Haswell Refresh

[John P. Myers]

If you currently have a Haswell CPU, updates are coming as soon as May if you're not into overclocking. If you want a shiney new i7-4790K, you'll need to wait until June. The 4790 is expected to come in at 3.6GHz stock, compared to 3.4GHz on a 4770, and 3.5GHz on a 4770K/4771. No specs on the 4790K available.

If you don't currently have Haswell, but were thinking about upgrading, save your money. Broadwell comes out in the fall. No specs on that yet either, but Intel has said they expect a 30% reduction in power usage with Broadwell, mainly because it'll be made on a 14nm process, where Haswell and Ivy Bridge are 22nm.

Also expect Haswell-E late summer or early fall. Finally time for DDR4 8-core desktop CPUs

Also expect motherboard makers to go completely insane trying to keep up with all of these things happening at once

Nvidia's new Maxwell architecture is also coming, probably starting sround March, but they're giving us the entry level chip first, which will basically mean upgrades for the GT 630 and 640. It'll be a few months later for the mid and high-end GPUs.

A ton of stuff happening this year ensuring we get more BOINCing done using less power and producing less heat. This will be a great year.

[Duke of Buckingham]

Hey zombie that is what I have, the I7 4770k is feeding 2 GPUs and running 6 cores at full speed, I am very happy with that CPU but I understand John P. Myers is asking for more.

The real deal of the my CPU is doing all that with a UPS of 420W and is not using all power, very good consumption for all those things, I am very happy with mine CPU.

Very Crazy Duke crunching all around.

[Fire$torm]

Hey JPM I have a question (in three parts)

Pricing for Haswell Refresh, Broadwell & price drops for Pre-Refresh?

[John P. Myers]

Hey JPM I have a question (in three parts)

Pricing for Haswell Refresh, Broadwell & price drops for Pre-Refresh?

Price drops for pre-refresh: most likely none
Pricing for refresh: higher than prices for the chips the refreshed ones are meant to replace, but not much higher. Most likely $5 to $30 more depending on the chip.

I say this because if you recall, there was a Sandy Bridge refresh, but they didn't call it that. I guess because they didn't release as many new chips as they're planning to this time (around 20). For SB, the 2600K was top of the line until the refresh, then you could get a 2700K. They even released a 2550K with no IGP (technically it was still there, just fused off). When this happened, there were no noticeable price drops on the chips that already existed so i expect the same pattern here.

Broadwell pricing: ehh....that's really tough. Really depends on if they use the multi-chip design on the non-BGA parts. No reliable sources for pricing yet, and probably won't be until Intel actually starts mass production of Broadwell which, as of 8 hours ago, is still on schedule to begin in Feb/March.

[John P. Myers]

Pricing for Haswell Refresh, Broadwell...

Rumor has it the Intel HD 5200 graphics, aka GT3e, aka Iris Pro, will be available on the high-end Broadwell desktop CPUs. This is great news performance-wise, but will most definitely affect pricing. With GT3e you get double the execution units found in a 4770K (or anything using HD 4600). However there's also talk that the number of EUs will be increased by 20% across the board for the Broadwell line, meaning you'd go from a 4770K with 20 EUs to a 5770K with 48 EUs. On top of that, you also get 128MB of on-die eDRAM used by GT3e. The eDRAM also functions as L4 cache.

With the addition of EUs in the IGP, it's likely "GT3e" may be renamed. Broadwell will still offer 4 cores at best and still use DDR3.

[zombie67]

Folks have been surprised that Apple hasn't refreshed the mac mini since late 2012. It's still shipping with IB. In fairness, they were busy refreshing all their other models. But only the mac mini is left, and it's been a while since they finished all the other models. I wonder if apple thought a haswell version this close to the haswell refresh didn't make sense, and so is waiting for it?

Mac Mini uses the mobile version(s) of the CPU. What hews on that, with regard to the haswell refresh?

[DrPop]

@Z - that makes sense, because I know Apple uses a lot of the integrated graphics on the smaller form factor rigs, and if they knew a Haswell refresh was coming with the better integrated GPU - I'm sure that would be more beneficial for them to wait. I just wonder how soon we'll see them in retail?

[John P. Myers]

From what I recall there's no igp improvement on the Haswell refresh. Just Broadwell. There are some new mobile Haswell parts coming. I'll dig it up when I get home from work.

Sent from my Galaxy S4 using Tapatalk Pro

[DrPop]

Oh man, that's lame. So you mean NO integrated GPU improvement until Broadwell - which is a new socket - so "it is what it is" on Haswell? Guess the refresh is just for a few MHz bump then? Doesn't hardly seem worth it...

[Fire$torm]

Oh man, that's lame. So you mean NO integrated GPU improvement until Broadwell - which is a new socket - so "it is what it is" on Haswell? Guess the refresh is just for a few MHz bump then? Doesn't hardly seem worth it...

That's what happens when Intel's only competitor has fallen flat on their faces and can't get up again.........