NBR Exclusive: First-hand review of Intel Ivy Bridge and NVIDIA Geforce GT 640M Discussion

Updated 24 March 2012

No worries, I'm not under NDA.

In this review, we had the chance to tinker around with the new unreleased Acer Aspire V3 4710G 14.0" notebook.

Specifications:
3rd Generation Intel Core i7-3612QM processor (2.100GHz with Turbo Boost up to 3.100GHz, 6MB L3 cache)
NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 640M with NVIDIA® Optimus™ technology (2 GB of dedicated DDR3 VRAM)
6 GB DDR3 RAM
320 GB HDD
Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium 64-bit
DVD-Super Multi Double-Layer Drive (DVD+/-RW)
14” HD Acer CineCrystal™ LED-backlit TFT LCD
Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n
Integrated Bluetooth® 3.0+EDR
Dolby Home Theatre® audio enhancement





To begin, this is the complete picture of all major components using available diagnostic software.

GPU-Z recognised the NVIDIA Geforce GT 640M with high accuracy due to preliminary support for NVIDIA Kepler already added by the developers. The GT 640M is shown here with idle clocks of 135/270/405MHz, with an idle Core voltage of 0.8120V. An unprecedented chilly idle core temperature of 32C is seen; the NVIDIA Geforce GT 640M is indeed a cool-running card.






The NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M has been speculated and rumored to be a rehashed Fermi core by many, but HWiNFO reveals and clarifies the truth; the GPU codename is GK107/N13P-GS, and GT 640M supports the new PCI-E 3.0 x16 standard. The GPU ID of 0FD2 confirms GT 640M is a new Kepler core.

The presence of 384 shaders and 16 ROP, along with core frequency of 405MHz and shader clock of 810MHz, paired with DDR3 on a 128-bit bus likely means that the GT 640M surpasses the performance of its predecessor, the GT 540M greatly.

The core: shader ratio remains at 1:2, which is unchanged from Fermi.







HWiNFO supports Ivy Bridge, from here we can see that core frequency is at 2.1GHz, E0 stepping, Ivy Bridge-MB Standard Voltage, TDP 35W, CPU/GPU Power Current 112A/50A, Power Limits of 43.75W and 56W, and rPGA988B(Socket G2).












Captured at another moment, one of the 4 cores of the Intel Core i7-3612QM is Turbo Boosted to 2.8GHz, while the other three remains idle at 1.2GHz.







In this picture the GPU is changed to display the NVIDIA Kepler GK107 based Geforce GT 640M specifications.



HWiNFO System Summary page: Intel Ivy Bridge Core i7-3612QM has 4×256KB L2 Cache and 6MB L3 Cache. Core i7-3612QM default core frequency is 2.1GHz, with idle frequency of 1.2GHz, and highest Turbo Boost frequency of 3.1GHz. HWiNFO can support individual core speed reading, in this picture the four cores are clocked at 1.2/1.2/1.9/1.9GHz respectively.

On the top right the specifications of Intel GT2 HD Graphics 4000 is displayed, while we can view the base GPU clock of 350MHz, we do not know the number of GT cores HD4000 possesses.

The Acer Aspire V3 uses Intel next generation HM77 chipset, Hynix 6GB DDR3-1333 CL 9-9-9-24-1T, 1.5V.










NVIDIA Kepler was said to have hot clocks or Turbo clocks earlier, and the Kepler based GK107 supports this functionality. Do note that this hot clock concept is similar to Intel Turbo Boost, where clock speeds are bumped to extract more performance when the chip still stays within TDP.




Windows Device Manager：Intel Core i7-3612QM 4 Core 8 Thread, Intel HD Graphics 4000, NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M 2GB DDR3 Discrete and Western Digital WD3200BPVT 320GB HDD.






Windows 7 WEI from new Acer Aspire V3 4710G, 6GB of RAM.




GPU-Z reading of Intel HD4000. Little is known for now.

Benchmarks below.

Album:
http://photobucket.com/kelperwivybridge

 

Reserve one post for commentary.

Brought to you by yknyong1
I hope you guys will be thankful. (It wasn't easy to get hold of 20+ pictures BTW)

Now for the bench!

Benchmark 1 - 3DMark06
for Acer Aspire V3
Intel Core i7-3612QM 35W 2.10GHz
NVIDIA Geforce GT 640M 2GB DDR3
Default settings at 1280x768 - The screen is only 1366x768 BTW



Okay, now another picture of 3DMark06 programme information:




3DMark06 does not even recognise Kepler chips, so anything online with 3DMark mentioning a new name is fake for sure.



