Intel Delays Broadwell for Defect Density Issue - and for AW owners this means that...

...we are screwed.

The new CPU will be "smaller than Haswell — small enough to fit into tablets and form factors without requiring a fan." Just the other day in another thread we were complaining about Intel moving toward powering cheap mobile solutions, which unfortunately affect the enthusiast solutions market > see what happened to our Has( not)well CPU.

Take a look at the article > HERE

 

Well, I kind of expected Broadwell to be a joke. I was skeptical about Haswell before it was released, and all of its limitations certainly took a lot of folks by surprise. But the Atom processor is also a joke, so maybe Intel hasn't spilled the beans 100% and Broadwell is possibly intended only to serve as a better option for low-powered garbage like tablets and Ultrabooks instead of mainstream PC.

Any time the notion of "smaller but more powerful" is presented it should be questioned. That's not impossible by any means, but something that sounds too good to be true probably is. Having a 14nm CPU that runs like a Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge Extreme CPU is probably an unrealistic expectation.

We are seeing some great examples of waiting for next generation hardware not necessarily being a smart move. Perhaps "strike while the iron is hot" is better advice for anyone waiting for the next big thing.

 

The iron is pretty cold by this point, especially with all the issues with the AW 18's BIOS.

I think waiting is still the good move at this point. If we get Haswell performance that works flawlessly with Broadwell, plus DDR4 and new-gen graphics, I'd be happy.

 

Desktops are looking better and better as the days go by... Hopefully this energy conservation era we are in passes soon, or at least balances out with performance.

I can't believe Alienware systems are sacrificing performance for a tiny boost in efficiency, and I hope this changes in the near future.

 

*Hugs my R2*

 

Yeah... I've been thinking about buying another R2, seeing as they can outperform the AW 18's with similar or lesser components inside (referring to the CPU). But then again, if Alienware does release an unlocked BIOS and sorts out all of this crap, the 4930MX should perform much better and I'm assuming the AW 18 will finally (at that time) be better than the previous M18x.

 

Even if the 4930MX got a fully unlocked BIOS, I doubt you'd see much difference vs a 3940XM, each overclocked to a stable max.

 

...and this is kind of ironic. Because, while we didn't expect a big bump in performance increase with this new generation, we did take for granted that Haswell would have allowed us to keep at least a 4.5Ghz OC stable and cool for everyday use, just like we did with the M18x at 4.3Ghz. Look at us now, barely able to keep a 4.1Ghz (Brother Fox aside).

 

Unfortunately, I've always been of the mindset that once the next generation CPU's and GPU's come out, all of a sudden I need to get rid of whatever laptop I have at the time because it is suddenly "not good enough". I think a lot of you can relate to what I am talking about. It's a sickness. Lol

Having this R2, this is the first time I have not had that overwhelming urge. If anything, it is the exact opposite.

A moment of clarity and sanity all at the same time???

 

Upgrade it with 780s and it's about as good as it gets right now.

Sent from my SPH-L900 using Tapatalk 2

 

Broadwell was always going to be really mobile device (tablet and thin/lights), I think its the broadwell refresh that may help our side a little.

We will have to wait and see.

This is part of the reason I never wanted to see AMD take such a back foot and the people hoping for intel dominance were fools.

 

I wish I could share your optimism...

 

Great minds think alike.

 

Any time there is only one game in town the potential for things to turn out poorly for customers is significant. Whether you like the competition or not, it's always a good thing. When a monopoly exists there is little incentive for big business to listen to what the customer wants and they tend toward a "take it or leave it" attitude without a need to earn their following. When customers have other viable alternatives, companies have to go out of their way to ensure that their products and services are superior.

 

I couldn't agree more with what's being said above.

 

And for these reasons I worry that nVidia have been dragging their feet.

 

Oh this is for broadwell ._. boy am i a . Sorry guys i know nothing about broadwell its probably for the macbook airs and netbooks and ultrabooks and RUGGED pcs anyhow so i wouldnt worry about it as for the rest of the post it still stands

Ill be honest about nvidia i (post above me) like them and i think there doing way above ATI right now they have the fastest mobile chip i hate ATI for it is always been slow and cheap to me

ATI- great for people who just wanna play the game

Nvidia- play it on ultra for a long while

Take my dads Mx17r1 he has some old ATIS lasted a year now they cant even run left 4 dead on high even barly on medium VS my brothers HP with a nvidia 230M it was able to beat 2 crossfired ATIs from my dads ran L4D on high

On top of that his HP is a year older

Ether you guys are reading lies or are expecting way too much

Im ending here no more editing of this message will be done unless its spelling or grammer error

 

Haswell... Maybe it works better with a good BIOS, but at the moment it struggles keep pace with my Ivy Bridge Extreme CPU and has a challenge matching the Sandy Bridge Extreme CPU that I had before the Ivy Bridge. I'm basing that on the Alienware 18 and Alienware M18xR2 which are in my possession right now. Even some of the highly experienced desktop overclockers at places like HWBOT.org are struggling to get Haswell to perform up to its potential on custom built machines.

