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This is only an artifact of market segmentation and release schedules. LGA1155 is their budget line. 2600K is not the best processor they can make -- it is the

This is only an artifact of market segmentation and release schedules. LGA1155 is their budget line. 2600K is not the best processor they can make -- it is the best processor they can make give very stringent whole platform cost limits. In addition to having the desktop budget line, they also have a desktop high-end line. Last generation, these were the LGA1156 and LGA1366 respectively. The processors they just released are the budget line for this gen, and the high-end line fits a socket called LGA2011, which will be released later, and on which the processor cost will range from 300$ to about 1000$. In every generation, new Intel processors gain roughly as much more power as is the difference between the budget and high-end product lines, so it's normal for todays budget processors to win over yesterday's high end. Usually Intel releases the high-end first for better margins and to avoid this kind of confusion -- this time, they started on the budget end, probably to pummel AMD, who previously only competed on the budget segment and now cannot really compete much at all.

Retric 16y ago
Intel adding integrated graphics to their CPU's is basically spending ~20% of their chip on something that most mid to high end consumers are not going to use, and would be more cheaply produced as a separate chip on the low end. Intel's basic assumption is AMD is so far behind they can't exploit it, and they can exploit their monopoly to crush the ultra low end GPU market. But, it's still risky. IMO Intel focusing on the low to mid range of this release cycle is vital or they are going to be eaten.
- kenjackson 16y ago
  How is this more cheaply produced as a separate chip? If that's the case then AMD could exploit it. I thought the point was that producing this would be cheaper, passing on the cost savings to the consumer, while at the same time offering better perf than low-end GPUs. Everything I've seen seems to indicate that this is true. Did I miss something?
  - mistermann 16y ago
    No, I think you are indeed correct.
  - Retric 16y ago
    The larger the chip the fewer chips you get from the same process. The larger the chip the higher risk a failure. The larger the number of transistors the lower your heat budget for the remaining chip. But, far more importantly, producing a 32nm graphics chip is more expensive (for now) than a 45nm chip using the same number of transistors. Intel has a huge process advantage and is often on the lookout for useful things to do with their huge transistor budget, but integrated graphics has huge downsides, most notably memory bandwidth issues.
    - kenjackson 16y ago
      Regarding BW, the GPU now has access to onchip (L3) cache. Since low-end GPUs use shared memory anyways, this actually saves bandwidth to main memory, and also since it needn't go get main memory, also saves power (from the power hungry GPU). I get that you decrease yield, but w/o knowing the numbers, it's hard to really see if its much impact on the bottomline. I suspect its a bigger win than loss (not hard to speculate, since Intel apparently had made the same bet).
      - Retric 16y ago
        8MB of Cache has far less value when dealing with modern 3D rendering than you might think. Granted, building HW to deal with HD Video decoding is a huge win from an energy use perspective, but 3D is a different beast that is not vary cache friendly. To give some idea of cache's relative value a GT110 is a 3 billion transistor chip with less than 1mb of cache. A QX9650 is a 0.82 billion transistor chip with 12MB of cache. PS: At a minimum it's a 1 - (1/1.2) = 17% loss but adding in bad chips it's probably closer to 25% until they start selling chips without video capabilities. Also, I am not saying it's a bad long term move, just that in the short term it's risky.
- CognitiveLens 16y ago
  Mid to high end mobile devices can use these chips with a switchable external GPU that can be turned on for graphics-intensive applications and off when it's not needed in order to improve power consumption - Apple is doing this with their MB Pros, and as far as I know it has been an effective configuration. I can imagine a similar setup in desktop machines to reduce their power consumption.
  - mistermann 16y ago
    From the reading I've done lately, switchable graphics are just now coming into their own. Nvidia Optimus in notebooks (only) now apparently does very nice automatic seamless switching between CPU and dedicated GPU. There are some good articles out there benchmarking the much improved battery life. When the next round of SSD are released, one will be able to buy a pretty sweet laptop: powerful when you need it, but super efficient when you don't, and fast always. I'm pretty certain I read (an article on anantech?) that graphics switching is explicitly not going to be supported on desktops until the next release of intel processors. Here it is: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/the-sandy-bridge-review-intel-core-i5-2600k-i5-2500k-and-core-i3-2100-tested http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/the-sandy-bridge-review-i... "Quick Sync with a Discrete GPU There’s just one hangup to all of this Quick Sync greatness: it only works if the processor’s GPU is enabled. In other words, on a desktop with a single monitor connected to a discrete GPU, you can’t use Quick Sync. This isn’t a problem for mobile since Sandy Bridge notebooks should support switchable graphics, meaning you can use Quick Sync without waking up the discrete GPU. However there’s no standardized switchable graphics for desktops yet. Intel indicated that we may see some switchable solutions in the coming months on the desktop, but until then you either have to use the integrated GPU alone or run a multimonitor setup with one monitor connected to Intel’s GPU in order to use Quick Sync."
- Tuna-Fish 16y ago
  Eventually, high-end consumers are meant to buy Sandy Bridge-E on the LGA2011 platform. The vast majority of LGA1155 users are going to use that integrated gpu. Producing it as a separate chip would be much more expensive -- on-die it can share expensive resources, notably the memory controller, and moving it away from the chipset means there only has to be one high-performing piece of silicon in the whole system. Using a quarter more die does not mean that the cpu is a quarter more expensive -- the fabrication costs are a minuscule amount of the sale price, and if this move allows Intel to reduce the total amount of different high-performing chips made, it could well result in a reduction of total costs, potentially making the CPU less expensive -- even to people who do not use the integrated GPU.

