Haswell. Yawn.

LOLOLOL. Good going Intel.

For those of you waiting for the updated Y400/Y500 with Haswell i7-4700MQ, the results are out. Identical clock speeds and no more than 10% faster in best-case scenarios, basically CPU synthetics. Pretty much no increase in real-world performance from the current i7-3630QM. Me wonders if it runs hotter too with the increased TDP.

Looking on the desktop side, i7-4770K is equally disappointing. About the same performance increase at stock going from Ivy Bridge to Haswell as there was going from Sandy Bridge to Ivy Bridge. Plus Haswell falls short of even Ivy Bridge in overclocking headroom. So the only increases are due to slight IPC improvements. Basically once you've overclocked all 3 they perform pretty much even. We came this far in 3 generations on the enthusiast desktop platform? Sad.

Where Haswell does shine is in the iGPU. The highest TDP Iris Pro 5200 is an absolute beast compared to HD 4000, more than twice as fast in everything. Substantially faster than AMD's fastest APU as well. But still nowhere near GT 650M performance as Intel had claimed. It does get sorta close though at low resolutions and settings when not bottlenecked by memory bandwidth. Not that this has any relevance to this laptop as the iGPU will be HD 4600 and shut off anyway.

So safe to say there is no real point in waiting a few months for Haswell to find its way into the Y400/Y500. Unless of course you like waiting.

 

All this fuss for nothing. I guess we still have to wait for something better. I was browsing on MSI website and their already listing their products with haswell.

 

Thanks for sharing this information, i was just curious about this haswell trend topic...

 

Good post enjoyed reading it. I had the same point of view . Until I read about Haswell's

#1. Double Vector Processing performance vs Ivy Bridge.
#2. The 2.4Ghz 4700QM is compared to and performs like a 2.7Ghz 3740QM is significant.
#3. Built in Graphics would allow lets say a Y500 to obtain 8+ hours guestimate on built in Graphics rather than 2 hours always running on GT650 or GT750
#4. Thinner cooler socket design allows Haswell to run cooler cooler Temps More Turbo Boost, and less fan cooling wasted battery
#5. New instructions sets optimized for future applications and gaming optimizing hyperthreading.
#6. Its rated a TDP of 47 W including CPU, GPU, memory controller and VRM all combined vs Ivy Bridge TDP 45 W on just the CPU like the Core i7 3630
#7. I forgot which component intel removed from the motherboard in Haswell and is now on chip further reducing battery drain.

Ivy Bridge was a huge improvement over sandy Bridge, still I agree that Haswell is not a big jump over Ivy Bridge except for the double vector processing performance. I'd like to see some benchmarks.

 

The slashed the USB controller HUB and integrated into the new XOCH design

lets not forget that the 4700 is the replacement of the 3600 sku, not for the 3700sku, the 4800 is that one

 

Gaming wise, it won't matter much until maybe new console ports arrive with higher CPU demand. Doubt the y500 will get revamped to the point igpu will matter.

 

what about the battery life improvement? any info on it?

 

Are you trolling? Can't tell if serious. "Ivy Bridge was huge improvement over Sandy Bridge" it's not. We got a 10% IPC improvement, higher temperatures due to using crappy TIM instead of fluxless solder to attach the IHS, less overclocking headroom, and HD 4000 which most enthusiasts don't care for. Ivy Bridge may have been 10% faster than Sandy Bridge clock-for-clock but it also ran hotter and couldn't overclock as high so in the end they were about even. You've ticked off that list in the past and I don't think too many people took it seriously. It's easy to copy-paste something from Wikipedia without understanding what they mean or how they are relevant to real-world performance.

I don't like ripping holes in people's arguments but pretty much everything you listed is either speculation, conjecture, or just flat-out wrong.

Sure, the 4700MQ will probably perform close to the 3740QM at stock, but latter has partially unlocked multipliers which you can use XTU to boost up to 3.9 GHz on four cores. The 4700MQ is a small enough improvement over the 3630QM that you'll never feel it in actual use.

