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Intel Launches Haswell Processors Ahead of WWDC Mac Updates

Tuesday June 4, 2013 8:49 am PDT by Eric Slivka
haswell_chipIntel today officially announced the launch of its latest family of Core processors, formerly known as "Haswell". The new processors are making their way into a number of new computers, and are expected to be included in Apple's next-generation Macs, some of which are likely to make their debuts at next week's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC).

The new chips offer significant improvements in integrated graphics performance, as well as modest CPU performance improvements and a major effort toward increasing battery life in notebooks.
Delivering Intel's largest generation-over-generation gain in battery life enablement in company history, 4th generation Intel Core processors can bring an 50 percent improvement in battery life over the previous generation in active workloads when watching movies or surfing the Internet, and two to three times improvement in standby battery life. For some systems coming to market this year, over 9 hours of active use battery life or 10 to 13 days of standby with fresh data on a single charge is expected.
Ars Technica has been providing overviews of the new chips, beginning with the quad-core desktop and notebook chips that were unveiled over the weekend. That group included six Core i7 and six Core i5 chips for desktop machines, as well as ten varieties of Core i7 notebook chips.
All of the mobile parts being announced today belong to the i7 family and, like their desktop counterparts, they're all quad-core chips with Hyperthreading enabled. The differences here come in the suffixes: the MX and MQ parts (reversed from Ivy Bridge's QM and QX suffixes) come with the Intel HD 4600 GPU, while most of the HQ parts come with the faster Iris Pro 5200 GPU.
With today's announcement of dual-core Haswell chips highlighted by AnandTech, the picture for Apple's notebook lineup comes into more focus. Intel has emphasized mobile chips for this round of dual-core launches, a move that will likely see the chips showing in updated MacBook Airs and 13-inch MacBook Pros as soon as next week.

A notebook refresh is expected to be the hardware highlight of WWDC alongside previews of OS X 10.9 and iOS 7. The latest rumors suggest that Apple may even be able to slim down the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro, which is currently slightly thicker than its 15-inch sibling. Less substantial tweaks are expected for the MacBook Air, although the move to Haswell should offer significant performance improvements in certain areas.

Related Roundups: MacBook Air, MacBook Pro
Buyer's Guide: MacBook Air (Don't Buy), MacBook Pro (Buy Now)
[ 169 comments ]


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Pentad
69 months ago

Can't wait for the Apple ARM version of the MacBooks


:rolleyes: Do you realize the disaster this would be?
Rating: 14 Votes
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GREEN4U
69 months ago
Haswell is such an ugly name. It sounds like a high school principal or something.
Rating: 10 Votes
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barkmonster
69 months ago

Can't wait for the Apple ARM version of the MacBooks


I can't really see any sense in them switching to proprietary chips significantly slower than Intel and designed as integrated CPU/GPUs for tablets and phones :-)
Rating: 8 Votes
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TheHateMachine
69 months ago

Can't wait for the Apple ARM version of the MacBooks


Yea I cannot wait for under powered chips that will introduce a myriad of software compatibility issues for a small power advantage and to stick it to Intel.

:rolleyes:

The latest rumors suggest that Apple may even be able to slim down (//www.macrumors.com/2013/06/02/slimmer-13-retina-macbook-pro-dual-mic-macbook-air-expected-at-wwdc/) the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro, which is currently slightly thicker than its 15-inch sibling.


This is really stupid if this rumor is true. Instead of increasing battery longevity due to the decreased power draw, they might cut the battery down to make the laptop slimmer and have the current battery life?
Rating: 7 Votes
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ValSalva
69 months ago

I care about this only if it means a new Mac Pro will be announced and shipping soon.


Well then this news will not please you. Haswell will have nothing to do with the Mac Pro this year. If the Mac Pro is updated this year it would be with the Ivy Bridge Xeons when they are available.
Rating: 5 Votes
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mrxak
69 months ago
There's always one crazy person who thinks ARM would work well for laptops.
Rating: 5 Votes
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charlituna
69 months ago



PS i hope apple has been listening to their customers, bring us raw power as well as the magic of apple!
And RIP to stupidly overpriced upgrades to our MAC - like charging 200% on SSD is criminal!


After what 35 years, you expect Apple to start listening to customers.

Thanks for the laugh
Rating: 5 Votes
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milo
69 months ago

Well then this news will not please you. Haswell will have nothing to do with the Mac Pro this year. If the Mac Pro is updated this year it would be with the Ivy Bridge Xeons when they are available.


Haswell (v3) is the generation after ivy bridge (v2, and ivy bridge xeons have been available for a while). In fact, if you click on the intel announcement, it actually mentions Xeon E3-1200 v3 as part of today's introduction.

The E5 needed for dual cpu Mac Pros is still a couple months off, but next week Apple could announce new MP with E5/dual versions shipping later but E3 quads shipping immediately.

The one downside to the new generation of chips is that so far they don't have a version of the single socket xeon that's more than four cores. Are those expected later? Or will people have to buy the dual versions even for single socket 6 (or more) core?
Rating: 5 Votes
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Macrolido
69 months ago

Can't wait for the Apple ARM version of the MacBooks


You must be kidding.
Rating: 4 Votes
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WestonHarvey1
69 months ago
Of course, we all know in reality we'll be seeing about 2.5 hours of battery life in realistic usage scenarios, as usual.
Rating: 4 Votes

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