DigiTimes: Intel to launch Haswell on March 2013

[Iconyu]

It's been said before, but if this is the case, why bother with Ivy Bridge-E at all, which I read was going to be launched in 2H 2013?? It'll be nearly obsolete the instant it's launched.

Way to go Intel...way to screw the folks who pay for your top chips by demanding a high premium for obsolete hardware.

Fortunately, technology is improving to the point where the consumer-grade processors are making Intel's high end stuff more and more irrelevant for more and more people. PCI-E 3.0 makes the fewer lanes available on Ivy less of an issue and having new features like chipset supported USB 3.0 will sweeten the deal. Intel is slowly but surely poisoning their own prized cash cow, IMHO. This, combined with Intel's lagging position in the mobile market (in relation to other companies like ARM), is setting the stage for a significant comeuppance.

And Intel needs said comeuppance...badly.

Intel probably won't bother making a big deal about Ivy Bridge E, if they release it it'll just be to make cheaper eight core CPU's. If you think it's obsolete just don't buy it, people spending that kind of money should make educated choices. As for making the mainstream systems attractive I don't see an issue with this, you don't need to gimp mainstream to provoke high end sales, Intel chips are selling well on both fronts. On the subject of socket changes, Intel have been bring a lot more subsystem changes per generation so when you upgrade it's not just a faster chip.

As for the mobile market, when it comes to a fight against ARM, for a company that makes desktop chips Intel aren't doing too badly. ARM has a lot of advantages as far as manufacturers are concerned as they can just buy the design and build whatever they want around it. Intel aren't really going to follow this lead so it will always be an uphill struggle, to insure a sale, Intel has to make a chip and subsystem that can't be beaten on performance by almost everyone that has made an ARM based SOC. So I think it's brave for them to step into the market, but unless they can create a huge advantage it won't be theirs soon.

[Kallenator]

It would be awesome to see Amd catch up and compete again, i do like there focus on affordable enthusiast products. I just wish Intel would give us more then 4 cores in the mainstream segment.

I agree, it really is a shame that Bulldozer did so bad overall, if AMD really were able to compete here then maybe we would see cheaper six cores and even eight cores for consumers.

[rk7p5]

I wonder is Haswell going to be multi unlocked chips only? or will we be able to mess with the bclock to? Honestly overclocking with Intel now is kinda boring and straight forward, at least the Amd stuff is still fun even though performance is not that good.

[nossy23]

I hope this will not be another generation of CPU's focused mostly on the more mobile devices. Having a GPU on CPU is fine for a laptop/ultrabook etc. But I don't seen the use for them in high end desktops. I want more pure CPU power damned!!

[rk7p5]

I don't mind the igpu's, i just wish that someone would find a use for them in systems with discrete gpu's. Like using them to do AA AF to take the load off discrete gpu or something like virtu but actually using the igpu + dgpu to render frames and not just trickery.

[jogshy]

That's good. I just hope Intel could add DDR4 support for the desktop version and not only for the EX one.

[Levish]

IvyBridge was supposed to match Llano in IGP performance, and we know the results.

comparatively Ivy IGP performance is not shabby at all for low - medium quality gaming at 720p
looking forward to improvements though, would be nice to have a better "spare" vga for when I happen to be in between cards.

was using the hd4000 in place of a olde 8800gt and the performance difference is not as tremendous as I thought it would be, I literally thought it would be no contest but HD4000 is fairly comparable.

still I've always wondered why IGP was so neglected and allowed to fall so very far behind discrete VGA, I'm glad things are turning around a little.

[Generic user #2]

...allowed to fall behind VGA?

have you seen the differences in die area between an integrated graphics core and a discrete card of the same generation? I only advantage I can think of for the IGP is the fact that its much closer to the CPU.

[rk7p5]

comparatively Ivy IGP performance is not shabby at all for low - medium quality gaming at 720p
looking forward to improvements though, would be nice to have a better "spare" vga for when I happen to be in between cards.

was using the hd4000 in place of a olde 8800gt and the performance difference is not as tremendous as I thought it would be, I literally thought it would be no contest but HD4000 is fairly comparable.

still I've always wondered why IGP was so neglected and allowed to fall so very far behind discrete VGA, I'm glad things are turning around a little.

