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Intel's Ivy Bridge Architecture Exposedby Anand Lal Shimpi on 9/17/2011 2:00 AM EST
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- CPUs
- Intel
- Ivy Bridge
- Trade Shows
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driscoll42 - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkOn the last page there's "Should the fab engineers at Intel do their job well, Ivy Bridge could deliver much better power characteristics than Ivy." in the second paragraph, should that be Sandy on the end? Reply
Anand Lal Shimpi - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkThank you! Fixed :)
Take care,
Anand Reply
Beenthere - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkIt's good that Intel has decided that their GPU sucks and that to be competitive they need to catch up to AMD. This will take some time as AMD has a two year head start on APUs but it's all good for consumers.
In spite of the marketing hype from Intel it looks like they've conceded that AMD has the better system approach with APUs for mainstream consumers and laptops. CPU performance alone is no longer a valid yardstick for PC performance thanks to AMD's advance thinking and Llano. Reply
TypeS - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkI realize Intel is behind (has been for since anyone can remember) in the graphics arena compared to AMD/ATI and NVIDIA, but is AMD "two years ahead" in terms of an APU? While Clarkdale can't really be considered a true all in one package (hey remember when Kentsfield wasn't considered a true quad core?), it was still an all in one package, and with Sandy Bridge, Intel brought it all together onto one die. Intel isn't calling it an APU but if you compare SNB and Llano/Bulldozer, they share some similarities.
AMD's edge is on graphics, and Intel is closing the gap.
I might be missing something though in why you say they are ahead in terms of an "APU", but from my knowledge, Intel as first to release a retail/commercial APU. Reply
Guspaz - Monday, September 19, 2011 - linkIntel might be catching up in terms of physical performance, but Intel's drivers still, quite frankly, suck. It's the one thing really holding the platform back, in terms of both compatibility and performance. Even simple things like flash acceleration can sometimes be wonky with Intel's drivers.
Furthermore, developers like Carmack have been pestering Intel to give them lower-level access to the hardware, with potentially enormous performance benefits; they'd like to treat PCs more like a console, and stripping away much of the driver/graphics overhead (particularly in terms of memory management) could see some pretty big performance gains. There's a reason why modern integrated GPUs like in Ivy Bridge have theoretical performance on-par with a 360 or PS3, but in practice, are nowhere near as performant.
Of course, the same is true for AMD and nVidia; high-end developers like Carmack and Sweeney seem to want lower-level access to hardware. From Carmack's latest QuakeCon keynote, it does seem like the hardware manufacturers are listening. Reply
fic2 - Monday, September 19, 2011 - linkYeah, Intel seems to want to catch up and made a pretty decent effort of no sucking with the HD3000. BUT then they go and do a dumb@ss thing like put the crappy HD2000 on 90% of the Sandies they sell. I think if marketing would get the he11 out of the way they wouldn't be too sucky.
Oh, yeah, except the drivers. Reply
bigboxes - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkI love AMD as much as the next guy (have three running AMD boxes), but are you going to continue to be "that guy" that posts this nonsense in every Intel/AMD thread? We get it. You love AMD and want to help them win the CPU wars. Yay for fanbois everywhere! Reply
Beenthere - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkIntel hasn't released an APU. They have released a CPU and GPU on the same slab of silicon. That's not an integrated APU.
No nonsense, just facts. I like facts. Some folks can't handle facts but that's life. I like choice and scrupulous businesses. That's what AMD is unlike Intel. Reply
ltcommanderdata - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkFor someone arguing against marketing hype and looking for facts you seem overly preoccupied by AMD's APU term. If you are looking for which product currently on the market has tighter CPU/IGP integration then that produce is Sandy Bridge not Llano. For instance Sandy Bridge allows bidirectional communication/sharing of instructions and data between the CPUs and IGP via a shared on die L3 cache instead of through a crossbar and off die system memory as in Llano. Sandy Bridge also has more advanced power and thermal monitoring allowing efficient sharing of TDP room between the CPU and IGP, allowing each to be overclocked as needed, something Llano doesn't do.
Yes, Llano has the faster GPU, but that's not the critical concern if what you are interested in is integration. Intel's CPU and GPU on a slab of silicon was Arrandale. Sandy Bridge has moved well beyond that. Llano's CPU/GPU integration looks to be somewhere in between Arrandale and Sandy Bridge. Seeing Llano is AMD's 1st generation Fusion product along with Brazos that's fine. But just because AMD's calls their product an APU doesn't mean it's the pinnacle of CPU/GPU integration. Reply
gramboh - Sunday, September 18, 2011 - linkBoom. Beenthere just got roasted, and of course disappears rather than admitting he was wrong. Reply
shiznit - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkIntel's APU is more integrated than AMD's Reply
TypeS - Monday, September 19, 2011 - linkGuess you're one of those fanboys that just couldn't come back down from high of AMD's time in the spotlight with the Athlon 64?
For someone who speaks of facts, you need to go check the architecture of both the SNB and Llano/Brazo cores before you say AMD has the more integrated approach.
AMD is just using marketing nonsense with calling their new CPU an "APU", just like when they called the Phenom X4s "true quad cores". Reply
JonnyDough - Monday, September 19, 2011 - linkMarketing fluff is Intel's bag, right? Maybe you forget the whole "clock speed" fiasco. Selling P4's claiming they are faster than the competition, although they are not...
At least consumers eventually caught on and OEMs began looking at AMD processors as well. :)
You all sound like fanboys though, who really cares who's right? We should just be excited about the TECH! Reply
Kaihekoa - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkLol with Intel's capital and recruiting experienced GPU engineers that "two year lead" will evaporate faster than boiling water. I don't know where you're getting your delusions of the mainstream market sapping up AMD's CPU/GPU combination marketing and products, but the average computer user doesn't use or need anything more than Intel's current generation of graphics. And as others have mentioned Intel's design is more integrated than AMDs on an engineering/design level.
Yes, they have the more powerful GPU, but you have to be an idiot to think it's more integrated than Ivy Bridge. CPU performance and graphics good enough to power 2D and 3D accelerated media are the yardstick for PC performance for the vast majority of users. You're truly deluding yourself if you think the average computer user is playing The Witcher 2 and Deus Ex on their PCs with cards more powerful than IVB's. Even now with AMD's two year advantage, guess who owns the market for systems with a combined CPU/GPU? For integrated graphics? Wintel.
Am I an Intel fanboy? No, the last desktop system I built had an AMD CPU and discrete GPU, but you can't logically deny how well their business is doing now, and you'd be a food to think they would overlook the mainstream demand for a high-end APU. In the future when the market needs/wants it, Intel will have something equivalent or better to AMD/ATI. Reply
Zoomer - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkLet's not forget drivers and game support, not to mention IQ. Last I checked, Intel graphics drivers were still pretty horrible. Reply
iwodo - Sunday, September 18, 2011 - linkExactly. Designing Hardware is easy. You throw Money and Engineers you could be there in no time. Especially with the expertise from Intel.
Software - on the other hand, takes time. No matter how many engineers you put in. Drivers is the problems Intel has to overcome. Reply
JonnyDough - Monday, September 19, 2011 - linkI agree. Software is key. Intel is good at parts of it, AMD is better when it comes to keeping up with game developers. However, business markets make enthusiast markets look miniscule. Still, both are great competitors and we consumers just keep winning. :) Reply
iwodo - Sunday, September 18, 2011 - linkI forgot to add, there is a reason why Nvidia has more Software Engineers then Hardware. Reply
medi01 - Sunday, September 18, 2011 - linkIt's actually the other way round. Pretty much any CPU starting from about 2008 is "more than good enough" for most users. Reply
BSMonitor - Sunday, September 18, 2011 - link"In spite of the marketing hype from Intel it looks like they've conceded that AMD has the better system approach with APUs for mainstream consumers and laptops. CPU performance alone is no longer a valid yardstick for PC performance thanks to AMD's advance thinking and Llano. "
This is utter nonsense. All AMD has done is transfer 400 of its shader units on to the CPU core. What you have with AMD is a 4-5 year old GPU combined with a 3 year old CPU.
