Will Haswell be significantly better than Ivy Bridge?

[LEDPros]

Motherboard chipsets and faster ram can make just as much difference as the processor. I notice this when I buy budget boards, they just aren't as snappy as the flagship models even though they run the same processors.

Also, Core2Duo chips are fast enough to run basically anything most people do. If you upgrade your computer for hundreds of dollars, you might get something twice as fast, but you don't really notice it because the software is already snappy on the slower chip. That's what I mean by it not being much different.

The faster chips, to me, are just a bit of future proofing as the Internet and apps demand faster hardware to run properly. Many times though, it only buys you an extra year or two. And it's not like it used to be- moore's law isn't really a focus anymore whereas everyone wants more battery life.

 

[Yami]

But since the laptop I'm looking at has a dedicated GPU (Nvidia GT 650M 2GB) it wont matter right?

Correct.

 

[LEDPros]

Source: AnandTech | The Haswell Review: Intel Core i7-4770K & i5-4670K Tested

But do you remember what it was like before the core 2 chips? Even the core 1 chips were a huge leap, however when the core 2 chips came out you get even faster speeds with much better battery life- battery life that is still decent in today's market. I have noticed lately, that anything less then a Core 2 speed is just slow enough to make you want something better.

Surely at some point, the Core2 chips wont be fast enough to run what we normally need, but I think that's 5 years away at least.

 

[steve10765]

since as its a laptop do you guys think he should find a haswell one? I mean better battery life makes his battery last longer(wont use as much energy=less charge cycles over time) and he gets better performance. Also it probably has better temps I assume due to its lower power requirements, I am not sure about this though

 

[PP Mguire]

Um no, the Core i series is a significant leap in architectural performance compared to Core 2, and even the 45nm Core 2 series. I agree, Core 2 is still decent for grandma getting online and will still last a while but simply adding faster RAM will not make say a Q9550 perform the same as something like my i5, or better yet a 3570k. That includes every day tasks, especially when an SSD is involved. When you are talking gaming performance, single threaded in general, or productivity that is highly multi-threaded the newer chips run circles around Core 2. Mobile and desktop.

To take that a bit further, the IMC in the Core i series gets better with every generation making anything faster than 1600 moot because they are so efficient.

When you mix overclocking into the mix Core 2 just can't compete, and power consumption levels are extremely low compared to the 65nm and 45nm Core 2 chips.

It's 2013, there simply isn't a reason in the world to buy anything with a chip that isn't Core i unless the price is stupid cheap.

To the OP, Haswell performs about 10% overall compared to IB but the power consumption is lower. If you don't really care much about power consumption then IB based laptops are just fine.

 

[LEDPros]

You're missing my point and making it at the same time.

An i3 on a cheap motherboard is going to be about the same as a core2duo in a good fast motherboard. I didn't mean to say you could add faster ram to make a chip seem like the next generation, but they do sell crippled next gen systems that aren't as fast as the older stuff because the motherboard and ram aren't as fast as they should be for that processor.

 

[Yami]

An i3 on a cheap motherboard is going to be about the same as a core2duo in a good fast motherboard.

That's spectacularly false, for many reasons but primarily that even a cheap 1155-socket mother is going to be far better than even the best 775-socket motherboard.

 

[PP Mguire]

A B75 ASRock board can be had for 50 bucks which includes almost every feature available to the platform while the i3 with any speed RAM will run circles around any Core 2 chip.

You obviously missed my point. Core i of any gen is significantly faster than Core 2 for any purpose. I notice a huge difference between my i5 750 based rig and my fiance's Q8200 stock for stock and we both have SSDs. So the point being, unless you are getting a Core 2 based machine for pocket change for grandma, mom, pops, whatever it is a waste of money. If you have a couple hundred for a machine it better be at least AMD APU based or have an i3. For basic every day tasks even the IB based Pentium 2020 makes mincemeat of Core 2 chips.

It's pretty much indisputable. An i3 2120 is 2-3x faster than an e8400 for any task given, plus the i3 has HT. The only people who won't notice are old people running HDD based rigs and they typically don't care. But hey who am I to judge, my fiance's great grandma has a Phenom 2 based machine with 16GB of RAM and she could see the difference from that and her e6600 HP.

 

[LEDPros]

I would say most people still run HDD's, which is part of my point that after the core chips came out there really isnt a dramatic difference in speed, unless you game of course. And even if you dont, you can open Internet Explorer in 1.5 seconds instead of 3. It's just not a difference most people would notice. On paper, twice as fast looks huge, but that's not what we are talking about.

It's like the NVS3100 graphics in my laptop. It's far better on paper then my other identical laptop with gma4500HD, yet it doesn't make a lick of difference in the real world because most modern games can't run on either solution.

At least we agree that anything pre-core days are basically obsolete, which was my original statement. The only exception I make are certain atom/zacate solutions, because they can still do HTPC tasks well.

And I wouldn't say Core2 chips are for grandmas only. Not yet anyway. Theyre fast enough for 1080p HD streaming, which previous generation chips need GPU support to make the videos play properly.

 

[LEDPros]

That's spectacularly false, for many reasons but primarily that even a cheap 1155-socket mother is going to be far better than even the best 775-socket motherboard.

:/ If you mixed up my i3 system with my Core2Duo rig, which both just run WMC but still, I couldn't tell you which one is which without looking inside the system properties page.