Discussion of the iGPU is moot because you can bet it will continue to be disabled along with Optimus in future Y400/Y500 models.

So far the reviewed Haswell desktop parts (i7-4770K and i5-4670K) are running even hotter than Ivy Bridge as well as using slightly more power. Temperatures are in AMD Bulldozer/Piledriver territory once overclocked. Overclockers are hitting a thermal barrier at frequencies below what could they could achieve on Ivy Bridge and Sandy Bridge. Looks like Intel is still using TIM to glue to IHS on the die for their desktop parts. With that in mind, how much cooler, if at all, do you really expect the mobile parts to run?

The 45W TDP of the 3630QM includes the CPU, iGPU, and memory controller too. The integrated VRM pushes the 4700MQ to 47W TDP. Should decrease temperatures, right?

Speaking of the integrated voltage regulator, this will probably hurt overclockers more than it helps. That and the higher temperatures combined with a chip design more geared toward mobile than to enthusiast desktops.

 

My Y400 gets about 4-5 hours of screen time. I'm not sure why your Y500 would only be getting 2 hours.

How do you expect to use the on-board graphics it they are not going to be supported by Lenovo?

 

We are talking desktop parts in a notebook forum? Anyway, the benefits of Haswell mobile processors are improved integrated graphics and improved power management. So if you are looking a buy a portable laptop it definitely makes a lot of sense to wait especially since we should be seeing Haswell in laptops and tablets very soon, the new Razer Blade is available for pre-order first week of June. If you are looking for a device that you will leaved plugged in to a power source at all times then yes it makes absolutely no sense to wait.

 

#1 is pure marketing. There might be an actual change from IB to include whatever this is suppose to do (but, as mentioned, anyone can copy/paste Wikipedia and other sources without understanding the pros/cons of the tech), but it'll likely be minor. Remember that you have to get programmers on board with the technology; simply having it there won't change anything.
#2, probably closer to an i7-3630QM. Might OC to i7-3740QM levels though.
#3, only if Lenovo allows it (Intel has no control over that), as mentioned.
#4 I'm doubtful about. Same thing was said about IB, yet it runs hotter than SB.
#5 sounds just like more marketing from Intel.
#6, I'd be more concerned about idle power usage, since that's honestly what the CPU is doing most of the time.
#7, you're thinking about the voltage regulator. I'll wait and see how Haswell laptops will last on a charge compared to an IB model of the same lineup to see how moving the voltage regular affects performance/thermals/etc.

IB wasn't a huge performance improvement over SB at all, unless you think 5%-15% CPU performance increase is massive.

 

Regarding #4, you may have less Watts of heat generated per GHz, but this in the end has little to do with the temperature of the CPU in the end. Ivy bridge runs hotter than Sandy for a simple reason. The TDP is the same for both ivy/sandu dual cores and quad cores and the die area is smaller for ivy bridge. Less surface in contact with the heatsink and the same TDP will result in a small increase in temperature overall.

If Intel chose to go the same way with Haswell, we'll end up with very similar temperatures to what we had before. Unless there's a reduction in TDP, you won't see much of a difference. Now, there could be a difference in heat generated at different C states with the highest gains in terms of TDP at idle and low loads. We'll know soon anyways.

Finally, regarding the lower power draw, I wouldn't be surprised to see manufacturers cramming smaller batteries to make the notebook smaller and lighter instead of keeping a battery of the same size and offering longer battery life. Again, time will tell.

 

Stop hating on Haswell. I would hit it if I was in the market for a new laptop.

 

It would make sense to go for the newer model if you are in the market, but the argument here is that Haswell isn't the dramatic improvement over Ivy Bridge that their marketing department made it out to be. If you are already running an Ivy Bridge setup, there really isn't much justification to sell your system at a loss just to get Haswell. The Y400/500 has the integrated GPU disabled, so one of Haswell's selling points is already moot in this case.