Both sides of the coin yeild a huge YAWN from anyone looking for real performance. Reply
JonnyDough - Monday, September 19, 2011 - link4-5 year old GPU? Heh, bud...most hardware takes years to develop. And the HD3000 series may be a bit dated but it makes even the XBox 360 look weak in comparison. Hardly dismal. Reply
moozoo - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkDoes its GPU support double precision under OpenCL? i.e. cl_khr_fp64
Does Trinity? Reply
Ryan Smith - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkWe don't have solid details on either one, but don't count on it. The reasons we don't see full FP64 support on non-halo GPUs are still in play for CPUs. Reply
Galcobar - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkPerhaps I'm missing something in the acronyms, but the table and text seems to disagree on the availability of SSD caching.
The text states "All of the 7-series consumer chipsets will support Intel's Rapid Storage Technology (RST, aka SSD caching)."
The table, however, puts No under the Z75 column for Intel SRT (SSD caching).
As I understand things, you need RST (software) to support SRT (bound to the motherboard), but without SRT you don't get SSD caching. Reply
Anand Lal Shimpi - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkFixed :) SRT is only on the Z77/H77, not the Z75.
Take care,
Anand Reply
mlkmade - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkI know its really early to be talking about this cause ivy won't be out for awhile..but what about what amounts to be "ivyb-e" ? I'm sure details are very scarce...but will it follow the desktop path (both s1155) and be socket compatible? in this case s2011? if ivyb-e is socket compatible with sb-e...that'd be great..but by then all the chipset problems would be fleshed out huh..buy a new mono anyway Reply
Anand Lal Shimpi - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkI would hope so, but as of now there is no IVB-E on the roadmaps so anything I'd say here would be uninformed and speculative at this point :-/
Take care,
Anand Reply
ltcommanderdata - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkDoes Ivy Bridge finally allow the IGP and QuickSync engine to be available even with a discrete GPU plugged in for both mobile and desktop without resorting to specific chipsets (ie. limited to the high-end chipset) or third-party software (relying on motherboard makers and OEMs to deal with Lucid)? WIth the IGP being OpenCL and DirectCompute capable, even if you have the latest Quad SLI/Crossfire setup it would be useful to have the IGP help out in GPGPU tasks.
And it's interesting that with AMD introducing a beefier form of SMT with two full integer cores, Intel decided not to similarly increase hardware resource duplication to expand Hyperthreading. Instead Intel is focusing on improving single threaded performance by making sure a single thread can use all the resources if Hyperthreading is not needed. Seeing most software isn't making use of 8 simultaneous threads, focusing on making 4 threads (1 per core) work as fast as possible does make sense. Reply
Meegulthwarp - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - link"As we've already seen, introducing a 35W quad-core part could enable Apple to ship a quad-core IVB in a 13-inch MacBook Pro." Here is to hoping that someone other than apple will also ship a decent 13-inch with a quad.
Other than that great insight, I really hope the GPU on IVB will be half way useable. I think we've hit a point where CPU performance is more than adequate for 95% of consumers. Now just need to up the GPU performance and get power down so we can use our laptops on battery all day. I'm more than happy with my 2 year old C2D CPU performance but want battery life, hugely tempted with AMD's A6-3400M. But with Bulldozer looming I think I may hold back for 6 months. Reply
Anand Lal Shimpi - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkI hope so too, I simply used Apple as an example because it has migrated to quad-core in every member of its MBP family with the exception of the 13-inch. I've updated the statement to be a bit more broad :)
Take care,
Anand Reply
Meegulthwarp - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkThanks man, you're a star. You really should just ignore whiny comments like mine as you provide some of the best (if not the best) tech articles online and its free of charge! Everytime you push a article like this my life comes to a standstill so I can read it. Keep up the good work! Reply
zshift - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkI agree with this 100%. I love reading the articles here on AnandTech. The articles are well written, and provide plenty of charts/data/photos to provide as much of a complete understanding as possible of the product in question.
I also like the fairly recent upsurge in articles, you have a great team here.
PS: Bench rocks! Reply
lowenz - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkFrom power page: "Voltage changes have a cubic affect on power"
P ~ C * v^2 * freq * switching activity Reply
know of fence - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkCubic as in "to the third power".
I remember a slide from on of the Intel presentations saying that, but i'd like to know how it comes about.
Vcore^3 ~ power
Here somebody posted some data of Vcore vs Power. If you were to plot power consumption in relation to Vcore^3 then one ought to get a linear graph.
http://www.awardfabrik.de/forum/showthread.php?t=6... Reply
KalTorak - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkCubic. Because f, for a big chunk of the V-f curve, tends to be linear in V. Reply
gevorg - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkWill IVB have 8-core unlocked CPUs like 2500K/2600K SNB? Reply
Sabresiberian - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - link"Ivy Bridge won't get rid of the need for a discrete GPU but, like Sandy Bridge, it is a step in the right direction."
I'm not so sure I'd agree getting rid of the need for a discrete GPU is a good thing. In terms of furthering technological possibilities, yes, I get that; in terms of me building the computer I want to build and tailoring the results to my purposes, I really don't want these things to be tied together in an inflexible way.
;) Reply
platedslicer - Sunday, September 18, 2011 - linkStandardization seems to be the current trend... next thing you know, the computer industry has gone the way of car manufacturers. Reply
JonnyDough - Monday, September 19, 2011 - linkStandards are not all bad. In the case of car manufacturers, we now have things like sealed bearings (so you don't have to regularly grease the bearings in your wheels, and they actually last longer and cost less), safety systems like ABS, seat belts, airbags, etc.
With computers, we need standards as well for compatibility. It lowers cost, ensures that hardware works fluidly between platforms, etc. If we didn't have standards we would have things like rambus - which would only cost us a fortune and slow technological progression. Reply
JonnyDough - Monday, September 19, 2011 - linkI think the author means that you won't NEED a discrete CHIP (GPU other than the one on-die) to run a system. Discrete here seems to imply an IGP (integrated onto the motherboard) OR on a separate graphics card. That isn't to say one won't still be required for graphics intensive applications. Ideally, the on-die GPU will be able to work in tandem when a graphics card is installed. Reply
piroroadkill - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkI'd have liked a little more on this.. What's the source?
I searched anyway, and found it is using thermal sampling. Presumably it's also seeded. Anyway, I thought it was of interest. Reply
Jamahl - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkDon't you get tired of saying "intel is finally taking gpu performance seriously" every year? I do. Reply
JonnyDough - Monday, September 19, 2011 - linkI'd just like to say...
=) Yes sir, I do. Reply
imaheadcase - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkI heard when sandy bridge came out they was considering a GPUless version for enthusiasts who don't need it..is that something they will do eventually?
I suspect its tied to the core, so not going to happen because of high costs. But wouldn't that save even more power/heat problems with that removed?
It just seems like its a mobile orientated cpu vs consumer. :D Reply
DanNeely - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkWith power gating if you're not using the IGP it doesn't consume any power; so the only thing they'd save on is die area by removing it. Reply
imaheadcase - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkAh did not know that part. thanks. Reply
fic2 - Monday, September 19, 2011 - link"I heard when sandy bridge came out they was considering a GPUless version for enthusiasts who don't need it..."
