Intel Announces 'Iris' as Top Tier Graphics for Haswell

[Marcus Yam]

Intel has its eye on better graphics performance for Haswell.

Intel Announces 'Iris' as Top Tier Graphics for Haswell : Read more

 

[acktionhank]

To me it seems to be just past the level of an A10-5800k.
Looks like intel is becoming more competitive in integrated graphics, this isn't good news for AMD.

 

[CarolKarine]

well, the A10 is a bit outdated when compared to haswell. let's wait and see for AMD's next gen APUs. also, don't forget about AMD's HUMA technology, which will speed up graphics on APUs considerably.

 

[vmem]

hmm, the "R" series for desktop seems a bit strange to me. the default "Iris graphics" should be sufficient for professional workstations as it supports upto 4k resolution and Display port 1.2 if anyone actually wants to play games with it, these iGPUs won't hold a candle to a serious discrete GPU.
seems like a cheap excuse for OEMs to cut costs, and just put the intel BGA into their machines and sell it as is. Intel is just trying to cut out Nvidia and AMD -_-

 

[Bill Campbell]

Nobody buys a CPU for the integrated graphics capabilities; EVER. I disable it on every CPU/Motherboard it's implemented on. An $80 PCI-Express x16 graphics card would blow this away. Why do they waste their time, and the end user's money? (R&D costs the end user in the end)

 

[tului]

I did just use the iGPU on an i5 3570K when my AMD 7970 took a crap until I could get a replacement card. Luckily other than Skyrim(which still ran in low mediocre quality) most of my games are lo-res. Almost all are from Paradox Interactive.

 

[jezus53]

Because, Bill Campbell, some of us don't want to buy a graphics card if we do not have to. Some of us do not exactly need 1337 graphics because we aren't gaming. I personally used the HD graphics on my i7-3770K because i just need it to display documents for school on two screens. No need for cutting edge gpus, just enough to get it to show computations on the screen.

 

[theLiminator]

The iGPU is actually really freaking useful on certain laptops. When they reach the point where they're powerful enough to play most games at medium settings, it will be a huge success for laptops. Heck, they'd suit the needs of nearly all users, it's just most people on toms are more heavy duty users than the average. I can imagine how useful fairly powerful integrated graphics would be on an ultrabook.

 

[theLiminator]

The iGPU is actually really freaking useful on certain laptops. When they reach the point where they're powerful enough to play most games at medium settings, it will be a huge success for laptops. Heck, they'd suit the needs of nearly all users, it's just most people on toms are more heavy duty users than the average. I can imagine how useful fairly powerful integrated graphics would be on an ultrabook.

 

[smeezekitty]

But remember AMD has all of the radeon series at its disposal. It could streamline a higher end card and stick it in the APU and catch up.

 

[juan83]

Nice to see notebooks decent graphic performance with low power consumption.. but intel: don't be an ass.. don't put the best graphic engine on an i7 desktop, there surely may be a discrete graphic card.. you better place this engine on a notebook i3-i5 cpu.. where discrete graphic doesn't make sense to buyers.. that will be great.. also putting more preasure to AMD, prices go down and everybody are happier!

 

[CaptainTom]

I just got a Lenovo Y400 with a 750m and then I read this! But then I checked benchmarks and my graphics cards 5x stronger than intel 4000! So I am not worried I made a dumb mistake anymore, but in 2 years I could see Intel and AMD making anything less than a x50m completely pointless in new builds...

 

[Bill Campbell]

jezus53, the existing integrated graphics will perform no worse than this for "viewing documents." Viewing a document requires a refresh only when you're scrolling. Also, many document viewers will utilize the GDI which isn't even accelerated on some systems. Modern enterprise applications utilize .NET Windows Forms, which isn't accelerated either. Only .NET WPF does, which is primarily designed for multimedia, not enterprise/business/productivity applications. The benchmarks provided for these CPUs are not for desktop performance. The difference in desktop performance will be minimal, if even noticeable at all.

 

[JOSHSKORN]

But...can it run Crysis?
Seriously, can it? I'd like to know.

 

[Matsushima]

Intel's finally getting better at integrated graphics which they suck at since the beginning, Intel740 and that was more than a decade ago. The 'Graphics Media Decelerator' was also frequently bashed by people as well. This new graphics engine will be perfect for people playing games that are not demanding or old games.

 

[abbadon_34]

More BS for the illiterate. and more wasted productivity in the office.

 

[ragenalien]

I see some pretty nice gains here but for all those saying amd should watch out, check out the TDP on those higher end processors. Sure they're catching up to amd integrated but at the cost of using a good deal more power. I can only imagine the graphics potential if amd made a laptop APU with a TDP of 55 W. They would barely be scaling back some of their desktop versions.

 

[digiex]

If you buy an core i7, would you not also buy a high tier graphics card with it?
Why are they pairing high tier CPU with a decently good IGP, when few will use it anyway.
Why not pair the decently good IGP with Pentium/Celeron or Core i3.