 

Some people are intentionally buying the older models to save hundreds..
Also I always thought about the iGPU.. why can't we manually activate it and such?

 

If I remember correctly, Lenovo disabled it in favor of the NVidia SLi setup. There were discussions for a modded BIOS that allows you to enable GPU switching, but I don't know how well it works and if you are running two GT 650/750M's, the potential issues caused by them.

 

Lenovo did something to the hardware. There is no software/bios mod that will allow the iGPU to work.

That is what I learned on the forum with the bios mod.

 

I wonder is maybe it has to a hardware mod to have SLI work? How do other SLI laptops handle Optimus?

 

The display is hooked up to the iGPU and any information from the dGPU(s) would have to pass through the iGPU to get to the display, instead of having the dGPU directly connected to the display (as the Y500 is configured, I suspect).

Interestingly enough, this is why you don't see Optimus in high-end IPS displays. Intel's GPU can't handle 10 bits of color information, only 8 bits.

 

Haswell is an all-new design catered toward low-power consumption and improved graphics performance.
In that department, it has succeeded very well, if you only look at it from purely a performance standpoint than you'll surely be dissapointed.

Regarding the Y400/Y500, the benefits of low-power consumption is moot, as the Y400/500 disables Optimus as a result of issues with SLI.

So my point is:
1. Ultrabooks and tablets with only iGPU or Discrete graphics + Optimus will almost surely benefit from better battery life (which is the point of Haswell)
2. For those buying Y400/Y500, if you can score an IVB machine for a lower price than there's no reason to wait for the updated Haswell, which almost has no performance benefit and no battery life benefit as well.

 

I thought a smaller die shrink actually decreases thermal heat?
Correct my if I'm wrong

 

Not exactly. It increases thermal density. More transistors packed into a smaller area = more heat.

In the case of Ivy Bridge, it ran cooler and consumed less power than than Sandy Bridge at stock, but once overclocked it got quite a bit hotter. The use of TIM to attach the IHS also contributed to that.

 

Right about thermal density, but it wasn't the TIM that increased the heat, it was the silicon that mounted the ihs to the cpu (it left a gap between the IHS and the core).

 

Got it. Thanks for the correction.

 

The new Y510p is out and lenovo is claiming that it has 5 hours of battery life. Idk whether or not this is actually true or not.
IdeaPad Y510p High-Performance 15.6" Multimedia Laptop from Lenovo | Lenovo (US)

 

I wonder if that 5 hour battery life is accurate, cause that'd be pretty cool. I max out around 4 hours w/Throttlestop (one of the most epic pieces of CPU tweaking software available) and like 2 without xD.

 

doesn't the new nvidia 700 series graphics cards uses less power? same goes for the haswell processors. maybe that's where they squeezed out the extra 2 hours.

 

Can't speak on the Haswell processors but for the GT750M, it is nothing more than a re-branded 650/660M running on higher clock/ voltage. Unless they put a bigger battery in the Y510p, we will see the real world numbers well below 5 hours. As far as I know, switchable graphics is still not an option due to SLI.

 

Yes, better power efficiency in both parts. But the difference in quoted battery life comes from real-world vs. marketing specs.

A Lenovo Y400 / Y500 gets 3 hours of real-world battery life.
A Lenovo Y410 / Y510 gets up to 5 hours of marketing-claim battery life.

That's the difference. You can bet that the "up to 5 hours" battery life on a Lenovo Y410 / Y510 is under best-case scenario where screen brightness is all the way down, all wireless radios (WiFi & Bluetooth) are off, and you're doing something where the CPU is nearly at idle like typing a Microsoft Word doc.

 

How is the 750M more power efficient than the 650M? The 750M runs at 1.13v, the 650M runs at 1.025v. They both throttle down to 135mhz on battery if I'm not mistaken.