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  • StealthGhost - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    Is PCMark 8 Home less demanding than 1080p video? If not, it doesn't seem like the Asus can call itself an Ultrabook.

    Still, impressive gains in battery life. I hope this will carry over, to some extent at least, into the CPUs that will be in laptops like the MacBook Pros. Guess we will have to see when that review comes out =)
  • StealthGhost - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    *Acer
  • Death666Angel - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    As far as I know the Ultrabook specs don't define a minimum luminance for the display. So Anand's test isn't relevant for the Ultrabook spec.
  • axien86 - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    Laptopmag just reviewed the Sony Vaio based on the i7-4500u and they also noted that performance wise the Haswell offered marginal improvement over Ivy Bridge laptops, while battery life was indicated as improved.

    One important characteristic that most laptop users want to know is regards to heat and fan noise. Laptopmag found that the Haswell i7-4500u based Sony Vaio found that the back of the laptop "reached a more troubling 110 degrees." They also found fan noise was definitely noticeable in a quiet room just running Word and a Youtube video.

    http://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/sony-vaio...

    The question is, why hasn't Anandtech run extensive temperature and noise characteristic analysis on Intel Haswell processors and your current laptop?
  • Kristian Vättö - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    Likely because of lack of time. As Anand said in the article, he got the unit while in Computex, so basically he did the review between meetings. I'm pretty sure he didn't have the equipment with him to do temperature or noise tests properly but I'm sure this is something that will be tested in later reviews.

    Also, keep in mind that heat and fan noise are system-dependent. If the Vaio has poor cooling, then it will be hot and loud but that's not Haswell's fault (I'm not saying this is the case but we obviously need more reviews before any conclusions can be drawn).
  • mavere - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    "The question is, why hasn't Anandtech run extensive temperature and noise characteristic analysis on Intel Haswell processors and your current laptop?"

    The WHr of battery that a laptop consumes is the exact same thing as its heat output.

    Anand is trying to test the Haswell platform, not the design deficiencies of any specific manufacturer. Sony's problems are its own.
  • n13L5 - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    Cause they had to run their test in Taiwan with a borrowed machine?

    I was rather disturbed by the temperature of Sony's Vaio Pro, as well as the instability of the carbon case, which must be paper thin... And their keyboard backlight has the worst bleed I've ever seen, they should have a look at Lenovo and Samsung keyboards...

    Well, I'll be waiting for more tests and the ULT Haswell with the Iris 5100 GPU. Maybe that'll rack up a high enough temperature to fry a steak.
  • akbisw - Monday, June 10, 2013 - link

    Sony has terrible cooling system in their laptops in general. The worst I have seen done by any manufacturer. Even my my old acer before their "reiteration" had better cooling design than current VAIO systems.
  • Dnann - Friday, June 14, 2013 - link

    He probably didn't have the time considering the circumstances...
  • DanNeely - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    The fact that companies historically known for horrible battery life are getting good results out of Haswell with Intel's help is promising; but starting from such a horribly low baseline makes getting gains much easier. I'm much more interested in seeing what companies who've historically offered good battery run times will be able to do with Haswell.
  • broccauley - Tuesday, June 11, 2013 - link

    Were Acer not known for their "Timeline" series of laptops which were known for groundbreaking battery life?
  • smilingcrow - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link

    Apple are claiming dramatically improved battery life.
  • deeps6x - Sunday, July 14, 2013 - link

    I just don't get why Intel caved to MS pressure and made touchscreen a requirement for Haswell. Everyone I know who does image editing insists on doing it on a matte screen.

    Metro was a huge mistake.

    Gaah, just too pissed about this to make a coherent comment.

    I want haswell with a matte screen and 13 and 15 inch 'ultrabook' size options. I guess manufacturers will just have to invent some new name to call their matte screen ultrabooks. Perhaps just call them 'laptops' and say screw you and your goof ass naming rules Intel.
  • Xenon14 - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    It would be useful to see productivity and multithreaded benchmarks like Excel and Fritz. It'd be nice if you provide a few charts with higher TDP Cpu's so we can see the relative performance differences.
  • Synaesthesia - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    Wow Anand you delivered! Once again such an in-depth analysis of EVERYTHING relevant to the platform. Nowhere else can I find this information!
  • uditrana - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    Except for one thing. How did they change the backlighting in the S7. I am really interested in knowing.
  • n13L5 - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    yeah, they did a good job doing that on location and before anyone else :D
  • meacupla - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    That's great news.

