Benefits of Ivy Bridge for a laptop?

[dennilfloss]

For someone in no real hurry and able to wait until April, would performance and/or power consumption be much improved in, say, a Dell XPS 17 with Ivy Bridge compared to the current Sandy Bridge models with processors like the 2670QM or 2760QM?

 

[gevorg]

IVB should give about 20% power reduction over SB, and one of IVB i7 mobile models, the i7-3612QM, is rated at 35W which is quite a significant reduction in power usage from SB 45W variants. Also, the power reduction in IVB might be somewhat offset by higher power usage in IGP.

 

[epidemis]

CPU probably spends a lot of time idling so it's hard to say how much of an effect it will have on the battery life.

 

[ensign_lee]

The integrated GPU should be vastly improved. That, and lower power draw.

 

[georgec84]

The integrated GPU should be vastly improved. That, and lower power draw.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Otcge1cn8Os&feature=player_embedded

 

[drizek]

Ya, but you'll notice the difference more in laptops with smaller displays, where the CPU plays a bigger role in determining battery life.

 

[greenhawk]

should have better idle wattages thanks to the 3d transisters. Peak power is also down (but not as much as idle as a &#37 looking at how the 3d transisters perform.

iGPU will be noticably better if looking at the cheaper end laptops. Units using actual GPUs will not see any difference in this area.

Now, as to the 3d Trnasisters and lower power draw, it will either mean a longer run time for the same laptop, or the ability to use smaller batteries so overall a smaller laptop.

In the case of a high end laptop using a addon GPU, difference is not going to be noticable overall.

 

[IntelUser2000]

It won't be a drastic increase in battery life or performance though. Think extra 30 mins over a 6 hour time, and 10% performance gain, maybe 20-25% on the Ultrabook SKUs.

In massive hindsight I thought 22nm would bring big gains for ULV chips(37% cycle reduction = 50% increase). But that 37% number happens at the 0.7V curve, which is LFM frequency, or only few hundred MHz above that.

The potential 50% power reduction is also limited. Perhaps its more important to circuitry designers than as a chip overall. Lower power SRAMs, or even integrated graphics.

 

[GTRagnarok]

From the lineup, it looks like there's a 0.4GHz increase across the board...well, at least for the quadcores. Pretty nice.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

From the lineup, it looks like there's a 0.4GHz increase across the board...well, at least for the quadcores. Pretty nice.

yeah, was gonna say Ivy will probably have its biggest impact on mobile quads to where we might start to finally see conservative desktop power in a truly mobile platform

 

[sm625]

I'm waiting on a large corporate laptop purchase because I want a viable workstation docking solution. I want one cable, like thunderbolt. Now if I could charge the battery over that same cable then I think we'd really be on to something... I may end up just settling on a good usb 3 dock. But right now I'm not happy with the current docking solutions.

 

[imagoon]

I'm waiting on a large corporate laptop purchase because I want a viable workstation docking solution. I want one cable, like thunderbolt. Now if I could charge the battery over that same cable then I think we'd really be on to something... I may end up just settling on a good usb 3 dock. But right now I'm not happy with the current docking solutions.

What is wrong with the current docking solutions? I drop my Dell in my dock... click a single button and it ejects. It even charges while in it.

 

[Fjodor2001]

I know there's been a lot of talk about Haswell lowering the power consumption quite a lot compared to Ivy Bridge. But will the lower idle power consumption provided by Haswell really mater that much? Won't the idle power consumption of Ivy Bridge be so low that most of the power consumption when the laptop idles comes from other sources anyway, most notably the display?

How much more battery life do you think will Haswell add compared to Ivy Bridge?

 

[IntelEnthusiast]

I think the biggest thing that it is going to offer for a person buying a new laptop is increased battery life and better IGP performance.

 

[Concillian]

Won't the idle power consumption of Ivy Bridge be so low that most of the power consumption when the laptop idles comes from other sources anyway, most notably the display?

How much more battery life do you think will Haswell add compared to Ivy Bridge?

I think this is pretty true already with SB and to some extent, Clarkdale. Once you have power gating in place, the CPU really isn't a huge contributor (at idle). The motherboard, chipset, drives, display, etc... all contribute at leastas much, or more at idle.

It's possible that things like moving USB3 onto the chipset will help for models that have USB3, an external chip like that is never efficient.

I think that the last time the chipsets had a die shrink was x58. x58 and x79 is 65nm, I assume the mainstream chipsets in-between were all 65nm. Perhaps this is why they dragged their feet on USB3 for x79, they were waiting on the die shrink / redesign for IB? Just a guess that there even is one, but with x79 @ 65nm, it'd be odd to attach a 22nm CPU to a 65nm chipset. I suspect the next set of chipsets will be 45 nm

There may be as much power consumption to gain on the chipsets as the CPU (at idle, at least).

 

[piesquared]

I think the biggest thing that it is going to offer for a person buying a new laptop is increased battery life and "better IGP performance".

In the interest of full disclosure, I thought I might fix that for you. Wouldn't want consumers to think there are no caveats!

 

[frozentundra123456]

In the interest of full disclosure, I thought I might fix that for you. Wouldn't want consumers to think there are no caveats!

It doesnt need any caveats. IGP performance definitely will be better than Sandy Bridge. That is all he was saying. He did not say it would be better than AMD or "x" disrete card or be able to play "x" game at 1080p on ultra settings. No need to belittle his comment.

 

[CHADBOGA]

I think the biggest thing that it is going to offer for a person buying a new laptop is increased battery life and better IGP performance.

It will also further entrench AMD's irrelevancy in laptops.

 

[OS]

amd llano laptop are actually awesome

 

[max347]

It will also further entrench AMD's irrelevancy in laptops.

I think you may be a few years behind...

Several years ago, I would not touch a turion hunk of junk. Now, the zacate platform and the a-3xxx platforms are very nice performers.

 

[pitz]

Don't forget the much higher resolutions that the Ivy Bridge chips can drive versus the Sandy Bridge.

I have a feeling the next few years are finally going to see a breaking of the WUXGA (1920x1200) barrier on laptops. And pixel densities are certain to climb considerably on the larger external panels as well. Ivy Bridge fills in some of the final building blocks.