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[Matt]

On the recent Tech Report podcast they discussed some of the early Haswell benchmarks (including these).  The overall bump is as-expected, but Scott Wasson also reported on overclocking a bit, and said that early insider reports are that it is closer to Sandy-like overclockability than Ivy-like overclockability.

Which "fits" based on the focus on efficiency, and a new architecture on a mature process node.  If so, that is Very Good News.  Ivy isn't a particularly good overclocker.

If true, I'll be in line at Microcenter on launch day to get my Haswell.  Of course, I'll have to fight this guy for the first one:

[Daydream]

At what price point are we playing this game?

On short: is there anything to make one enthusiastic about Haswell vs launch price + new motherboard?

I don't quite see it. Will it overclock to 5GHz on air (and stay there, not just for benchmarks) with a flip of a switch? An i7-3770k now is $329 (I know, I know Microcenter has them at $229 but I don't think that's the rule). 4770k will launch at what? Same? 7-13% $$$ more (to be consistent ) ? Or $399?  How much will a new spanking motherboard cost for this 'jewel' that comes without GT3 and other stuff? $150-200?

So $500-600 the whole thing. I'm not sure it's an easy sell for a new PC, but for an upgrade?!?

[Matt]

So $500-600 the whole thing. I'm not sure it's an easy sell for a new PC, but for an upgrade?!?

Have you been talking to my wife?

[SpeedD408]

Have you been talking to my wife?

You need multiple systems.  I'll probably upgrade my HTPC and then trickle down the Ivy i5, MB and RAM to a new dedicated router/firewall.  Or maybe upgrade the parents computer with my old one.  Keeps them active longer for less stressful tasks nd therefore easier to justify upgrading as multiple systems get the benefit of the same $$$

[jmone]

How long does it take to compile now?

[Daydream]

Latest rumor - Core i7-4770K - $368. Which is... ~12% more than a Core i7-3770K. Hehe, the math aligns .

[newsposter]

Coming in late to the party but...

On 'server class' machines, IBMs in-house x86 chipsets out-perform Intels by a fair margin.  Mostly in memory bandwidth but also on the PCI and SATA busses.

I have no idea what a current=generation IBM xSeries machine with an IBM chipset costs these days.

[glynor]

Looks like Haswell will be a good overclocker.  Or, at least, they'll give you to the tools to get there if your chip can do it.  We got an important fiddly widget back:

The default BCLK for Haswell parts will remain at 100MHz, however now you'll have the ability to select 125MHz or 167MHz as well. The higher BCLK points are selectable because they come with different dividers to keep PCIe and DMI frequencies in spec. At each of these BCLK settings (100/125/167MHz), the typical inflexbility from previous architectures remain. Intel's guidance is you'll only be able to adjust up/down by 5 - 7%.

Obviously we'll still have K-series SKUs with fully unlocked multipliers. Intel claims the CPU cores will have ratios of up to 80 (8GHz max without BCLK overclocking, although you'll need exotic cooling to get there). Some parts will also have unlocked GPU ratios, with a maximum of 60 (GPU clock = BCLK/2 * ratio, so 3GHz max GPU clock).

Memory overclocking is going to be very big with Haswell. Intel will offer support for 200MHz steps up to 2.6GHz and 266MHz steps up to 2.66GHz on memory frequency, with a maximum of 2.93GHz memory data rate supported.

Getting baseclock flexibility back in addition to unlocked multipliers is huge (we haven't really had that since the Pentium II).  Those aren't the world's most flexible dividers for the PCIe and DMI freqs, but it should still help a lot since you can combine them with multiplier fiddling.  Overclocking Haswell well will likely be more challenging than the past couple generations though.  Combining baseclock and multiplier adjustments (while watching the impact on other related buses) isn't dead-simple like turning a multiplier up or down and testing, but it does give you more headroom if you know what you're doing.

[glynor]

Looks like Haswell will be a good overclocker.

That big GPU still makes me nervous.

The thing could leak like a sieve when pushed (or not).  There are rumors that LN2 overclocking is awesome, but that doesn't mean much for overclocking on air.  If the chips are thermally limited, you can "fix" it by cooling the bejeezus out of them.  AMD's Phenoms and Phenom IIs were like this (as were the IBM PowerPC CPUs Apple used in the G5).  They could throw up unbelievable LN2 overclocks, but were very limited on air or with average consumer-grade liquid cooling rigs.

We'll see.  Should be an interesting time.  If they're crappy overclockers, my bet is on the GPU, and then I'd wait for Haswell E and see what it brings.