    Now, I can't wait to see it in surface pro.
  • B3an - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    Yeah Surface Pro with one of these, in a thinner and lighter design (should be possible now) with Windows 8.1 = ultimate device.
  • MrSpadge - Monday, June 10, 2013 - link

    Or the Thinkpad Helix!
  • Rogatti - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    GPU Intel.........no thanks !!!!!

    Kaveri ... where is you !!! ... do not let me down !
  • A5 - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    Anything based on Steamroller isn't going to be able to touch these battery life numbers.

    If you don't care about battery life, you can get much better value for your money outside of the ultrabook form factor.
  • Samus - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    The GPU performance is slowly creeping up to AMD; AMD won't be able to use their GPU as a crutch much longer.
  • Death666Angel - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    Just the ridiculously lower price.
  • kyuu - Monday, June 10, 2013 - link

    Yeah, because AMD isn't going to be improving their iGPU tech at all...?
  • nunomoreira10 - Monday, June 10, 2013 - link

    not really, intel currently uses an abnormal 180mm2 of die area on 22nm (hd5000) for the same perfomance and efficiency of an 80mm2 28nm amd gpu.
    the are trying to go all out, but their gpu tech basically sucks
  • smartypnt4 - Monday, June 10, 2013 - link

    Where'd you see the analysis of how much space HD5000 takes? I haven't seen anything on that. Maybe I just missed it...

    180mm2 of die area for Haswell ULT total is what's been reported, and AMD's Trinity 4C at 28nm is 246mm2. The number of transistors in each is basically identical. The difference comes in where Intel and AMD spend transistors. I'd wager that AMD spends more transistors in GPU, and Intel spends more in CPU.

    To be frank, I don't see how you can assert that Intel's <90mm2 of graphics on an integrated chip has appreciably lower efficiency than any other mobile part on the market. I could be wrong, but I just don't see it as that far off.
  • smartypnt4 - Monday, June 10, 2013 - link

    Never mind. Found Anand's analysis. There's no way that's correct though. If 1/2 of GT3 takes up 87mm2, then full GT3 takes up 174mm2. Haswell 2C ULT is a 184mm2 die. There's no way the GPU takes up 90% of the chip. Over half, sure. but 90% is ridiculously high. Something in the 75-80% range is the absolute highest I'd expect.
  • Homeles - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    A bit disappointed to see the CPU performance largely stand pat compared to Ivy bridge, but it nailed the one major thing that mattered: battery life.

    GPU performance isn't awfully inspiring either. I suppose that I won't see the performance gains I was hoping for until Broadwell.

    Oh well. I suppose Fall IDF isn't too far away.
  • meacupla - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    Well, i7-4500U is clocked 100mhz slower, but haswell IPC is about 10% better, so obviously CPU performance is not going to differ by much.

    GPU performance for HD5000 is pretty much what was expected from early intel slides. Iris pro is what was touted as performing up to 'more than 2x' performance.
  • xTRICKYxx - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    AMD's target market has been at a considerably lower price platform than Intel's Ultrabook.
  • zdw - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    6 PCIe 2.0 lanes is probably the minimum possible for a MacBook Air, as ThunderBolt + WiFi would take up a 4x and 1x respectively.
  • risa2000 - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    So, if I minimize task manager into tray, which updates, let's say, every second, does it mean I will wake up the GPU and save and restore the buffer into display's DRAM every second just for this update? What would be the impact on battery life?
    (If there is a tray on Win 8, as of which I am not sure right now.)
  • tential - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    There is a tray.
  • A5 - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    It would wake up the GPU whenever something that is on-screen changes. Once per second is still much better than 60 times per second.
  • Synaesthesia - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    It can remain in sleep state for most of that second so it won't impact the battery much, particularly with Haswell.
  • mikk - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    Why is there no memory configuration detail in the test? This is tremendously important especially for integrated GPU tests. Because we don't know this all gaming tests are completely useless. Bad job.
  • Homeles - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    You've completely missed the point of this review.
  • mikk - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    I think you did.
  • Egg - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    I'm assuming they're comparable between the Acer S7s. But I could be wrong.
  • Homeles - Monday, June 10, 2013 - link

    Maybe you didn't catch on with Anand's "I was running this in my hotel room" statement, but the idea was to get the anxiously awaited battery life numbers out to the public.
  • seapeople - Tuesday, June 11, 2013 - link

