Very glad that they did not hesitate to implement IVB i7 in Inspiron and Vostro series - considering they are the most basic in Home and Small-Business categories. Was afraid that it would be restricted only to XPS and Latitude and above! May be they cannot wait for months for IVB i5 series to release I guess.
All I care is that they put out BIOS's to support Ivy Bridge on the QM67 systems. Has any laptop manufacturer done this? I heard this hinges on Intel bothering to release a ME update for QM67 systems. I see no reason for them not to since who in their right mind would dump a whole Sandy Bridge system for a whole new Ivy Bridge one. Not worth the cost.
Can someone at Anandtech look into this? I will be pretty pissed off if Intel does never end up supporting Ivy Bridge on QM67 and HM65. The thing that made me pull the trigger on a Sandy Bridge system was that Intel said it would be compatible with Ivy Bridge CPUs. Then we get to Ivy Bridge launching, its looking like they only meant DESKTOP systems, and are leaving notebooks in the dust even though the socket is 100% compatible.
Generally speaking, I'd say the number of people looking to upgrade a Sandy Bridge laptop to an Ivy Bridge processor is going to be extremely small. It would be nice if the major laptops got BIOS updates to support newer processors, but I would never purchase or recommend a laptop based on the hope/assumption that you will be able to upgrade to a newer CPU down the line. And really, unless you're running HD 3000 with no discrete GPU, there's not much of a point to upgrading to IVB just yet.
Anyway, what laptop are you currently using? I can certainly check with my contacts at the appropriate OEM(s) to see if there are any plans to support IVB on 6-series chipset laptops.
It's a Dell Latitude E6520. One of the few laptops that still offers an expresscard slot, which I use to connect a GTX 580 to :) The PCI-E bandwidth reduction hurts a little, but the relatively weak CPU is an issue too, which hurts in games like BF3. There are also some times where I am away from home without the 580, where having a stronger IGP would be nice.
The official word from Intel is: "The 6 series CAN support Ivy Bridge, but it’s an OEM decision and they have to build it, support, provide firmware/BIOS/ME et al to work. So it's kinda a chicken and egg scenario." I also asked Dell and my contact said, "I can look into it, but I wouldn't expect the answer your reader is hoping for...." Clevo probably has a better chance of updating to support IVB on some of their laptops, but even then I'd be surprised if they actually release the necessary info/firmware to the public.
Hmm. Well thanks for looking into it. Dell did provide the required BIOS updates back when Core 2 duo came out to be run on systems that were originally Core duo only. Seems odd that they would change their stance on offering future CPU upgrades, but maybe SB to IVB requires more work.
Add the audioworld to the customer list. Though Vostro's 3450,3550 and 3750 mobile line uses HM67 chipset, DELL implementation of Renesas daughterboard, which allows for an uncommon and comfortable total of 4 USB connectors (2x USB 3.0). Count in the required ExpressCard slot, that allows Musicians, DJ and Studio techs the use of professional SoundCards at low latencies and high bandwith. And then its easy to see why these models have been quite successful in this area. Even if the new Vostro Ivy bridge line comes including thunderbolt connectors, there will have to pass quite some time (years) till soundcard makers upgrade their variety of used connectors into the new capacities of thunderbolt.
Therefore for 2012 and some part of 2013, it will be difficult to sell new laptops to those customers who already bought Vostro's 2nd generation Sandy Bridge. In my case, for many concurring reasons (W8, low delay (ms) touch technology, extended battery life, thunderbolt) I will wait until 2013 or Q1 2014 for the "Haswell" generation of new chipsets. Consider that this chipset refresh will finally make the switch to 32 nm, (HM67,HM65, QM67 "Cougar" chipset is still built in old and energy consuming, 90nm lithography fabrication process!!!). Meanwhile, I (and probably many audio-related users) would seriously consider upgrading my actual 3450 CPU to Ivy bridge CPUs the same way I am considering 1,35v CL8 1600 Mhz 8G memory upgrade.
Actually as easily as DELL's third party repair service fixed a Vostro laptop that a musician friend broke on a tour, they could provide the actual upgrade while DELL online cart system could just as fast add the service.
Probably need explaining why musicians, Djs, Studio techs have mostly chosen 2011-2012 DELL Vostro line instead of Inspirions, XPSs or Latitudes. First discard XPS and Inspirion for the omission of ExpressCard connector. There are many reasons for this need, pbbly too off topic to list here. Latitudes instead have a customer base on a number of studios, mainly because of the good build, however their lack of USB 3.0 (and hence no future-proof from a 2011 perspective) or the low count of USB ports, have distanced Live acts or DJs who need to plug several USB MIDI controllers.
And in the wide perspective, INTEL will have a thin time window to sell Ivy Bridge; started late on 2012 because of the remaining high stock of Sandy Bridge and ending early 2013 because of the building pressure to bring on Haswell to tone down their own fab process costs and also because of the crescent urgency to lower platform's power consumption and finally to compete with what IS coming; tablets, surging smartphones, other CPU developers, etc.
Why let go segments INTEL already owns? Offering high quality CPU upgrades to recent customers (1 year +) looks like a sensible choice for them too.
Sometimes I want to suggest people buy a dell. But each time i see those memory upgrade prices...
Going from 4Gb (2*2)1600 to 8Gb (2*4)1600 cost 123 euros more not including taxes. That is 160 US dollars?? I can off course do it myself but still BONKERS!
Does anyone know if the Vostro 470 come with Intel® HD Graphics 2500 or HD 4000? This article and Dell's site only list HD 4000 yet the i5-3450 only supports 2500.
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18 Comments
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dexterkarthik - Wednesday, May 2, 2012 - link
Very glad that they did not hesitate to implement IVB i7 in Inspiron and Vostro series - considering they are the most basic in Home and Small-Business categories. Was afraid that it would be restricted only to XPS and Latitude and above!May be they cannot wait for months for IVB i5 series to release I guess.
DanNeely - Wednesday, May 2, 2012 - link
odds are only a few of the high end laptops will be getting i7's; the rest will be updated later when the i5/i3 parts come out.Khenglish - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
All I care is that they put out BIOS's to support Ivy Bridge on the QM67 systems. Has any laptop manufacturer done this? I heard this hinges on Intel bothering to release a ME update for QM67 systems. I see no reason for them not to since who in their right mind would dump a whole Sandy Bridge system for a whole new Ivy Bridge one. Not worth the cost.Can someone at Anandtech look into this? I will be pretty pissed off if Intel does never end up supporting Ivy Bridge on QM67 and HM65. The thing that made me pull the trigger on a Sandy Bridge system was that Intel said it would be compatible with Ivy Bridge CPUs. Then we get to Ivy Bridge launching, its looking like they only meant DESKTOP systems, and are leaving notebooks in the dust even though the socket is 100% compatible.
JarredWalton - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Generally speaking, I'd say the number of people looking to upgrade a Sandy Bridge laptop to an Ivy Bridge processor is going to be extremely small. It would be nice if the major laptops got BIOS updates to support newer processors, but I would never purchase or recommend a laptop based on the hope/assumption that you will be able to upgrade to a newer CPU down the line. And really, unless you're running HD 3000 with no discrete GPU, there's not much of a point to upgrading to IVB just yet.Anyway, what laptop are you currently using? I can certainly check with my contacts at the appropriate OEM(s) to see if there are any plans to support IVB on 6-series chipset laptops.
Khenglish - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
It's a Dell Latitude E6520. One of the few laptops that still offers an expresscard slot, which I use to connect a GTX 580 to :) The PCI-E bandwidth reduction hurts a little, but the relatively weak CPU is an issue too, which hurts in games like BF3. There are also some times where I am away from home without the 580, where having a stronger IGP would be nice.More about laptops with desktop graphics cards if you're interested: http://forum.notebookreview.com/gaming-software-gr...
There are a lot of people in this thread who would like Ivy Bridge.
JarredWalton - Friday, May 4, 2012 - link
The official word from Intel is: "The 6 series CAN support Ivy Bridge, but it’s an OEM decision and they have to build it, support, provide firmware/BIOS/ME et al to work. So it's kinda a chicken and egg scenario." I also asked Dell and my contact said, "I can look into it, but I wouldn't expect the answer your reader is hoping for...." Clevo probably has a better chance of updating to support IVB on some of their laptops, but even then I'd be surprised if they actually release the necessary info/firmware to the public.Khenglish - Friday, May 4, 2012 - link
Hmm. Well thanks for looking into it. Dell did provide the required BIOS updates back when Core 2 duo came out to be run on systems that were originally Core duo only. Seems odd that they would change their stance on offering future CPU upgrades, but maybe SB to IVB requires more work.Nexing - Wednesday, May 9, 2012 - link
Add the audioworld to the customer list.Though Vostro's 3450,3550 and 3750 mobile line uses HM67 chipset, DELL implementation of Renesas daughterboard, which allows for an uncommon and comfortable total of 4 USB connectors (2x USB 3.0).