Now for Benchmark 2 - Fritz Chess Benchmark 11
for Acer Aspire V3
Intel Core i7-3612QM 35W 2.10GHz
NVIDIA Geforce GT 640M 2GB DDR3



Also, try guessing what the NVIDIA Geforce GT 640M with the Intel Core i7-3612QM scores in 3DMark11. 3DMark11 benchmark will be released when someone guesses the correct score (Performance mode).



Now for Benchmark 3 - 3DMark11
for Acer Aspire V3
Intel Core i7-3612QM 35W 2.10GHz
NVIDIA Geforce GT 640M 2GB DDR3

Score: P1898

Teaser


Score


Final picture


What I feel is that finally GPU performance levels above GT 555M possible in Ultrabook form factor. That alone is a good reason to celebrate if you are looking for good graphics performance in 14" and below.



Benchmark 4 - Cinebench R11.5
for Acer Aspire V3
Intel Core i7-3612QM 35W 2.10GHz 22nm Ivy Bridge
NVIDIA Geforce GT 640M 2GB DDR3 GK107 Kepler
Default Settings for all.

Scores with GPU comparison


Scores with CPU


As we can see, Ivy Bridge provides only an incremental jump in performance over Sandy Bridge.

However, the GT 640M is actually almost 30-50% faster than its predecessor, the GT 540M.

This is the end of all benchmarks, hope you all enjoyed yourself having a first hand look at newly cooked, but not yet released hardware!

NVIDIA Kepler GK107
NVIDIA Geforce GT 640M

1. Hot clocks (like Turbo Boost).
2. Low idle core temp.

Intel Core i7-3612QM 2.1GHz

 

Nice!

Look forward to some benchmarks!

 

sorry to be the noob but can you add a summary below the pics? I don't know much about how to read those images lol. I see the name of what's being tested but no clue of the details.

but whatever you posted looks cool

 

no way, 384sp and ddr3 connected to a 128bit mem interface?! now that's just ridiculous.

Do like the combo, though

 

What I can confirm from these pics is DeviceID:
GT640M: 0FD2

And from another pic leaked before
GT650M: 0FD1

 

Finally, some pictures that are legit

 

Benchmarks possible, guess I've have to return to the show to get them. But depends on whether the Acer personnel manning the display sets allow me to do so.

If you all want benchmarks, reply and give me some thanks through the left scales!

 

According to WEI , It seems to be on the same level with GT 555M/HD6770M.
Thank you +rep

 

Thank you so much! Try to run 3dmark vantage and 3dmark 11 though!!

And which card do you mean MPIXAPP?

 

wei would be testing the hd4000 not 640m.

according to the gpuz if it has 384 sp it should be quite fast but also has ddr3 which is kinda weird

 

"Gaming performance" tests the discrete GPU , so 6.9 is the score of GT 640M.

 

Well the windows perfomance index sucks anyways!

Now please some 3dmark11 and 3dmark vantage benchmarks !!

Its pretty good looking, seems like 640m and 650m are indeed kepler!

 

Ewwwww DDR3, it's a thing of the past, or so I thought...

 

Can you get 650m shots too? One of the other acer notebooks also had the 650m

 

Excellent shots, just to get a sense of what capabilities are. Strange to see DDR3 - I would think the improved power consumption of DDR5 would be beneficial - but DDR3 is generally more stable, so that may be the reason for this release. Probably improve over time with increased stability and availability.

 

This GT 640M idles at an unprecedented chilly 32C. That may be the reason why it can be used in Ultrabooks.

Which Acer model? I haven't really looked around much and seems like this is the only Ivy Bridge and Kepler model featured.

 

I think its the 17 inch acer aspire V3 Laptop!!

can you run 3dmark vantage and 3dmark11 benchmarks too?

thank you very much!

 

Holy cow! @.@ i wonder if the better cards would have a similar idle temp?

 

LOL you actually went down and installed GPU-Z/CPU-Z on the notebooks @ CeBIT? I`d %¤#" my pants if I did that.
The OEMs don`t really allow this do they? I mean it must be under NDA still I think. Both for Intel and Nvidia hardware.

But screw them, was longing for more details.

Would love some 3DMark Vantage scores. Who dares to run that on the machines?

 

Unless they have security looking over these machines 24/7 who is to stop yknyong1

 

oh nice! +rep

 

The trick is, he has one of those Harry Potter Invisibility Cloaks,

Here is a picture of yknyong1 standing infront of the MSI Machines;

 

Nothing sneaky was done to obtain these screenies by the way in case you are wondering.

 

man, nice job, really really nice job, keep it coming I am hoping 10th of March there will be some final display event where we will see real stuff (repped you already )

 

The 12th marks the end of GDC, so maybe then would be the final day of March for something significant to be officially announced.

