A continued desire to be aggressive on the GPU front however puts Intel in a tough spot. You can expect a 5 - 15% increase in performance for the same price as a Sandy Bridge CPU today. Intel eventually committed to taking GPU performance (and driver quality) seriously, setting out on a path to significantly improve its GPUs.Īs Ivy is a tick in Intel's cadence, we shouldn't see much of a performance improvement. First it was HD video decode acceleration, then GPU accelerated user interfaces and, more recently, GPU computing applications. Over the past decade that philosophy required adjustment. For years Intel has been able to ship substandard graphics in its chipsets based on the principle that only gamers needed real GPUs and Windows ran just fine on integrated graphics. Where Ivy Bridge shakes things up is on the graphics side. Being less risky on the architecture allows Intel to focus more on working out the kinks in its next process node, in turn delivering some amount of tangible power reduction. Intel's microprocessor ticks are usually very conservative on the architecture side, which limits the performance improvement. Ivy Bridge, the tick that follows Sandy Bridge, would typically be just that: a mild upgrade that inched performance ahead while dropping power consumption. If you remember Conroe (the first Core 2 architecture), what followed it was a relatively mild upgrade called Penryn that gave you a little bit in the way of performance and dropped power consumption at the same time. Sandy Bridge brought a Conroe-like increase in performance across the board thanks to a massive re-plumbing of Intel's out-of-order execution engine and other significant changes to the microarchitecture. The table below summarizes what we've seen since Intel adopted the strategy: Every year we either get a new architecture on an established process node (tock), or a derivative architecture on a new process node (tick). Granted Intel hasn't given us a new chip every 12 months on the dot, but more or less there's something new every year. I still remember hearing about Intel's tick-tock cadence and not having much faith that the company could pull it off. We say, if you're launching a new product right around the time of a processor upgrade, don't take people's money for an extra week or so and make sure every customer has the newest parts.Note: This preview was not sanctioned or supported by Intel in any way. The PC makers in question blame Intel for shifting the release dates of these new CPUs. In some unfortunate cases, if you order (or preorder) right away, you'll actually be getting a laptop with the older second-generation CPUs, but if you wait another week or so (for quad-core, longer for dual-core), the same systems will be for sale with newer Ivy Bridge parts. One thing to definitely watch out for is new laptop models or refreshes announced right now or in the next few weeks. Besides Intel's new chips, it may also be worth waiting for Windows 8, or at least the free upgrade coupons we expect to see bundled with new laptops starting in late summer. This is a topic recently debated here at the CNET offices, and you can see the arguments for and against waiting here. I really need a mainstream laptop right now, should I tough it out and wait four to eight weeks? We'll have to wait until the mainstream versions of Ivy Bridge hit to really test battery life. Keep in mind that these are all examples of high-powered Core i7 laptops that aren't expected to have great battery life. In comparing two similar Asus N-series laptops, the newer Ivy Bridge version ran for an additional 12 minutes (226 versus 214 minutes). In comparing somewhat similar 17-inch Origin gaming laptops (one Ivy Bridge, one Sandy Bridge), we saw a small drop in battery life, but those were both outlier systems with power-hungry overclocked parts. Will these new CPUs make my next PC cost more?įrom the vendors we've spoken to, there should be no price difference to consumers once second-gen CPUs are swapped out for third-gen ones.Īfter the big leap made by last year's Sandy Bridge Intel chips, both battery life and application performance are in for modest gains. For a more in-depth look at the HD 4000's gaming chops, read this detailed analysis.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |