Sandy Bridge Performance Preview

i found the whole article very interesting i like there approach it is similar to AMD's with there reg and black series. The performance looks great and that was without turbo boost enabled.
 
Now only if Intel make those chips overclockable probably going to be better than the 980x.
 
prtuc2 said:
Now only if Intel make those chips overclockable probably going to be better than the 980x.
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what part of unlocked multipliers on K series parts doesnt explain itself...

"First and foremost we have the K-series parts. These will be fully unlocked, supporting multipliers up to 57x. Sandy Bridge should have more attractive K SKUs than what we’ve seen to date. The Core i7 2600 and 2500 will both be available as a K-edition. The former should be priced around $562 and the latter at $205 if we go off of current pricing"
 
oh yeah and this part too.

"Secondly, some regular Sandy Bridge processors will have partially unlocked multipliers. The idea is that you take your highest turbo multiplier, add a few more bins on top of that, and that’ll be your maximum multiplier. It gives some overclocking headroom, but not limitless"
 
These SB chips look to be pretty damn fast, especially the on-die GPU.
Having the performance of a discrete GPU is amazing.
 
flyz said:
These SB chips look to be pretty damn fast, especially the on-die GPU.
Having the performance of a discrete GPU is amazing.
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Yep. When Sandy Bridge comes out in the LGA 1155 form, this might render some of the low-end current-generation discrete GPUs redundant if not obsolete.
 
Looks awesome! Although, at the same time, it looks like I might be able to comfortably skip that generation with my 980x. Hopefully, maybe. Probably.
 
Screw Sandy Bridge and it's half assed turbo+multiplier OC'ing.

AMD.. can you hear that? It's opportunity calling
 
so um, game over for AMD. Intel keeps improving bulldozer will only compete against i7 tech. Damn
 
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man they get 20% increase with each generation now. Some one should do an article on cpu's of today and compare it to the k8 p4 generation. I know its been like 5 years but it does not feel like that far ago.
 
E4g1e said:
Yep. When Sandy Bridge comes out in the LGA 1155 form, this might render some of the low-end current-generation discrete GPUs redundant if not obsolete.
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Well ati is about to release new cards so the low end will probably be better.
 
HisSvt76 said:
what part of unlocked multipliers on K series parts doesnt explain itself...

"First and foremost we have the K-series parts. These will be fully unlocked, supporting multipliers up to 57x. Sandy Bridge should have more attractive K SKUs than what we’ve seen to date. The Core i7 2600 and 2500 will both be available as a K-edition. The former should be priced around $562 and the latter at $205 if we go off of current pricing"
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Sorry I guess I miss that part and thanks for the clarification.
 
Even Anand admits he doesnt know how the K series will turn out, and it could be "really really bad". Just have to see what Intel does.
 
anand tested the "single core" graphics part too.... I can only imagine what turbo enabled, final drivers, and *dual core* graphics will give the final product....

I was seriously considering getting an alienware m11x, but now i'm pretty sure i'm going to hold off for the dual core sandy bridges to appear (yes I know that means i'll be waiting till next summer.... but I only buy new systems once every 4 years at the minimum....)

mmm, and a mini-itx system would be sweet with one of these things in it...

ahh the possibilities... doesnt really look like i'll be getting anything other than a laptop and mini itx system at least until the next console generation...
 
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I wonder if the board manufacturers can sneak in an external clock gen for the external busses. They're probably already working on it.
 
So... Are the "K" chips going to cost twice the price of the non-"K" chips like they do now? That's what I want to know.
 
Nice performance, I definetly would like one of those in the next PC I build. I know most people are concerned about the overclockability of Sandy Bridge. But whats going on with USB 3 support? It still seems to be added in instead of native to the chipset.
 