[Matt]

The Haswell embargo lifted this morning:
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/06/01/intel_haswell_i74770k_ipc_overclocking_review
http://anandtech.com/show/7003/the-haswell-review-intel-core-i74770k-i54560k-tested
etc.

[6233638]

Well that hardly seems worth the cost of upgrading, unless you need better integrated graphics, or were already at the absolute upper limits of performance and need something faster. Ivy Bridge seemed the same way.

Is Intel focusing too much on reducing power consumption? (which also doesn't seem like a significant reduction?)

Maybe they need to start focusing on 6-core or 8-core consumer CPUs like AMD.

[Matt]

Is Intel focusing too much on reducing power consumption? (which also doesn't seem like a significant reduction?)

I was expecting more impressive idle power numbers.  I'm typing this on a 2500k computer in my living room that idles at just over 30 watts.  It doesn't look like the 4770k is really much (if any) better.

And since it's not much faster, and doesn't overclock much better, the release is a bit more of a yawn than I was hoping for.

[6233638]

I was expecting more impressive idle power numbers.  I'm typing this on a 2500k computer in my living room that idles at just over 30 watts.  It doesn't look like the 4770k is really much (if any) better.

And since it's not much faster, and doesn't overclock much better, the release is a bit more of a yawn than I was hoping for.

That seems very low for a 2500K system. Mine is more than double that! It's overclocked, I do have eight drives inside it, and a GTX 570 though…
Anandtech's review indicates that there should be a 15–20W reduction, but if you are only measuring 30W, that seems unlikely.

One of the reasons I have been looking forward to Haswell has been new NUCs or Mac Minis though. Since my system won't sleep (hardware conflict) my system has been on a lot more now that I am using Media Center.
So I really like the idea of having a system with less than 10W power consumption for when I'm just doing desktop related tasks or playing music.
But you then have the hassle of files being spread over multiple computers, and not being able to access everything while only one system is on - I would probably end up in a position where I'm running both at the same time.

I'd rather have a chip that can reach both extremes - disable cores entirely and bring idle/light usage consumption down to NUC levels, but allow it to perform like a high-end desktop part when necessary.
Having more cores seems like the best solution for this.


That said, I don't know if trying to reduce power consumption is just a losing battle. I just bought a new DAC, and because there's a horrible pop through the speakers/headphone outputs when turning it on, I have been recommended to just leave the unit in standby - which is how it actually seems to have been designed to operate.
Being an American-made product, standby power consumption is 12W though! (up to 15W in operation, and 0.5W when "off")

[Matt]

That seems very low for a 2500K system. Mine is more than double that! It's overclocked, I do have eight drives inside it, and a GTX 570 though…

This is just a casual living room computer with no video card, a single SSD, no add-on cards, no overclocking, etc.  I removed the fan from the power supply (I re-purposed a nice Seasonic that was over powered), so the only moving part is the 120mm CPU fan.

The LED monitor only takes a bit over 20 watts, so the whole thing is less than a 60 watt light bulb when on, and it sleeps down to a watt or two after a few minutes of inactivity.  It's pretty neat for what it is.

(ps. To make sure I wasn't remembering wrong, I just measured again.  It's about 29 watts for the machine and about 51 watts with the monitor on too.  It uses a little more if you load the machine, so this is just staring at the desktop.)

[6233638]

Very nice - though it sounds like you might also want to look to switching over to something like a NUC if it's mostly running idle/playing music, and you're wanting to reduce your power consumption.

[glynor]

Desktop Haswell doesn't have all of the power optimizations they built into the Mobile versions (in particular, the new active idle power states).

Also, you should note... You cannot directly compare the TDP numbers between Haswell and pre-Haswell.  That's because they substantially revised the power delivery system in Haswell, including moving the voltage regulator onto the die (Intel calls this the FIVR, Fully Integrated Voltage Regulator).  This has a whole bunch of positive impacts (more independent voltage rails, dramatically quicker voltage ramps which allow the chips to much more finely tune power draw, etc), but it does also lead to a higher overall TDP number for the CPUs themselves as they took a component that was a separate chip on the motherboard (with a fairly large power dissipation requirement) and moved it to the CPU die itself.

In any case, desktop Haswell has around 25% better idle power usage than Ivy, and 11-12% worse usage at load (clock-for-clock), though the results of this depends almost entirely on how you test.  Improvements on the mobile chips, particularly when you consider total platform power (especially on the chips that have the new GT3 GPU core and will no longer require discreet GPUs with their extremely power-hungry wide GDDR memory buses), will be much more dramatic.  But, in the past, the "big money" improvements were all from ramping clockspeed, which isn't going to happen anymore.  Also, consider that the release cycle is extremely compressed compared to the old days (Ivy was only a year ago).  So, compared to the old days, you'd have to go back and look at improvements over something like Lynnfield.  That doesn't look bad at all.

