The chip giant has hyped up its Haswell platform for a quite some time now. With the new lineup of CPUs set for release early next month, it seems that the hype is justified, at least for mobile devices.
Desktop owners may have to cope with bit of a conundrum with potentially incompatible power supply units, owing to the fact that Haswell CPUs are more power efficient than what most PSUs can handle. But laptop users can finally rejoice.
While this was clear that Haswell processors came with really optimized battery usage, up until now it was hard to guess or quantify just how much notebooks would benefit.
Well, now we have an official confirmation — a lot.
Intel, talking to Computerworld recently claimed that battery life on notebooks (and by the same extension other mobile devices) could be lengthened by half compared to previous Ivy Bridge models.
And at the same time performance is not impacted negatively. Impressive indeed!
All Haswell Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7 CPUs, as well as the eventual budget Pentium and Celeron chips based on this architecture that will be released, carry this notable advantage.
And that is not all. Standby times could potentially be — wait for it — 20 times longer.
The first reviews (and devices) based on Intel’s Haswell platform will start surfacing in June, and if Intel can deliver on these promises, then a lot of mobile users would be happy. And with Windows 8.1 already promising further optimized usage of battery, times really could be changing for PCs.
Microsoft is also said to be preparing its second-generation Surface Pro tablets, which could be on track for unveil by the year’s end. Chances are that the technology titan will again deploy Intel’s Core i5 processors to power these slates.
And with these impressively optimized numbers, we may finally get to see around 8 hours of battery time for the company’s flagship Surface slate.
What about you guys? Are you pleased with these numbers, and finally excited to see optimized battery performance from laptops and mobile devices? And more importantly are you ready to upgrade your notebook in the near future with a Haswell powered solution? Comment away!
All Comments
I have heard versions of this tale from Intel for years. Each of the past few iterations were going to be the one that made the difference. Other than the impressive stuff that a few manufacturers deliver via their own solutions, it has all been hype. Now Intel is going to deliver battery life that Toshiba was able to achieve with the second generation I5 and Asus (sort of) brought to the table in the second generation I5 and I7. All this is more marketing hype, much like the ultrabook farce and the BS about the current Atom powered machines not being the modern equivalent of an old netbook. Anyone else notice that the battery life champions of the past few years are typically not classified as ultrabooks? For that matter, has anyone else tried to use an Atom powered Windows 8 tablet only to watch that little spinning ball or series of dots waiting for things to happen? Real world numbers from real world hardware producers mean something. Anything else is just more bluster from Intel. I am also sure when it turns out they only bring marginal battery life improvement to the table, it will all be the fault of the vendors and their poor hardware designs.