The Intel Haswell Refresh Review: Core i7-4790, i5-4690 and i3-4360 Tested
by Ian Cutress on May 11, 2014 3:01 AM EST
Computer processors for PC like devices fall into four broad categories, starting with the smartphone/tablet, then the notebook, the desktop and finally the extreme desktop/server. These segments have different cadence formats from each of the companies that compete between new designs. For longer cadences it makes sense to launch an improved product in the middle of that cadence taking advantage of minor production improvements. To that end, Intel is updating their June 2013 Haswell CPU line with a ‘Haswell Refresh’ – 20+ CPUs aimed to be faster at similar price points to the original Haswell release.
The Death of Desktop… or not
Mainstream media are all too ready to pounce on the end of the desktop. While it is true that casual computing is shifting towards smaller hand-held devices, in most ‘work’ type scenarios that involve more delicate interaction than just touch, the desktop is still king. The rise of smaller PC-like devices such as the Mac Mini, NUC and the BRIX now separate the desktop into two categories: human-limited content production against computer-limited content processing.
For human-limited content production, the smaller PC-like devices are ideal. Typically limited to faster dual core or slower quad core parts, a single storage drive and integrated graphics, these devices make their use in writing reports, writing reviews, browsing the internet, answering emails and minor photograph/video editing. The ultimate goal is that no matter how long you might be waiting for an email to send, or a photograph effect to be processed, the limiting factor is the technology between the keyboard and the monitor: the user.
For home use and most workplace scenarios, the smaller PC-like device makes sense. They end up using a mobile CPU variant that is binned for low power and voltage, and can make use of cloud storage for anything more substantial. For other users, where the goal is better graphics, enhanced detail, pure processing, a testing environment, a DRAM limited scenario or the need for grunt is paramount, then a full-desktop should be the answer.
The two main players are Intel and AMD. AMD focuses on specific workloads geared at integer type commands and are gambling on the heavy integration of the GPU for these type of workloads via OpenCL. Intel is king in general purpose single-threaded performance, wherein most software requires brute force down a single code path because that is the easiest way to write programs. Intel multiplies this out into many cores and many threads in order to allow more of these processes to run at once. This can be considered not the most power efficient way of designing a processor (more cores and more MHz can push efficiency out the window).
Both of these companies have a processor cadence. AMD recently released their Kaveri platform in January, following their Richland platform back in June 2013. Kabini was a half-node change on a different silicon platform (32nm SOI to 28nm SHP). On the Intel equation, ignoring the Atom and Extreme processor lines, the last full release was Haswell in June 2013. Before this was Ivy Bridge in April 2012. As part of Intel’s tick-tock strategy (a tick being a die shrink, a tock being an architecture update), Ivy Bridge was a tick from Sandy Bridge, and Haswell was a tock from Ivy Bridge. The next platform is Broadwell, a tick/die-shrink from 22nm to 14nm due out (by our estimates) somewhere near the end of the year. That makes Haswell to Broadwell a full 15 to 18-month gap with nothing in-between for the desktop space.
Having such a large gap between launches can make other companies, particularly the partners that depend on these releases, somewhat frustrated. A new product means an opportunity to promote new hardware and new designs, bringing in the profits. In an industry where sales revolve around new releases, there has to be some form of relevant cadence in order to tell shareholders when jumps in revenue are expected. In order to satiate both sides of the equation, Intel is today officially releasing two series of products. The first is the new 9-series chipsets for current Haswell CPUs and upcoming Broadwell processors. We will be looking at the performance of the chipset in more detail when it comes to motherboard reviews later this week. The second side of the launch is the Haswell Refresh processors – a set of 20+ CPUs at higher frequencies/better price points than the original Haswell release.
