"Intel has targeted roughly the level of performance offered by NVIDIA’s GT 650M with their Iris Pro 5200 graphics"
In Anand's review it's obvious Intel fell considerably short of their targets, falling regularly 40-50% behind the GT 650m. And the 650m was just replaced by the 750m, so it will look even worse by comparison.
It's great integrated performance, but if a consumer is still wanting to AAA game regularly on their laptop discrete remains the clear choice.
Pretty happy I'm not the only looking at these prices and going WTF?!
That integrated GPU isn't worth anywhere NEAR a 200 dollar premium. Intel needs to drop prices by 200 bucks basically across the board. It's getting to the point I don't even care how much faster they are; we're so far past "fast enough" I might just switch everything to AMD on principle. Waiting to see what the market does with all this hardware for any hard decisions; but for the first time ever I may not be buying a laptop with Intel inside.
How many people actually play AAA games on their laptop? Benchmarks for "The Sims" or "World of Warcraft" would be more appropriate. That's the kind of thing normal users actually do. The truth is that "AAA" hardcore games are a tiny and shrinking niche.
Benchmarks for "The Sims" or "World of Warcraft" are uninteresting because even entry-level iGPUs are perfectly capable of playing those at 720p nowadays.
Also, you can easily extrapolate from benchmarks of more demanding games. If it can run Crysis at 720p, you can assume it won't have any trouble handling The Sims or WoW.
They probably don't go over 85W but in the past Apple laptops would lock out the highest CPU clocks if you didn't have the battery in because they were capable of using more power than the adapter could provide.
The simple fact is that Intel is NOT trying to eliminate any reason to have discrete add-on GPUs. That would cost too much die real estate. What they ARE trying to do is to enable laptop OEMs to not need them in all but their high end laptops. They've accomplished that with Haswell by taking a huge chunk out of the performance gap between integrated & discrete GPUs. Even Apple will continue to use these for their lower price & ultrathin Mac Books
I use my work laptop with a core 2 due almost exclusively for CPU. But it has a power hungry nvidia Quattro gpu in there that is really slow. I'm really excited to upgrade to one of these in a smaller form factor instead of my old 6 pound dell. I need it to last just as long (3+ years) so I need the fastest CPU I can buy.
the question is: what is the better CPU performer? The 4900MQ with the higher clocks or the 4950HQ with the huge L4? I'm wondering if the performance is so similar I might as well get the 4950HQ just to have the GPU in case I need it. Next step is finding a thin light laptop with it included
Yup, it's the Core i7-4930MX. Also, I am surprised the Extreme part doesn't have vPro, TXT, and VT-d. Is this a mistake? The 2920XM, 2960XM, and 3940XM all came with vPro and VT-d. I know because I own or have owned laptops will each of them. I am already disappointed to see "K" and "R" desktop parts lacking these features. It will only infuriate me further to see the Core i7-4930MX without them.
Unless I messed up the table initially (which is entirely possible), the MX and the other top two MQ SKUs have VT-d/TXT/vPro; only the 470xMQ lack those.
Looking at the prices I do wonder what Intel is smoking. 300-1000$ for a cpu? Are they trying to destroy the PC market completely? They don't have any competition from AMD, but they have considerable competition from ARM based tablets.
No wonder people go for these when Intel sells just the CPU/GPU for 2x the price of a good tablet.
If you can do all your work on a tablet, Intel is targeting you with a $50 Celeron or Atom, not a $300 i7. A Celeron with a small SSD/hybrid drive and a clean install of Windows/Linux/Chrome OS is extremely snappy for typical tablet tasks.
Of course, all the OEMs are stupid and sell i5 + HDD + bloatware instead, which for most use cases is slower.
Keep in mind that at least for now, there are a ton of businesses that are still sticking with PCs and Laptops. Plus, while for some things an iPad or tablet will be "fast enough", try doing complex spreadsheet work or document editing on one. There are use cases where the fact that the quad-core Haswell chips are an order of magnitude faster than a tablet is still important. Paying three times as much as the cost of a basic tablet to get performance that's over 10X as high is not necessarily a bad investment, at least if your primary concern isn't mobility and battery life.
If excel / libreoffice spreadsheet not supporting multi threading, what benefit when you bought something like these compared to core i3? The real world performance to process the spreadsheet is not that significant.
For business I think i3 or AMD trinity is good enough. With notebook price about ~ 1/2 compared to this.
I'm many cases price of your most important tool doesn't really matter that much. Even the most expensive laptop you can think of usually costs around 3000USD/EUR unless you really go for some industrial strenght military spacetech.
And when you are equipping your 100 000+ usd/eur per year salaried engineers with tools, that is really a drop in a bucket.
Exactly. The software licenses on my laptop at work run over $15,000 a year. I don't think they are too worried about the extra 500 dollars it cost them to get a better processor over an i3. My salary + travel + software for 4 years (replacement lifetime) makes the entire cost of the laptop about 0.5% or less of the cost of employing me over that time.
And i'm not even a software engineer. I work in heavy industry. The upfront costs for hardware for the business are really just not that substantial when looking at the overall costs of everything else related to employing someone like me. And I'm certainly no one special for my company.
