What is Ivy Bridge actually going to deliver?

[newfoundglory]

I want a MBA, but there are lots of stories flying around about significantly better battery life or faster performance with Ivy Bridge.

Any ideas exactly how much more battery and/or performance this might give us in the real world?

 

[robbie12345]

for performance yes battery life no

what it will do is lower the total power consumption by about 30 percent. the 13 inch mba and mbp currently only have dual core chips due to the fact that that they have a top power of 35 watts, what ivy bridge will bring is quad core processors to the 13 inch laptops and for battery life i doubt they would see a difference because the quad core chip will have the same power consumption but as for if there is a dual core in the 13 inch low end there will be about a 8.5 hour battery instead of 7

 

[2IS]

Ivy Bridge is a die shrink of Sandy Bridge. I wouldn't expect any huge performance gains but there will be some. Power consumption should be lowered a decent bit. Don't expect any revolutionary improvements in either performance or power consumption until Haswell hits, but that will probably be sometime in 2013.

 

[cube]

OpenCL, with the caveat that it will still be Intel.

 

[steveca]

some performance improvement and battery life improvement will always be better than no improvement at all

 

[Hellhammer]

The tricky part with IB is that it will introduce tri-gate transistors, so real world gains are harder to predict. Generally, new generation provides roughly 20% performance boost, but this time it might be more, especially in low TDP parts.

 

[Ramunas]

Is it possible that with IB we will see USB 3.0 and a better performing IGP in new Airs ?

 

[fyrefly]

Is it possible that with IB we will see USB 3.0 and a better performing IGP in new Airs ?

For sure. The IGP will get better (as it always does) and Intel will support USB 3.0 natively in it's Ivy Bridge chipsets. So there's two more benefits.

 

[DarwinOSX]

Nobody really knows what Ivy Bridge will do for sure but no way will it reduce consumption by 30 percent.
The 13 inch MBA has dual core because the only ULV chips Intel makes are dual core.
The 13 inch MBP does not use the same processor as the MBA. It could use a quad core chip right now but Apple wants people to buy the 15 inch for that.
There will be a significantly better GPU in Ivy Bridge though.

what it will do is lower the total power consumption by about 30 percent. the 13 inch mba and mbp currently only have dual core chips due to the fact that that they have a top power of 35 watts, what ivy bridge will bring is quad core processors to the 13 inch laptops and for battery life i doubt they would see a difference because the quad core chip will have the same power consumption but as for if there is a dual core in the 13 inch low end there will be about a 8.5 hour battery instead of 7

 

[Aras87]

Don't expect anything in battery life. Both sandy bridge and ivy bridge ULV cpus will have TDP of 17w which is exactly same as the Sandy bridge ulv. Sandy bridge is already very frugal which means we won't get significant battery life gains unless other components like screen consumes less power. In idle state my MBA consumes about 6W(zero cpu use) and when watching videos(cpu heavy task) it goes to about 8w, so you do the math. There is really not much room left for improvement in cpu department as far as battery life is concerned.

 

[Koodauw]

From my understanding its mainly going to be better video performance, and possibly USB 3.0. Someone else should really confirm this though, I don't want to lead you down the wrong path.

 

[Peteman100]

Don't expect anything in battery life. Both sandy bridge and ivy bridge ULV cpus will have TDP of 17w which is exactly same as the Sandy bridge ulv. Sandy bridge is already very frugal which means we won't get significant battery life gains unless other components like screen consumes less power. In idle state my MBA consumes about 6W(zero cpu use) and when watching videos(cpu heavy task) it goes to about 8w, so you do the math. There is really not much room left for improvement in cpu department as far as battery life is concerned.

This is just all kinds of wrong. TDP does not equal power consumption. Ivy Bridge will bring a very noticeable improvement in battery life.

 

[Aras87]

This is just all kinds of wrong. TDP does not equal power consumption. Ivy Bridge will bring a very noticeable improvement in battery life.

How do you know ? Any facts to prove otherwise?

 

[hansimglueck]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4830/intels-ivy-bridge-architecture-exposed/4

 

[Aras87]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4830/intels-ivy-bridge-architecture-exposed/4

Thats a very informative post but I still don't understand how those mamba jamba will help in real life as far as battery life is concerned. Like I said earlier, my mba consumes about 6W in idle state and about 8w when watching movies. Most of the power consumption comes from components such as screen. In day to day tasks such as browsing the web,writing docs etc, I don't think Ivy Bridge can improve battery life anymore as sandy bridge gets these kind of jobs done extremely fast and goes to idle immediately. Once the sandy bridge is idle, all of the battery consumption comes pretty much from other components. It is all guessing right now, we will see it in a year. I think Ivy bridge will significantly improve GPU performance but not battery life. Haswell on the other hand, will be a more significant upgrade as it will reduce TDPs to 10w compared to 17w of Sandy bridge and Ivy bridge.

 

[2IS]

I don't think Ivy Bridge can improve battery life anymore as sandy bridge gets these kind of jobs done extremely fast and goes to idle immediately.

You're free to think that, but you'd be wrong. Every single one of Intel's die shrinks within the same micro-architecture since Core Duo was introduced has seen lower power consumption than it's predecessor. What makes you think that trend ends with Sandy Bridge? IB will consume less than SB and Haswell will consume less than IB.

 

[Peteman100]

Thats a very informative post but I still don't understand how those mamba jamba will help in real life as far as battery life is concerned. Like I said earlier, my mba consumes about 6W in idle state and about 8w when watching movies. Most of the power consumption comes from components such as screen. In day to day tasks such as browsing the web,writing docs etc, I don't think Ivy Bridge can improve battery life anymore as sandy bridge gets these kind of jobs done extremely fast and goes to idle immediately. Once the sandy bridge is idle, all of the battery consumption comes pretty much from other components. It is all guessing right now, we will see it in a year. I think Ivy bridge will significantly improve GPU performance but not battery life. Haswell on the other hand, will be a more significant upgrade as it will reduce TDPs to 10w compared to 17w of Sandy bridge and Ivy bridge.

You need to let go of TDP numbers. They're a metric that computer manufacturers use to size the cooling system, since it represents the "maximum" heat that a processor will generate. So even if Intel is publishing identical TDP values, the actual power draw between Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge could be very different. If you dont believe me, give Intel a call and they will tell you the same thing.