First Haswell performance benchmarks hit the web

[Andre S. Veteran]

See link: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i7-4770k-haswell-performance,3461.html

The review unfortunately says nothing about power consumption, heat or overclocking, but it does look like Haswell is another solid incremental upgrade over the previous generation. Software recompiled to take advantage of the new AVX2 and TSX instructions should see much larger gains.

The gaming performance remains disappointing and those looking for decent integrated graphics performance should probably still go with AMD's Trinity.

I'll eagerly await pricing and availability. :)

[+Mirumir Subscriber¹]

Cool and thanks for sharing!

I'm impressed by the perfomance of HD graphics 4600. You can pretty much play WoW without discreet graphics now :D

[Semtex]

INtel isn't happy about that

[cpu killer]

Sounds like the expected performance increase. I personally am just waiting for it to come out for LGA1150 so I won't be one socket behind when I upgrade from my i7-870.

[theyarecomingforyou]

It looks like a modest improvement over Ivybridge, which was itself only a modest improvement over Sandybridge. While it's great to have improvements in productivity apps I'm most interested in gaming performance and overclocking. I'm disappointed that Intel isn't pushing beyond quad-core, especially when they already have hexa-core processors on the market with the LGA2011 chipset.

Overall I don't see anything to get excited about and if it's a poor overclocker or is excessively priced then that's going to kill demand.

[torrentthief]

2-6% cpu improvement and 20% gpu improvement is pretty poor :( I was hoping for 10% cpu improvement and 40%+ gpu improvement.

[Jason S. Global Moderator]

Overall I don't see anything to get excited about and if it's a poor overclocker or is excessively priced then that's going to kill demand.

i agree w/ you. I'd like to upgrade my Desktop this summer, but i'm having trouble getting excited for Haswell. My 920 may be old now, but it still handles anything i throw at it. I suppose what i can get excited about are the chipset enhancements ive been missing - SATA3, USB3, PCI-e 3.0, UEFI...

[cpu killer]

i agree w/ you. I'd like to upgrade my Desktop this summer, but i'm having trouble getting excited for Haswell. My 920 may be old now, but it still handles anything i throw at it. I suppose what i can get excited about are the chipset enhancements ive been missing - SATA3, USB3, PCI-e 3.0, UEFI...

In the same boat as you just with a 870. All I'm looking to upgrade for is to have the latest socket and native USB3/SATA3 support, and perhaps lower power consumption with a Haswell i5.

[+Majesticmerc MVC]

Nice spot. Looks like decent gains overall, but nothing to write home about if you already have an Ivy Bridge chip. Disappointing that Intel aren't really looking for anything more than quad core though. I guess with AMD effectively out of the game at the top end, Intel aren't really pushing the boat out.

Will be nice to see the power consumption figures, since this is where Haswell is (supposedly) going to excel.

[Andre S. Veteran]

These numbers should be taken with a grain of salt as by THG's own admission, their test setup was clearly not tuned correctly, and the review hasn't been even approved by Intel. I expect later reviews to show Haswell in a better light.

[BillyJack]

i agree w/ you. I'd like to upgrade my Desktop this summer, but i'm having trouble getting excited for Haswell. My 920 may be old now, but it still handles anything i throw at it. I suppose what i can get excited about are the chipset enhancements ive been missing - SATA3, USB3, PCI-e 3.0, UEFI...

I have the same plan but will watch to see if Harwell is worth it. If I do not feel like there is a lot to offer then I will wait for the next tick.

[YounGMessiah]

Only time will tell :shiftyninja:

[George P Global Moderator]

I'm going to stick with my i7 920 till it dies. Intel will probably be talking about it's i7 7770 chips by then.

[Hitman2000]

Granted these are only the first benchmarks taken with a pinch of salt, I don't think that its far off the mark.

Everyone already predicted that haswell will be a 10-15% bump.

This is why we need AMD to step up, I remember the golden era of about ~2000 to 2007 when AMD and Intel were going hard at each other and each had to actually try to get their name at the top.

Intel knows it can do this drip and drab strategy cause lets be honest AMD has pretty much gone to **** since the Intel Core era..

[Phouchg]

Release Ivy Bridge-E or "Intel, go home".

[vcfan]

the point of haswell is its power efficiency more than performance. the igp only has 4 more execution cores,what did people expect? haswell will allow thinner,lighter,cheaper, less power hungry and more powerful tablets and notebooks. devices like the surface pro and acer w700 will cost beginning at $599,have all day battery and be thinner and lighter.

[123456789A]

Not much of an increase. Should I stick with getting a 3770K for my new build then?

[RvXtm]

I'm still on a q9400, but if i do an upgrade this year, it will probably be hanswell ... i'm waiting to see the the price points.

[spaceelf]

I'm going to stick with my i7 920 till it dies. Intel will probably be talking about it's i7 7770 chips by then.

I kinda feel the same way, but I've been extremely irritated with this system from time to time...I'd like to replace it with Kaveri but I'm not sure I really need to spend the money when I'll have a PS4 soon.

[mattmatik]

Ok, I'll bite...why do we need Intel's blessing for a review? I get that they want the test environment to be 'optimal' but to me that just sounds like they will find the best binned chip and have control over the results.

[theyarecomingforyou]

Release Ivy Bridge-E or "Intel, go home".

Well, I'd rather they release Haswell-E.

[Osiris]

the point of haswell is its power efficiency more than performance. the igp only has 4 more execution cores,what did people expect? haswell will allow thinner,lighter,cheaper, less power hungry and more powerful tablets and notebooks. devices like the surface pro and acer w700 will cost beginning at $599,have all day battery and be thinner and lighter.

I agree that Haswell will be more about battery life and achitecture to allow thinner devices, but $599 for a pro and all day battery is a pipe dream for even Haswell devices. In light battery saving mode haswell will hopefully hit 8 hours but again, an icore and 1080p screen you have to keep at such low settings to get a full days battery life out of, isnt really that beneficial to people.

The temash and baytrail chips offer larger respective performance gains, larger respective video gains, they are already cheaper than icores and last longer, and imo where most of the tablet market is going to potentially head to until you can get your icores as thin, light, with as long battery and at the same price point.

[Growled Member]

Decent increases but nothing overwhelming.

[George P Global Moderator]

I dunno about battery life for these but even if you gain at best another 2hrs on a Surface Pro 2 with one of these lots of people would say it's worth it. Would it bring prices down? Maybe a bit but I don't expect much. At best it could help cut the price by $100 but at the same time OEMs want to try and see prices and their margins go higher. If you want lower price then you'll have to go with atom or ARM.

[Phouchg]

Well, I'd rather they release Haswell-E.

That would be sometime around 2016, if their current pacing is any indication.

But what would it give? No efficiency improvements - same 22 nm. Doesn't have IGP anyway. Just bring 8 physical cores to desktop and I'm a happy guy.