Well that argument can be applied to all cost. From toilet paper to cpu. But running a profitable business means you have to control cost all over. The reason beeing that revenue is defined by marginal cost; the last product you sell the last toiletpaper you use so to speak. It does matter. Having an agressive attitude to control cost all over your company can define a business. Think IKEA.
the point he is making is that since it is relatively cheap compared to everything else they do, an extra 1% to their budget absolutely increases his productivity by more than 1%. This is harder to justify at say a small mom-and-pop store where they would be NO more productive at 3x the cost of an i3. Cost is relative.
I think your wrong about that comment. The company Sager that produces my laptop, is very upgradeable and they come standard with the 4700MQ, but for an additional $185 you can have it replaced at the vendor level, not manufacturer level, with a 4800MQ, for $385 you can have it replaced with a 4900MQ. And for like $800 you can even get the Xtreme part. So that means they have to be sockets. In fact if you clearly read this article it says at the begging that MQ Part are PGA(Socketed) and H parts 4950HQ and the like 4700HQ are BGA(Soldered on chips) So yes M series are socketed and H are BGA.
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34 Comments
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tviceman - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
"Intel has targeted roughly the level of performance offered by NVIDIA’s GT 650M with their Iris Pro 5200 graphics"In Anand's review it's obvious Intel fell considerably short of their targets, falling regularly 40-50% behind the GT 650m. And the 650m was just replaced by the 750m, so it will look even worse by comparison.
It's great integrated performance, but if a consumer is still wanting to AAA game regularly on their laptop discrete remains the clear choice.
t.s - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
Well, Intel and their overpriced CPU, again. Why I'm not surprised? AMD, ARM, where are you?testbug00 - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
I don't know if i would truly call it a failure...They failed compared to what they wanted to hit, but they also blew trinity/richland mobile to hell.
Of course, they also cost 3-4+ times as much..... so.....
Hrel - Wednesday, June 5, 2013 - link
Pretty happy I'm not the only looking at these prices and going WTF?!That integrated GPU isn't worth anywhere NEAR a 200 dollar premium. Intel needs to drop prices by 200 bucks basically across the board. It's getting to the point I don't even care how much faster they are; we're so far past "fast enough" I might just switch everything to AMD on principle. Waiting to see what the market does with all this hardware for any hard decisions; but for the first time ever I may not be buying a laptop with Intel inside.
JDG1980 - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
How many people actually play AAA games on their laptop? Benchmarks for "The Sims" or "World of Warcraft" would be more appropriate. That's the kind of thing normal users actually do. The truth is that "AAA" hardcore games are a tiny and shrinking niche.kyuu - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
Benchmarks for "The Sims" or "World of Warcraft" are uninteresting because even entry-level iGPUs are perfectly capable of playing those at 720p nowadays.Also, you can easily extrapolate from benchmarks of more demanding games. If it can run Crysis at 720p, you can assume it won't have any trouble handling The Sims or WoW.
Tetracycloide - Monday, June 3, 2013 - link
This simply isn't true. AAA games are as big or bigger than they ever were. Slower relative growth is not 'shrinking.'inighthawki - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
It may not quite match the perf, but it also uses a lot less power. As you note from Anand's review, the 650M rMBP is 90W, vs haswell at 47W and 55Wwhyso - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
Um please tell me how the rmbp can possibly use 90 watts on an 85 watt power adapter?Cold Fussion - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
It would discharge the battery while being connected to the power adapter presumably.Flunk - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
TDP is normally not actually hit. It's a worst-case scenario. Apple probably tested their product through and found 85W to be enough.I have an Alienware m14x with basically the same specs as the rMBP 15", the adapter is 150watt. I think it's more a factor of Apple being cheap.
Amaranthus - Monday, June 3, 2013 - link
They probably don't go over 85W but in the past Apple laptops would lock out the highest CPU clocks if you didn't have the battery in because they were capable of using more power than the adapter could provide.Hector2 - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
The simple fact is that Intel is NOT trying to eliminate any reason to have discrete add-on GPUs. That would cost too much die real estate. What they ARE trying to do is to enable laptop OEMs to not need them in all but their high end laptops. They've accomplished that with Haswell by taking a huge chunk out of the performance gap between integrated & discrete GPUs. Even Apple will continue to use these for their lower price & ultrathin Mac Booksskiboysteve - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
I use my work laptop with a core 2 due almost exclusively for CPU. But it has a power hungry nvidia Quattro gpu in there that is really slow. I'm really excited to upgrade to one of these in a smaller form factor instead of my old 6 pound dell. I need it to last just as long (3+ years) so I need the fastest CPU I can buy.the question is: what is the better CPU performer? The 4900MQ with the higher clocks or the 4950HQ with the huge L4? I'm wondering if the performance is so similar I might as well get the 4950HQ just to have the GPU in case I need it. Next step is finding a thin light laptop with it included
AFQ - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
@JarredThere is an error in the first table. Its Core i7-4930MX, not MQ.
