Personal computing discussed

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Usacomp2k3
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Mobile Kaby Lake vs Haswell

Fri Jun 23, 2017 1:11 pm

Work is offering the option of upgrading my laptop. Unfortunately I'm not sure if it is an upgrade on the CPU side. Right now I have the Core i7-4810MQ.
Per Intel ARK (https://ark.intel.com/products/78937/In ... o-3_80-GHz)
4 core, 8 thread. 2.8Ghz boost to 3.8. 22nm. 6MB cache, 5GT bus speed, 47W TDP. DDR3 dual-channel, 25GB/s. Intel HD4600 up to 1.3Ghz.

The best cpu in the new options is the Core i7-7600u, which is Kaby Lake.
2 core, 4 thread. 2.8Ghz boost to 3.9. 14nm. 4MB cache, 4GT bus speed, 15W TDP. DDR4 dual-channel, 34GB/s. Intel HD620 up to 1.3Ghz.

On most of those specs, it is actually a downgrade on everything except memory bandwidth. The only thing I don't know is if the 3 generations will overcome the other performances changes. My use case is all office-work, but I run the crap out of Excel calculations that frequency take 10+ minutes to run/calculate. I'm leaning towards having fewer cores would run slower.
I wish they would offer the quad Kaby then it would be a no-brainer, but Lenovo saw fit to not offer than on anything but DTR's. I'd go for even the i5-7440HQ, but alas.
 
DPete27
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Re: Mobile Kaby Lake vs Haswell

Fri Jun 23, 2017 3:27 pm

Is Excel very well threaded for large data sets? I thought it was just a memory hog in those situations. Since it takes 10 minutes to run your calcs, have you ever opened performance monitor to see what's being stressed the most?
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Usacomp2k3
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Re: Mobile Kaby Lake vs Haswell

Fri Jun 23, 2017 3:54 pm

The straight calculations are very heavily threaded. About 75% the time, all 8 threads are pegged. The rest of the time it is kinda just sitting there with no obvious bottleneck, and I don't know what it is actually doing besides not-responsive. Note, this is with an SSD, 16GB of RAM, so again, no obvious bottleneck. This is Excel 2013 64-bit.
 
EndlessWaves
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Re: Mobile Kaby Lake vs Haswell

Fri Jun 23, 2017 4:16 pm

Usacomp2k3 wrote:
Lenovo saw fit to not offer than on anything but DTR's. I'd go for even the i5-7440HQ, but alas.


Lenovo do the T470p which is a sub-2kg, 35W processor machine.
 
Usacomp2k3
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Re: Mobile Kaby Lake vs Haswell

Fri Jun 23, 2017 4:28 pm

14" means no number pad which is a no go.

EDIT. I'm going to have to seriously consider it though. I just don't want to downsize.
 
bfg-9000
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Re: Mobile Kaby Lake vs Haswell

Fri Jun 23, 2017 4:52 pm

Looks like an "upgrade" only if you are trying to improve battery runtime.

For just about anything not memory bandwidth limited (that is, not compression or games), anything with a huge "Crystalwell" eDRAM L4 chip would probably be fastest. That's
Intel Haswell with Iris Pro Graphics 5200 (128 MB)
Intel Broadwell with Iris Pro Graphics 6200 (128 MB)
Intel Skylake with Iris Graphics 540 or 550 (64 MB)
Intel Skylake with Iris Pro Graphics 580 (64 or 128 MB)
The L4 being eDRAM instead of SRAM means it still has about half the latency of system RAM but even this is enough to produce a huge improvement as normally accessing main memory means hundreds of CPU cycles wasted, so preventing half of that loss is a big deal.

It's too bad not even DTR laptops use socketed chips anymore or you could've upgraded to a better Haswell. At least the T470p is available with 8 threads.
 
Airmantharp
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Re: Mobile Kaby Lake vs Haswell

Fri Jun 23, 2017 8:14 pm

It's going to be a downgrade in terms of raw processing power- but it'll likely be an upgrade in terms of battery life, heat, and noise.

And for what it's worth, while I used to insist on having a num pad, I just picked up an ultrabook (XPS 13, outgoing model) that doesn't have one, and I've been practicing on my number row typing.

Still not nearly as fast as a 10-key but getting there.
 
curtisb
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Re: Mobile Kaby Lake vs Haswell

Sun Jun 25, 2017 3:08 am

Usacomp2k3 wrote:
The straight calculations are very heavily threaded. About 75% the time, all 8 threads are pegged. The rest of the time it is kinda just sitting there with no obvious bottleneck, and I don't know what it is actually doing besides not-responsive. Note, this is with an SSD, 16GB of RAM, so again, no obvious bottleneck. This is Excel 2013 64-bit.