Count in the required ExpressCard slot, that allows Musicians, DJ and Studio techs the use of professional SoundCards at low latencies and high bandwith. And then its easy to see why these models have been quite successful in this area.
Even if the new Vostro Ivy bridge line comes including thunderbolt connectors, there will have to pass quite some time (years) till soundcard makers upgrade their variety of used connectors into the new capacities of thunderbolt.
Therefore for 2012 and some part of 2013, it will be difficult to sell new laptops to those customers who already bought Vostro's 2nd generation Sandy Bridge.
In my case, for many concurring reasons (W8, low delay (ms) touch technology, extended battery life, thunderbolt) I will wait until 2013 or Q1 2014 for the "Haswell" generation of new chipsets.
Consider that this chipset refresh will finally make the switch to 32 nm, (HM67,HM65, QM67 "Cougar" chipset is still built in old and energy consuming, 90nm lithography fabrication process!!!).
Meanwhile, I (and probably many audio-related users) would seriously consider upgrading my actual 3450 CPU to Ivy bridge CPUs the same way I am considering 1,35v CL8 1600 Mhz 8G memory upgrade.
Actually as easily as DELL's third party repair service fixed a Vostro laptop that a musician friend broke on a tour, they could provide the actual upgrade while DELL online cart system could just as fast add the service.
Nexing - Wednesday, May 9, 2012 - link
Probably need explaining why musicians, Djs, Studio techs have mostly chosen 2011-2012 DELL Vostro line instead of Inspirions, XPSs or Latitudes.First discard XPS and Inspirion for the omission of ExpressCard connector. There are many reasons for this need, pbbly too off topic to list here.
Latitudes instead have a customer base on a number of studios, mainly because of the good build, however their lack of USB 3.0 (and hence no future-proof from a 2011 perspective) or the low count of USB ports, have distanced Live acts or DJs who need to plug several USB MIDI controllers.
And in the wide perspective, INTEL will have a thin time window to sell Ivy Bridge; started late on 2012 because of the remaining high stock of Sandy Bridge and ending early 2013 because of the building pressure to bring on Haswell to tone down their own fab process costs and also because of the crescent urgency to lower platform's power consumption and finally to compete with what IS coming; tablets, surging smartphones, other CPU developers, etc.
Why let go segments INTEL already owns? Offering high quality CPU upgrades to recent customers (1 year +) looks like a sensible choice for them too.
plopke - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Sometimes I want to suggest people buy a dell. But each time i see those memory upgrade prices...Going from 4Gb (2*2)1600 to 8Gb (2*4)1600 cost 123 euros more not including taxes. That is 160 US dollars?? I can off course do it myself but still BONKERS!
MGSsancho - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Vostro desktops are decent, spend the extra $100 and get the optiplex series if you can because money grows on trees.MrSpadge - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Almost 2 years ago DELL was already using 80+ Gold for their Optiplex, so I assume the XPS will at least feature these.casteve - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Wait and see if it has an Energy Star label. The ES 5.0 Spec (effective July 09):"Internal power supplies: 85% minimum efficiency at 50% of rated output and 82% minimum efficiency at 20% and 100% of rated output"
DukeN - Thursday, May 3, 2012 - link
Ugh, WTF is the problem with these desktop makers.Neither HP nor Dell supports native SSDs even today for most desktop lines.
WTF dudes - wake up out of the stone age already.
piroroadkill - Wednesday, May 9, 2012 - link
Agreed. Completely.Bare minimum to be considered these days is a Seagate Momentus XT hybrid drive. Above that, SSDs.
Dave S - Friday, May 4, 2012 - link
Does anyone know if the Vostro 470 come with Intel® HD Graphics 2500 or HD 4000? This article and Dell's site only list HD 4000 yet the i5-3450 only supports 2500.rcmerlin - Thursday, July 19, 2012 - link
[scrambls}ceGdESjwK ⋤⊰⋧⊩ ∩∢≪≽∎⊅∾∿ ≛⋊∁ ⋡∩∻⊅≼⋀ ⋎⊁⊗☆⊰ √∖∤≐ ∹∛≭ ⋭≥≰⊘⊇☍⋪− ⊛⊀ ≀≗≉☉⊽≞⊻⊍∡≸ ⊡⊸≾≾ ≓⋤⊳∣ ☇⊯ ∉⋇≀≺☉{]jems-ford - Monday, August 20, 2018 - link
Thanks