4th Gen Intel enhanced grahpic cpu good move?

GroovyFlower

Intel Iris & Iris Pro Graphics: Haswell GT3/GT3e Gets a Brand

Still on fence seems win8 only and will not realy compete with desktop AMD/Nvidia GPU cards.

For laptops a huge leap forwards.

Quizzical

First, remember that it's Intel.  All Intel graphics are junk until proven otherwise.  Remember Intel's insistence that with Ivy Bridge, they were finally taking graphics seriously?  And before that, with Sandy Bridge?  And before that, with Arrandale?  There has been progress and Ivy Bridge finally offers API compliance that isn't a complete joke.  But "not a complete joke" isn't the same as "is really good".

Next, it's one thing to perform well in 3D mark.  It's quite another to reliably perform well in most games.  The difference between the former and the latter is basically drivers, and Intel's track record there is not good.  Even Intel HD 4000 graphics was very hit and miss, with some games not trailing that far behind Llano while in others, it could deliver 1/3 of the performance of Llano.

Third, you should note that the first chart compared an upcoming 28 W part to an existing 17 W part.  If those are both dual core processors, as seems likely, then this is probably a matter that if you're willing to burn more than twice as much power on graphics, then you can more than double the performance.  But that defeats the point of ULV parts.

Fourth, Intel is pushing the performance of their GT3e graphics, which has the on-package eDRAM.  That's what they're branding as "Iris Pro".  But Iris Pro is going to be expensive.

In desktops (which is where they'll get rid of the junk bins), the rumored Core i5-4570R bin has a max turbo of only 3.2 GHz.  That's only infrequently going to beat the much cheaper AMD FX-6350 by much.  Even if it manages to roughly tie an AMD A10-5800K that costs about $100 less--in both CPU and GPU performance--is that really such a big win for Intel?  The next bin up, the Core i5-4670R is probably also going to be both slower than a Core i5-3570K on the CPU side and also a lot more expensive.  And then the Core i7-4770R is probably going to cost far north of $300.  For those last two, if that's your budget and you care about graphics performance, get a discrete card.

And in laptops?  That's where the prices get positively ugly.  Rumors say that the only laptop chips that will get GT3e graphics are the Core i7-48** and -49** parts.  Intel has already launched three generations of Core i7-*8** and -*9** parts.  The cheapest *8** part is over $500.  The cheapest *9** is over $1000.  Even if Intel does manage to catch AMD Richland and Kabini in performance per watt in graphics-heavy games, is that such a big win for Intel if they charge 3-5 times as much?

The low-bin quad core that Intel will actually sell in volume (i.e., the successor to the Core i7-3610QM and -3630QM) won't have GT3e graphics and will offer far less graphical performance.  The Pentium and Core i3 bins actually priced to compete with AMD Richland probably won't even offer GT3 graphics, and GT2 isn't going to be able to hang with Richland.