Hit the Road, Jack: Intel’s Mobile Quad-Core Haswell SKUs
by Jarred Walton on June 1, 2013 10:02 AM EST
For those who are just looking for information on the various processor models with their associated features, we wanted to put together a short list of all the parts being launched today to go along with our architecture and performance testing (among other things). Similar to the previous two launches, Intel is starting off with their quad-core parts, to be followed at a later date by dual-core offerings. We’ll actually be going into the Ultrabook parts sooner rather than later, but for now there are no Core i3, Pentium, or Celeron Haswell chips. We’ve got a separate article going over the desktop SKUs, and our focus here will be on the mobile offerings.
Intel 4th Gen Core i7 M-Series Mobile Processors | |||||
Model | Core i7-4930MX | Core i7-4900MQ | Core i7-4800MQ | Core i7-4702MQ | Core i7-4700MQ |
Cores/Threads | 4/8 | 4/8 | 4/8 | 4/8 | 4/8 |
CPU Base Freq | 3.0 | 2.8 | 2.7 | 2.2 | 2.4 |
Max SC Turbo | 3.9 | 3.8 | 3.7 | 3.2 | 3.4 |
Max DC Turbo | 3.8 | 3.7 | 3.6 | 3.1 | 3.3 |
Max QC Turbo | 3.7 | 3.6 | 3.5 | 2.9 | 3.2 |
TDP | 57W | 47W | 47W | 37W | 47W |
HD Graphics | 4600 | 4600 | 4600 | 4600 | 4600 |
GPU Clock | 400-1350 | 400-1300 | 400-1300 | 400-1150 | 400-1150 |
L3 Cache | 8MB | 8MB | 6MB | 6MB | 6MB |
DDR3/DDR3L | 1600 | 1600 | 1600 | 1600 | 1600 |
vPro/TXT/VT-d | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No |
Intel SBA | No | No | No | Yes | Yes |
Price | $1096 | $568 | $378 |
On the mobile side of the fence, other than some slight changes to the naming scheme relative to Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge (there’s no more “20” suffix on most of the initial models and they’re now “MQ” instead of “QM”), the mobile Haswell rollout is what we expected. There are actually two quad-core mobile processor families, with the M-series being the “traditional” models while the H-series gets some iGPU upgrades and other tweaks.
Along with the traditional Extreme part at the top of the hierarchy, we now get a 4900MQ, 4800MQ, and 4700MQ in place of the previous 3820QM, 3720QM, and 3610QM that we saw with Ivy Bridge. The 4800MQ, 4702MQ, and 4700MQ are 6MB L3 cache parts, so only the 4900MQ and 4930MX get the full 8MB L3. Other than the clock speed variations and the lack of vPro/TXT/VT-d on the 470x chips (which at the same time also get the distinction of being part of the Intel Small Business Advantage platform—basically, for non-managed networks), the parts all have HD 4600 Graphics. That means slightly better iGPU performance than HD 4000, but these are GT2 (20 EUs) rather than GT3/GT3e (40 EUs).
TDPs are up 2W relative to Ivy/Sandy Bridge models, but how that will actually play out in practice remains to be seen. Considering the max TDP is rarely hit under mobile workloads, we don’t expect any major changes, and Haswell is introducing a host of other improvements all aimed at delivering better battery life. Dustin has at least one Haswell notebook in for review, with a high-end CPU and dGPU. It won’t be a great representation of battery life, but at least we can get some idea of how much things have changed relative to the 3rd Generation Core i7 processors.
Intel 4th Gen Core i7 H-Series Mobile Processors | |||||
Model | Core i7-4950HQ | Core i7-4850HQ | Core i7-4750HQ | Core i7-4702HQ | Core i7-4700HQ |
Cores/Threads | 4/8 | 4/8 | 4/8 | 4/8 | 4/8 |
CPU Base Freq | 2.4 | 2.3 | 2.0 | 2.2 | 2.4 |
Max SC Turbo | 3.6 | 3.5 | 3.2 | 3.2 | 3.4 |
Max DC Turbo | 3.5 | 3.4 | 3.1 | 3.1 | 3.3 |
Max QC Turbo | 3.4 | 3.3 | 3.0 | 2.9 | 3.2 |
TDP | 47W | 47W | 47W | 37W | 47W |
HD Graphics | Iris Pro 5200 | Iris Pro 5200 | Iris Pro 5200 | 4600 | 4600 |
GPU Clock | 200-1300 | 200-1300 | 200-1200 | 400-1150 | 400-1150 |
L3 Cache | 6MB | 6MB | 6MB | 6MB | 6MB |
DDR3/DDR3L | 1600 | 1600 | 1600 | 1600 | 1600 |
vPro/TXT/VT-d | Yes | Yes | No | No | No |
Intel SBA | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Price | $657 | $468 |
Here’s where things get interesting, the mobile H-Series processors. CPU clocks are down slightly relative to the above M-series, and all of these are 6MB L3 cache parts. To make up for that, Intel has equipped the top three HQ parts with their Iris Pro 5200 iGPU. While having faster integrated graphics may not really matter much on a desktop if you have a discrete GPU, on notebooks we generally always like having the faster iGPU available—you don’t always need a full discrete GPU for some tasks, but the cut-down GT1 of the previous generation sometimes fell short. Heat and noise are also more of a concern with notebooks, so running off the iGPU whenever possible is generally a good thing.