Interesting since Intel did the exact opposite - put the only GPU with half decent performance into the enthusiast 'K' series. Reply
JonnyDough - Monday, September 19, 2011 - linkThe only people who would actually consider that are businesses and home users who don't play "real" games. :P Reply
jjj - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - link"I believe that x86 CPU performance is what sells CPUs today"
That's not all that true anymore,there was a time when apps used by everybody required a fast CPU but that's not the case anymore nowdays..Just a few years ago playing HD content was a chalange on older systems but now ,if you look at usage paterns and what kind of perf is needed, the picture has changed. This is one of the reasons PC sales are not doing so great,there is no need to upgrade your system every 1-2 years.Even Windows is not driving system requirements up anymore.
In the consumer space GPU and battery life matter more now. Intel is trying to fight all this with lower power consumption, ultrabooks but that far from enough.If they want to survive the ARM "tsunami" (think about the financial part too here not just perf) , they got to push the software to be more demanding too and maybe the easiest is to do it on the GPU side -not in games. Reply
MadMan007 - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkIntel's quarterly results say there is less to worry about than hyperbolic ARM domination headlines would lead one to think. One IDF slide showed large growth in emerging markets where the analysts aren't as able to get reliable data. Yes, PC upgrade cycles are longer, but that doesn't mean there is not net worldwide growth.
There is room for growth in both areas, it's not a zero-sum game, and some things like mobile video consumption actually go hand-in-hand with faster beefy CPUs. Reply
medi01 - Sunday, September 18, 2011 - linkIt's been a while that most users didn't really need faster CPUs or GPUs.
In a couple of years, why on earth would anyone but gamers need a PC? Emails, browsing, video would be covered by tablets and the likes. Reply
dealcorn - Friday, November 04, 2011 - linkMy Suzuki Alto has about the horsepower of a team of mules and it's fine, really. However, if for about the same money and fuel economy I could get 600 hp, darn right I need 600 hp. That's about where we are at with CPU power. I believe your issue is more properly stated as "there is a need to re engineer humanity because it is not doing what I want." Reply
Billy_Boy - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - link"In Sandy Bridge, many of those structures are statically partitioned. If you have a buffer that can hold 20 entries, each thread gets up to 10 entries in the buffer. In the event of a single threaded workload, half of the buffer goes unused."
If you turn off HT does this go away in Sandy Bridge? Reply
BioTurboNick - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkThey are talking about a hardware implementation, so it wouldn't go away by disabling hyper-threading. Reply
Zoomer - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkIt depends if the designers thought it would be important enough to implement. Losing 1/2 of the many resources (though probably not execution resources) is huge, and on a non-HT chip it's almost like castrating it. Reply
BioTurboNick - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkRight. That's probably why Ivy Bridge is moving to completely single-thread-capable resources. Reply
danjw - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkI am wondering if Ivy Bridge will be faster for gaming then the Sandy Bridge-E. I lot of the improvements seem to be with threading, but more games are starting to implement threading. Sandy Bridge-E will have PCI-Express 3.0 and more memory channels, but Ivy Bridge will have faster memory. Reply
Hrel - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkWill Intel FINALLY be turning on hyper threading on every CPU? Cause if not that's the final straw that breaks the camels back, I'm going AMD. It took them years to finally get a decent quad core down to 200 bucks, but then if you wanted HT it cost another 100 bucks. Ridiculous. I want to be able to buy a K series quad core with HT for under 200 bucks. Also WHY are there USB 2.0 ports on this AT ALL?
If AMD has all usb 3.0 ports and the CPU performance is comparable I'm def switching camps.
Do you guys know if AMD has any plans on releasing SSD caching on their motherboards too? Cause that really is a "killer app" so to speak. Large SSD's are too expensive to make any sense unless you're filthy rich but 64GB with two 2TB HDD's in RAID sounds pretty great. Reply
philosofool - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkWhen AMD releases serious competitors at the relevant price points. I hope bulldozer kicks ass, because a solid quad core will be two hundred bucks until there is real competition. Reply
medi01 - Sunday, September 18, 2011 - linkIf you count motherboard price in, AMD is already more than competitive. Reply
Hrel - Thursday, September 22, 2011 - link1: I said comparable, not competitive.
2: I don't care about price. I make enough it doesn't matter. I just care about performance. At the same time, I don't waste money, so I don't buy Extreme Editions either. I buy whatever CPU has the best performance around 200 bucks.
Point: At this point if AMD is even close (within 15%) I'm switching. Reply
mino - Monday, September 26, 2011 - linkIf price does not matter, the you shall not bother about desktop stuff and go directly fro 2P workstations with ECC.
Just a thought. Reply
JKflipflop98 - Monday, October 24, 2011 - linkHind sight is 20/20 now. Reply
Zoomer - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkThat stuff can, and imo should, be implemented in the filesystem. Reply
Cr0nJ0b - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkI'm wondering they wounldn't just got with all USB 3.0 ports since they are backward compatible with other UBS forms. Maybe a licensing cost issue? Reply
Zoomer - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkIntel's platform is really a mess and a hodgepodge nowadays. Pity. Reply
ggathagan - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkThere aren't enough PCIe lanes to allow for that kind of bandwidth. Reply
DanNeely - Sunday, September 18, 2011 - linkAlong with the fact that USB3 controllers are larger and need more pins on the chip to connect. They're the same reasons that AMD only has a 4 USB3 ports on its most recent southbridges. Reply
marcusj0015 - Saturday, September 17, 2011 - linkIntel Invented USB...
so no there are no licensing costs that i can think of. Reply
Aone - Sunday, September 18, 2011 - linkIs Ivy's Quick Sync in the same power gated domain together with IGP as it happens in SB or Quick Sync and IGP can be switched on/off independently? Reply
Arnulf - Sunday, September 18, 2011 - link"Voltage changes have a cubic affect on power, so even a small reduction here can have a tangible impact."
Quadratic relationship, rather than cubic ? Reply
damianrobertjones - Sunday, September 18, 2011 - link" As we've already seen, introducing a 35W quad-core part could enable Apple (and other OEMs) to ship a quad-core IVB in a 13-inch system."
Is Apple the only company that can release a 13" system? Reply
medi01 - Monday, September 19, 2011 - linkNo. But it's the only one that absolutely needs to be commented on in orgasmic tone in US press (and big chunk of EU press too) Reply
JonnyDough - Monday, September 19, 2011 - linkThey're the only ones who will market it with a flashy Apple logo light on a pretty aluminum case. Everyone knows that lightweight pretty aluminum cases are a great investment on a system that is outdated after just a few years. I wish Apple would make cars instead of PCs so we could bring the DeLorean back. Something about that stainless steel body just gets me so hot. Sure, it would get horrible gas mileage and be less safe in an accident. But it's just so pretty! Plus, although it would use a standard engine made by Ford or GM under the hood, its drivers would SWEAR that Apple builds its own superior hardware! Reply
cldudley - Sunday, September 18, 2011 - linkAm I the only one who thinks Intel is really wasting a lot of time and money on improvements to their on-die GPU? They keep adding features and improvements to the onboard video, right up to including DirectX 11 support, but isn't this really all an excersise in futility?
Ultimately a GPU integrated with the CPU is going to be bottlenecked by the simple fact that it does not have access to any local memory of it's own. Every time it rasterizes a triangle or performs a texture operation, it is doing it through the same memory bus the CPU is using to fetch instructions, read and write data, etc.
I read that the GPU is taking a larger proportion of the die space in Ivy Bridge, and all I see is a tragic waste of space that would have been better put into another (pair of?) core or more L1/L2 cache.