Wow that's impressive. Oem Haswell Pc's are going to introduce gaming to many people at a pretty decent level. In the past people would get bored and try to play a game on their dell or similar type pc but either it wouldn't run or run very poorly and of course they would give up. The future of Pc gaming looks like it's changing for the better.

[PatRaceTin]

I hope new revision (stepping) for IVY to reduce some heat

[[XC] hipno650]

Wow that's impressive. Oem Haswell Pc's are going to introduce gaming to many people at a pretty decent level. In the past people would get bored and try to play a game on their dell or similar type pc but either it wouldn't run or run very poorly and of course they would give up. The future of Pc gaming looks like it's changing for the better.

when the next gen consoles are released (and chances are it will be about the same time) the bar will be raised considerably for what will be needed to run games on PC. because most games are shoddy ports an 8800gt can still run essentially everything well (granted new games need to be on low and such be even still its impressive). so im guessing we will be back to square one in the IGP performance struggle. AMD's APU's are trying to change that are a doing a half decent job but overall i think once the next gen hits they will be as useful as the Intel parts.

[NapalmV5]

they should ditch ib-e/ep and just bring all haswell forth

[aussie-revhead]

I read that somewhere here already, which needs updating more? It would be nice to have a six core with mem clocking ability like Ivy has, along with better IPC and maybe some extra oc headroom ...

[Olivon]

Package options of desktop and mobile Haswell processors - CPUWorld

[lutjens]

With Haswell being out so soon, it'll mean that the "high-end" will officially be two generations behind the mainstream...

[Evantaur]

I hope this will not be another generation of CPU's focused mostly on the more mobile devices. Having a GPU on CPU is fine for a laptop/ultrabook etc. But I don't seen the use for them in high end desktops. I want more pure CPU power damned!!

it'll be more and more useful in the future

also i find it funny how AMD tries to match intel's CPU power and intel tries to match AMD's GPU perf

[Olivon]

New video and graphics features of Haswell CPUs - CPUWorld

Haswell chips may have one of the three graphics controllers: GT1, GT2 or GT3, aimed at entry-level, mainstream, and performance graphics respectively (...) The GT3 controller can have up to 40 execution units, however we don't know exact number. (...) The GPU now supports DirectX 11.1, OpenGL 3.2 and OpenCL 1.2 APIs. According to Intel, average performance of the Haswell GT1 unit is 15% - 25% better than performance of Ivy Bridge GT1, and Haswell GT2 is also 15% - 25% faster than IVB GT2. GT3 graphics has 50% - 100% better performance than performance of Ivy Bridge GT2 GPUs.

[FlanK3r]

wow! it could be dangerous for Trinity igpu....

[Iconyu]

wow! it could be dangerous for Trinity igpu....

Agreed, the days of laughing at Intel graphics have definitely come to a middle...

[BababooeyHTJ]

Agreed, the days of laughing at Intel graphics have definitely come to a middle...

Good, I really think that Intel's IGP has done more harm to pc gaming than consoles ever could.

[Olivon]

Although the Ultra level processors won’t feature any display outputs rather a digital output, Haswell’s IGP is also rumored to be around three times faster than HD4000. The CPU side bring in a new instruction set AVX2 and around 15% IPC improvement over Ivy Bridge.

http://wccftech.com/intel-haswell-de...ails-revealed/

[jimba86]

intel seems to be moving so fast these day you cant keep up..

[GoldenTiger]

Wow, that's all quite impressive.... I skipped Ivy but looks like I will go for Haswell.

[god_43]

wow! it could be dangerous for Trinity igpu....

by the time haswell comes out, it will be facing steamroller based apu's. im pretty sure amd will still have the graphics crown, because those would be based on gcn.

[dairyFarmer]

From the slides Olivon is posting I cant see GT3 graphics on ANY desktop processor.

It seems intel thinks only laptops need good 3d performance, desktop space has been ceded to discreet cards for anything more than office work/productivity. A bit disappointing, but it kind of makes sense.