I agree that a lot of stuff posted on the web is rubbish. Some of the people testing and publishing their findings are also incompetent. Ultimately we will need to wait and see what happens with Broadwell after it is released. Hopefully, it will be better than Haswell, but skepticism is probably warranted.

 

I wouldn't trust Geekbench for anything. There's an HTC One (Smartphone) at 38800, beating Xeon processors.

nVidia has been making ATI look slow and cheap for a while, and if you think so, they're winning. nVidia is often needlessly more expensive, and there's NO WAY that the 230m could beat any ATI HD4000+ cards crossfired with proper drivers and settings. PEBCAK in that case. Usually, ATI is about 10% behind for 30% less cost. That's pretty reasonable to me.

Also, in conclusion, you didn't really say anything. Haswell offers a proven, limited performance increase clock vs clock, and the AW18 is currently broken, so that the 4930MX cannot be overclocked effectively, making the 3940XM superior, at least in the short term.

 

Agreed mr fox sorry about talking about haswell instead of broadwell this threads about broadwell. Everyone gets sleepy and reads it fast sees 1 word and compares it to the rest thinking your talking about something else. Has anyone else done that, here???

 

*raises hand* ...I do, I do...

 

I saw a 230M do it i can tape it and send it if u want that

And yea the HP was screaming for dear life but it beat it

It did 50 fps vs the 35 from my dads

 

You can tape it all you want. I believe that it happened, but same configuration and most up to date drivers, with everything working, the ATI would come out way ahead unless it was 2x 9800s.

Were they running the same resolution screen? I bet that was it. 720p vs 1080p or something silly like that.

 

Actually the hp was doing 1920 by 1200 and the alien 1920x1080

Ill be honest when i saw it i was bewildered i was like "NO....WAY...." just like you are right now

The hp specs are a
Hp pavillion Dv8-1200
1920x1200 16:10 LCD display
120 watts AC adapter
230M 1GB
Blu-ray burner
4GBs of ram at 1333mhz
Intel Core i5-520 M @ 2.4ghz
....may be other specs that i havnt memorized its not infront of me

The aliens specs were
....barly work on it since dad hides it so i dont know by memory ill repost with its specs when i get home




....btw i didnt know my 18 and reborns 18 were so similar XD his is even red like mine too ._. copier jk LMFAO

 

Even in desktops it keeps about pace with ivy bridge, it hits lower clocks but is more efficient per clock and it ends up being mostly a wash.

 

In theory, yes. In practice it might not be important for those using an Extreme Processor. If you reach Haswell's maximum stable overclock threshold and still have more headroom to keep going with Ivy Bridge, then Haswell being more efficient per clock cycle may become mostly irrelevant due to its diminished capacity. Until I see numerous examples of Haswell processors overclocking higher and being more efficient, I have a hard time regarding it as being a better alternative than Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge. In the end all that matters are the results, not efficiency.

To use an automotive example, since we can all relate to them so well... Having a car that sets a 0-60 acceleration record is nice. Sort of. Having a car that runs a 5.0-6.0 second quarter mile or sets a land speed record trumps the 0-60 sprinter.

 

Basically haswell reaches 4.5ghz to 4.6ghz which matches the 4.9ghz to 5ghz with ivy at the higher speeds it performs about the same as haswell and also consumes about as much power. So as I said a wash, the biggest difference is really the extra the extra IO the chipset provides and some slightly better memory support.

 

It is a wash if you have a good Haswell CPU. Unfortunately, many Haswell CPU owners are struggling to achieve 4.5-4.6GHz. Some are having a hard time getting a stable 4.3GHz out of their unlocked K and X processors. I don't know if that is an indication of a decline in quality control at Intel or just flaws that are inherent to Haswell architecture. So, yes, it has potential, but the results are inconsistent. I know that I would be disappointed and pissed about buying the latest and greatest only to find that it runs the same as what I already had. Upgrades are expensive and when no remarkable performance benefit is realized they move from being expensive to being a waste of time and money.