I can see the purpose of integrated graphics in the lowest-end SKUs for budget builds, and there are certainly power and TDP advantages, and things like Quick-Sync are a great idea, but why stuff a GPU in a high-end processor that will be blown away by a comparatively middle-of-the-road discrete GPU? Reply
Death666Angel - Sunday, September 18, 2011 - linkI disagree. AMD has shown that on-die GPUs can already compete with middle-of-the-road discrete graphics in notebooks. Trinity will probably take on middle-of-the-road in the current desktop space.
Your memory bandwidth argument also doesn't seem to be correct, either. Except for some AMD mainboard graphics with dedicated sideport memory, all IGPs use the RAM, but a lot of them are doing fine. It is also nice to finally see higher clocked RAM be taken advantage of (see Llano 1666MHz vs 1800MHz). DDR4 will add bandwidth as well.
Once the bandwidth becomes a bottleneck, you can address that, but at the moment Intel doesn't seem to be there, yet, so they keep addressing their other GPU issues. What is wrong with that?
Also, how many people who buy high-end CPUs end up gaming 90% of the time on them? A lot of people need high-end CPUs for work related stuff, coding, CAD etc. Why should they have to buy a discrete graphics card?
Overall, you are doing a lot of generalization and you don't take into account quite a few things. :-) Reply
cldudley - Sunday, September 18, 2011 - linkIronically I spend lots of time in AutoCAD, and a discrete graphics board makes a tremendous difference. Gamer-grade stuff is usually not the best thing in that arena though, it needs to be the special "workstation" cards, which have very different drivers. Quadro or FireGL.
I agree with you on the work usage, and gaming workloads not being 90% of the time, but on the other hand,workstations tend to have Xeons in them, with discrete graphics cards. Reply
platedslicer - Sunday, September 18, 2011 - linkAs a fraction of the computer market, buyers who want power over everything else have plunged. Mobility is so important for OEMs now that fitting already-existent performance levels into smaller, cheaper devices becomes more important than pushing the envelope. I still remember a time when hardly anybody gave a rat's ass about how much power a CPU consumed as long as it didn't melt down. Today, power consumption is a crucial factor due to battery life and heat.
Personally these developments make me rather sad, partly because I like ever-shinier games, and (more importantly) because seeing the unwashed masses talk about computers as if they were clothing brands makes me want to rip out their throats. That's how the world works, though. Hopefully the chip makers will realize that there's still a market for power over fluff.
Looking at it on the bright side, CPU power stagnation might make game designers pay more attention to content. Hey, you have to look on the bright side of life. Reply
KPOM - Monday, September 19, 2011 - linkI think that's largely because for the average consumer, PCs have reached the point where CPU capabilities are no longer the bottleneck. Look at the success of the 2010 MacBook Air, which had a slow C2D but a speedy SSD, and sold well enough to last into mid-2011. Games are the next major hurdle, but that's the GPU rather than the CPU, and hence the reason it receives a bigger focus in Ivy Bridge (as it also did in Sandy Bridge compared to Westmere).
The emphasis now is having the power we have last longer and be available in smaller, more portable devices. Reply
JonnyDough - Monday, September 19, 2011 - linkYou're missing the point. They aren't trying to beef the power of the CPU. CPUs are already quite powerful for most tasks. They are trying to lower energy usage and sell en-mass to businesses that use thousands of computers. Reply
AstroGuardian - Monday, September 19, 2011 - link"Intel implied that upward scalability was a key goal of the Ivy Bridge GPU design, perhaps we will see that happen in 2013."
No we wont. The world ends in 2012 remember? Reply
JonnyDough - Monday, September 19, 2011 - linkIt ended in the year 2000. Hello! Y2K ring any bells? Come on, keep up with current events would ya? Reply
TheRyuu - Monday, September 19, 2011 - link"I've complained in the past about the lack of free transcoding applications (e.g. Handbrake, x264) that support Quick Sync. I suspect things will be better upon Ivy Bridge's arrival."
As long as Intel doesn't expose the Quick Sync API there is no way for such applications to make use of it, not to mention the technical limitations.
There are hints on doom9 that they know a bit about the lower level details but that it's all NDA'ed. Even with that knowledge he says that it's probably not possible or probable to do so.
You can find various rambling/rage here:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=156761 (Dark_Shikari and pengvado are the x264 devs).
tl;dr: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1511469#po... (to the end of the thread) Reply
fic2 - Monday, September 19, 2011 - linkI would also wonder who (software wise) would be willing to put a lot of resources into supporting something that isn't really available on most SB platforms - or at least not available without jumping through hoops (correct mb, correct chip, 3rd party software, etc). Reply
fic2 - Monday, September 19, 2011 - link"By the time Ivy Bridge arrives however, AMD will have already taken another step forward with Trinity."
I wonder how realistic this is considering that AMD can't even get Bulldozer out the door.
My money is on Ivy Bridge showing up before Trinity. Reply
Beenthere - Monday, September 19, 2011 - linkConsidering Trinity was shown at IDF up and running and the fact that Trinity and other AMD nex gen products were developed concurrently with Zambezi and Opteron Bulldozer chips - which have been shipping by the tens of thousands already, I'd say Trinity will be here in Q1 '12. Reply
fic2 - Monday, September 19, 2011 - link"Opteron Bulldozer chips - which have been shipping by the tens of thousands already"
And, yet, nobody can benchmark them.
I hope that I am wrong, but given AMD's continual delays shipping the desktop BD I am not holding my breath.
Whichever comes first gets my money - assuming that BD is actually competitive with SB performance. Reply
thebeastie - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - linkYou talk about what's for support for handbrake but to put it harshly your mind is stuck in the past gen device era.
I simply grab a full DVD and run makemkv on it to just store it unmodified in a single file and copy it to my iPad2 directly.
Plays perfectly fine under avplayerhd.
I consider it that you would have to be insane as in you think your an onion to bother handbrakin your videos if you got a device like ipad2 that can just play them straight.
If your the hoarder type that insists that you watch Rambo 4 etc every week and need to pack 100+ full movies on your single device at the same time your a freak so pipe you niche life style comments to /dev/null.
I would not understand why you have time to bother shrinking/ converting your movies all the time over just getting sick of some of them and putting new stuff on from time to time. Reply
TheRyuu - Tuesday, September 20, 2011 - link8.5GB for a movie seems a bit impractical for an ipad. Reply
thebeastie - Wednesday, September 21, 2011 - linkFull 8gb is big but they still copy of amazingly quickly over to a ipad2 64gb, a lot of DVDs don't get that full size anyway.
If you bought a honeycomb tablet and put sdslot storage on it, I am sure it would be a extremely painfull slow copying experience if you use SD over built in flash, maybe this is what Apple avoid sd lslotd in the first place. Built in flash is lighting fast and less draw on battery.
Having full on pc and just coying over in 2mins vs bothering to convert I know what i just choose full copy every time.
Once I have watched it takes at least a year before I consider watching the same thing again. Reply
NeBlackCat - Wednesday, September 21, 2011 - linkThe GPU part would be streets ahead, the drivers would be good, Tegra 3 (4..5...) on the 22nm trigate process is an absolutely mouth-watering proposition, and who knows what else could have been accomplished with the engineering effort saved on Intel GPUs and the (so far) fruitless efforts to push x86 into smart consumer devices.
On the downside, there's be no AMD. Reply
mrpatel - Wednesday, September 21, 2011 - linkThe iMac 2011 27" model ships with the Z68 chipset.
So the question is whether or not it would support IVY BRIDGE CPUs in it? (given that all other things like TDP etc requirements match up).
