buy a trinity now or wait for haswell or amd 4th gen

[dragon199]

i want to buy a mid range notebook for mild gaming and general tasks

so i decided on a trinity based hp 2313ax with an amd a10 4600 and a dedicated 7670hd

but since intel will be releasing haswell soon with amd following with their 4th gen offering should i wait

will the notebook in the same price range will outclass the above by more than 25 to 30 percent

i will use it for moderate gaming

 

[dragon199]

please delete this as it is a double post

 

[jaguarskx]

If the new forum format is the same as the old format, then threads cannot be delete once a reply (such as your own) is posted. You should be able to delete the thread you created (unless someone reply including yourself) by clicking the edit icon and then click the delete thread icon.

 

[jaguarskx]

i want to buy a mid range notebook for mild gaming and general tasks

so i decided on a trinity based hp 2313ax with an amd a10 4600 and a dedicated 7670hd

but since intel will be releasing haswell soon with amd following with their 4th gen offering should i wait

will the notebook in the same price range will outclass the above by more than 25 to 30 percent

i will use it for moderate gaming

AMD Richland based laptops are expected to be available for sale sometime in April. The performance increase is so far unknown.

Since Intel has been shipping Haswell CPUs for a couple of months, I would expect laptops will be available for sale a soon as Intel officially announces the release of Haswell. But that is not expected to happen until June. The Intel HD 5000 graphics core has been demoed a few times, but no actual benchmarks are available so far. Based on observations alone it seems that the Intel HD 5000's performance is going to be around that of the nVidia GT 625m and GT 630m.

If so, then that would make the Intel HD 5000's performance equal to if not better than AMD's current flagship integrated graphics core Radeon HD 7660g in the Trinity A10-4600m APU.

 

[dragon199]

thanks for the reply
but will gpu of mobile i3 or i5 will perform equally as iam buying a mid range laptop

also is driver support of intel hd series graphics as good as ati

 

[jaguarskx]

Unknown. Mobile Haswell CPUs will have two graphic cores Intel HD 4600 (GT2) and Intel HD 5000 (GT3). I would expect the more powerful CPUs (Core i5 & i7) to have the HD 5000 graphics core. I suspect all "U" designated CPUs for ultrabooks will have the GT2 version due to lower power consumption. As for Core i3... I don't know maybe it will have the HD 4600, maybe it will have the HD 5000.

As with the Intel HD 3000 and 4000 graphic cores, different CPU models may have different clockspeeds. For the Intel Hd 4000 series the clockspeed generally ranges between 1.05GHz and 1.30GHz max speed All "U" models for ultrabooks seem have be limited to 1.05GHz, while 1.30GHz is served for the quad core i7 "QM" models which are the most expensive and also power hungry of the Intel Mobile CPUs. There is the ultra low "Y" model that only consumes 13w of power; the Intel HD runs at 850MHz. Therefore, expect some variations in Intel HD 4600 / HD 5000 clock speed for Haswell.

Additionally, it is rumored that there is the HD 5000, HD 5100, and HD 5200 variants. I would think the difference it going to be the clockspeed. But who knows, maybe it the HD 5200 variant that will have all 40 shaders while the HD 5000 and HD 5200 variants will have slightly fewer shaders. As reference the Intel HD 4600 will have 20 shaders (up from 16 for Intel HD 4000) and is expected to be about 20% more powerful than the HD 4000.

 

[dragon199]

thanks again




what about the driver support how well do they compare to an ati card or a similar nvidia card do the hd series perform equally well as an equal gpu by ati or nvidia

 

[jaguarskx]

Intel driver support is not as good as AMD in my opinion. The fact that their iGPUs seems to perform very means that the hardware is actually quite robust given that graphics driver support is a bit lacking. I tested the Intel HD 3000 in my Lenovo Y470 laptop with Mass Effect 3, Fallout 3 and Cities XL 2012. All three games seems to play well enough with a mix of low and medium settings. Actually ME3 was probably set to "mainstream" and I was able to complete the game on Insanity Mode. Naturally, those games runs smoother with the nVidia GT 550m graphic core activated; actually I don't think there was much of a difference with Cities XL.

 

[dragon199]

so should waiting be worth it or the performance gain might not be significant in a similarly priced laptop

 

[UniversityOfPi]

so should waiting be worth it or the performance gain might not be significant in a similarly priced laptop

my understanding is that the haswell performance boost isn't that much (people over-hype it)

realistically it's going to be about a 10% gain, people are going crazy and saying 25% but that won't happen just like the next iPhone won't have a DSLR-class camera or a hypersonic barometer or whatever new things I'm making up now
Maybe I'm wrong and it'll be 15% but much more is an unrealistic expectation


3 other points; 1. First releases will be expensive and desktop only (from what I've read) 2. If you have the money or you need a new pc IB is fine, bulldozer also looks pretty good 3. GPU will make a much bigger difference; dedicated (assuming it's not the cheapest 256mb or whatever) will outperform integrated (assuming it' not the highest end in which case it would be comparable) within a generation

 

[jaguarskx]

I believe Haswell's CPU performance increase over Ivy Bridge will be moderate because Intel is focusing more on lowering power consumption than on actual performance. I am guessing anywhere between 6% - 8% (Max). However, with regards to the iGPU there are indications (as stated above) that it will be a significant improvement over Intel's current HD 4000 iGPU. The number of shaders will increase from 16 to 40. That alone should make a significant performance difference, but it is likely not going to reach it's full potential in Haswell. As stated, the focus is decreased power consumption so the Intel HD 5000 is likely not going to run at the same frequency as the Intel HD 4000. I believe the speculation is that the HD 5000 will be running between 800MHz and 900MHz. That's opposed to as high as 1.3GHz in the HD 4000.

The full potential of the Intel HD 5000 will like not be realized until the release of Broadwell in 2014. With the die shrink of 14nm Intel should be able to either reduce power consumption or at the very worst maintain Haswell's power consumption level while increasing performance be increasing the clockspeed... and of course some other hardware related tweaks.