 

I think they've been loosening the binnings on a lot of the K series processors that aren't on their enthusist platform (LGA2011), as I've seen some wild fluxuations on the Haswell 4xxxK, some not even willing to go 300mhz over stock.

 

dun dun dunnnnn *watches hybrts nerdgasmragekaduken

((I said that all because Im narcasist and want extra fun man rep power without having said anything constructive, which I think is the topic here , right ?)

 

Ive been wanting a amd solution for some time.. maybe this is the time we will see a hi end amd chip hit the mobile market..
it would be a cheaper solution.. maybe some thing like the FX-9590 ... or a or a equivalent 6-8 core extreme cpu or some thing lol..

 

You're absolutely correct. I keep seeing all kinds of stuff posted by yes-men that have stars in their eyes about how awesome Haswell is and I just don't see it as being anything to be excited about. It sounds great in theory, but it's not so great in implementation if you are an extreme performance enthusiast. It's really not designed to deliver extreme performance, but does a nice job of developing extreme heat, LOL.

This video is one of the few that sets the record straight and their comments are totally consistent with my observations about Haswell. Good video!

<iframe width='853' height="480" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/FqdLpzwSDFo?rel=0" frameborder='0' allowfullscreen=""></iframe>

I guess the million dollar question is, will Broadwell be more of the same crap, or something that actually gives Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge K and X CPU fans a valid reason to actually want to upgrade?

 

Well intel always had large margins on those chips, with the pressure they are under now market wise as opposed to opposition it's not surprising if they start to milk it.

 

I don't think we'll see anything from AMD besides APUs. They already own a significant amount of the low end market with their A4-A8 chips, and they don't really seem to care about mobile that much.

For them to craft a high end mobile device, they'd be gambling so heavily on the Intel haters, or super aggressive binning, eating into their Opteron bins, to outweigh their R&D cost.

@ Mr. Fox:

The hype is mostly about selling a new product, and what was supposed to be a decent performance increase. Haswell is also a fantastic product, IF you're looking for something low end, or low power.

I'm cautiously optimistic, and am hoping to see Broadwell be something better, or at the very least, the current model but actually working to it's full potential. At least the bump to DDR4 should be worth something, as long as the rest of the system keeps up.

 

I notice something interesting about the upcoming Broadwell chip. According to the article I posted below, Intel rep said that the CPU can be plugged in directly into Haswell components. If that is true, then does that mean it's possible to use Broadwell CPU in the new AW 14,17, and 18 ?

Intel reveals more details of 14nm Broadwell chips | News | PC Pro

 

Same thing was said of Ivy and Sandy. Did that happen for the mobile sphere?

 

I doubt Intel will let Haswell owners upgrade to Broadwell. Broadwell might let one use a Haswell CPU as Ivy Bridge allowed using Sandy Bridge... but I would be surprised to find forward compatibility because it would ultimately cost Intel and their partners too much with the loss of new system sales revenue. It would arguably be stupid on their part to facilitate that.

It's too bad that Haswell motherboards don't allow backward compatibility with Ivy Bridge processors. It would be nice to see how the new 18 would function with a 3920XM or 3940XM CPU.

 

I'm pretty sure AMD are abandoning the non APU line totally, which I think makes a lot of sense. 6 and 8 module APUs could be interesting, especially combined with DDR4.

 

For the mobile realm, you're probably right. But there will always be a market for those Opteron processors that don't make the cut. And thus, the FX line.

 

Ha, now that would be interesting... Come on Alienware, release a BIOS already.

 

Not in my opinion, they likely want to start putting shaders on opterons for the HSA stuff

 

I`m willing to bet hundred bucks that the Broadwell launch will include enthusiast mobile CPUs as well.

Just because they make low power broadwell CPUs with low TDP for touchpads etc, or 17W TDP CPUs with great IGP performance for ultrabooks, doesn`t mean they will skip us enthusiasts

 

Well, they sort of skipped enthusiasts with Haswell... at least the end result was tantamount to being skipped.

 

I agree with Cloud.

 

Its the trend I`m afraid.

Ivy Bridge/Haswell/22nm was a wrong step for people like us. They pack in more cores for the graphic part of the chip, keep the CPU performance at bay, increase TDP because of the extra IGP cores, shrink the die, less surface area for the heatsink to remove heat, temperature go up. For what cost? Better graphic performance? Then what about us that have a dedicated graphic card thats lightyears ahead? Couldn`t care less about superawesomemegatonpowerful IGP. Ditch that monkey from our backs. Make a dedicated gamer CPU without all those IGP cores. Use the extra resources on higher clocks to accomodate our SLI builds.