Retric 16y ago

Intel adding integrated graphics to their CPU's is basically spending ~20% of their chip on something that most mid to high end consumers are not going to use, and would be more cheaply produced as a separate chip on the low end. Intel's basic assumption is AMD is so far behind they can't exploit it, and they can exploit their monopoly to crush the ultra low end GPU market. But, it's still risky. IMO Intel focusing on the low to mid range of this release cycle is vital or they are going to be eaten.

kenjackson 16y ago
How is this more cheaply produced as a separate chip? If that's the case then AMD could exploit it. I thought the point was that producing this would be cheaper, passing on the cost savings to the consumer, while at the same time offering better perf than low-end GPUs. Everything I've seen seems to indicate that this is true. Did I miss something?
- mistermann 16y ago
  No, I think you are indeed correct.
- Retric 16y ago
  The larger the chip the fewer chips you get from the same process. The larger the chip the higher risk a failure. The larger the number of transistors the lower your heat budget for the remaining chip. But, far more importantly, producing a 32nm graphics chip is more expensive (for now) than a 45nm chip using the same number of transistors. Intel has a huge process advantage and is often on the lookout for useful things to do with their huge transistor budget, but integrated graphics has huge downsides, most notably memory bandwidth issues.
  - kenjackson 16y ago
    Regarding BW, the GPU now has access to onchip (L3) cache. Since low-end GPUs use shared memory anyways, this actually saves bandwidth to main memory, and also since it needn't go get main memory, also saves power (from the power hungry GPU). I get that you decrease yield, but w/o knowing the numbers, it's hard to really see if its much impact on the bottomline. I suspect its a bigger win than loss (not hard to speculate, since Intel apparently had made the same bet).
    - Retric 16y ago
      8MB of Cache has far less value when dealing with modern 3D rendering than you might think. Granted, building HW to deal with HD Video decoding is a huge win from an energy use perspective, but 3D is a different beast that is not vary cache friendly. To give some idea of cache's relative value a GT110 is a 3 billion transistor chip with less than 1mb of cache. A QX9650 is a 0.82 billion transistor chip with 12MB of cache. PS: At a minimum it's a 1 - (1/1.2) = 17% loss but adding in bad chips it's probably closer to 25% until they start selling chips without video capabilities. Also, I am not saying it's a bad long term move, just that in the short term it's risky.
CognitiveLens 16y ago
Mid to high end mobile devices can use these chips with a switchable external GPU that can be turned on for graphics-intensive applications and off when it's not needed in order to improve power consumption - Apple is doing this with their MB Pros, and as far as I know it has been an effective configuration. I can imagine a similar setup in desktop machines to reduce their power consumption.
- mistermann 16y ago
  From the reading I've done lately, switchable graphics are just now coming into their own. Nvidia Optimus in notebooks (only) now apparently does very nice automatic seamless switching between CPU and dedicated GPU. There are some good articles out there benchmarking the much improved battery life. When the next round of SSD are released, one will be able to buy a pretty sweet laptop: powerful when you need it, but super efficient when you don't, and fast always. I'm pretty certain I read (an article on anantech?) that graphics switching is explicitly not going to be supported on desktops until the next release of intel processors. Here it is: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/the-sandy-bridge-review-intel-core-i5-2600k-i5-2500k-and-core-i3-2100-tested http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/the-sandy-bridge-review-i... "Quick Sync with a Discrete GPU There’s just one hangup to all of this Quick Sync greatness: it only works if the processor’s GPU is enabled. In other words, on a desktop with a single monitor connected to a discrete GPU, you can’t use Quick Sync. This isn’t a problem for mobile since Sandy Bridge notebooks should support switchable graphics, meaning you can use Quick Sync without waking up the discrete GPU. However there’s no standardized switchable graphics for desktops yet. Intel indicated that we may see some switchable solutions in the coming months on the desktop, but until then you either have to use the integrated GPU alone or run a multimonitor setup with one monitor connected to Intel’s GPU in order to use Quick Sync."
Tuna-Fish 16y ago
Eventually, high-end consumers are meant to buy Sandy Bridge-E on the LGA2011 platform. The vast majority of LGA1155 users are going to use that integrated gpu. Producing it as a separate chip would be much more expensive -- on-die it can share expensive resources, notably the memory controller, and moving it away from the chipset means there only has to be one high-performing piece of silicon in the whole system. Using a quarter more die does not mean that the cpu is a quarter more expensive -- the fabrication costs are a minuscule amount of the sale price, and if this move allows Intel to reduce the total amount of different high-performing chips made, it could well result in a reduction of total costs, potentially making the CPU less expensive -- even to people who do not use the integrated GPU.