Intel Core "Haswell" Refresh CPUs Launch Date Revealed

[btarunr]

It looks like Intel will launch its Core "Haswell" Refresh line of processors sooner than Computex 2014. According to sources in the IT retail, Intel could launch these new chips, led by the Core i7-4790K, on May 10th in most markets. An armada of new socket LGA1150 motherboards, based on Intel's Z97 Express chipset should launch around those dates, probably in the week leading up to the 10th. Intel Core "Haswell" Refresh processors offer marginally better performance over current Core "Haswell" chips, at existing price points (i.e., they will displace existing chips from their current price-points); while the 9-series chipset offers features such as M.2 SSD support, making you ready for a tidal wave of 1000 MB/s SSDs that will launch around Computex.



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[ne6togadno]

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[Fairlady-z]

Dang...I am getting a Z79 Asus Delux and i74930k delivered today from Amazon? Are new chips and mobos shipping before May 10th?

 

[Mistral]

Let's see if this even makes me think of upgrading from my good old 920...

 

[Fairlady-z]

Followed the source and looks like its only 1150 socket CPUS, and no X99....skimmed the article. Dang yeah, I would love to have the newest and freshest but the 4930k will have to suffice.

 

[repman244]

Let's see if this even makes me think of upgrading from my good old 920...

It's just a refresh, so if Haswell didn't make you think about upgrade you will have to wait another year.

 

[Slizzo]

It's just a refresh, so if Haswell didn't make you think about upgrade you will have to wait another year.

Which is surprising because Haswell is gobs and gobs more powerful than a 920. The 920 was a great processor sure, but even my Sandy Bridge is much more powerful than it.

 

[Kaynar]

Which is surprising because Haswell is gobs and gobs more powerful than a 920. The 920 was a great processor sure, but even my Sandy Bridge is much more powerful than it.

Even most demanding recent cpu-bound games don't need more than a i7 920/930 at 4ghz (all of them should be able to hit 4ghz) to allow gameplay at 60fps.

 

[tongey54]

Even most demanding recent cpu-bound games don't need more than a i7 920/930 at 4ghz (all of them should be able to hit 4ghz) to allow gameplay at 60fps.

It's not always about games. Haswell spanks X58, simples

 

[zsolt_93]

It spanks at consumption too. That i7 at 4.0 must be using like 150W, when haswells rarely go that high even with big oc.

 

[Hilux SSRG]

It spanks at consumption too. That i7 at 4.0 must be using like 150W, when haswells rarely go that high even with big oc.

Does consumption really matter for a high end i7 CPU?

I own a 920 have never cared for the high wattage and wouldn't care if I bought a high watt 4770k or higher.

I wish Intel would stop catering to low watt. Speed is what it's about.

 

[Suka]

Does consumption really matter for a high end i7 CPU?

I own a 920 have never cared for the high wattage and wouldn't care if I bought a high watt 4770k or higher.

I wish Intel would stop catering to low watt. Speed is what it's about.

Maybe they are catering to their reputation just like nVidia not letting their cards above a certain power limit which would allow higher clock speeds

 

[Hilux SSRG]

Maybe they are catering to their reputation just like nVidia not letting their cards above a certain power limit which would allow higher clock speeds

Intel catering to low power has been a huge cash & time sinkhole. They really should have never lost focus on speed.

These Haswell refresh new MHz rates are just sad compared to what a consumer can overclock.

 

[Kaynar]

Intel catering to low power has been a huge cash & time sinkhole. They really should have never lost focus on speed.

These Haswell refresh new MHz rates are just sad compared to what a consumer can overclock.

Well currently my 4930K sits at LESS than 20W idle which is very good for my electricity bill on the long run, compared to my previous i7 930 that couldn't downclock from 4ghz and has officially the same TDP, its a very big difference. I am thankful for that.

Personally I think ppl should stop trying to find excuses to upgrade from one generation to another. When you have, for example, a nearly new i7 3770k why would you even bother looking at the spec sheet of the latest updated 4770k? You don't need it. Yet so many threads about this kind of dilemma...

 

[Hilux SSRG]

Well currently my 4930K sits at LESS than 20W idle which is very good for my electricity bill on the long run, compared to my previous i7 930 that couldn't downclock from 4ghz and has officially the same TDP, its a very big difference. I am thankful for that.