Intel has targeted roughly the level of performance offered by NVIDIA’s GT 650M with their Iris Pro 5200 graphics, or roughly a two-fold increase in performance over HD 4000, and that should be enough for everything short of high-quality, high-resolution gaming. What’s even more interesting is that there’s the potential for a reasonable gaming experience with the CPU and iGPU combined still drawing less than 47W of power; GT 650M may still be a better gaming chip, but the combined CPU + dGPU power draw is quite a bit higher than 47W. Of course, even on a 90Wh battery a load of 45W means you’d still get less than two hours of battery life. We’ll see about testing this as soon as we get more time with the hardware.
What I’m not quite getting is the role the 4702HQ and 4700HQ are supposed to fill; they’re still equipped with HD 4600 graphics, just like their MQ relatives, so we’ve asked Intel for clarification. Best guess right now: the MQ and HQ parts are different packages, so the 470xHQ chips are lower-echelon offerings for OEMs/users that don’t necessarily need/want Iris Pro 5200. It’s a way for an OEM to have one laptop that can support a range of processors, rather than locking all the HQ parts into higher-cost CPUs. Maybe down the road, we’ll even see some Core i5 H-Series CPUs, but we don’t have any concrete information on that yet.
For those interested in the desktop side of things, we’ve broken out those parts into a separate Pipeline article.
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t.s - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
If excel / libreoffice spreadsheet not supporting multi threading, what benefit when you bought something like these compared to core i3? The real world performance to process the spreadsheet is not that significant.For business I think i3 or AMD trinity is good enough. With notebook price about ~ 1/2 compared to this.
t.s - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
Err.. I mean, excel / libreoffice spreadsheet, AFAIK, didn't scale with CPU number.zepi - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
I'm many cases price of your most important tool doesn't really matter that much. Even the most expensive laptop you can think of usually costs around 3000USD/EUR unless you really go for some industrial strenght military spacetech.And when you are equipping your 100 000+ usd/eur per year salaried engineers with tools, that is really a drop in a bucket.
skiboysteve - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
Thismy company of thousands of engineers use many performance demanding applications. We usually have a 2k budget on laptops.
reininop - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
Exactly. The software licenses on my laptop at work run over $15,000 a year. I don't think they are too worried about the extra 500 dollars it cost them to get a better processor over an i3. My salary + travel + software for 4 years (replacement lifetime) makes the entire cost of the laptop about 0.5% or less of the cost of employing me over that time.And i'm not even a software engineer. I work in heavy industry. The upfront costs for hardware for the business are really just not that substantial when looking at the overall costs of everything else related to employing someone like me. And I'm certainly no one special for my company.
krumme - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
Well that argument can be applied to all cost. From toilet paper to cpu.But running a profitable business means you have to control cost all over.
The reason beeing that revenue is defined by marginal cost; the last product you sell the last toiletpaper you use so to speak. It does matter.
Having an agressive attitude to control cost all over your company can define a business. Think IKEA.
thesavvymage - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
the point he is making is that since it is relatively cheap compared to everything else they do, an extra 1% to their budget absolutely increases his productivity by more than 1%. This is harder to justify at say a small mom-and-pop store where they would be NO more productive at 3x the cost of an i3. Cost is relative.juhatus - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
Are all parts are soldered to motherboard using BGA? Maybe the difference between H- and M-series is sockets vs BGA?thesavvymage - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link
these are all mobile chips, theyre all soldereddoug1970 - Wednesday, October 16, 2013 - link
I think your wrong about that comment. The company Sager that produces my laptop, is very upgradeable and they come standard with the 4700MQ, but for an additional $185 you can have it replaced at the vendor level, not manufacturer level, with a 4800MQ, for $385 you can have it replaced with a 4900MQ. And for like $800 you can even get the Xtreme part. So that means they have to be sockets. In fact if you clearly read this article it says at the begging that MQ Part are PGA(Socketed) and H parts 4950HQ and the like 4700HQ are BGA(Soldered on chips) So yes M series are socketed and H are BGA.