As far as performance...

It is about what I expected.  A similar bump from Ivy as to what Ivy was to Sandy (10-20% or so, maybe averaging 13% across workloads clock-for-clock).  This isn't shocking at all, really.  Desktop isn't "important" anymore, and this architecture was absolutely focused on mobile.  The huge gains are all in the GT3 GPU (which isn't even offered or available for desktop versions of Haswell), particularly those versions of the GT3 with the Crystalwell eDRAM L4 cache.  It is a huge bummer that they didn't offer a desktop version with Crystalwell, because it is a general-purpose super-fast L4 cache (it caches CPU functions in addition to GPU functions).

I did notice this, though... Which applied directly to your original request in this thread:

Quite possibly the most surprising was just how consistent (and large) the performance improvements were in our Visual Studio 2012 compile test. With a 15% increase in performance vs. Ivy Bridge at the same frequencies, what we’re looking at here is the perfect example of Haswell’s IPC increases manifesting in a real-world benchmark.

A 15% IPC gain (clock-for-clock) is no small feat for something as "old" as a compile test.  That's real money there.  It is almost certainly the extra two execution units (though the front-end improvements likely helped here too).

But, if you want to see the real change in Haswell, you need to look at this article over here on GT3+Crystalwell.  That's where they spent their money and time.  Along with the stuff we don't know yet because they haven't launched the general mobile parts yet (only the 4950HQ, which was almost certainly launched because we're getting new Macbook Pros at WWDC this week).

Overclocking...

Hmmm.... Well, the 4770K is fully unlocked (multiplier and bus) which is pretty cool.  The on-package VRMs are worrying though, along with that higher TDP.  We'll have to wait and see.  Historically, the process refinement part of Intel's cycle is the "good ones" for overclocking, but putting all of that power stuff on the die...  Not sure.  Might take more than you can throw at it to cool it on air.

[glynor]

Yep, looks like those iVRMs are trouble in overclockland:
http://techreport.com/review/24889/haswell-overclocked-the-core-i7-4770k-at-4-7ghz

[Daydream]

At this point I don't see anything good about Haswell. As a desktop chip is not worth it, a cool tech as an abstraction on paper, but a very expensive proposition in real life. As a mobile chip - it's not here, it has variations that would make even a math magician's head hurt trying to keep track and... did I mention is not here? What makes them think people will wait 6 more months to start getting Haswell NUCs or - whoa! - a Surface-like device with Haswell inside. And God forbid that thing doesn't stay charged a full day and doesn't have better graphics than whatever is the latest iPad.

After all, we've been talking about this for the last 6 months. Let's wait 6 more. And if not 2013, then Christmas 2014. I'm Daydream MacLeod, of the clan MacLeod... I can wait forever.

Next!

[6233638]

A 15% IPC gain (clock-for-clock) is no small feat for something as "old" as a compile test.  That's real money there.  It is almost certainly the extra two execution units (though the front-end improvements likely helped here too).

Still not seeing anything making it worth the cost of upgrading from my 2500K. I have a friend with a 3570K running at stock speeds and it is slower than my system.

I'm barely even pushing the chip either - no PLL overvolting, I have a negative voltage offset based on what the motherboard defaults to at 4.5GHz, and it is around 40℃ on air with an old Thermalright True 120 and an updated mounting kit.

It may as well have been 4.5GHz stock.

Yep, looks like those iVRMs are trouble in overclockland:
http://techreport.com/review/24889/haswell-overclocked-the-core-i7-4770k-at-4-7ghz

As expected—the integrated VRMs were another power-saving feature.

Seems stupid to have them on the desktop and restrict performance, when the desktop chips don’t include all the power-saving features of the mobile chips.

I wonder—does Haswell allow the chips to downclock more? One of the biggest things wasting power on my 2500K is that it will only ever downclock by 50%, and keeps all four cores active.


All this talk of improved mobile graphics seems disingenuous as well—the parts which offer a 2× performance boost over the previous generation also have close to double the TDP.
I know that it's supposed to replace the need for a dedicated GPU now, but I'm just not seeing the performance for that.


The one thing I was interested in with the upgrade, aside from performance, was being able to use QuickSync for transcoding—but I don’t know that Media Center supports it anyway, and reports suggest that they have started reducing quality for speed.

Oh, and SSD caching would be nice, but there are so many limitations with that, and Z67 motherboards are cheap now.