critical_ - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
Yup, it's the Core i7-4930MX. Also, I am surprised the Extreme part doesn't have vPro, TXT, and VT-d. Is this a mistake? The 2920XM, 2960XM, and 3940XM all came with vPro and VT-d. I know because I own or have owned laptops will each of them. I am already disappointed to see "K" and "R" desktop parts lacking these features. It will only infuriate me further to see the Core i7-4930MX without them.JarredWalton - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
Unless I messed up the table initially (which is entirely possible), the MX and the other top two MQ SKUs have VT-d/TXT/vPro; only the 470xMQ lack those.blackbrrd - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
Looking at the prices I do wonder what Intel is smoking. 300-1000$ for a cpu? Are they trying to destroy the PC market completely? They don't have any competition from AMD, but they have considerable competition from ARM based tablets.No wonder people go for these when Intel sells just the CPU/GPU for 2x the price of a good tablet.
madmilk - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
If you can do all your work on a tablet, Intel is targeting you with a $50 Celeron or Atom, not a $300 i7. A Celeron with a small SSD/hybrid drive and a clean install of Windows/Linux/Chrome OS is extremely snappy for typical tablet tasks.Of course, all the OEMs are stupid and sell i5 + HDD + bloatware instead, which for most use cases is slower.
JarredWalton - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
Keep in mind that at least for now, there are a ton of businesses that are still sticking with PCs and Laptops. Plus, while for some things an iPad or tablet will be "fast enough", try doing complex spreadsheet work or document editing on one. There are use cases where the fact that the quad-core Haswell chips are an order of magnitude faster than a tablet is still important. Paying three times as much as the cost of a basic tablet to get performance that's over 10X as high is not necessarily a bad investment, at least if your primary concern isn't mobility and battery life.t.s - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
If excel / libreoffice spreadsheet not supporting multi threading, what benefit when you bought something like these compared to core i3? The real world performance to process the spreadsheet is not that significant.For business I think i3 or AMD trinity is good enough. With notebook price about ~ 1/2 compared to this.
t.s - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
Err.. I mean, excel / libreoffice spreadsheet, AFAIK, didn't scale with CPU number.zepi - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
I'm many cases price of your most important tool doesn't really matter that much. Even the most expensive laptop you can think of usually costs around 3000USD/EUR unless you really go for some industrial strenght military spacetech.And when you are equipping your 100 000+ usd/eur per year salaried engineers with tools, that is really a drop in a bucket.
skiboysteve - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
Thismy company of thousands of engineers use many performance demanding applications. We usually have a 2k budget on laptops.
reininop - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
Exactly. The software licenses on my laptop at work run over $15,000 a year. I don't think they are too worried about the extra 500 dollars it cost them to get a better processor over an i3. My salary + travel + software for 4 years (replacement lifetime) makes the entire cost of the laptop about 0.5% or less of the cost of employing me over that time.And i'm not even a software engineer. I work in heavy industry. The upfront costs for hardware for the business are really just not that substantial when looking at the overall costs of everything else related to employing someone like me. And I'm certainly no one special for my company.
krumme - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
Well that argument can be applied to all cost. From toilet paper to cpu.But running a profitable business means you have to control cost all over.
The reason beeing that revenue is defined by marginal cost; the last product you sell the last toiletpaper you use so to speak. It does matter.
Having an agressive attitude to control cost all over your company can define a business. Think IKEA.
thesavvymage - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
the point he is making is that since it is relatively cheap compared to everything else they do, an extra 1% to their budget absolutely increases his productivity by more than 1%. This is harder to justify at say a small mom-and-pop store where they would be NO more productive at 3x the cost of an i3. Cost is relative.juhatus - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
Are all parts are soldered to motherboard using BGA? Maybe the difference between H- and M-series is sockets vs BGA?thesavvymage - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
these are all mobile chips, theyre all soldereddoug1970 - Wednesday, October 16, 2013 - link
I think your wrong about that comment. The company Sager that produces my laptop, is very upgradeable and they come standard with the 4700MQ, but for an additional $185 you can have it replaced at the vendor level, not manufacturer level, with a 4800MQ, for $385 you can have it replaced with a 4900MQ. And for like $800 you can even get the Xtreme part. So that means they have to be sockets. In fact if you clearly read this article it says at the begging that MQ Part are PGA(Socketed) and H parts 4950HQ and the like 4700HQ are BGA(Soldered on chips) So yes M series are socketed and H are BGA.doug1970 - Wednesday, October 16, 2013 - link
Sorry I am stupid I didn't edit my own post, I spelled beginning really badly.gxtoast - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
Just noticed that none of the Haswell i7s support Intel EPT, which is required for nested virtualisation of 64-bit guests. Jarred, what are we to do?JesperL - Saturday, June 15, 2013 - link
Anyone care to venture a guess on which model will be in the Mac Minis?n13L5 - Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - link
So, much later the reason for the i7-4702HQ comes into sharp focus:The lesser Intel GPU making this a 37W part allowed Razer to install a quad core CPU paired with a GTX 870M GPU into their rather slim 2014 Blade 14.
Best not to waste 10W on Intel's Iris in cases like this.