The 9-Series Chipsets
Today Intel is launching two mainstream 9-series chipsets, both evolutions from the 8-series platform. Z97 and H97 motherboards based on the new silicon also go on sale today, supporting the LGA1150 socket only. The primary purpose of these chipsets over the 8-series is to introduce more storage options, including SATA Express and M.2. As with the previous nomenclature, Z97 is the overclocking platform aimed at multiple GPUs and maximum everything whereas H97 is a cheaper option with Intel’s Small Business Advantage add-on with certain firmware versions.
Rapid Storage Technology is now enabled for PCIe devices, allowing (we believe) integration of the SATA Express and M.2 devices into RAID arrays or SRT hybrids. Both of these chipsets will support current LGA1150 processors (Haswell) and future ones (Broadwell), and maintain Flex IO with up to six USB 3.0 and six SATA 6 Gbps (the same as 8-series). I mention the processor support based on the fact that Intel has not confirmed if Broadwell processors will work on the older 8-series chipsets. In fact when Intel announced the Haswell based Devil’s Canyon SKU back in March, we were told by Intel that this SKU is “supported on Intel® 9 series chipset. Intel® 8 series boards are not targeted for “Devil’s Canyon” support.”, which might mark Broadwell in the same vein.
With 9-series, Intel is enabling Rapid Storage Technology 13, allowing UEFI support, RAID 0/1/5/10 on chipset ports and TRIM in RAID 0 SSD configurations. With M.2 and SATA Express, the RST will solely be for a PCIe x2 slot, which means implementations like ASRock’s M.2 PCIe x4 on their Z97 Extreme6 might be excluded (the x4 is also routed via the CPU, not the chipset, which may be the reason).
The PCIe storage on 9-series is somewhat confusing. For clarity, let us return to the Flex IO system introduced with the 8-series:
The chipset has access to 18 ports, four of which are USB 3.0, four are SATA 6 Gbps and 6 are PCIe. This leaves two sets of two, the first set can be configured for either USB 3.0 or PCIe, and the second set are either SATA or PCIe, but only a maximum of eight PCIe ports are possible. This is designed as a catch-all interface for different sized motherboards, where some can use more PCIe lanes, others can use more USB 3 ports, and so on. Eventually as the future of the chipset progresses, I see all these ports becoming flexible, though I would imagine we are a few years out from this.
With the PCIe storage functionality, SATA Express and M.2, the lanes for both should come from the PCIe allocation. However, each connector can take advantage of having SATA ports as well:
Thus the SATA ports with SATA Express will also be hooked up to the chipset ports for a mixed IO solution. With the motherboard shown above, an amicable solution is found: the two ports on the right are plain chipset SATA 6 Gbps ports. The combined mass in the middle is four SATA ports, two of which can be used instead for SATA Express duties or plain SATA, but not both. This means if SATA Express is used, two SATA ports are lost as well. Finally on the left is another set of two SATA 6 Gbps ports, this time from a controller. We will find that some motherboard manufacturers completely separate the SATA Express ports from the chipset, using a switch to change between a controller and SATA Express functionality instead. A motherboard manufacturer can also use a SATA Express controller, which uses two PCIe lanes and an internal switch/SATA controller to provide either SATA Express functionality or SATA ports.
M.2 (NGFF) is another part to this due to the mixed standard it operates. M.2 can be either SATA based or PCIe based, and the slots can be wired up differently. Technically the specification allows for four PCIe lanes and one SATA 6 Gbps port through the connector, although we might see motherboard manufacturers solely use a PCIe x2 connection as a result and SATA-based M.2 will not function. One might think that while M.2 was designed to unify the SFF storage standard for PCIe, it just happens to make things more complicated when motherboard manufacturers do not want to lose functionality.
With RST13 / 9-series, Intel is now supporting Rapid Start Technology with 16 GB of storage. This would allow systems to enter a deep sleep, write the contents of DRAM to the SSD cache, and then resume to active use by doing the reverse copy. While Intel is promoting the lower BOM cost to entry for this platform, I see it a little differently. It would allow portable devices to have suitable storage soldered onto the motherboard (consuming a SATA port) and the system by default, even with an SSD, uses RST.