[glynor]

reports suggest that they have started reducing quality for speed.

That looks like a bug to me.  Hopefully a driver bug.

I'm not a fan of the black-box of QuickSync anyway.

Seems stupid to have them on the desktop and restrict performance, when the desktop chips don’t include all the power-saving features of the mobile chips. 

It provides some power benefits to the desktop too, and "costs" them only overclocking performance (which they don't care about very much).  So, they threw the extreme guys a bone with the new frequency straps (which should let people with crazy-pants LN2 coolers push these to 8GHz or more) and more importantly...

They didn't have to develop/maintain two separate architectures for the handful of crazy enthusiasts running desktop systems way out of spec.  These are quite-clearly consumer focused, and in the consumer market, it makes sense (when they better control the VRMs it also probably has a big impact on reliability and longevity because you aren't relying on "who knows what" VRMs the motherboard makers decided to use).

If you care about ultra-high-end desktop performance, they clearly want you on the E-series chips.  In other words, pay us.  But, frankly, the old Pentium EE chips used to always launch at $1k...  The highest-cost Haswell isn't even close in price to that.  They've just segmented the market differently now.

And, that, makes a whole lot of sense when you consider that everyone is buying laptops now.  The desktop market is shrinking, and the lion's share of what's left is all corporate junk where reliability trumps speed every time.

[glynor]

As a mobile chip - it's not here, it has variations that would make even a math magician's head hurt trying to keep track and... did I mention is not here?

Oh, it's here.

Someone will just be buying them all for a while (and hardly anyone else can afford to sell a bunch of high-end-only versions -- HP and Lenovo all want the low-end variants, which always launch delayed).  Tune in next Monday.

[glynor]

Still not seeing anything making it worth the cost of upgrading from my 2500K.

I wouldn't upgrade from a Sandy either, but I wouldn't have done that with a two year old system anyway.  If you're looking for something better than a desktop Sandy, then wait for Ivy-E in September, or the next Tick in summer 2014-ish.

It is a bummer they don't seem to overclock better (or, at least, it depends heavily on luck of the draw).  Reminds me of the Pentium EE days, except of course those IPC gains were more like 2-5%.  20% IPC gains over Sandy in less than two years isn't too shabby at all.  IPC gains are "hard", and never go backwards.  So, any overclock you do get is improved by that percentage (so a Haswell at 4.5 is roughly == Sandy at 4.5*1.2).  I tried to explain that earlier... Their horizon for IPC improvements is based on multiple cycles "working together".  They fixed the front end in Sandy/Ivy, and then added extra execution ports in Haswell.  Neither of these changes is massive across-the-board by themselves, but they fit together to make huge changes over time.  Again, go back and compare them to Lynnfield or Nehalem, and remember that overall clock speeds have been pretty much static for much of that time.

If you're looking for a laptop or a desktop to run at stock, though... Haswell is a pretty big deal.

[6233638]

That looks like a bug to me.  Hopefully a driver bug.

Hopefully.

I'm not a fan of the black-box of QuickSync anyway.

It would be nice to be able to transcode my Blu-rays in real-time for streaming to devices around the house that don't seem support their native format via DLNA - for example all the Sony TVs we have here.
They support up to 1080p H.264 and MPEG2 via USB, but I can't get Media Center to stream that via DLNA without having to transcode. Transcoding to MPEG2 looks awful, and H.264 eats up all of my CPU power so it doesn't stream smoothly, and I can't use the PC for anything else.

Being able to use QuickSync would look good enough for streaming to those TVs, and leave my CPU free so that I can use the PC at the same time as someone else streaming a film.

It provides some power benefits to the desktop too, and "costs" them only overclocking performance (which they don't care about very much).  So, they threw the extreme guys a bone with the new frequency straps (which should let people with crazy-pants LN2 coolers push these to 8GHz or more) and more importantly...

I guess. Power saving seems minimal at best, from real-world testing so far.

They didn't have to develop/maintain two separate architectures for the handful of crazy enthusiasts running desktop systems way out of spec.  These are quite-clearly consumer focused, and in the consumer market, it makes sense (when they better control the VRMs it also probably has a big impact on reliability and longevity because you aren't relying on "who knows what" VRMs the motherboard makers decided to use).

That's true I suppose, though most motherboards went far beyond what Intel specified for VRMs.

If you care about ultra-high-end desktop performance, they clearly want you on the E-series chips.  In other words, pay us.  But, frankly, the old Pentium EE chips used to always launch at $1k...  The highest-cost Haswell isn't even close in price to that.  They've just segmented the market differently now.