I wonder if IVY BRIDGE CPUs would require a full EFI or kernel module upgrade to be supported? (i mean i really don't care if the USB 3.0 works, but I do care about the new design, gpu performance and lower power to performance ratio compared to sandy bridge!). Reply
caggregate - Friday, September 23, 2011 - linkSo being that this is a current/future platform, what's the big deal about support for DDR3L (which as a standard was ratified in July 2010)? I realize the specs of DDR3U ("Ultra low voltage" 1.25V) are not "final" yet, but you'd think it would be implemented given that DDR3U has been available to engineers (according to Hynix/Google) since June 2010. Reply
fb39ca4 - Sunday, September 25, 2011 - linkNo OpenGL 4 support? Seriously? Reply
OCguy - Tuesday, September 27, 2011 - linkAre they even trying anymore? Reply
Olbi - Tuesday, October 18, 2011 - linkI wonder why Intel add DX11, but no OpenGL 4? Both are needed by developers of apps and DX11 isnt need by allmost all app. OpenGL 4 is needed by Linux desktop like KDE 4, GNOME, Xfce and others. So why Intel still doesnt support it. Reply
tkafafi - Tuesday, March 20, 2012 - linkWhy do the new intel chipsets (series 7) still contain so many (10) usb2 ports ? Would any PC/laptop manufacturer chose to use a usb2 port instead of anavailable usb3 port from the chipset ? for e.g would they use 2 usb2 + 2usb3 instead of 4 usb3 from the chipset ?
I know PC manufacturers are using this configuration (2 usb2 + 2 usb3) because now they need to support usb3 through an external controller so they are saving cost by using a 2 port controller. But once series 7 chipsets arrive with native usb3 support, there would be no cost advantage to do this. Is this to derisk any interoperability issues with older usb2 devices (i.e if for some reason usb3 ports don't work well with some existing usb2 devices) ?

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3DMark for Windows Launches; We Test It with Various Laptopsby Jarred Walton on 2/5/2013 5:00 AM EST
69 Comments
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IanCutress - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkIt is worth noting that FM have integrated a native rendering that scales to your monitor. So Fire Strike on extreme mode is natively rendered at 2560x1440 and then scaled to 1366x768 of the monitor as required. (source: FM_Jarvis on hwbot.org forums)
Time to fire up some desktop four way, see if it scales :D Reply
dj christian - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkThanks for a great walkthrough! However i am wondering about the Llano and Trinity systems. Are those mobile and if what brand and model do they run on? Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkAll of the systems other than the desktop are laptops. As for the AMD Llano and Trinity, those are prototype systems from AMD. Llano is probably not up to snuff, as I can't update drivers, but the Trinity laptop runs well -- it was the highest scoring A10 iGPU of the three I have right now (the Samsung and MSI being the other two). Reply
Alexvrb - Wednesday, February 06, 2013 - linkI'm annoyed with Samsung for their memory configuration. 2GB+4GB? I'd like to see tests with that same laptop running a decent pair of 4GB DDR3-1600 sticks. On top of this, even if you can configure one yourself online... they gouge so bad on storage and RAM upgrades that it makes more sense for me to buy it poorly preconfigured and upgrade it myself. I could throw the unwanted parts in the trash and STILL come out way cheaper, not that I would do so. Reply
Tuvok86 - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkso, does the 3rd test look "next gen" and how does it look compared to the best engines? Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkIn terms of the graphics fidelity, these aren't games so it's difficult to compare. I actually find even the Ice Storm test looks decent and makes me yearn for a good space simulation, even though it's clearly the least demanding of the three tests. I remember upgrading from a 286 to a 386 just so I could run the original Wing Commander with Expanded Memory [EMS] and upgrade graphics quality! Tie Fighter, X-Wing, Freespace, and Starlancer all graced my hard drive over the years. Cloud Gate and Fire Strike are more strict graphics demos, though I suppose I could see Fire Strike as fighting game.
The rendering effects are good, and I'm also glad we're not seeing any rehashing of old benchmarks with updated graphics (3DMark05 and 3DMark06 come to mind). Really, though, if we're talking about games it's really the experience as much as the graphics that matter--look at indie games like FTL where the graphics are simplistic and yet plenty of people waste hours playing and replaying the game. Ultimately, I see 3DMark more as a way of pushing hardware to extremes that we won't see in most games for a few years, but as graphics demos they don't have all the trappings of real games.
If I were to compare to an actual game, though, even the world of something like Batman: Arkham City looks better in some ways than the overabundant use of particle effects and shaders in Fire Strike. Not that it looks bad (well, it does at single digit frame rates on an HD 4000, but that's another matter), but making a nice looking demo is far different from making a good game. Shattered Horizon is a great example of this, IMO.
Not sure if any of this helps, but of course you can grab the Basic Edition for free and run it on your own system. Or if you don't have a decent GPU, Futuremark posted videos of all three tests on YouTube I think. Reply
euler007 - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkReminds me of the days where I had a bunch of batch files to replace my config.sys and autoexec.bat to change my setup depending on what I was doing. I used QEMM back in the days, dunno why I remember that. Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkQEMM or similar products were necessary until DOS 5.0 basically solved most of the issues. Hahaha... I remember all the Config.SYS tweaking as well. It was the "game before the game"! Reply
HisDivineOrder - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkKids today have it easy.
Remember when buying anything not Sound Blaster meant PC gaming hell? I mean, midi was the best it got if you didn't have a Sound Blaster. And that's if you were lucky. Sometimes, you'd just nothing. Total non-functional hell.
I remember my PC screen being given its first taste of (bad) AA with smeared graphics because you had to put your 2d card through a pass-through to get 3dfx graphics and the signal degraded some doing the pass-through.
I remember having to actually figure out IRQ conflicts. Without much help from either the system or the motherboard. Just had to suss them out. Or tough luck, dude.
I remember back when you had all these companies working on x86 processors. Or when AMD and Intel chips could be used on the same motherboards. I remember when Intel told us we just HAD to have CPU's that slotted in via slot. Then told us all the cool kids didn't use slot any more a few years later.
I can remember a day way back when that AMD used PR performance ratings to make up for the fact that Intel wanted to push speed over performance per clock. Ironic compared to how the two play out now on this front.
I can remember when Plextor made fantastic optical drives on their own of their own design. And I can remember when we had three players in the GPU field.
I remember the joy of the Celeron 300a and boosting that bad boy on an Abit BH6 to 450mhz. That thing flew faster than the fastest Pentium for a brief time there. I remember Abit.
I remember...
Dear God, at some point there, I started imagining myself as Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner at the end.
"I've seen things you wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die." Reply
Parhel - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkI remember I bought the Game Blaster sound card maybe 6 months before the Sound Blaster came out, and how disappointed I was when I saw the Sound Blaster at the College of Dupage computer show. God, how I miss going to the computer show with my grandfather. I looked forward to it all month long. And the Computer Shopper magazine, in the early days. And reading newsgroups . . . Gosh, I'm getting old. Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkCelery 300a was pretty awesome, wasn't it? I think that's around the time I started reading Tom's Hardware and AnandTech (when it was still on Geo Cities!) I had that same Abit BH6 motherboard, I think... I also think I used an Abit IT5H before that, with the bus running at 83.3MHz and my Pentium 200 MMX ripping along at 250MHz! And I had a whopping 64MB or RAM.
But even better was the good old days before we even had a reasonable Windows setup. Yeah, I recall installing Windows 2.x and it sucked. 3.0 was actually the first usable version, and there were even Windows alternatives way back then -- I had a friend running some alternative Windows OS as well. GEM maybe, or Viewmax? I can't recall, other than that it didn't really work properly for what we were trying to do at the time (play games). Reply
Dug - Wednesday, March 13, 2013 - linkI remember deciding between 8 and 12mb and then getting my 2nd voodoo card later and running time demos of Quake over and over again after overclocking. The 300 to 450 was fun times too. Reply
WeaselITB - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkRE: Space Sims
http://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/star-citizen... Reply
Parhel - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkIf that ever sees the light of day, I'll buy it in a second. Freelancer was one of all time favorite games. I still play it from time to time. Reply
silverblue - Wednesday, February 06, 2013 - linkSeconded... great game with excellent atmosphere. Reply
Peanutsrevenge - Wednesday, February 06, 2013 - linkJust incase you've not heard (somehow).