Chances are that the 9-series chipsets also include efficiency enhancements under the hood, but Intel only provides information regarding their consumer-facing adjustments. In that respect, the 9-series is only a relatively small bump in storage options. Everything else remains the same, or to put it another way, due to the storage options designing a motherboard gets a little harder.
All the major motherboard manufacturers will have 9-series based products up for purchase today, ranging from $120 to $400. We covered the leaked images from GIGABYTE, ASUS, MSI and ASRock in a short article a couple of weeks ago – some of the galleries are below. Stay tuned for full reviews of some of these motherboards in the next couple of weeks.
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Ramon Zarat - Monday, May 12, 2014 - link
Whatever man... :/ You're happy with 7 seconds? I'm happy for you.Then again, this is such a *HUGE* issue, right? I mean, 25 seconds boot is a REAL *problem* right? But to think of it, 7 seconds is also wayyyy too long, right? This is why 95% of my boot are 55% faster than yours, in only 3 seconds flat from sleep. But when you realllllly think about it, 3 seconds is *STILL* outrageously slow!
Can you imagine just how fantastic life will be in 10-15 years from now when PC boot in 1 or 2 ***femtoseconds***? Ahhhhh, can't wait because I'm soooo unhappy, super sad and totally depressed with my current near eternity 25 seconds. :(
MrSpadge - Monday, May 12, 2014 - link
Sounds like Win 8/8.1 vs. Win 7.. with you using the newer one.mapesdhs - Sunday, May 11, 2014 - link
Also found this elsewhere for CB R15, i7 4770K @ 4.6GHz, RAM @ 2133 (system
owner using a Corsair H110 though to handle the heat, whereas my 5.0 2700K is
runing happily with a boring old TRUE and two simple fans):
1-thread: 183
N-thread: 933
Ramon, indeed, I've been arguing elsewhere for a while now that one of the
reasons the desktop market has been fading is because - for the enthusiast
crowd - there is nothing worth buying. The rise of tablets and suchlike is
certainly a factor, but the media doesn't look beyond this narrow focus.
Enthusiasts (by which I mean those who want top-end gaming systems or setups
for oc'ing and/or breaking benchmark records) are often the ones with serious
money to spend (one shop owner in CA told me 40% of his income is from
customers of this kind), but they're also more likely to already have good
systems. Anyone with an oc'd 2500K or better config will see little real speed
boost from any newer setup (even an oc'd i7 870 holds up quite well to newer
CPUs, eg. gives a better 3DMark11 physics score than a stock 3570K).
Intel isn't producing significantly better desktop CPUs because it doesn't
have to (no competition), but IMO they're making a big mistake, because in
time the lack of useful CPU upgrades will have knock-on effects elsewhere. We
already see CPU bottlenecks in numerous GPU reviews (that's why reviewers keep
using oc'd CPUs to test newer top-end GPUs), a situation that's going to get a
lot worse in the next year or so.
At some point, gaming-focused dekstop customers are going to realise that
buying better desktop GPUs is pointless because the CPU can't support them
properly, which will hurt GPU sales. I'd expect NVIDIA and other corps to be
distinctly unhappy with such a scenario, and what about movie companies are
others who demand ever greater compute performance? Some tasks can be done
with GPU acceleration, but many cannot.
IMO the people with the real money to spend in the desktop PC market are
similar to those in the hifi market who care more than most about audio
quality, the kind who always purchase separates; they don't constitute a large
group in terms of customer numbers, but the monetary pool they represent is
disproportionately large.
I've read a lot of responses elsewhere to my suggestions from people who point
to better SATA3/USB3 support in chipsets after P67 (and they're right), but
the reality is most people don't need such features and won't notice the
difference.