 

[Matsushima]

If you buy an core i7, would you not also buy a high tier graphics card with it?
Why are they pairing high tier CPU with a decently good IGP, when few will use it anyway.
Why not pair the decently good IGP with Pentium/Celeron or Core i3.

Because they want you to buy high-end to make business. It's like there isn't a Celeron with an unlocked multiplier, for example. They did that once with the E6500K a few years ago and with the success, they decided to limit the unlocked multiplier to high-end models like they used to (e.g the Pentium Extreme Edition 955). Nowadays we only have the 3570/3770/3930 that are over $200 and the Extreme Edition models that are unlocked which is really sad for us.

 

[ta152h]

This is just an example of Intel imposing its superior manufacturing on AMD, and AMD being forced to runt off.
Before this, despite inferior CPU performance, AMD could at least boast their iGPU was better, and CPUs were fast enough. But, now, AMD simply can't compete. Intel is using lithography that is so much finer then the 32nm that AMD is using, transistors are cheap for them, and for AMD to match the performance, the processor die would be too big. With all that fab space underutilized, Intel had to find something to do with it, and AMD is suffering badly from the consequences, while GloBlows pounds sand for oil.
With the terrible beating AMD has suffered in market share already for their mainstream processors, this might lower it even further, putting them in negative market share (they not only don't sell processors, but they find themselves obligated to buy them from Intel, due to some weird Apple-Hippie vibe Steve Jobs' ghost is putting out).
It might make more sense for AMD to just get out of the mainstream market with their inferior designs, and just stop the losses there. BD/PD just can't do it. Maybe take one more stab with Steamroller, and then just give up if it continues to lag so badly. When you're in 2013, and you can't match the per thread performance of a 2006 Intel chip, you're clearly not competitive.
Spend the resources on Jaguar, which is very good, and will be wildly successful like Bobcat, and new ARM processors, and discontinue failed lines of hardware that simply don't measure up. Just like Intel did with Pentium 4. It was a bad product, so they went with their other line, and added the stuff that worked well in it. It's time for AMD to accept runthood with a smile, and stop deluding themselves to think they can really compete with Intel in performance. On anything.

 

[sarinaide]

This is just an example of Intel imposing its superior manufacturing on AMD, and AMD being forced to runt off.
Before this, despite inferior CPU performance, AMD could at least boast their iGPU was better, and CPUs were fast enough. But, now, AMD simply can't compete. Intel is using lithography that is so much finer then the 32nm that AMD is using, transistors are cheap for them, and for AMD to match the performance, the processor die would be too big. With all that fab space underutilized, Intel had to find something to do with it, and AMD is suffering badly from the consequences, while GloBlows pounds sand for oil.
With the terrible beating AMD has suffered in market share already for their mainstream processors, this might lower it even further, putting them in negative market share (they not only don't sell processors, but they find themselves obligated to buy them from Intel, due to some weird Apple-Hippie vibe Steve Jobs' ghost is putting out).
It might make more sense for AMD to just get out of the mainstream market with their inferior designs, and just stop the losses there. BD/PD just can't do it. Maybe take one more stab with Steamroller, and then just give up if it continues to lag so badly. When you're in 2013, and you can't match the per thread performance of a 2006 Intel chip, you're clearly not competitive.
Spend the resources on Jaguar, which is very good, and will be wildly successful like Bobcat, and new ARM processors, and discontinue failed lines of hardware that simply don't measure up. Just like Intel did with Pentium 4. It was a bad product, so they went with their other line, and added the stuff that worked well in it. It's time for AMD to accept runthood with a smile, and stop deluding themselves to think they can really compete with Intel in performance. On anything.

1) GT3/GT3e is going to be very expensive relative to a APU to achieve about the same theoretical performance as the top end HD7660D

2) 1300mhz core clocks on the iGPU to achieve performance, thats a near 50% clock bump.

3) Richland Desktop is around 20-40% faster than Trinity on the iGPU side on a mere 44mhz bump and mobile Richland has touted 50-60% graphics improvement. Trinity is over a year old but AMD timed Richland to nullify Haswells effect. On price to performance Richland will be much faster in gaming on integrated solutions.

4) Kaveri based on Steamroller core architecture along with unified memory space and on die GDDR5 will take AMD's APU's to a completely new level. This factoring in AMD's drive to HSA will also yield HPC gains. Early rumors on Kaveri's graphics performance is probably on or better than a HD7770 which will open the game significantly. With broadwell a no go it will be mid 2015 before intel can address it, and by then excavator is out.

 

[slomo4sho]

Iris Graphics... still inferior to the new AMD APUs. To top it all off, these "high end" graphics chips from Intel probably demand a hefty premium.
The worst part about it is that they aren't even available on the workstation platforms where they might have some use.

 

[abitoms]

my question is...if this graphics level is so wonderful, why didn't people go all gaga at the faster IGP given by AMD..... and that was a FULL YEAR ago
sorry to be using caital letters...i know it is no good manners to do that

 

[Cryio]

And so the naming scheme has become way more confusing for the consumer.

 

[The_Trutherizer]

Cool stuff