Check out Star Citizen.
Also cool is Diaspora, which is actually playable.! Reply
alwayssts - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkIt looks exactly like the video. :-P
I'm not super impressed by how it looks, but appreciate what I think it's saying.
I am of the mind Fire Strike gpu tests are FM saying to the desktop community 'if it can run test 1 with 30fps, your avg framerate in dx11 titles should be ok for the foreseeable future. If it can run test 2 at 30 frames, your minimum should be okay'. The combined test obviously shows what the current feature-set can do (and how far away from using it's full potential in a realistic manner current hardware is). Perhaps it's not a guide, but a suggestion and/or an approximation of where games and gpus are headed, and I think it's a reasonable one at that.
For reference, test 1 would need ~ a stock 670/highly overclocked 7870/slightly overclocked Tahiti LE or 660ti, test 2 ~ a stock 680 or 7970/highly overclocked 670 or Tahiti LE/moderately overclocked 7950 for 1080p. IOW, pretty much what people use.
The combined score looks to be a rough estimation of what to expect from the 20nm high-end to get 30fps at 1080p, which also makes sense, as it will likely be the last generation/process to target 1080p before it it becomes realistic to see higher-end consumer single screens become 4k (probably around 14nm and 2016-2017ish). Also, the differance in frame rate from the combined test to gpu test 2 is approx the difference in resolution from 720p to 1080p...so it works on a few different levels. Reply
Dustin Sklavos - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkAn AT editor running Nehalem and only 12GB of RAM?
What are you, some kind of animal? Was that the only computer you could fit into your cave? ;) Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkHey, I only upgraded from Core 2 Quad on my desktop last year! On the bright side, I have a bunch of laptops that are decent. Reply
Penti - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkNehalem is quite fine. Performance hasn't changed all that much. Servers are still stuck on Nehalem|Westmere/Xeon-"MPs" or Sandy Bridge-EP/Xeon-E5. Should count as a modern desktop :) Really it's quite nice that a 2-4 year old system isn't ancient and can't drive games, support lots of memory or whatever like how it was in the not so old days. It's still PCI-e 2.0, DDR3 etc. You really wouldn't exactly have thought of putting say a Radeon 9800 Pro into a 600-800MHz Pentium 3 Coppermine machine. Reply
Steinegal - Saturday, March 09, 2013 - linkIn the table listing the system you list the Nehalem Desktop RAM as DDR2-800 I'm pretty shure they Reply
Steinegal - Saturday, March 09, 2013 - link(new comment system needs an edit option)
In the table listing the system you list the Nehalem Desktop RAM as DDR2-800, I'm pretty sure they didn't support DDR2. Reply
dj christian - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkWould be great if we could get an option to check "notify me if i get replies" when posting in articles.
Or integrate the forum for posts made in articles instead as it is now, separated from eachother. Having two different accounts on AT is a pain! Reply
dusk007 - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkI feel like all these scores are useless and don't really tell one anything.
If they want to make a 3D benchmark. Why not bench the actual capability rather than fps.
Build a very variable engine & world in its detail.
Give those details weights.
Let the system try to render at 30 to 60 fps or something reasonable.
The benchmark would simply automatically adjust details according to some weight system until it reaches a verdict.
This much detail the system can handle. That way mobile and desktop could be more comparable than a 1000 fps vs 60 fps scene.
As it stands I don't quite see what futuremark accomplished that a few games benchmarks don't do better. Especially with the 2 year update schedule. Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkI agree with the last part for sure; I prefer game benchmarks to synthetic graphics tests, but there's a point to running 3DMark on laptops as I note in the article. It's a single score that you can at least get some idea of performance from -- but really, it's three scores per tests, and you still have to use your brain to analyze what it all means. :-p Reply
MrSpadge - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - link> As it stands I don't quite see what futuremark accomplished that a few games benchmarks don't do better.
Really? What praphically demanding games are there which can be benchmarked across different platforms? Reply
cityuser - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkNot dare to make nVidia angry ?
It's so simply to draw conclusion from the chart, but why so shy to say "AMD WINS" ???
What if the longest graphic bar belongs to nVidia, will anandtech avoid writing "nVidia wins" but write so many irrelevant words?? Reply
silverblue - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkIrrelevant. It's simply not a fair test. The 630M and 650M are nowhere near the top of their mobile product stack, whereas the 7970M is for AMD. Had there been a 680M in the test, I doubt you'd be saying this. Reply
Spunjji - Thursday, February 07, 2013 - linkDid you even read any of the paragraphs around the tests? :/ Reply
Diagrafeas - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkI am waiting to see how an 3570K and 3770K with 7970 GHz Edition and GTX680 score.
Hyperthreading seems to double the scores on physics tests on my systems... Reply
Diagrafeas - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - link2600K - 7970 OC
and a video from the run
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedd... Reply
lever_age - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkI rarely game on this, but I own a system very similar in specs to the ASUS UX51VZ tested (i7-3630QM instead of i7-3612QM, same exact clocks and memory on a GT 650M, same exact clocks and timing on the RAM) and got somewhat better results. Running 310.90 WHQL.
Left number is my Inspiron 17R SE's result, right is the UX51VZ:
Ice Storm:
74570 / 58955
96962 / 72342
41239 / 35781
Cloud Gate:
9514 / 8892
11477 / 11056
5952 / 5277
Fire Strike:
1454 / 1328
1518 / 1367
8288 / 7382
Drivers, or I guess it could be the dynamic clocks of the GPU working higher. Some of the difference is the i7-3630QM at 300-400 MHz higher than a i7-3612QM, but is that supposed to show in the graphics subscores? Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkIt could. I tested all systems with either Catalyst 13.1 or NVIDIA 313.96 drivers, with the exception of the Llano system that's running some ancient driver set because nothing newer will install. Reply
relztes - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkDo the graphics and physics tests run sequentially? With integrated graphics they really need to be stressing both components simultaneously. Giving the GPU 17 W and then the CPU 17 W won't reflect the performance in games when the two components have to share 17 W. If the ULV parts hold up a lot better in 3DMark than they do in real games, I think that is to blame.
Also, how do these test results change running on battery? Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkThat's the point I'm trying to make: other than Ice Storm, ULV IVB is far closer to DC SV IVB than I would expect it to be, which suggests the results are going to correlate all that well with real games for HD 4000.
As for running on battery, how the results change depends heavily on what power settings you use, at least with most of the systems. Set everything for maximum performance and you'll get less battery life but should have similar performance to what you see in the charts. Drop to Power Saver and optimize for battery life and you'll get anywhere from one half to maybe 20% of the performance (e.g. HD 7970M will drop the clocks pretty far if you optimize for power). Reply
Spunjji - Thursday, February 07, 2013 - linkThey do indeed run sequentially, except for the final Fire Strike test which is "combined" and also the most taxing by some margin. So you may be on to something there.
It's also worth noting that in fine tradition the scores appear to be frame-rate based, so will take little account of the awful stop-start fast-slow chuntering that you get with Intel integrated graphics when they're at their thermal limits. Reply
Landspeeder - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkI would LOVE to see specs for the current crop of high end gaming notebooks. For example -
The Clevo P370EM3 / Sager NP9370-3D single 670M, 670M SLI, 680M, 680M SLI, 7970M, 7970M xfire.