    You mean a hotel room in Taiwan is not the normal procedure for a pedantically complete review?
  • ciparis - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    OT: Opening paragraph typo: "Haswell less than a month after the arrival of a new CEO,"
  • jhoff80 - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    I know you said that you disabled any Display Power Savings options in the Intel driver, but still, out of curiosity, it would be interesting to know what kind of effect those have. I mean, it wasn't made explicit, but does this specific ultrabook support Panel Self Refresh? If so, what improvements does that give?
  • yoyoma245 - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    I don't understand why battery life increased going from pcmark8 home to pcmark8 creative. Wouldn't a more demanding test suite result in reduced battery life?
  • meacupla - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    Could Minecraft be added to benchmarks for ultrabooks?
    HD5000 is obviously quite pitiful at eye candy games, so how about popular games that are most likely to be played on them?

    I get around 34~40fps with surface pro, which is playable, but could be better.
  • esgreat - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    I don't think I've seen benchmarks for HD5000 yet. The i7-4500u uses HD4400 graphics.

    With 2x the EUs, HD5000 should give quite a performance boost, but not as fast as Iris.
  • krumme - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    Haswell U improves excactly where it was needed; on the battery life. This segment dont need more cpu power or gpu power than ib, they want battery life.
    This is the luxury product that ultrabooks are made for.
    Haswell for the desktop was utterly unimportant, but this is excellent targeted and a very tangible improvement for everyone.
  • name99 - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    "Haswell for the desktop was utterly unimportant"
    Uhh, well apart from defining a rather different parallel programming model going forward...
  • krumme - Monday, June 10, 2013 - link

    Yes. Thats relevant in perhaps 5 years from now. Perhaps. Its a technology and innovative huge step forward, but hardly of any pratical importange to the consumers today.
  • JDG1980 - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    Do Haswell notebook chips have the same crazy high temperatures on full load that the Haswell desktop chips do?
  • dealcorn - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    I am not comfortable with your suggestion that DEVSLP's 2 mw benefit shows exclusively/primarily when the system is asleep. I sense a big benefit at low loads because the SSD's can slip in and out of DEVSLP really fact. Let's have some testing, at your leisure. Will a SSD be in DEVSLP state 50% of the time while watching non HD video? I suspect power requirements during DEVSLP is the new idle power measurement for typical home use and SSD reviews should be revised accordingly.

    Everything else: Bravo!
  • Sivar - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    Typo:
    "Haswell less than a month after the arrival of a new CEO"
    Just trying to help out. :)
  • kallogan - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    What a tech revolution, a bigger battery gives a bigger battery life.
  • FwFred - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    Reading is FUNdamental: "Using Acer’s Aspire S7 as a comparison platform and NORMALIZING FOR BATTERY CAPACITY DIFFERENCES I measured anywhere from a 15% to a 60% increase in battery life thanks to the move to Haswell."

    Emphasis mine.
  • kallogan - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    Scam. A well optimised ivy lap would do the same.
  • Egg - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    Proof?
  • Homeles - Monday, June 10, 2013 - link

    I see that reading comprehension is not your strong point.
  • kallogan - Monday, June 10, 2013 - link

    I just need more than one Haswell based laptop review to draw any conslusions.
  • seapeople - Tuesday, June 11, 2013 - link

    Me too. I think Anand should have held any Haswell reviews until we've had a good five years for industry to comprehensively adopt the architecture and fundamentally evaluate the aggregate system stability on an enterprise-wide scale. Then he could submit all the reviews he had saved up.
  • Freddo - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    I wonder if this CPU is powerful enough to run the PS2 emulator PCSX2 well, it require a somewhat decent CPU.
  • bakedpatato - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    So the M series socketed Mobile Haswells are not getting S0ix?
  • stevechippy - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    Correct, but there are U-series 28W TDP parts that aren't in the Ultrabook bracket AFAIK.
  • Kevin G - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    Typo on page 7 on the Tomb Raider 1600 x 900 test graph: "Motion Blue".

    http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph7047/55515...
  • Ryan Smith - Monday, June 10, 2013 - link

    Thanks!
  • name99 - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    "The shift of consumer dollars to smartphones and tablets instead of notebooks and desktops won’t be reversed, but a good launch here might at least help keep things moving ok until Silvermont, BayTrail and Merrifield can show up and fill the gaps in Intel’s product stack."