Personally I think ppl should stop trying to find excuses to upgrade from one generation to another. When you have, for example, a nearly new i7 3770k why would you even bother looking at the spec sheet of the latest updated 4770k? You don't need it. Yet so many threads about this kind of dilemma...

I agree with your second point partially for mainstream users but enthusiasts generally are willing to upgrade more frequently for performance gains, whether single or double digits.

But to your first point, the difference in an electric bill [in the US] will be between $40-80 more per year for the i7 930 versus that i7 4930k. Really are you glad for several bucks in your pocket versus a theoretical 6/8 core i7 at stock 8Ghz?

I'm not.

I'd rather have better gains in power efficiency in PSUs than CPUs and GPUs. I guess there are different enthusiast computer users out there.

 

[Octavean]

Dang...I am getting a Z79 Asus Delux and i74930k delivered today from Amazon? Are new chips and mobos shipping before May 10th?

Not sure which motherboard you're talking about since I suspect you meant to post Asus X79 Deluxe not Z79. I seem to recall Asus releasing a newer X79 board by the name of "X79 Deluxe" but I guess you just as easily could have intended to say Asus P9X79 Deluxe of which is kind of old (I've had one since about late 2011 or early 2012).

I don't know, I guess you have to go with what is available if you need to upgrade at a given time. I'd have to check but I thought Haswell-E was to be released in the third quarter of 2014 and we are in the second quarter now. in fact we are coming close to the middle of April and will be in May soon. If it were me I would have tried to stick it out until the release of Haswell-E. It really shouldn't be too far off now,.....

This coming from someone who really thinks his Sandy Bridge-E Core i7 3930K / Asus P9X79 Deluxe system has been a powerful rock sold platform for years and still is,....

 

[zsolt_93]

Stock 8GHz??? That is just stupid. All companies gave up on the clockspeed is performance thingy, when P4 was released. Everyone thought we would see 10GHz CPUs in a few years when the 3.7GHz extremes appeared. They just realized they cant dissipate that heat effectively and they destroy the chip doing it. Die shrinks i think make it even harder as transistor count is increasing and the area effectively decreases and heat has nowhere to escape. Only CPUs i have read of running at 8+GHz were from that gen, mainly and under LN2, and later gens reach a limit much earlier. If they continued on 90nm to 65nm we maybe would have had larger Clockspeeds now, and CPUs 4 times as huge, consuming 1kW or so with 6 cores. Maybe good for you, but bad for everyone else. Efficiency matters more, and they realized that that particular thinking was inefficient. And now everything is going green. The system i7-920+GTX480/580 from a few years ago is equal roughly to a Haswell i5+750Ti that consumes like what just the 920 would consume overclocked to keep up with time.

 

[Hilux SSRG]

Stock 8GHz??? That is just stupid. ... Maybe good for you, but bad for everyone else. Efficiency matters more, and they realized that that particular thinking was inefficient. And now everything is going green. The system i7-920+GTX480/580 from a few years ago is equal roughly to a Haswell i5+750Ti that consumes like what just the 920 would consume overclocked to keep up with time.

1kw bring it Intel.

6/8/10/12+ cores bring it Intel.

It's bad for enthusiasts like myself who haven't had a want or need to upgrade precisely because Intel chose thermal efficiency over speed.

You and other mainstream consumers may like it or have benefited from efficiency but it doesn't matter to enthusiasts hungry for more speed. 100mhz increments suck.

Heck Intel at GDC recently was stating they need to focus back on what enthusiast/power users want:

"The desktop business is a large and important segment for Intel, and we are investing in it -- reinventing form factors, experiences and products for our customers," said Lisa Graff, vice president and general manager of Intel's Desktop Client Platform Group. "Enthusiasts are the heart and soul of the desktop and they asked us to give them more. We are delivering -- more cores, better overclocking, faster speeds."

 

[lilhasselhoffer]

"The desktop business is a large and important segment for Intel, and we are investing in it -- reinventing form factors, experiences and products for our customers," said Lisa Graff, vice president and general manager of Intel's Desktop Client Platform Group. "Enthusiasts are the heart and soul of the desktop and they asked us to give them more. We are delivering -- more cores, better overclocking, faster speeds."

