Intel Haswell review

After more than 18 months of anticipation, the Intel Haswell architecture is finally here. Haswell – officially known as 4th Generation Intel Core – promises to reduce power requirements and boost performance, especially in the arena of graphics.

Haswell chips are built on the same 22nm process as Ivy Bridge, so the power savings aren’t achieved through miniaturisation. They’re the result of two technical innovations. The first is a new power management framework, which lets the CPU handle device driver events in scheduled batches, rather than in real time, so it can spend more time powered down between bursts of activity. Intel estimates this improvement can cut power consumption on a regular laptop by around 20%.

The second innovation is a structural change. In low-power processors aimed at Ultrabooks and tablets – denoted by model numbers suffixed with U and Y – the chipset has been moved into the CPU package. This reduces the amount of energy wasted as heat, and gives the processor better control over its power budget. Intel says this allows a “20x” increase in battery life, although in reality this applies only to laptops or tablets in standby mode.

Desktop performance

When it comes to actually running code, Haswell brings numerous architectural improvements over previous designs. For the technically minded, these include better branch prediction, a larger translation lookaside buffer, improved out-of-order execution capabilities and a doubling of cache bandwidth. The updated AVX2 instruction set brings new functions, too. In theory, this should give fourth-generation processors a performance edge over their Ivy Bridge forebears in almost every application.

So it proves with the first Haswell chip to emerge, the Core i7-4770K. As the name suggests, this is a direct successor to the Ivy Bridge i7-3770K, and like its predecessor, it’s a desktop quad-core chip – supporting eight threads, thanks to Intel’s Hyper-Threading technology – with a base frequency of 3.5GHz and 8MB of L3 cache. It isn’t a drop-in replacement for the old chip, however: Haswell desktop processors use the new LGA 1150 socket and a new 8 Series chipset.

When benchmarked in Windows 7 with 8GB of RAM, this top-of-the-range model scored 1.16 overall, with respective scores of 1.09, 1.22 and 1.17 for responsiveness, media and multitasking. That’s a fair lick faster than the Ivy Bridge Core i7-3770K, which scored 1.06 in an identical configuration, and well ahead of AMD’s most powerful desktop processor, the FX 8350, which scored 0.95.

Stepping up to Windows 8 knocked 10% off the i7-4770K’s responsiveness score, but nonetheless, the system scored a respectable 1.12 overall. It’s reasonable to expect a comparable step up in speed, compared to the previous generation, across all Haswell chips.

Since this particular processor is a “K” model, you can also overclock its Turbo multipliers; we found the chip ran stably using its stock cooler with its maximum Turbo speed turned up from 3.9GHz to 4.4GHz. This allowed the system to achieve an overall score of 1.25, including a stellar 1.36 score in our media test.

Graphical performance

Haswell’s on-chip GPU is much improved compared to Ivy Bridge’s. In fact, Intel is so proud of the new graphics core that it’s given it a new name. While mainstream processors will continue to offer Intel HD Graphics, high-end units are now dubbed Iris. At the top of the range, Iris Pro chips will feature an extra 128MB of on-die cache memory, which can serve as a local frame buffer to provide maximum video performance.

The i7-4770K isn’t an Iris part, but it still gave impressive results in our Crysis test, averaging a happily playable 38fps at Medium quality settings – a big jump from the 3770K’s 24fps. Intel has said it intends to make modern games playable at native resolutions on Ultrabook processors with no need for a discrete GPU, and this result suggests it’s achieved that.

Processor models

Haswell comes in a broad range of flavours, supporting everything from high-end desktops to lightweight tablets. The table below details the major models, and many of these will also be offered in lower-power variants. If Intel’s past launches are any guide, additional lightweight designs will follow in due course as well.

Pricing details aren’t yet available for most of the new models, but we do know that the Core i7-4770K comes in at $339 wholesale – a slight rise from last year’s i7-3770K, which launched at $320 per chip for bulk orders. Prices tend to fall once systems start shipping, however, so that gap may close quickly.

Overall, Haswell represents a big step forwards for graphics, and a smaller boost for desktop performance. We’ll have to wait and see how the low-power parts shape up, and measure for ourselves how Ultrabooks benefit from Haswell’s battery-saving measures. But it’s already clear that Intel has raised the stakes again. While this might be a good time to pick up an Ivy Bridge bargain, there’s no doubt the future is with Haswell, which outshines its predecessor in every way.

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