    I love you Anand, and I love your tech analysis. But it might be worth your team acquiring a business analyst, or at least asking those sorts of questions of your informants.

    Silvermont does not "fill the hole in Intel's product stack" because that hole is business-based not tech-based. We saw the prices of Haswell a few days ago --- $250 and way up. Meanwhile the price of a high-end ARM SoC is, what, $20? That's one hell of a difference.

    The problem intel faces is that, for many purposes, it's perfectly adequate to pay for the $20 ARM CPU rather than the $250 Intel CPU. Silvermont and the whole Atom strategy, rather than making things better make things worse. Yes, now maybe Intel captures $20 from sale of an Atom --- but that Atom is ALSO able to replace Haswell (or at least lower-end but still more expensive Intel CPUs). The SMART Intel strategy would have been to acquire an ARM ISA license, making competitive ARM CPUs at $20 (so you still capture from that market) but at least avoid competing so directly with your more expensive line.

    Intel's problems from here on out are business problems. They have to compete with an architecture that is simple enough that Apple could put together a competitive CPU starting from scratch in two years, and they have to do so using an architecture that is so complicated it took Intel 5 years to out together a competitive CPU. Meanwhile they can't charge Haswell prices to maintain the massive parallel design teams that are required to create these ever more sophisticated x86 designs.
    (And, to make life even worse, apart from the myriad own goals Intel has inflicted, they have MS in the background insisting on its charges for Windows x86, one more drag on the sale x86 in the tablet market.)
    I don't think things are nearly as rosy for Intel as do you. Technically yes, they are well-positioned right now. But they seem to be in the position of DEC or IBM in the early 80s --- technically superb, but with an extremely problematic business model. And it's business model that determines the future, more than technology...
  • rwei - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    IIRC Intel does have a full ARM license. But supporting ARM by making ARM parts competitive with Intel's x86 ones would be a blow to their future ability to extract economic rent for x86, as more software targeted at ARM became available.

    Much preferable to decisively beat ARM for 1-2 generations with x86 parts - if they can manage it.
  • peterfares - Monday, June 10, 2013 - link

    ARM is going to keep getting better and better with or without Intel. It might be smart for them to have the best ARM chips because then they'd get the money from people buying ARM chips. Not too much better than the rest that it impacts their x86 chips though. Either way, I'm glad that we can get affordable x86 computers. Until Android can truly compete with Windows on the bigger screens I'll stick with x86 Windows. Android is a LONG ways away from being able to replace Windows for me. Intel is in a tough position though.
  • meacupla - Monday, June 10, 2013 - link

    The main short comings with ARM are the lack of processing power and the massive power consumption increase with faster chips. These chips are good enough for a majority of users and the OS' that run on them support just enough games and programs to keep those users happy.

    Intel, on the other hand, have chips that are fast, but need to get their power consumption and heat output lower. There's no shortage of games and programs that only run on x86, so if you need to run a specific program that won't work on ARM, your choices become quite limited.
  • Amagus - Sunday, June 9, 2013 - link

    Is the increased battery size without increasing size/weight of the system a result of a better battery/design by Acer, or is it directly influenced by Haswell (eg lighter/smaller platform)? I noticed the thing happened with the Sony Vaio Duo Haswell design...they stuck in a bigger battery (in addition to a bigger screen) but it's weight barely went up to.
  • FwFred - Monday, June 10, 2013 - link

    Single package instead of two, integrated VRs instead of discrete. Perhaps this allows a smaller mainboard and allows a bigger battery?
  • piroroadkill - Monday, June 10, 2013 - link

    Not impressed.
    Yeah, the idle time battery life is better, but that GPU is super-lousy. In my opinion, Intel have done themselves a massive disservice by making crappy GPUs available with Haswell. The choice should be only 5100 and 5200. The others are a total waste of time, and barely interesting over HD 4000.
  • nunomoreira10 - Monday, June 10, 2013 - link

    There is not a single 5100 17w sku, and the reason is power.
    intel is going the nvidea and amd road, choices, this is the budget i7, want more, pay more.
  • mikebelle - Monday, June 10, 2013 - link

    I still think he has a point though. While some consumers may prefer the battery life and/or cost savings. Intel seems to have made it very difficult to get access to any of there 5000 series graphics. I wouldn't be surprised to see Iris and Iris Pro come to a few Core i5 parts during Haswell's "refresh".
  • samkathungu - Monday, June 10, 2013 - link