Yeah - I don't care about bleeding-edge desktop performance like that, I'm just looking for something comparable to my 2500K, which is "supposed" to be a 3.3GHz chip, but runs at 4.5GHz with ease. Anything above 4.5GHz or so is when you actually start to "push" the chip, and need to supply higher voltages and start using loud cooling solutions.

Similarly, the E5200 which I upgraded from was a 2.5GHz chip that could run at 3.5GHz using the stock Intel cooler.

And, that, makes a whole lot of sense when you consider that everyone is buying laptops now.  The desktop market is shrinking, and the lion's share of what's left is all corporate junk where reliability trumps speed every time.

The funny thing is that I got out of buying laptops specifically because performance gains were so small, and power consumption wasn't improving in any meaningful way. It turned out that an iPad is actually enough to handle most of the "mobile" use that I got out of a laptop, and having a desktop PC is so much better for when I'm actually doing anything that requires CPU power.

That said, I wouldn't mind moving to something like an 11" MacBook Air or that Sony tablet Jim picked up for the flexibility x86 offers.
But it would need to have a real 10-hour battery life for that to happen, which seems years away. Currently they're advertising ~6 hours, but realistically you only get about 2 on the 11" Airs. (because doing anything is "high CPU usage" on those chips)

[glynor]

I agree QuickSync could be cool.  But so far... I'm not sure.

My view is certainly "tainted" by my experience doing "real" transcoding.  To me, it would make much more sense to get a dual Xeon CPU 16-core behemoth for those kinds of purposes and do software transcode.  But, of course, money.  But, like I said... From my point of view, you can now do on a single workstation what used to (only a few years ago) take a cluster of high-end machines running in parallel.

I guess. Power saving seems minimal at best, from real-world testing so far.

Power reliability was what I meant.  But Haswell is a bit more power efficient too.  Anand's article doesn't show it right.  You have to look at task energy.  If Idle power is much lower (and most PCs spend most of their time idling), but you have higher IPC (even at higher usage at load), you can "race" to the lower power state and still win overall in the amount of power used to complete a specific task.

Now, it'd have been WAY BETTER if they'd included the new sleep states in the desktop variants, which is mostly what the new on-die VRMs were for.  The idea of the new sleep states is that the CPU can do "micro-sleep" all the time (shutting down even the VRMs themselves).  So, the idea isn't that it does some task, but then sleeps when you stop using it.  The idea is that it sleeps for 2 seconds, or 50ms, here and there while you are using it.  In between keypresses and the like.

That, plus the DRAM-backed display tech Intel is pushing could make a huge difference on laptops.

Also, the Airs I've played with got 4-6 hours real-world easily for normal usage.  Not gaming, of course, and running Garage Band kills them (which is probably all GPU and memory), but for "regular stuff" that you'd do on an Air (web browsing, Office, etc) they were pretty good.  For my money, though, I'd much rather have a 13" Retina Macbook Pro.  But not with that crappy Ivy GPU.

But a 13" Retina Macbook Pro with a Haswell GT3+Crystalwell?  That looks like it could be pretty darn interesting.

[glynor]

I agree with you on the iPad, though... That's why I wouldn't ever be very interested in an Air, and prefer to have a "real laptop" (mine's a Sandy 15" Macbook Pro) and an iPad.  Execs and journalists who fly and type a lot like them though.  My COO is a huge fan of his, but he spends his whole day in Office and email.

[glynor]

Power reliability was what I meant.  But Haswell is a bit more power efficient too.

That all said... I agree, the power saving on the Desktop is decidedly ho-hum.  It isn't nothing, as Anand's article makes it out to be (and they keep beating the crap out of AMD, little by little - how times have changed since Netburst), but... Meh.

I think this summary from Scott Wasson says it well:

On the desktop, the generational progress from Ivy Bridge to Haswell is fairly modest, as we've noted throughout our analysis. This chip doesn't even move the needle much on power efficiency in its socketed form. For those folks who already own a Sandy or Ivy Bridge-based system, there's probably not much reason to upgrade—unless, of course, your present system has become a serious time constraint. We did shave off 34 seconds when compiling Qt on the 4770K, after all, and we've illustrated that much larger speed gains are possible in floating-point intensive applications that make use of Haswell's FMA capability.

<snip>

 With that said, Haswell's integrated graphics have made bigger strides than the CPU cores this time around. The HD 4600 IGP in the Core i7-4770K isn't quite a fast as the one in AMD's A10-5800K, but it comes perilously close to wiping out AMD's one consistent advantage in this class of chip. And the Iris Pro graphics solution in the Core i7-4950HQ not only wipes out that advantage but threatens low-end discrete mobile GPUs, as well.