The suite of tests done in both 2D and 3D.
The suite of tests done in 7x64 and 8.
Mmmm... can you tell what I've been itching to pick up? Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkOther than the Alienware M17x R4 and the MSI GX60, I don't have any high-end laptops right now (though I'm trying to get something with GTX 680M to use as a comparison for the above). Regardless, some time in the next few months I'm sure we'll have another high-end laptop or two for testing. Reply
Landspeeder - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkThanks for all that you do Jarred!
We are transitioning many of our number crunchers at work from self-built desktops to laptops - the shifting focus of reviews to such equipment here at Anandtech has been a fantastic help and I eagerly consume everything you folks put out.
What city are you located in? If near enough I'd be willing to drop a dual 680M rig loaner for a few days when I pull the trigger post bonus. Have you been able to beg XOTICPC/Sager/AVADirect/ETC for a unit? If not, would you like to enlist my help?
Given the sheer power available on the high end-laptops I'm planning on replacing my gaming rig – a massively overclocked watercooled i920 with dual 280 greens. Most of the games I want to play have some amount of support for 3D. Few games are really pushing today's GPUs/CPUs as the vendors are reined back by console specs. Even the next gen console specs appear to be a bit underwhelming. I'm fairly confident that Clevo's massive SLI rig fit with dual 680Ms should last a good many years – hopefully. I plan on utilizing a hefty factory overclock, so I hope the heat doesn't kill the components too quickly. It also helps push this decision that my job now sees me traveling – often with long layovers – and my aging desktop rig is seeing very little use. Reply
MrSpadge - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkThat's what the ORB is for. Just wait a few mode days and the results should be there. Reply
Landspeeder - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkDrawing a blank mate - ORB? Reply
Ryan Smith - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkFuturemark's Online Results Database. Reply
Landspeeder - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkperfect - thanks Gents. Reply
carage - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkHave you considered notebooks with the possibility of external video upgrades?
I have a ThinkPad W520 connected to a ViDock via Express Card which houses a GTX 670 4GB.
The scores I got so far:
(Beats the Alienware with 7970M)
(Slightly slower than 7970M)
(Even beats the gaming desktop 7950) Reply
Notmyusualid - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkM18x R2.
i7 3920XM, 16GB CAS10 RAM, ONE 7970M. (Cross-fire equipped, but it locked my system solid the moment the DX11 tests began).
Left number is my Inspiron 17R SE's result, right is the UX51VZ:
Ice Storm:
Cloud Gate:
Fire Strike:
It was kind of fun to watch the tests, but a bore after a 3rd time, due to Crossfire issues. Would be nice to run ONE test, but I guess they need to make money, eh?
Will update when Crossfire works... Reply
Notmyusualid - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkOpps, ignore the cut & paste error there from the other poster. I have no 17R, nor UX51VZ.
Its late in Asia.... Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkInteresting... looks like even with the 3920XM you're still getting slower results on Fire Strike than the M17x R4. What drivers are you running? Reply
Notmyusualid - Wednesday, February 06, 2013 - linkRE: I don't see how you saw my results as slower, so here are the comparisons, side-by-side, with data from your graphs, for all, including the Fire Strike tests.
M18x R2.
i7 3920XM, 16GB CAS10 RAM, ONE 7970M. (Cross-fire equipped, but it locked my system solid the moment the DX11 tests began).
Left number is your M17x R4's results, right is the my M18x R2 on ONE 7970M card:
Ice Storm:
85072 / 146723 #
116561 /273526 #
43727 / 55947 #
Cloud Gate:
16729 / 18157 #
30624 / 32362 *
6491 / 7159 #
Fire Strike:
4332 / 4467 *
4696 / 4807 *
8910 / 10467 #
So to me, I have the M17x system beat in all respects.
# = My system besting everything on your graphs.
* = Your HD7950 showing significant gain(s), over the laptops.
Operating System is Win 8 (Bloatware) x64.
Graphics drivers are AMD_Catalyst_13.2_Beta3. (13.1 didn't install at all). No CAP file for this one yet I don't think.
Now to try the Crossfire again... Reply
jtd871 - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkJarred,
Moar data for you...
i7-3630QM 3.3GHz
GT675M 4GB, 126.96.36.1993 (306.97 Driver Package)
Win 7 Pro
Samsung 830 SSD (if that matters)
3DMark Basic
Screen Resolution (if that matters) 1920x1080
Scenario: Score / Graphics / Physics / Combined
Ice Storm: 80831 / 109914 / 41967
Cloud Gate: 12475 / 18162 / 5952
Fire Storm: 2091 / 2220 / 8146 / 816 Reply
MrSpadge - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkWow, seems like FM put some real effort into this one. It's more than "just another 3DMark" :)
And regarding the currently missing diagnosis information: I think they should partner with some hardware diagnostic tool vendor, like the Argus Monitor team. Whatever FM needs to implement, they already did it. Fair deal: FM integrates their diagnostic in exchange for advertising that they do so.
There's also more potential in the enhanced result analysis and the nice graphs. And interesting point would be the time between frames. Give a mean and standard deviation and we could judge which system is smoother. Give us a graph and we could easily identify micro stutter. Reply
Hrel - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkAre you guys ever gonna review those ARM based NAS boxes or not? Reply
humbi83 - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linksingle(gs, phs,cs) / sli af1 / sli af2
ice storm 30402 (27721,45965, - ) / 125970 (247612,46323,-) / 125551 (246867, 46159, - )
cloud gate 14687 (26205, 5786 , - ) / 18518 (49233,5817, - ) / 18501 (49182, 5812, - )
fire strike 3106 (3585, 8296 , 1057) / 5667 (6926 , 8330, 2007) / 5795 (7011,8306,2104) Reply
Landspeeder - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkJust what I was looking for!
Any chance to try an OC on the CPU/GPUs? Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkI tried overclocking the GPU on a P170EM and it totally wouldn't work -- all the utilities I tried basically hard locked the system the instant you applied new clocks. If anyone has a recommended utility for overclocking notebooks, I'd like to know what it is. Reply
humbi83 - Wednesday, February 06, 2013 - linkHmm... 7970m seems much more powerfull. 3585 vs ~4700. Maybe I could improve the score using new drivers but I don't have time for it (or overclocking or anything else until they disable the demos). SLI works by the way :D.
A couple of things (long rant):
Disable the frigging demos (I'm starting to repeat myself, not OK) !!!!! or set them looping on some other button from the launcher.
No easily discernible screen tearing at 1k FPS (are they actually showing 1K or just offscreen + 60 on screen).
They have troubles with identifying the SLI on/off , GPU vendor, GPU speed etc.
You can see that the first test is targeted towards mobile stuff. Very bald looking (did I mentioned 1K fps?). What would be nice is to also see attached to the tests the GPU utilization (if not already done).
Phy tests seem rushed. Even in the last combined test, the rocks in the background fall kinda funny. BTW, cloth simulation is way off. Also .. was I using the gpu for physics?? Don't know, don't think so.
Looking over their "invalid config guide" seems that if you have a dedicated PPU the test is invalid. So what if the frigging cellphone can't do complex stuff, use all available hw at your disposal and then worry about scoring???!!!! Do you get better fps, then that is a good thing. Score it accordingly. FPS was a common denominator. Use it! Fidelity(phy&gfx) + Keeping the Illusion of movement is what the end user is concerned not what hw you use to get there. If the phone in your pocket can't do that ... well it's a phone, in another 3-5 years it will.
Last test/demo(actually just the combined part of the test) is what I was expecting, just that we should have had 3 of those not just 1 + 2 with fps >200. I mean 5 tests where 3 are actually DX11 with all the bells and whatnot. I have 4GB of mem per card, are you using that, I want the pcie to fry from all the swapping.