Meh, Broadwell will be IGP extravaganza based on everything Intel have said lately. CPU development is dead in the water. APU is the way. Thank AMD for starting this trend. Sacrificing real CPU development for the sake of making a cash cow for the weak thin ridiculous excuse for a notebook. Thank Apple for starting this trend. Everyone just surf the internet and game simple flash games where IGP is more than enough.
Gamers and enthusiasts are just a tiny piece of your whole cash flow anyway right? Why should you care? AMD is like 10 miles behind anyway. Nobody to tell you to get your act together. Nobody that offer anything similar to the CPU performance you have on your CPUs anyway. Why should you take lead and build better chips? Build CPUs with better IGPs instead. Eventually you will catch up with Nvidia and AMD and can offer similar graphic performance right? Its not like they too develop and build better GPUs right? And games do not offer better and better graphics anyway. I`m sure you eventually will catch up and everyone can max out games on 1080p in the future sometimes with your hot IGP chips.

You wish.

/rant

 

I don't like the trend in "performance" very much...

 

3920XM is scoring 10% more (CPU score) than the 4930MX. LOL it should be the other way around. Have you isolated what is the reason? BIOS on the Alienware 18? Or is it the CPU itself?

Say the BIOS was working great and Intel pushed out a real gamer CPU (without all the IGP cores), we might have reached maybe +20% from previous generation CPU.

Pathetic, thats all I can say. And I blame Mr Average guy, or the Mr Starbucks Macbook Joe

 

Haswell more than anything. The BIOS could be improved upon, and having fans that react quickly and run fast would definitely help. But, Haswell just runs too hot to be a good enthusiast CPU. At lower clocks speeds where temps are easier to manage it outperforms Ivy Bridge by about 10%, but when you start trying to do any kind of extreme overclocking it can't handle it. This problem is affecting desktop overclockers in exactly the same way. Johnksss knows quite a few overclockers that have built new Haswell desktops and they are struggling with very similar issues.

Hopefully we won't see more of this trend with Broadwell, but I am afraid that we might with a smaller die and less room for heat dissipation.

In case you haven't already seen it, this video sums it up nicely...

<iframe width='853' height="480" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/FqdLpzwSDFo?rel=0" frameborder='0' allowfullscreen=""></iframe>

Yup, I think you're right about that...

Wahhh, waaaah... my laptop fan is too loud! Boo-hooo, my laptop is too big and heavy! Sniff, moan... my laptop battery only lasts 36 hours!!!

 

Yeah.... Long live the r2 huh? May be a cult classic like the r2 m17x


Sent from my SPH-L900 using Tapatalk

 

I have said before, it's the FIVR that's contributing to the heat. You have a positive feedback from the heat off the FIVR that heats up the core even more, reducing their efficiency. It eventually leads to thermal runaway.

It's like diesel engine runaway. Positive feedback at its best. (it happens after 1:30, so wait for it).


Actually, I think the extra silicon in the iGPU are dark silicon. It's come to a point where Intel can't really power on every transistors on chip due to TDP and heat density issues, and some of them are what people consider dark silicon/dark transistor.

Dark Silicon - When Moore's Law gets too hot to handle &mdash; Advanced Computer Architecture Group
http://research.cs.wisc.edu/vertical/papers/2011/isca11-darksilicon.pdf

Multi core scaling will hit its limit due to Amdahl's Law. There's only so much you can parallelize. Say you have 10% code you can't parallelize, no matter how many cores you throw in the max speedup is 10x. If you have 5% code that you can't parallelize, the max speedup is 20x.

AMD has a lot of leverage in this issue, since they now own the console space. They also make GPUs. The best way to go forward in the next 10 years would be heterogeneous computing. But before that we will need shared and addressable memory space between CPU and GPU.


AnandTech Portal | AMD News: A10-6790K, 13.11 Beta6 Drivers, FM2+ Motherboards, Kaveri
Kaveri is coming out, but I highly doubt it will be able to chip anything off the Haswell CPUs. Then again it's OK Intel's giving them some space and time to catch up. At least AMD not conceding the GPU market too much.


Speaking of which, Nvidia strikes back with a vengeance. GTX 780 gets a price cut from $650 to $499, which makes it very competitive against AMD's 290X.
AnandTech | NVIDIA Announces GeForce GTX 780/770 Price Cuts; GTX 780 Ti Launch Date & Price