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Haswell to launch June 2?
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6898/intel-details-haswell-overclocked-at-idf-beijing
"As we march towards the June 2nd release of Intel's Haswell processors,"
That site got engineering samples of Lynnfield and Sandy Bridge several months before launch to post benchmarks, so they have sources somewhere. While he doesn't cite a source on the June 2 launch date, once a launch date gets close enough, there are a lot of people who know but aren't allowed to say because of an NDA, which he might have just broken. Though this far out, the tech media probably doesn't have review samples yet, and likely hasn't been briefed on it, so I'm not sure where his June 2 launch date came from.
Comments
Happy with my ivy bridge high end now, seems haswell get new socket and sinds most games STILL DX9 and prolly not before 2015 dx 11 im not gonne change again.
2 desktops
1 with amd 5870 highend 2009 OC cost at the time 2500 euro self build.
2 with amd 7970 highend 2012 OC 2100 euro self build.
Win7 64 ultimate forever!...:P
Both handle all games on highest settings(crysis 3)(cpu and gpu OC) very well , so not gonne buy a third highend rig while sinds 2003 i think we have 95% of games at dx9.
Only game for me that looks finally realy beautiful is crysis 3.
Hope to build full AMD system RYZEN/VEGA/AM4!!!
MB:Asus V De Luxe z77
CPU:Intell Icore7 3770k
GPU: AMD Fury X(waiting for BIG VEGA 10 or 11 HBM2?(bit unclear now))
MEMORY:Corsair PLAT.DDR3 1866MHZ 16GB
PSU:Corsair AX1200i
OS:Windows 10 64bit
I imagine pricing and SKU choices will be comparable; they have been fairly standard since they re-consolidated everything into the current Core branding with Sandy Bridge. One "K" edition i7 and i5, and around 3-4 Desktop SKU's that aren't K-edition that lower the clock speed incrementally, with 4 or so Core i3 Desktop SKU's.
That being said, the kick in the pants will be the new motherboards. They will be limited and expensive at the beginning - much like they were when Sandy brought us the new 1155 Socket. And there could be some chipset nonsense like there was with Cougar Point -P67/H67 confusion and SATA problems. Initially there will be few models available, and those will tend to be the models that upsell on a lot of features for nice margins. After about 6 months (The holiday season roughly) we'll see a larger variety of motherboards with budget models availble, and after a year there will be so many you can't click a Newegg link without seeing one (like there are for Socket 1155 now).
If I were a betting guy, I would say the "K" series i7 will be around $350 retail, and the "K" series i5 will be around $230 retail, and you will pay around $25 for the privilege of overclocking. I would also bet that the current core counts would stay about the same: Desktop i7's all 4x with HT, Desktop i5's all 4x w/o HT, and i3's all x2 with HT.
The big marketing push will occur in the mobile sector (Haswell improved idle power efficiency), and probably an upgraded on-die GPU (which gamers won't give a crap about, but will be huge for the more budget-minded, and again, the mobile sector). Given that full-load efficiencies probably aren't all that much improved, and the new GPU die may (or may not) be much more higher power, I would say the desktop TPD's will probably be similar to Ivy: 77W for i5/i7 and 55W for the i3. And a the standard ~15% speed increase over Ivy at similar price points (not necessarily clock speed though) is probably what I would expect
The real pricey components (that you will see touted in the high-end Alienware stuff) will be the Ivy Bridge E, which will be the 6-8 core Ivy Bridge CPUs on Socket 2011, no on-die GPUs, and run around $500-$1100.
Ivy bridge prices won't permanently come down: you may see some fire sales as retailers try to clear inventory space and cut their current inventory at a loss, but older technologies do not tend to come down in price as new stuff comes out. Sandy Bridge and older technologies still demand nearly-retail prices for people that choose to buy them new.
All that said, I haven't been holding my breath for a Haswell desktop upgrade (even though I'm still running Nehalem). I think until I start to have to really sacrifice game quality, and I haven't had to with what I'm playing yet, I'm sticking with "good enough" with my gaming rig for now.
I have been holding my breath for a new Haswell laptop for work though (currently running dual core Penryn that is approaching 5 years old).