Could I but drugs from her supplier? Intel lost the soldered chip lid, and their overclocking has been consistently down hill (on average) since. 5+ GHz SB was pretty much a reasonable push while under water, but Haswell is proving to limit around 4.5 GHz (again, on a regular basis).

Anger aside, what is the motivation here? When the Enthusiast platforms switched from SB to IB there was no PCH refresh. There's little to no reason to see a refresh on 1150 unless the next generation of chips has hit a significant wall. On top of the delay, there's the pitiful motivation to upgrade. Intel claims this is the mainstream offering, but adds support for faster SSDs as their main selling point for an upgrade. What? Why would anyone spend the money to upgrade to basically the same thing they could have had months ago? A slight bump in CPU performance (no numbers leads me to conclude single digits at most), with almost no new features, leads me to believe the selling off of old Z87 stocks at a discounted price will damage the refresh even more.


Seriously though Intel, give the enthusiasts what they want. VRM belongs on the motherboard, so you can pay for overclocking or save money with a rock solid but less exciting platform. SATA needs to be copious, because despite the rumors we still use blu-ray drives and HDDs. Internet connectivity is a must, and Marvell has had some spectacularly crappy chips. If you can offer us that, and a bit of fun with overclocking potential, I'll bite. For now the X79 and Z77 platforms aren't worth spending a dime to upgrade from.


Wait a minute, aren't computer sales supposed to be crap... Me thinks there might be some underlying connection here...

 

[Aquinus]

@Hilux SSRG : I think you're misunderstanding limitations of CPUs. You can't just be like "herp derp, lets make the CPU consume 1kw and make it run at 8ghz!!!!" There are barriers other than power that keeps CPUs from running at faster clocks speeds. For example, transistors can only switch so fast and the faster your switch them the worse any clock and/or data slew gets. Additionally, Intel has 12c CPUs, they're E5 v2 Xeons and isn't anything an enthusiast ever would need but a server would. For example, a web server could be serving several thousand HTTP requests per minute. That's a highly threaded workload that works well on multi-core systems and even across multiple servers that have multiple CPUs. Your browser and games are not and probably never will need to be.

Intel's biggest income source are businesses and they care more about stability and less about "overclocking" unless it doesn't compromise stability (boost). People who want to overclock is not what keeps Intel alive, that's for sure.

Also, enthusiast isn't synonymous for wasteful spending. You buy what you need. If you *need* server grade hardware, that is what you get. Otherwise all you're doing is flushing money down the drain unless your goal is just to make your e-peen feel bigger. Most people don't need that power so they would rather have a smaller electricity bill and businesses looking for PCs and laptops are looking for the same thing. Server hardware on the other hand focuses on one very different thing and that's the kind of workload the machine is doing. So don't pull the "enthusiast" card unless you have a particular use case you need your computer to satisfy.

 

[SKL_H]

The is no reason to buy high end CPU, I mean people will go all out and 6, 8 or even 12 threaded CPU the is no reason it is just a wast of money, I mean I have the 3570K and it still rocks for and I will use it until intel develops 8th Gen processors. You must just weigh the benefits of upgrading.

"YOU DON'T HAVE TO SPEND A FORTUNE ON A CPU"

the TDP of the CPU is important cause the less the TDP then the less the heat and you also save on electricity, even if you save $30-$40 a year it does make a difference not only to your money but also to the environment .

 

[MikeMurphy]

Intel catering to low power has been a huge cash & time sinkhole. They really should have never lost focus on speed.

Yeah mobile is wasted effort. Nobody wants laptop, tablets and cell phones these days....

...............

 

[MikeMurphy]

I'm quite excited for the UNLOCKED dual core pentium soon to be released!! Should be an extremely fun project chip.

It'll probably be a monster for most Windows users, but less so for newer gaming and video transcoding.

 

[Animalpak]

Im happy that my Impact motherboard have the support for M.2 SSD

 

[JDG1980]

Intel lost the soldered chip lid, and their overclocking has been consistently down hill (on average) since.

Haswell Refresh is supposed to feature 'improved thermal interface material' according to the released Intel slides. It's not clear if this means bringing back solder or if they are just going to be more consistent about the lid spacing and dimensions so there isn't an air-gap, but it does seem clear that Intel is aware that enthusiasts have a problem with their current TIM solution and are going to do something to fix it. Hopefully this will mean the end of mandatory "de-lidding" for overclockers.