Haswell's true mission is to squeeze into thinner and lighter laptops and tablets, where it can provide something close to a desktop-class user experience with all-day battery life. Much of the new technology developed to make that happen isn't present in the desktop versions of Haswell. That's fine, as far as it goes. Focusing on mobile applications surely makes good business sense at this point. We'll take what gains we can get on the desktop, where the user experience is already very satisfying, and we are very much looking forward to getting our hands on some Haswell-based mobile systems to see how much more of its promise this architecture can fulfill.

[Matt]

And, that, makes a whole lot of sense when you consider that everyone is buying laptops now.  The desktop market is shrinking, and the lion's share of what's left is all corporate junk where reliability trumps speed every time.

I'm not great at predicting trends due to my personal weirdo-quotient (ie. I often like weird things).  But isn't this sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Effectively Intel is saying "People aren't excited about desktops so we're not going to release exciting products."  Microsoft is saying "People aren't excited about Windows on the desktop so we're going to release a lousy desktop experience and stop releasing software that makes people want a desktop."  It's a chicken and egg issue.

[6233638]

I agree QuickSync could be cool.  But so far... I'm not sure.

My view is certainly "tainted" by my experience doing "real" transcoding.  To me, it would make much more sense to get a dual Xeon CPU 16-core behemoth for those kinds of purposes and do software transcode.  But, of course, money.  But, like I said... From my point of view, you can now do on a single workstation what used to (only a few years ago) take a cluster of high-end machines running in parallel.

Well for me, the only time I would personally want transcoding is to view files on my iPad, which are not feature-length films, and on that display it's more about convenience than quality.
But JRemote doesn't currently support transcoding for video anyway.
QuickSync is probably better quality than anything my CPU can handle in real-time, and without the CPU load and power consumption that is associated it.

Streaming to the other TVs is not something I would make use of, because I only watch films on the main TV, which is hooked up to the PC via HDMI.
But it would be nice to have good enough quality, that doesn't have a performance impact for anyone else here that might want to use it on one of the other TVs.

Now, it'd have been WAY BETTER if they'd included the new sleep states in the desktop variants, which is mostly what the new on-die VRMs were for.  The idea of the new sleep states is that the CPU can do "micro-sleep" all the time (shutting down even the VRMs themselves).  So, the idea isn't that it does some task, but then sleeps when you stop using it.  The idea is that it sleeps for 2 seconds, or 50ms, here and there while you are using it.  In between keypresses and the like.

That's actually one of the things that had me excited about Haswell after reading this article some time ago - I didn't realise they only planned on it being available on the mobile chips.
Apple has actually been advertising similar things for years now - such as sleeping in-between every keystroke: http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/environment/

I have to say though, while it may add up to save power (which is often why you get longer battery life in OS X rather than Windows) I can't stand to hear the CPU switching power states all the time in their notebooks. Those high-pitched whines drive me nuts.

That, plus the DRAM-backed display tech Intel is pushing could make a huge difference on laptops.

Yep.

Also, the Airs I've played with got 4-6 hours real-world easily for normal usage.  Not gaming, of course, and running Garage Band kills them (which is probably all GPU and memory), but for "regular stuff" that you'd do on an Air (web browsing, Office, etc) they were pretty good.

Well I suppose it depends what your normal usage is. Most people I know with Airs are complaining that they only get 2-3 hours before the battery dies.

For my money, though, I'd much rather have a 13" Retina Macbook Pro.  But not with that crappy Ivy GPU.

When most of my work is done on a desktop machine, and I'm used to the portability of an iPad, I'm not sure that I want something as big as that now. I don't know that I'd buy another MacBook Pro again anyway, because they're so expensive for the performance that you get from them. I'm always wanting to upgrade long before I've had my money's worth from them.

But a 13" Retina Macbook Pro with a Haswell GT3+Crystalwell?  That looks like it could be pretty darn interesting.

Perhaps. It's a shame that while we went "Retina" on the iPhones, iPods, and iPads without a price penalty, going "retina" on the MacBooks is a big price increase.

I'm not great at predicting trends due to my personal weirdo-quotient (ie. I often like weird things).  But isn't this sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy?

I don't think so. I don't know anyone that actually wants to own a desktop computer these days - at most they will consider an iMac if they need "a lot of power" and that's essentially a laptop with a big screen attached.

These days it's mostly gamers that are left buying desktop PCs - and they're moving towards smaller form factor systems that are no bigger than a full length video card.
I wouldn't mind one of them if it weren't for the noise and lack of storage options. With everything shifting towards smaller form factors and lower power consumption, I'm starting to regret buying a large tower though.


