I was waiting for Haswell, what is Crystalwell?

[arian19]

I feel a bit cheated, like i've been waiting for the wrong thing this entire time.... should I have been waiting for Crystalwell? What is it? I tried searching for it, and there isn't much information on it...

Is it a subset of Haswell? Predecessor or successor? What are the differences? Better, worse?

Can someone explain?

 

[thejadedmonkey]

Since Intel makes huge dies, it won't be a problem to squeeze some L4 (fourth level cache) to boost memory bandwidth and lower the latency in some of its Haswell SKUs. The Haswell variant that is internally known as Crystal Well offers much larger L4 cache.

http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/31066-haswell-crystal-well-has-l4-cache-for-igpu

 

[LoMonkey]

I'm pretty sure Crystalwell is a high end subset of Haswell. It offers similar power reduction but with more performance.

 

[leman]

I'm pretty sure Crystalwell is a high end subset of Haswell. It offers similar power reduction but with more performance.

Crystalwell is the codename of the L4 cache (eDRAM) featured in the Iris Pro-enabled Haswell CPUs. Its responsible for the increased performance of HD 5200.

P.S. Is it really so difficult to use google?

 

[jav6454]

Crystalwell is an aberration to the GPU. Apple I really hate this decision of not including a dedicated GPU.

 

[Yahooligan]

Crystalwell is an aberration to the GPU. Apple I really hate this decision of not including a dedicated GPU.

The 13" never had discrete graphics and discrete graphics are still available on the 15", don't get your panties in a wad.

 

[dusk007]

But you have to pay a lot now. Because you pay for HD 5200 and dGPU.
The 750M starting config is great but starts high.
Had they just used a normal quad core there could be a 750M config starting at the entry price. Mixing both these chips is a bit of a waste. It is nice if you don't were aiming for a config in that price range anyway.
The HD 5200 only option is neat though for all the people who aren't interested in gaming.

 

[sholzer]

But you have to pay a lot now. Because you pay for HD 5200 and dGPU.
The 750M starting config is great but starts high.
Had they just used a normal quad core there could be a 750M config starting at the entry price. Mixing both these chips is a bit of a waste. It is nice if you don't were aiming for a config in that price range anyway.
The HD 5200 only option is neat though for all the people who aren't interested in gaming.

Your paying less now for 5200 + 750m/2gb than you were for hd4000 + 650m/1gb ceteris peribus. I don't see what's wrong. They could have made it a bit cheaper with a lower processor, but I think for the majority of people, if you want the discrete card, you'd want the upgraded ram and ssd too

 

[Kendo]

The 13" never had discrete graphics and discrete graphics are still available on the 15", don't get your panties in a wad.

The 15" only has discrete in the $2600 model, not the base.

 

[Yahooligan]

The 15" only has discrete in the $2600 model, not the base.

Yes, but it's available. I know people hate the idea of the iGPU, but I think people may want to compare the performance if the Iris Pro to the old dGPU before throwing a fit.

If people want a Mac for gaming...well...that's their choice. $600 more for 2x the memory, 2x the SSD, faster CPU and a dGPU...that's not horrible.

Gamers are not Apple's demographic, so a small portion of consumers are going to feel like Apple screwed them.

 

[5097842]

I'm very surprised they included Iris Pro with the 750M. Haswell with Iris Pro is significantly more expensive than the regular HD Haswell chips. The top-end 15" MBP is expensive, but you get a lot of bang for the buck.

 

[Orr]

I'm very surprised they included Iris Pro with the 750M. Haswell with Iris Pro is significantly more expensive than the regular HD Haswell chips. The top-end 15" MBP is expensive, but you get a lot of bang for the buck.

Yup. Almost no one on here was expecting a 15" w/ dGPU to have Iris Pro as well given the seemingly prohibitive price point. Despite some obvious overlap depending on the application, I think it's a very nice combination for the price and offers a significant performance advantage for a mixture of both light and heavy usage.

 

[priitv8]

The top-end 15" MBP is expensive, but you get a lot of bang for the buck.

Similarly confed Early-2013 15" rMPB (ME665LL/A : 2.7GHz QC i7, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD) used to cost $2800, so it's a price drop, right?

 

[sholzer]

Similarly confed Early-2013 15" rMPB (ME665LL/A : 2.7GHz QC i7, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD) used to cost $2800, so it's a price drop, right?

Yes, drop of $200 bucks. I pointed this out in my other post above.

 

[DarwinOSX]

Crystalwell is an aberration to the GPU. Apple I really hate this decision of not including a dedicated GPU.

It's just fine for almost all users and if you want a discrete card you can get one.

 

[throAU]

It's just fine for almost all users and if you want a discrete card you can get one.

Also, i'd say if you think about your usage more seriously, if you're considering a DGPU in the machine, what you probably really want (of course there will be exclusions to this - and this is assuming money isn't an issue) is a sonnet thunderbolt enclosure and a desktop card in that. I'm just waiting for apple to put a PCIe slot in the thunderbolt display (will likely not happen though :-\).

DGPU on battery doing any sort of work that couldn't be handled by the the iGPU will burn through your battery in an hour or so.

So the case for dGPU is really those who carry their machine to somewhere away from their home/work and run heavy 3d while there.

I'd say most who use dGPU are doing so at a desk, on AC power, where they could have a thunderbolt connected GPU.

A friend has an 2011 MBA11 with sonnet enclosure that runs triple-head gaming just fine. Youtube for something like MBA triple-head, he runs a demo of Dishonored.


Of course, YMMV, but that's the conclusion i've come to after having a half-decent dGPU in my portable machine for a couple of years. The internal mobile dGPUs are always sub-par and just burn a heap of battery - so don't bother and go external desktop GPU...