Have you tried running them on another machine with less available threads to see if it runs any slower? Or even an i7 desktop machine to see if that's any faster. It sounds to me like testing the situation before you make a decision/purchase is in order. :)
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Re: Mobile Kaby Lake vs Haswell

Sun Jun 25, 2017 6:59 am

It's an improvement in battery life/heat/weight/noise levels, but no - the architectural improvements do not come close to compensating for the loss of half the CPU.

I would actually go as far as to say that the 7600U will be significantly slower even in regular single-threaded use, simply because the 15W TDP is so restrictive; Especially when you are making use of the IGP for anything (and that doesn't necessarily mean gaming - browsers, photoshop, media players and various other things engage GPU acceleration too)
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Usacomp2k3
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Re: Mobile Kaby Lake vs Haswell

Thu Jul 06, 2017 8:33 am

I think I'm pretty set on the P51 as the only upgrade option. It's definitely more expensive, but I just can't mentally stand going down in size or down in performance. Need to talk to IT now.
 
Usacomp2k3
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Re: Mobile Kaby Lake vs Haswell

Fri Aug 04, 2017 11:00 pm

So my new laptop came in this week and should be all setup Monday. I'm going to have them big for a couple days to transfer files and settings, so I was going to run some benchmarks to see how they compared. I can probably swing borrowing a recent ultraportable too for comparison for a Y-series recent CPU and a few generations back.

Any specific requests? My list so far is:
RAM bandwidth
NVME SSD speed
My main long-running Excel calculation
3dmark of some sort

I'm happy to run a few other requests as long as they can be run without installing. Is PCMark still around?
 
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Re: Mobile Kaby Lake vs Haswell

Tue Sep 19, 2017 12:25 pm

Airmantharp wrote:
And for what it's worth, while I used to insist on having a num pad, I just picked up an ultrabook (XPS 13, outgoing model) that doesn't have one, and I've been practicing on my number row typing.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Jeobest-Wire ... 3=&veh=sem
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thecoldanddarkone
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Re: Mobile Kaby Lake vs Haswell

Tue Sep 19, 2017 12:39 pm

Usacomp2k3 wrote:
So my new laptop came in this week and should be all setup Monday. I'm going to have them big for a couple days to transfer files and settings, so I was going to run some benchmarks to see how they compared. I can probably swing borrowing a recent ultraportable too for comparison for a Y-series recent CPU and a few generations back.

Any specific requests? My list so far is:
RAM bandwidth
NVME SSD speed
My main long-running Excel calculation
3dmark of some sort

I'm happy to run a few other requests as long as they can be run without installing. Is PCMark still around?


What did you end up getting?
I7 4930k, 32 GB Ballistix DDRL3@2133 , 1.2 TB Intel 750 AIC, 500 GB mx200, Sapphire R9 Fury, asus x79 ws, HP ZR24w, edifier s730
HP Pro x2 612- i5-4302Y, 8 gigs of memory, 256 ssd
 
Usacomp2k3
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Re: Mobile Kaby Lake vs Haswell

Tue Oct 03, 2017 8:46 pm

thecoldanddarkone wrote:
What did you end up getting?

Lenovo P51. I’m loving Windows 10 and any improvement to efficiency of navigation or multi-tasking performanc I’ll attrivute to the new OS. I don’t really feel like the hardware is any faster.
The main downside is the when docking, the laptop disables all on-laptop display outputs. This means I had to downgrade to only two 27” monitors. Ultimate first world problem, I know. It is just really annoying. I don’t know if it has to do with the nVidia Quadro chip versus using just onboard, but oh well.
 
thecoldanddarkone
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Re: Mobile Kaby Lake vs Haswell

Tue Oct 03, 2017 9:37 pm

Usacomp2k3 wrote:
thecoldanddarkone wrote:
What did you end up getting?

Lenovo P51. I’m loving Windows 10 and any improvement to efficiency of navigation or multi-tasking performanc I’ll attrivute to the new OS. I don’t really feel like the hardware is any faster.
The main downside is the when docking, the laptop disables all on-laptop display outputs. This means I had to downgrade to only two 27” monitors. Ultimate first world problem, I know. It is just really annoying. I don’t know if it has to do with the nVidia Quadro chip versus using just onboard, but oh well.


Which dock? I have a have a p51 and haven't purchased a dock yet. In my case my p51 is noticeably faster than my last laptop or my current work laptop. I didn't upgrade from Haswell but I'm sure in most things the difference is minimum.
I7 4930k, 32 GB Ballistix DDRL3@2133 , 1.2 TB Intel 750 AIC, 500 GB mx200, Sapphire R9 Fury, asus x79 ws, HP ZR24w, edifier s730
HP Pro x2 612- i5-4302Y, 8 gigs of memory, 256 ssd
 
Usacomp2k3
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Re: Mobile Kaby Lake vs Haswell

Wed Oct 04, 2017 8:16 pm

You have to get the Workstation dock. It is the only one that is officially supported. It comes with a massive power adapter that is the size of a netbook.

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