    Is it just me or are the releases coming from Intel about all the flavours of Haswell getting a little confusing? Probably a better communications strategy next time will benefit consumers.
    The confusion over what graphics ships with the desktop or mobile parts is not pleasant.
  • vipw - Monday, June 10, 2013 - link

    Maybe I'm bad at counting, but it still looks like there are two chips on the package.
  • sheh - Monday, June 10, 2013 - link

    When are the i5 43xxM and 42xxM are going to be available?
  • darthrevan13 - Monday, June 10, 2013 - link

    So no more PCIe 2.0? Will Thunderbolt be available for ULT/ULX processors? You could in theory connect a dGPU through that, right?
  • Sugardaddy - Monday, June 10, 2013 - link

    On page 2, you state that "any hopes for pairing a meaningfully high performance discrete GPU with Haswell ULT are dead."

    But there is a lot of Ultrabooks coming out like the Aspire S3-392 with a discrete GT 735M, which is probably 50%-100% faster than the 620M in last year's Asus UX32VD.

    How does that fit together? Is the 735M not "meaningfully faster" than HD4400/HD5000?
    Thanks!
  • extide - Monday, June 10, 2013 - link

    I was hoping charlie would be wrong. Sadly, he was right, Intel took away PCIe 3.0 and all CPU based PCIe lanes from this CPU. This is how the kill off AMD/nVidia competition, make it literally not an option. Scary as hell, I hope they don't start doing this to higher TDP SKU's.
  • warezme - Monday, June 10, 2013 - link

    "the processor graphics story by finally delivering discrete GPU class gaming performance". I hate this summation being thrown around, as I'm sure it will get re quoted somewhere as gospel. It is definitely NOT discrete GPU class gaming performance in any shape or form. There should be a limit to what is considered discrete GPU performance, like maybe 30-60FPS at, at least 1600x900 resolution and game settings across the board for all games set to Medium. That is not crazy or unreasonable for a true discrete GPU you would actually go out and buy. It shouldn't be unreasonable than to expect that in a built in GPU that is sold as "discrete GPU" quality.
  • gnx - Monday, June 10, 2013 - link

    Kudos! You have to love AnandTech for providing such detailed analysis, so soon after Haswell was made public!

    But it does seem that Haswell for Ultrabooks isn't so revolutionary as Intel seemed to imply. Not that we have much of a choice, since ARM isn't an option, and AMD doesn't provide much of an alternative, but I was personally hoping for more from Haswell.

    Maybe it's change the equation for Windows Tablets? look forward to more from AnandTech!
  • Kiijibari - Monday, June 10, 2013 - link

    Can you please add Wh numbers in the Battery Life Test graph (http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph7047/55504... or normalize them at least like in the previous tables? Seems to me that you compare 2 different batteries there. Haswell is great sure, but not THAT great ;-)

    Yes it is explained in the text below, but a picture not matching the numbers in the text is useless and misleading. A picture should be worth more than 1000 words and not demand reading 1000 words of explanation ;-)
  • broccauley - Tuesday, June 11, 2013 - link

    Does anyone know what the status of "activity alignment" for power optimisation is on the Linux kernel and how it compares with Windows 8? I assume such techniques were added when the changes from the Android branch were merged?
  • Henry 3 Dogg - Tuesday, June 11, 2013 - link

    "And today, we had to track down a pre-production Haswell Ultrabook in Taiwan to even be able to bring you this review of Haswell ULT."

    And today, a day later, you can pick up a production Haswell ULT based MacBook Air in your local Apple store.
  • lhurt - Tuesday, June 11, 2013 - link

    So are Platform Activity Manager (Windows) and Timer Coalescing (OSx) two different OS implementations of the same idea, to take advantage of Intel's Power Optimizer and are Haswell cpus required to get the benefit?
  • fteoath64 - Saturday, June 15, 2013 - link

    "Any hopes for pairing a meaningfully high performance discrete GPU with Haswell ULT are dead."
    This is Intel's method of CLOSING other discrete GPU solution on their cpus towards the future. This is a predatory move and premeditated !. Just stop buying their chips as this is forcing users into a proprietary path using their inferior gpu technology. It is a selfish and disgusting move. Now ARM is going to cream them on the desktop side as well soon and server side in time.

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