Also, use the demos as a more lengthy benchmark !!!
Thees tests should represent the future of content fidelity, now they waste their time with 10(actually between 9&11) year old tech because this is where the money is right now.
First time I ran 3dMark (2006) my PC was almost leaning towards seconds per frame in some situations. Now I get with a frigging laptop almost 10fps in their most demanding test. NOT OK. I know you can do better FM!!
Cheers! Reply
Landspeeder - Wednesday, February 06, 2013 - linkI know XOTIC PC offers it on both the CPU and GPU... perhaps they can shed some light? Reply
akhaddd - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkso frickin awesome i love me some computer stuff Reply
GTRagnarok - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkWhy is my Ice Storm score so high with my M17x R4 with a 3720QM and 7970M?
129064 overall
244590 graphics
48646 physics Reply
JarredWalton - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkAre you using Enduro or do you have it disabled? I had it enabled on the M17x, so that could be the reason. Also, you're using 12.10 drivers and I'm using 13.1, so maybe that makes a difference. Reply
Krysto - Tuesday, February 05, 2013 - linkDisappointing that it won't support OpenGL ES 3.0 right from the start. Also I wonder how "fair" the tests will be between DirectX and OpenGL devices. Will games that look and work identical on these 2 different API's, get the same score?
If not then it will be a pretty useless "cross-platform" benchmark. But we'll see. Reply
mindstorm - Wednesday, February 06, 2013 - linkResult for my Dell M6700 with a FirePro M6000 2GB ram. Test with 13.2 beta 4.
Ice Storm
Overal: 92056
Graphics Score 128702
Physics Score 46107
Overall: 12160
Graphics Score 15605
Physics Score 6860
Overal: 2241
Graphics Score 2353
Physics Score 9565
Combined Score 896
Better performance on the Ice Storm test then the other notebooks tested. Cloudgate 2nd (of notebooks) and firestrike 3th of notebooks.
All seem to be due to a low graphics score. I suppose this is due to the fact that the M6000 is optimized fore business apps. Although I wonder how much drivers could be of an isue since all the versions I have been trying so far havn't been very stable. 13.1 was a bit more stable then 13.2 overclocking is out of the option with 13.2 beta 4. Reply
Notmyusualid - Wednesday, February 06, 2013 - linkM18x R2.
i7 3920XM, 16GB CAS10 RAM.
Left number is your M17x R4's results, middle is the my M18x R2 on ONE 7970M card, right is both 7970Ms in Crossfire (reduced cpu multipliers).:
Ice Storm:
85072 / 146723 / 157182
116561 / 273526 / 343640
43727 / 55947 / 54218
Cloud Gate:
16729 / 18157/ 24279
30624 / 32362 / 65783
6491 / 7159 / 7568
Fire Strike:
4332 / 4467 / 7647
4696 / 4807 / 9542
8910 / 10467 /10449
Also: COMBINED score: 2699
No GPU overclocking.
Operating System is Win 8 (Bloatware) x64, and can't reverse install, and too lazy to restore backup.
Graphics drivers are AMD_Catalyst_13.2_Beta5. (13.1 didn't install at all, 13.2 completed only once). No CAP file for this one yet I don't think.
Crossfire working, but Intel's XTU informs me I was 'throttling', (somewhat) new to me. I game all day on multipliers of 4 cores @ x44, but this benchmark seems to push the system harder.
XTU reports 3% throttling over the benchmark period @ 4cores x44.
I dropped to x44,43,42,41 on beta 5 to allow it to complete the benchmark.
Oddly, Super Pi completes two 32M runs back to back without error on x44,44,44,44. (and it does it a whole 30s slower than on Win 7). Ambient room temp is ~29C. (It's 35C outside).
Hope that is of interest to someone out there. Reply
Spunjji - Thursday, February 07, 2013 - linkDefinitely of interest. It's odd how the Graphics scores increase dramatically with Crossfire, as you'd expect, but somehow the Overall scores don't. Seems they've either calibrated the engine or the score generator such that it leans towards overall system performance more than the GPU. Time will tell whether that gives us a reasonable picture of the system's performance, but past experience suggests it won't. Reply
Notmyusualid - Friday, February 08, 2013 - linkYes, good point!
The title of the product implies it is for testing 3D performance, yet with significant increases in GPU performance, it is shocking to not see that increase in performance reflected in the overall scores.
I took another look at some other scores online, and it appears to me that the 'Physics Score', is really just a CPU test.
And I thought 3DMark06 was being deprecated for focusing on CPU performance to much (as well as for not being DX11 capable), rather than simply reflecting overall 3D performance, as we'd expect from such a title.
But then, I guess, some games are more CPU-dependent, than others, so maybe it would be a mistake to leave out this sort of test for the average user looking to benchmark his systems' overall gaming performance? I can't say for sure. Reply
Krysto - Saturday, February 09, 2013 - linkI'm really skeptical about 3dmark11 outputting scores that have 1:1 parity between DirectX machines and OpenGL ES 2.0 machines. If it doesn't, then it would be pretty useless for Anandtech's benchmarks, because you're trying to compare GPU's and hardware, not graphics API's.
So if say Tegra 3 on Nexus 7 gives a 1000 score, and the Surface RT gives a 1500 score, because the benchmark gives higher score to certain DirectX features, then the benchmark is useless. Because it was supposed to show the GPU's are equal, and it won't.
That's just a speculation for now, but Anand and the guys should really watch out for this. Reply
Krysto - Saturday, February 09, 2013 - linkTo be clear, if the drivers are better on one device than the other, then the benchmark SHOULD reflect that, and I'm sure it will. Also it should reflect a higher score if the graphics look better on DirectX machines or anything like that (although that will probably come with a hit in battery life, but that's another issue).
What I'm saying is that if everything else is EQUAL , DirectX shouldn't get higher score, just because it's a more complex API than OpenGL ES 2.0. That wouldn't be on its merits.
Also, I'm very disappointing they are making such a big launch out of this, and they aren't even going to support OpenGL ES 3.0 out of the gate, even though it will probably be almost a year even before they release their OpenGL ES 2.0 benchmark, compared to the time when OpenGL ES 3.0 was launched last year.
Clearly they didn't want to prioritize the OpenGL ES part much, even 2.0, let alone 3.0. We might not see 3.0 support until mid 2014 at the earliest from them. Hopefully GLBenchmark 3.0 will come out this year. Reply
shuhan - Wednesday, February 13, 2013 - linkAnyone knows what might be the reason for this:
Thanks Reply
shuhan - Wednesday, February 13, 2013 - linkJust saw that:
"Why is my Ice Storm score so high with my M17x R4 with a 3720QM and 7970M?
129064 overall
244590 graphics
48646 physics"
My result is exactly the same! My rig: Intel Core i5-3570K @4.3, 2x GTX 670
And then my Cloud Gate test scores lower. Reply
failquail - Sunday, February 17, 2013 - linkCertainly seems pretty :)
I have CPU and GPU monitoring gadgets running on my second screen, i noticed that whilst the first two tests seemed fairly balanced for CPU/GPU, the third firestrike test maxed out the GPU usage the entire time with the CPU barely hitting 30% usage. A test for the sli/crossfire crowd i think :)
Not sure if it's just a display bug, but it didn't detect my GPU driver at all (ati 6950 modded with 6970 shader count, but GPU/RAM clocks still a little lower than a default 6970) and it detected my fx-8120 CPU (set to 3.4ghz or 4.2ghz turbo) as being 1.4ghz.
Still first go was this:
I need to rerun it though as i had lots of background stuff running and i think i still had AA forced in the GPU driver! Reply


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