Intel Corp (INTC)

[wbmw]

nVidia Tegra K1-32 (Sheild Tablet): 30.9 FPS, 64.9 FPS
Intel Haswell 15W (HD 4400): 30.4 FPS, 61.9 FPS

Huh... Ain't that somthin'... And the K1 does it at <11W, according to my brief googling.

Yup, very observant. I saw this as well.

Of course, we should all note that Tegra K1 uses an entire Kepler SMX unit, which not so long ago was enough for a $50-70 discrete card.

For example, look at these submissions:

NVIDIA GeForce GT 635: 33.0 FPS, 63.4 FPS
NVIDIA GeForce GT 620: 23.6 FPS, 37.3 FPS
AMD Radeon HD 8670M: 27.6 FPS, 66.1 FPS
AMD Radeon HD 7700M: 33.9 FPS, 87.3 FPS
NVIDIA GeForce 820M: 37.1 FPS, 77.8 FPS

These discrete cards aren't exactly that old, either. Maybe some of them are a year or two, at most. And now you can buy a Haswell product with modest GT2 and get similar performance - and now, an nVidia mobile product.

I think Tegra K1 has a very capable GPU - only thing to keep in mind is that the power dissipation is high for most tablet designs. nVidia put some fairly exotic heat spreaders in the Shield Tablet design, but most OEMs wouldn't spend the higher costs for these, just so they can accommodate a 6-8W design, since other tablet SOC vendors can offer designs in the 3-5W range.

At the same time, 15W is easily coolable in a laptop design with a fan, so I don't see a huge advantage for nVidia being able to dissipate 6-8W against Haswell's 15W. And with Broadwell ramping, I think even what little power advantage they have will be closed.