News Intel launches first Broadwell Core M chips

Some people are saying these new Core M's manage a 10% performance increase over its predecessor, if so I'm impressed they managed that while more than halving the TDP.

I just hope the desktop counterpart gets more than the normal 10% performance boost.

 

Are we looking at Q1 or Q2 onwards for the desktop parts? I understand nothing is official yet but a current estimate would be appreciated.

If I do manage to build my new system in the next couple of months I may just go for a cheap CPU (maybe the Pentium K) to partner my likely Z97 Impact VII and then wait for the 'go to' CPU on Broadwell.

 

Going on what Intel said we may only get high-end Broadwell CPUs, "it wouldn't be more specific about which chips will and won't get the Broadwell upgrade."

 

Current estimate is 5% clock for clock improvement from Haswell to Broadwell. IGP is going to be minor, with no real estimates that I have seen. It'll depend heavily on the workloads, based on the redesign of the EU in the GPU that Intel has. IIRC, it has roughly twice the shader resources now (or maybe it is texture resources. One of the two), for each EU. Also the packaging has changed, so it looks like (other than REALLY cut down chips like Celeron/Pentium chips), the EU "minimum" count has grown from 20, to 24 for Broadwell. So in some work loads performance might be Broadwell >>> Haswell, but in most games, I'd am taking a wild guess it'll be mild improvements, only in the 20-25% range.

Of course nothing has been said about the ULT/ULV parts, standard voltage parts of desktop parts. All of the big siblings to Core M Broadwell might well have >24 EUs (IIRC the EUs are now 8 to a package instead of 10 to a package that Haswell was, or something like that. So you should see them in increments of 8. I think. So with Core M being 24, if higher power parts increase the EU count, I'd expect it to jump to 32 next and cut down Celeron/Pentium parts might be 16 (or even 8)).

This generation does not, at least yet, look like a wild performance improvement, but Intel has said little about higher power parts.

If they can cram 4.5w TDP in to Core M, I'd think for a 10-15w low voltage laptop part they'll certainly turn up the base clocks, might even turn up the turbo clocks a little and probably have a beefier GPU (or at least same EU count, but higher clocks). What the standard voltage parts deliver, should be interesting to see.

So we might get the slight IPC increase, slightly improved and higher EU count GPU and maybe also a bit more clock speed on the CPU too. Oh, and probably all while using even less power. Nothing to go crazy over, but since I am on Ivy for my desktop and especially laptop (which is also using HD4000, no discrete GPU in it), it is certainly looking like a nice upgrade. Though for money and wanting even better stuff reasons, I'll be waiting till Skylake before considering an upgrade. That'll hopefully be a totally revolutionary improvement in most of things (battery life and GPU especially, less so CPU) by then, instead of simply "a nice improvement" like it is with Haswell and without knowing the full details, Broadwell more so.

 

jrs77, Skylake will be a new socket and DDR4 so isn't n option for a system coming together this autumn. I also don't want to wait and buy in to the very first gen (mainstream) of DDR4. So depending on info at the time of my likely purchases, I will go for either an i5-4690K, i7-4790K or most likely the Pentium G3258 and then the Broadwell version of the relevant i5 or i7 processors. Then I'll sit back for the next 4-5 years and let things mature and settle.

 

There may not even be i5 on Broadwell. Intel is being typically tight-lipped about it, but it sounds like they might only refresh the i7 line. Which may include some i7 SKUs with Iris Pro graphics. Which in most cases seems about as silly as it gets. Who buys a $300 processor and uses on-die graphics? There's likely a small market I'm missing, but it just seem to doesn't jive.

 

Some people are even saying we may only see Broadwell-K chips and will have to wait for Skylake.

 

Leaked Intel slide on Techpowerup would seem to confirm this, only talks about K-series parts for Broadwell.

Through some recent, unfortunate equipment failure I found myself in a similar position to SchizoFrog, and I'm pairing a MSI Z97 Gaming 5 with Pentium G3258 until Broadwell desktop parts come out, and then either get an i5-4690k/i7-4790K or Broadwell equivalent, depending on the performance/overclockability of said parts.

 

You don't say that the M-5Y70 has, remarkably, the same 4.5W TDP.

Also, what's the difference between the M-5Y10 and M-5Y10a? Specs all seem to be identical. Is it the same chip in a different package to suit different OEM requirements?

 

There may only be 'K' parts but that is fine with me as I am looking at Haswell 'K' parts. As for only i7, we'll have to wait and see but as I am giving myself another year if I go down the G3258 route I am sure I will be able to find the extra cash by then to go for the i7 rather than the i5 part.

At the moment I am waiting for reviews of the Impact VII to make my final motherboard decision and then I'll wait to see what nVidia does with the new 960, 970 and 980 GPUs...

 

I'm not sure but i think the 'a' suffix denotes that it can be configured down to 4W TDP rather than the fixed 4.5W

EDIT: I got that the wrong way around, going on the Anandtech article the 5Y10 is the one that can drop to 4W

 

Maybe. Intel said at the launch a few days ago that Broadwell will NOT include low end desktop parts. They said nothing about what that means exactly. I'd certainly assume it means NO Celeron/Pentium parts.

I'd be kind of suprised though if there wasn't at least one i3 part. Though Maybe Intel will change things up with Broadwell and have an i3 k series SKU. It would be kind of nice/neat/cool if they started having a dual core, with hyperthreading, unlocked part in the i3 line-up again. Maybe they'll see enough movement on the anniversry Pentium unlocked part to start an i3 unlocked part.

However, Intel is making it relatively clear, if you want a FULL line-up of desktop parts, Skylake is where it'll be at. I think it makes a certain amount of sense. Intel ended up with too much stock of Ivy and still has a big stock of Haswell. 14nm ran late and I think Intel is still charging forward with their plans for Skylake around the start of 2H2015. So they probably so no reason to try to do a full release of desktop Broadwell.

Release what needs to be released for Broadwell, and make it a narrow, but deep release. IE concentrate on mobile where it matters "the most" and make sure you don't stock inventories too deep, so you can introduce it, quickly clear it and have Skylake on the market when they want to with a full release.

I could be very wrong, but Intel seems to be moving in the direction of a 6-10 months product cycle for Broadwell before Skylake comes along (depending on if you are dating it by the Core M that was just now released, or based on the desktop and standard/low voltage laptop parts coming very early next year).