Most people - if they want a computer at all now, and aren't satisfied with an iPad or even just an iPhone - want a laptop that they can use at a desk/table if necessary, but are mostly just using on their lap when sitting on the sofa, lying in bed, taking it with them to a café etc.

In fact, people that are only a few years younger than I am, are starting to use their laptops as their sole entertainment devices. I know a worrying number of people that are happy to carry their laptop around the house with them, and use it as their music system, streaming via Spotify or similar services. All video content is just streamed to it via Netflix. High fidelity is a completely foreign concept to most people under say 25. The most you are likely to find is people that are into headphones for fashion, sound isolation, or bass, more than they actually care about fidelity. (hence the popularity of Beats)

Now that's potentially good news for you, as it means more people are shifting towards computer-based audio playback, but most people opt to pay for a streaming service that costs roughly the price of purchasing a single album a month, than actually caring about owning music and having a "library" to manage.

And in some ways, I don't blame them. I personally hate having a huge library of physical discs that I have to store somewhere, and are likely to be surpassed in quality in a few years.
I feel sorry for people that had big VHS libraries, then had collections of hundreds if not thousands of DVDs, and now we have Blu-rays which are a significant improvement. And in a few years time we will likely have 4K and eventually 8K too.

I'm happy enough to purchase Blu-rays though, because the quality is generally very good, and while it may not stand up to native 4K/8K video, I think it should remain watchable for a long time.
Even a good DVD never really impressed me when they were the current thing - they're all full of MPEG2 artefacts, sharpening, noise reduction etc.


If you're paying for a streaming service, you got a free upgrade from SD to 720p, to 1080p, and beyond.
Now the baseline quality is not good enough for me yet, but I'm sure it will be eventually, and why not pay the equivalent of buying a single disc to access any film you want, instantly, even if that means you don't own it?

[glynor]

I'm not great at predicting trends due to my personal weirdo-quotient (ie. I often like weird things).  But isn't this sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Effectively Intel is saying "People aren't excited about desktops so we're not going to release exciting products."  Microsoft is saying "People aren't excited about Windows on the desktop so we're going to release a lousy desktop experience and stop releasing software that makes people want a desktop."  It's a chicken and egg issue.

Maybe somewhat (and I agree with you on Windows 8, largely).  But...

The move to Laptops/Mobile has been a LONG time coming.  The problem is that for the past few years, corporate desktop sales have been propping up the plummeting consumer desktop numbers.  But corporations are switching now too.  In my company, we're deploying way more laptops than desktops now, whereas just two or three years ago laptops used to be only deployed to "important people" (managers) and worker-bees who "needed them".  The race-to-the-bottom in the laptop space (started by netbooks) made it economically viable to just use laptops everywhere now, even in corporate-land.

Mobile x86 CPUs got "good enough" for most office needs.  Laptops got "cheap enough" that... Why not?  Then the workers can be mobile, even if they don't need to be very often.  And they're easier to tote around without an IT person if you need to move a worker from one desk to another.  So, the bottom is falling out.  I don't know that it is ever going to go back.  For a while, the decline in desktops was in the "Problem Domain" (you can try to "fix" Problems).  Any more, it is in the "Fact Domain".

Some users will always need "trucks".  Intel has the workstation line for those.  Their higher profit margins better fits their new more-niche status.

The one ray of hope is actually tablets, I think.  As tablets (and convertibles) become more and more powerful and useful for "general computing tasks", I think it is possible we see a reversal in the next few years, where most consumers end up with a tablet or ultra-lightweight-portable (MacBook Air or wannabe), but want a big desktop at home for large storage and "sitting at a desk" computing needs.  Things like the All-in-Ones (iMac and wannabes) and small form factor style desktops might, just might, make a comeback then.

But they'll all be built from mobile parts.  Small and sleek.  Good economies of scale.

Us?

We'll probably be buying Xeons.

[6233638]

We'll probably be buying Xeons.

No, this is the opposite of what I want. I absolutely hate that Apple have only ever offered the Mac Pro with Xeons. OK, they have clearly neglected that line, and unless something is announced this WWDC, it's fairly safe to say they have abandoned them altogether.

But I wish they offered a line using consumer CPUs rather than Xeons and ECC memory. I don't need server-grade hardware that doubles the cost of the machine with very little performance benefit. (in a single CPU configuration)

[glynor]

No, this is the opposite of what I want. I absolutely hate that Apple have only ever offered the Mac Pro with Xeons. OK, they have clearly neglected that line, and unless something is announced this WWDC, it's fairly safe to say they have abandoned them altogether.