Why would less bad Intel graphics be such a huge deal for the budget-minded? Why wouldn't someone who is budget-minded and cares about integrated graphics performance just buy AMD? Even if you also want battery life, Richland won't be able to match Haswell for idle power consumption, but Kabini will likely beat it or at least roughly match it. Remember that Kabini is an SoC, which helps there, and not needing to go for high end performance makes it easier to save power.
Where Haswell really gets complicated is the graphics, which will have four variants. There is GT1, which is the low end, cheap junk graphics with 10 EUs. There is GT2, which is double GT1, for 20 EUs. There is GT3, which is double GT2 for 40 EUs, except that it will clock much lower, so it won't be anywhere near double the performance of GT2. And then there is GT3e, which is the same as GT3 on the GPU side of things, but also has some on-package memory rather than needing to rely purely on system memory.
Desktops will reportedly only get GT1 and GT2 graphics, apart from some low voltage parts meant for very small form factors (Mini ITX and smaller). I'm not sure if there will be a lot of laptop parts with GT3 graphics; it sounds like Intel mainly has Ultrabooks in mind with GT3.
As best as I can tell, there are only two real purposes to the GT3e graphics: to prevent Apple from bolting and to cheat at benchmarks. Apple is the only laptop vendor that cares much about the performance of Intel integrated graphics, so Intel likely cut a deal with Apple to sell them a bunch of chips with GT3e graphics for MacBook Pros without charging completely insane prices. Apple writes their own video drivers, so AMD drivers being better than Intel for Windows and Linux doesn't matter much to Apple.
One rumor has GT3e graphics only making it into the top end chips (48**QM and 49**XM), which are successors to the $500+ laptop chips of previous generations. Intel will probably send out laptops with a 55 W chip with GT3e graphics for reviews, even though it costs $1000+. And then hope that they beat out the A10-5750M in graphical performance, even though AMD's flagship is a 35 W part that probably costs $150 or $200 or so, so it's not a clean comparison. And then they'll hope that people extrapolate down and think that a 45 W part with GT2 graphics (or GT3 even, if it's offered) will still beat an A10-5750M in graphical performance, which is unlikely.
Now, AMD's Trinity and Richland graphics do each have four models, too. But those are pretty straightforward: you get 2, 3, 4, or 6 SIMD engines, and that's pretty much the difference that matters.
I mostly play MMOs and the faster my CPU has been, the better my framerates have been when I have a gazillion PCs and NPCs on screen with effects up the wazoo.
My trusty Sandy Bridge i5 2500k overclocked to 4.5GHz has brought me so many hours of satisfaction. I'm afraid to upgrade to an x-core bladiblabla only to have it sit at 4 GHz while performing worse overall than the 2500k...
Will Haswell make a difference? I wonder.
The thing that boggles my mind is that Microsoft wrote Windows 7 and Windows 8 in such a way that people get a performance increase by upgrading their software. If software can improve performance across the board, how important is the hardware in the grand scheme of things?
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Not that Intel graphics would be better than AMD - even less-bad graphics. But there are a lot of people out there who don't care about GPU performance. In fact, most people using a computer probably don't care about GPU performance past what it takes to play a Flash plugin, Casino Poker, or watch Youtube.
But ask anyone if they know what Intel is, and most of them will probably say "Doo-doo-doo" and maybe say something about Blue Man Group. Intel has brand recognition, even if most people have no idea what it does for a computer.
Given a $250 laptop with and AMD APU, nice graphics, but no Intel sticker, and a $275 laptop with a bargain bin Intel CPU and the bottom of the barrel integrated graphics, I would venture to say more than 50% would go with the Intel just on brand recognition alone, especially if it has some sticker saying "Improved/Next-Gen Graphics capabilities"
Budget-minded in the vein that they aren't going to care about GPU performance, won't need one, and don't want to pay for it. That doesn't exclude them from being ignorant about anything else though.
Certainly, I'd agree that many people don't--and shouldn't--care about integrated graphics performance beyond some minimum threshold that Ivy Bridge already meets. But why should those people care about graphical improvements in Haswell? If you're hoping that smuggling better graphics into low end laptops will mean that games can run on everything, then you'll likely be disappointed when the severe budget end of Haswell is littered with GT1 parts.