 

Man the announcements are so slow getting out.

 

I think a lot of us are spoiled by the energy that comes out of CES and the pace of the show. CeBit is kind of laid back..

 

Yeah that makes sense, especially since I never even heard of Cebit until like last week. But I've been trying keep up in the now so I know what's goin on when I make my first purchase in late may early June, HOPEFULLY.

 

384 shaders... On a 640m? So each Kepler shader is actually weaker than the Fermi ones, but each card has more of them?

 

Yeah, seems pointless right?

 

Well, each AMD VLIW/GCN shader is far weaker than a Fermi one but there's enough of them so performance is similar to Nvidia cards. It doesn't really matter how fast the individual shaders are, just that there's enough of them so that performance is improved over last gen.

 

also i noticed in one picture, the shader clock was 625! which is faster than a 580m, although if what you said is correct about the shaders being less powerful, then im not sure what kind of performance it would get.

 

i have 2 laptops with optimus and the discrete gpu doesnt turn on when running wei on either of them.

 

128bit GDDR3 is just insanely stupid...
If GDDR5 were used it would have like 50% higher performance

 

while I respect the info I think you went little over the wall with the "annoying1" all over the place ... lol

 

It's to prevent some site from cropping and taking the image as their own.

And I can simply withdraw the pictures and further info if someone annoys me by calling me names.

This is the hot clock, something like Intel's Turbo Boost.

 

It's his work and he can write whatever the hell he wants on it. He's providing us with great information and I think most of us really appreciate it.

 

I will do the commentary when I get everything posted.

 

So, if you do the maths, and assume that each of the new cards will be around the same performance boost over the previous card of the same name, and the logic of 640m=555m holds true, then it's a pretty meh release.

Don't get me wrong, a 35% increase isn't to be sniffled at, but to all the people who were hoping for double performance or something along the lines; could you not see this coming? Nvidia obviously saw that their cards are about level with AMD's so simply waited for the hype to die down a little, and I wouldn't be surprised if half of the rumours came from them too.

However, this is all assuming the above is correct. While it might deviate by a little, given the current calculations, I find it hard to believe that the peak performance would be more than 50% over the previous top tier cards. Not too bad, but still far from what some people were hoping for. Let's just hope they haven't nerfed the first generation like they did with fermi.

 

I love people who are trying to be smart@$$...

@yknyong1, don't worry man, we appreciate every single one of your screenies, keep it coming please!

 

Didn't see it mentioned anywhere, but what form factor is this in?

 

14 inch laptop

 

man, did you see this?

 

Its mostly a publicity stunt me thinks. They haven't mentioned at any place what settings or what fps they ran the demo on the kepler card..There's not a single video out there of it running on the kepler card (all the ones i can find are the original demo). The original demo ran on 60 fps with highest AA+FXAA and many other goodies fully enabled.

For yesterday's demo they prolly switched off the high amounts of AA and used only FXAA. The fps was most likely a bit lower as well. You've also got to factor in the time since the original demo was shown. Epic and nvidia have surely worked on optimizing the engine and drivers.


All that said, I still expect a ~ >=50% boost over past gen and I'm pretty sure i'm going with nvidia for my next build. But i dont think there's a 100-200% improvement which nvidia and other news sites are trying to insinuate with this "good samaritan demo on single kepler" news

 

I don't even believe we will have an immediate 50% boost over previous generation, I think the card they used should be a classified prototype thingie, like a later Kepler gen (all these companies have at least a few years of research ready in front of them, but mass production is a different thing), but at least this shows that Kepler eventually will have a major improvement in GPU business

 

well damn you all are not only missing sense of humor but also getting offended quite fast by nothing.

what I was just saying was that instead of putting his name like 5 times he could just do fine with one time over the whole screen, that's all.

either way, I said I respect the info, so chill out.

 

Kepler??Ivy Bridge????????? - ???
Acer VA40 Combines Core i7-3612QM and GeForce GT 640M - techPowerUp! Forums
http://www.overclock.net/t/1226312/nbr-nvidia-kepler-and-ivy-bridge-specs-revealed-mobile

Some commentary free from other sites.

 

Congratulations, your post is on the first page of techpowerup.com

 

I just became a Chinese poster and NBR, a Chinese forum.

Okay, time to reveal more: One titbit of information - Ivy Bridge notebooks will be released by April 29, 2012.

The Acer Aspire V3 14.0" is the notebook tested above with a definite release date of April 29, 2012.

Intel Core i7-3612QM 35W

The Lenovo Y480/ 580 will also be launched on the same day.