Intel Sandy Bridge 2600K and 2500K Processors @ [H]

All I am thinking when I see these reviews is, "AMD must have had all sales slam to a halt, and that I am going to buy a 1090T for $150 real soon" lol. Poor AMD, I am a fanboy, but there is no ignoring a punch in the gut as hard as the 2500k and 2600k. My Word.
 
Fire488 said:
Not sure what you mean by those remarks, but since i am a very positive person and always try to see the good in people I will take your words as a thoughtful compliment.
Thank you.

I can't wait to see these processors roll out!
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Thanks. I didn't mean any harm! ;)

When it comes to computer hardware - as you well know it - you put a lot of cash into a new system, and shortly thereafter, you find yourself in '2nd place'.

An i7 980X Extreme is no measly expense, and your wallet sure can tell the difference. :D
 
man I was hoping they'd come out today (the 4th) so I could order and get them by friday with 3 day shipping. Whether they come out Wed or Sat doesn't matter much.. probably be out the 9th. I think they were smart to release them after christmas though.. more hype then as people aren't focused on the holidays. They are in holiday hangover mode and this is something interesting to spice that up.
 
amd is gonna have to lower the price on the x6's again.

that 2500k gives it a good run for its money
 
Bodes well for 1356 and 2011.

If it weren't for graphics AMD would be a total joke.
 
maverick786us said:
SBs are supposed to be faster Clock by Clock compared to present Core i7 / i5. But in these results a on OCed 2500 @ 4.3 is only marginally faster than an OCed 920 @ 3.6 GHz. So if both the Processors are at 3.6Ghz, 920 might be faster:confused:
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I noticed this also and I think the Lack of HT and 2mb less L3 cache made the difference there.

Also want to thank kyle for putting in the 920 @ 3.6 in the test that is what i'm running and it gave me a direct comparison of where my current system stacks up again the new midrange chip.

A friend of mine just build a 1100T system last week after I told him not to he should wait. His stupid reasoning had something to do with a P2 system he owned that was junk and he has stayed away from intel. i'm going to be spamming him this review by email so he can see how much he Fucked up! :)
 
Looks like my E8600 machine will be downclocked and turned finally formed into just a HTPC instead of a combo gaming/media pc. Loving the watts on that.
 
Fire488 said:
Kills me because I just put together a system on NewEgg and it consisted of many top parts including the i7 980X Extreme processor. now I feel like it will be second fiddle in a few weeks...

Thank you for this fantastic post.
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The 980X is still faster than Sandy Bridge in many applications. I wouldn't worry about it.
 
nobody seems to notice this in the review, but shouldn't the 655k be an i5 instead of an i7?
 
Great review as always. Thanks ALOT for all the tips in page 2.
when I saw both the 2600K and the 980X at 4.4 I started looking for a non-core sensitive benchmarks but even in games you kept those extra 2 cores working.

Sandy Bridge GPU performance is limited but amazing when it comes to its physical size. Now I’m sure it doesn’t work this way but physically speaking, can’t we throw 50 or more of those GPU’s on a chip similar to the CPU chip and end up with a better performance than the highest end discrete card?
 
See the CPU in my sig? Yeah. The reason for that is heat. It looks like I can finally upgrade. Intel has done a great job on this CPU, too bad AMD has nothing to compete with it.

Oh yea, don't forget the 2500S which only has a TDP of 65W vs the 95W of the 2500K, it will use even less power than this one. Very impressive.
 
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aShrubbery! said:
Thanks. I didn't mean any harm! ;)

When it comes to computer hardware - as you well know it - you put a lot of cash into a new system, and shortly thereafter, you find yourself in '2nd place'.

An i7 980X Extreme is no measly expense, and your wallet sure can tell the difference. :D
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I agree 100%. My last build was built on the Core2 Duo and shortly after the Core 2 Quads came out. I remember feeling really upset about that because I paid top dollar for a chip that was obsolete in a month. The only saving grace was that at the time there were no programs or games that utilized four cores.
 
That's just nuts seeing how close those get to the 980X. I bet they will be crunching monsters. I want one!
 
It seems like Intel provided reviewers with a tall Intel heat sink but is that what really comes with the 2600K in retail form? I'm looking at swapping out my Q6600 for one of these.
 
Awesome. I can't wait to upgrade my tired Core2Duo system.

I was originally going with the 2500k but considering how infrequently I upgrade I might spring the extra $100 for the 2600k if funds allow.

It's looking like I'll need ~$500 for a 2500k upgrade and ~$600 for a 2600k upgrade.
 
Hostile said:
Awesome. I can't wait to upgrade my tired Core2Duo system.

I was originally going with the 2500k but considering how infrequently I upgrade I might spring the extra $100 for the 2600k if funds allow.

It's looking like I'll need ~$500 for a 2500k upgrade and ~$600 for a 2600k upgrade.
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Same boat. Might just spring for the 2600k and be happy with it for my next 4 year upgrade cycle. :p
 
Awesome review. Good to see just how much bad-assness Intel brought to the mainstream table.

My question: Ivy Bridge is about 9 months out. As someone who can't afford to upgrade often (see sig for proof - and the wife is in a C2D...), would you wait for the additional features that will come with socket 2011 or jump on this bandwagon and ride it for 3 years? Vid Card and other things will get bumped up incrementally, but considering I need the CPU, board, and RAM I'm going to be out at least $500-600 for this upgrade, and don't want to regret it when the high end parts get released.
 
I wish there was some software that made full use of my current system, let alone one of these beasts.
 