Meanwhile, with Z97 Intel continues using a small no. of CPU-based PCIe lanes,
which means the resulting mbds can hardly be regarded in the same enthusiast
vein as X58 was when it launched. Intel could have attracted the enthusiast
crowd with money to burn to X79 with a chipset refresh that updated SATA3,
etc. (easy to do, just offer an 8-core CPU and/or an unlocked XEON), but they
didn't bother. I'm sure there's an untapped market out there of people who'd
love to buy something new that really kicks performance up a level from what
they already own, but there's little point when one's current setup is an oc'd
2500K, 2600K, 2700K or any SB-E.
The fact that one can make these CPUs run perfectly ok at a much higher clock,
without increasing the voltage, proves that Intel could offer something a lot
better if they wanted to, but as others have pointed out it's clear Intel's
recent focus has been far more on power consumption, etc., to target the
mobile/tablet market.
When it comes to CPUs, Moore's Law has been dead for at least 3 years.
Ian.
Ramon Zarat - Monday, May 12, 2014 - link
I agrees with practically everything you said, but like I've said, I think we simply have reached a plateau where a 4.5 to 5Ghz quad (2500K and up, like you said) has enough speed to accommodate a very large number of desktop computing scenarios. There is not to many scenarios/apps that take hours or days of processing. Most of what you do on a modern PC is in the minutes or seconds range and more often than not, instantaneous.I used to wait long minutes to simply to apply an echo effect to a WAV file back in the days. I can now do the same on a 10 hours audio file in a few seconds, or apply the same effect to hundred of streams simultaneously, also in mere seconds. Now text to speech is instantaneous and of very high quality nearly indistinguishable from real humans! OCR is nothing for modern CPU. The list goes on and on...
At some point, there is simply no return on the investment, most stuff are now done in real time or near real time. What's the point of blowing tons of cash to get stuff done 4.4 seconds faster? Use to take 7 seconds with you old CPU, now only 2.6 seconds with the 4790! Back in the days, cutting time from 3 hours to 1 was highly justifiable. Now reducing 7 seconds to 2.6, not so much...
When we have a fully functional artificial intelligence brain application to drive, or game using ray tracing, then we'll need a 256 cores CPU running in the terahertz range or even a quantum computer. Until then, my quad is more than enough for Photoshop, Adobe audition/premier, Autocad, browse the net and run the Office suite. I can even stream 4K content on youtube, no problem!
romrunning - Monday, May 12, 2014 - link
One area where CPU upgrades can make a difference is in the workstation arena. CAD/CAM applications (ones like SolidWorks, etc.) can use more CPU muscle in addition to good workstation graphic cards. When you cut down the amount of time needed to create a certain 3D model anywhere from 25-75%, then that actually translates in $ saved - sometimes even tens of thousands of $ saved when you're talking about a shop that machines parts. The faster you can create & verify the 3D model, then the faster the shop can produce the part. Again, the time saved, even if you think only it's on an incremental CPU upgrade, can potentially equal a lot of $ saved as well.Ramon Zarat - Monday, May 12, 2014 - link
Exactly my point.Nowadays, only very vertical scenarios requires and can justify the money and the upgrade. In the 286 day, buying the new 386 for 5 grand to get a faster spreadsheet was a valid argument. Not anymore. The Core 2 quad of 6 years ago is already 10 time overkill for 99% of the spreadsheet scenarios! You can now practically run a mini Hollywood studio in full HD for a few thousands box!
Very complex scientific, mathematic/physic model, artificial intelligence, protein folding, weather system, fluid simulation etc... and 3D rendering, still requires all the computing power you can spare. How much of this desktop user do? Not much. Even simple to average complexity Autocad projects can be done a high end desktop, no need for a full blown 12K$ workstation as it USED to be the case.
stephenbrooks - Saturday, May 24, 2014 - link
Physics modelling, artificial intelligence and fluid simulation are being incorporated into games. So the gamers are pushing us forward :) Not an insignificant sized industry (billions) either.Antronman - Monday, May 12, 2014 - link
Nehalem can't even bring a candle to the current performance. Don't make up stupid shit.You're not an enthusiast, so you're thinking like a normal consumer.