But I wish they offered a line using consumer CPUs rather than Xeons and ECC memory. I don't need server-grade hardware that doubles the cost of the machine with very little performance benefit. (in a single CPU configuration)

You assume that Intel will still be making socketed consumer grade CPUs in three or four years.  I'm not so sure.  I wouldn't be surprised if they go all-mobile in the consumer line in 3-5 years.  I think there will always be a market for people who want high-end, "who cares about TDP, put her to the wall" performance in a desktop box.  They're just going to all be "workstation class".

You might not have been one of the "us" to whom I was referring, though.  

Also, I'm pretty sure the new Mac Pros are NOT coming at WWDC, but that doesn't mean they're abandoned.  Something is coming, but it won't be now.
They aren't doing anything with that line until Ivy Bridge E arrives, and that won't be till September.  You can make darn-good guesses about Apple's hardware release cycles by just watching Intel's release cycles (at least for their x86-based products).

[6233638]

Also, I'm pretty sure the new Mac Pros are NOT coming at WWDC, but that doesn't mean they're abandoned.  Something is coming, but it won't be now.
They aren't doing anything with that line until Ivy Bridge E arrives, and that won't be till September.

Oh, I forgot that wasn't ready yet. Apple do sometimes get the chips early, but probably not that early.

Are you so sure that there will be a new machine though? People said the same thing about Sandy Bridge E.

[glynor]

No, this is the opposite of what I want.

I should add...

I agree with you, generally (that's why I'm able to run a consumer-grade Ivy in my "server" at home).  There's just not enough of us, and if we can't "piggyback" on the economies of scale from Grandmas and corporate boxes... We turn into a niche, and we pay niche pricing.

ECC, however, is good.  It is the one thing in Xeons that I wish I had in my machines at home.  It is a little slower, but that's a good tradeoff for everyone but crazy LN2 overclockers.  I wish they'd switched the consumer line over to ECC a long, long time ago so that we could all be benefiting from their economies of scale.  But... I honestly think the enthusiasts would have screamed, so they never did it when it'd have made sense back in the Netburst or early-on Core days.  It is sad.

As densities and switching speeds go up and up, the tiny, infrequent errors become more and more troublesome.  You don't know it, but your 8-16GB of RAM is throwing errors out with regularity (also, cosmic rays).

[glynor]

Are you so sure that there will be a new machine though? People said the same thing about Sandy Bridge E.

Tim Cook all but announced it at their last earnings call.

EDIT:  Here's what I'm tea-leaf reading here:

Last year, after the kerfuffle from them not shipping Sandy Bridge E Mac Pros, he said:

Thanks for your email. Our Pro customers like you are really important to us. Although we didn’t have a chance to talk about a new Mac Pro at today’s event, don’t worry as we’re working on something really great for later next year. We also updated the current model today.

Then, at the earnings call, he strongly hinted that most of the exciting new stuff would be coming in the fall.  This means, certainly, the iOS devices (and whatever "new category" device they've been mumbling about), but... If you read the Q&A from the Earnings Call, I think it was more than that.  I think it was also supposed to be a hint that the Mac Pro replacement (and it'll be a replacement, not an update) is coming around the same time too.

Which times quite well with Ivy-E.  So...  

I bet they'd have preferred to launch them now, and were probably pushing on Intel to give them early access or speed up the ramp or something, but after the Earnings Call, I figured that failed.

[glynor]

Oh, I forgot that wasn't ready yet. Apple do sometimes get the chips early, but probably not that early.

And, right.

They're the biggest high-end player now, so Intel does all sorts of things for them they don't do for others (just watch how long it takes for other companies to ship GT3+Crystalwell in volume, I bet).  But, I don't think it'll be that early.  Maybe.  If so, then Intel really, really needs them.

[InflatableMouse]

You don't know it, but your 8-16GB of RAM is throwing errors out with regularity (also, cosmic rays).

Not saying your wrong, don't get me wrong but I like to understand what you're saying here. Oh, and its offtopic too . How do you know this? Why, when I run memtest86 for several cycles for 24 hours or longer, does it come out without a single error?

[glynor]

Run it for three months.  It'll happen.*

Because quantum mechanics is weird.  Also, cosmic rays.

* And these numbers are old.  As I mentioned, as switching speeds and densities increase, error rates go up logarithmically.  That particular study found the opposite, but I've seen other more recent ones showing faster DDR3 DRAM doing worse.  And, higher densities are the biggest enemy.  More data == more places for a single bit to flip, which because of quantum mechanics, is going to happen some fraction of the time.