Thanks for the review. As someone who skipped the original i7 release and is still clutching to my q6600 this kind of overclocking doesn't look half bad. Less headache and great results? Yes please.

Jeremy C said:
Awesome review. Good to see just how much bad-assness Intel brought to the mainstream table.

My question: Ivy Bridge is about 9 months out. As someone who can't afford to upgrade often (see sig for proof - and the wife is in a C2D...), would you wait for the additional features that will come with socket 2011 or jump on this bandwagon and ride it for 3 years? Vid Card and other things will get bumped up incrementally, but considering I need the CPU, board, and RAM I'm going to be out at least $500-600 for this upgrade, and don't want to regret it when the high end parts get released.
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That's not something anyone else can answer for you. It all depends on if you can do what you are trying to do right now. I'm in the same boat. I wish that I could run CF for eyefinity, but I'm on a nvidia board so that's one of the major driving forces in my urge to upgrade.(that and my current system would do awesome as a server) 4.5Ghz is really, really tempting... My system sits pretty maxed when I'm at home playing games in one window while watching hd video in another. (Civ 5 and tv anyone?) Three screens worth of real-estate really upped my multitasking demand.
 
I think that I will just wait and get the SB processor. I too am in need of an upgrade and I try to hang on to what I have for atleast 3 years as I have.
Can't wait till they come out... I called NewEgg and they would not comment on when they will be available... figures.
 
Looks like I'm gonna be selling the i7 970. Power consumption of the SB is better than the i7 980x.
 
"Overclocking is dead, long live overclocking."

Sounds like a Megadeth song

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6PwHROufhw&feature=fvst

I think that, people really looking to tweak intel hardware need to think twice about Sandy Bridge, Sandy appears to be more like fire and forget. I'd say alot of people not building something really mundane would wait for Socket 2011.
 
SOOOOO tempting.
I love my main rig. Other than GPUs, I have not had to touch a single component since I built it. Sure, the OC is oddly maxed at 3.01ghz, and the Q6700 is going on 4 years old. But at my monitor resolutions (1680X1050), I can run the majority of games maxed. Otherwise I do office work on it.

Nonetheless, these SB parts are crazy nice, especially regarding power and temps. Maybe 2011 (year and socket) will be my next upgrade...
 
Nice review and answered a few questions I had however, On the FFXIV benchmark you were really getting seven THOUSAND frames per second? That seems.... insane no matter what graphics card you are running.
 
$~400 entry point for 4+GHz on the latest architecture, eh?

Sounds like a good swap for my 'blown doors' Q6600 on an X48DQ6 at 3.6GHz. heh heh

I think I'm a little sentimental about being able to mangle the bios while chasing miniscule performance gains with my classic s775 setup though, it can certainly stick around.
 
Snowknight26 said:
The Handbrake 'Blu-ray to MKV' comparison is kind of flawed. You're encoding a 2.5 minute clip in almost 2.5 minutes, meaning real time. Seeing as the decoder Handbrake uses is single threaded, you can assume that any bottleneck would be casued by the decoding not keeping up with the encoding. Same with the 'VOB to M4V' test. 30 minutes encoded in 2 minutes is 450fps, which is definitely bottlenecked by the decoder. As a result, one core is maxed out while the others wait. So realistically, the 980X could be much faster.

Good review otherwise. :D
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It is not a benchmark. It is a heavily used real world application so it is not "flawed" at all in terms of the comparison. I think you would be best served by the Synthetic Benchmark page to get what you are looking for in terms of scaling.
 
vengence said:
Nice review and answered a few questions I had however, On the FFXIV benchmark you were really getting seven THOUSAND frames per second? That seems.... insane no matter what graphics card you are running.
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Those are not frames, those are "points" in that canned benchmark.
 
D.Law said:
nobody seems to notice this in the review, but shouldn't the 655k be an i5 instead of an i7?
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You are correct, it is labeled incorrectly in every graph. It will not be changed as it is insignificant to the outcome and conclusions in the review.
 
Why do they say it is the second generation of "core" wasnt core2duo/quad the first, then i3/5/7 ?
 
Well .... The 920 holds up pretty good to this processor. Since im running mine at 4.2 I think I'll wait for Ivy Bridge. But part of me wants to buy a 2600K and mobo to see how much I can crank it up too. If I can get a stable 5.0 GHZ with it then sell my 920 and R3E. Hummmm......
 
Elmy said:
Well .... The 920 holds up pretty good to this processor. Since im running mine at 4.2 I think I'll wait for Ivy Bridge. But part of me wants to buy a 2600K and mobo to see how much I can crank it up too. If I can get a stable 5.0 GHZ with it then sell my 920 and R3E. Hummmm......
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That's precisely what I'm going to do.

However, if I were building one now, I'd go with a 2600k and clock it to hell and back.

Everything I've seen make these processors pretty damn impressive, and have to put a lot of pressure on AMD.
 
vengence said:
Ok, so the graph is labeled wrong then. That's what I was figuring. Thanks for the clarification.
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I would fix it but I will not be using it again. We had three other gaming benchmarks as well, but they showed nothing in terms of scaling. The only real way to do that is through real world gaming and that is hugely resource intensive, but we will hopefully have an article late in Feb or early March.
 
Great review as always.

I do have a complaint.

IMO the gaming tests are pretty much useless. They say absolutely nothing about real world gaming performance. But I guess you can't make everyone happy.

You already have an overclocked rig for testing that you can use for comparison . Just do a quick test with say a 570 or 6970 on an OC 2500k/2600k. So we can see how SB compares to a high end core i7.
 
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