Because enthusiasts have the money, they will always buy the new parts because they're new. Unless the new parts are worse.
Oftentimes, there is some aspect of the newer parts that perform better. As an example, the new RoG Maximus VII Hero can easily pull 2933MHz clocks on RAM, whereas the older VI could probably get to between 2700MHz-2800MHz. That gives enthusiasts a reason to buy the Maximus VII Hero, even if they have the older, Maximus VI Hero.
Moore's law has been dead since integrated processors stopped being a thing.
Ramon Zarat - Monday, May 12, 2014 - link
Nehalem came just before Sandy bridge and is STILL very relevant in the vast majority of desktop user scenarios. This is not the Pentium D we are talking about here FFS...Also, every single benchmark I've read clearly show that with current CPU architecture, beyond 22-25GB/s RAM bandwidth (which correspond to 1600-1866Mhz dual channel), there is simply no return on investment in games. 1-2 maybe 3 FPS max. Even worse, in some scenario it's actually *slower* because of the incredibly loose timing to get those insane clock speed stable!
Again, only a few highly specialized and vertical solution will show appreciable and justifiable improvement beyond 1866Mhz / 25Gb/s. Even triple VS dual channel fail to show significant improvement in most real life scenarios, except useless synthetic benchmarks.
As for my rig, except maybe the video card, I'm confident it easily qualify for "enthusiast level":
Corsair Carbide 500R
Seasonic X-560 Gold
ASRock Z68 Extreme 4 GEN3 (BIOS moded for TRIM SSD RAID0 support)
Cooler Master Hyper 612 PWM
2500K @ 4.7Ghz 1.35V
16GB 1600Mhz 8-8-8-21 1.5V
Asus GTX 660 DirectCU II TOP (moded bios for 1.21V, 150% power target and 1.3GHz Overclock)
2 X Crucial M4 128GB SSD in RAID0 (900MB/S sequential read)
2TB WD Green HDD
5GB RAM DISK (9850MB/S sequential read)
Mushkin Enhanced Ventura Pro 64GB USB 3.0 (120MB/s sequential read)
LG Blu-ray burner
3 X LG 24in LCD
Klipsch Promedia Ultra 5.1
Sony ZX600 Headphone
Ducky Shine DK9008S White LED Cherry brown switch
Anker 5000 DPI, 11 buttons laser mouse
Razer Onza Xbox 360 gamepad - Battlefield 3 Tournament Edition
2 X Cyberpower CP850PFCLCD PFC Sinewave Series UPS
D-Link DIR-655 gigabit router
HP Procurve 1400-8G gigabit switch
16TB FreeNAS NAS box in the basement (4 X WD RED 4TB)
3TB USB3 WD My Book Essential for backup
Dlink DIR-615 wireless bridge (moded with DD-WRT Firmware) To hook 3 old school PC to the network: P54C 120Mhz, P3-450Mhz and Tualatin 1.4Ghz.
4 port KVM switch
And don't tell me I need a dual socket, 12 cores, 24 threads, 64GB RAM DDR3-3000, quad SLI, water cooled setup on 2 X 1500W PSU and 3 X 27in IPS 4K LCD to qualify for enthusiast...
Finally, "enthusiast" don't necessarily mean "stupid moron with an e-penis complex ready to blow insane amount of cash like it's the end of the world on the latest hardware for no apparent reason, just to brag about 1FPS and 1MHZ more in every forums." I love technology and I like my money to stay in my pocket for as long as possible. When I make a move, I want the best and I want it to last. I guess I'm just an enthusiast, but with a brain still intact and functioning properly! :)
Antronman - Tuesday, May 13, 2014 - link
http://www.bing.com/search?q=define+enthusiast&...Based on that comment, I can tell you are not deeply involved in the construction of computers or extreme overclocking.