I highly doubt it, in the seven years since I have seen HT come out I have never been floored by what it has to offer, and I've owned several CPUs with Hyperthreading.
 
sandy bridge will be pretty sweet when it comes out and OC capabilities will really make it shine
 
What is about the equivalent discrete video card of the integrated GPU within the Sandy Bridge CPU's? What kind of graphics performance does it offer with its integrated GPU?
 
ya im holding out for the 6-8 core SB on the 2011 socket with quad channel memory too, but i think ill be waiting till black friday next year :(
to hold me over i got a used 260 and a q9550 off fleabay, not a bad 200 dollar side grade to hold me over
 
Been a while since anything got me interested, nehalem did it, westmere was expected to but basically fell flat to me. Sandy Bidge, however...yum.

Since I love charts, I did some work with the ones from the article. Prices are from yesterday on newegg, like 10 minutes after the article went live. I suspect the i7-950 is supposed to be the i7-930 (or post upcoming price cut with the same effect), significantly cheaper and sitting in about the same spot as the rest of that box.



Im wondering how the 12 core GPUs are gonna do, if they really are in the mobile chips and this was a 6 core that got tested. If thats the case then the discrete low end mobile market is gonna disappear for nVid/AMD. I wouldn't buy a 5450 mobile chip (for example) at $100 when the H67 is just as fast.

Also, Im curious as to how "unlocked" the K series will be. Do we get to set individual multis for 1/2/4 cores active? 3.3 with 4 active and 4.0 with 2 would satisfy me quite well.

Personally, Im expecting to spend $600 on the core of my next gaming build when these come out. 2500K, $120 H67 mobo and overclock to 4.0 or so. 4GB of DDR3 and whichever $200 GPU is fastest at the time. Play any game damn well and still be inexpensive when matched with my current case/PSU/monitors/etc.
 
fishrule said:
But whats going on with USB 3 support? It still seems to be added in instead of native to the chipset.
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Intel will not be adding USB 3 native to the initial Sandy Bridge chip sets. IMO they probably won't add it native until they're reading to add Light Peak. So for now and probably until 2012 we'll be relying on NEC for USB 3.0 chips.

Sengirr said:
What is about the equivalent discrete video card of the integrated GPU within the Sandy Bridge CPU's? What kind of graphics performance does it offer with its integrated GPU?
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Basically normal people who just web surf, email & run Office will not need any type of discrete GPU. Games like the Sims should be able to run on these things pretty well.
 
Dark Shroud said:
Intel will not be adding USB 3 native to the initial Sandy Bridge chip sets. IMO they probably won't add it native until they're reading to add Light Peak. So for now and probably until 2012 we'll be relying on NEC for USB 3.0 chips.
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I've no interest in USB3 not much of a point IMO. SATA3, however... *drools over SSDs*
 
matrix563 said:
what is light peak?
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New universal interface that uses fiber optics to go very fast. It is supposed to be able to be used both as a replacement for USB, but also as a replacement for SATA and DVI type connections.

From Intel.

Light Peak is the code-name for a new high-speed optical cable technology designed to connect your electronic devices to each other. Light Peak delivers high bandwidth starting at 10Gb/s with the potential ability to scale to 100Gb/s over the next decade. At 10Gb/s, you could transfer a full-length Blu-Ray movie in less than 30 seconds. Optical technology also allows for smaller connectors and longer, thinner, and more flexible cables than currently possible. Light Peak also has the ability to run multiple protocols simultaneously over a single cable, enabling the technology to connect devices such as peripherals, displays, disk drives, docking stations, and more.
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"We expect that the components will be ready to ship in 2010" Sound intresting, though I think it's to board manafacturers etc. Apparently you can add a lightpeak hub to a PCIe x16 slot so it should work with most existing boards that don't have it built in.
 
light peak sounds good if its fairly easy to plug in like spdif, but as long as its a lil bigger so you are not fumbling :p. make it circular too if possible intel ;)
 
I'm bummed that 1155 six core CPUs are not being talked about, but I'll really need to upgrade from the dual core Athlon II I'm currently using.

My original plan was to outfit a 2500k with 2 x 4gb of 1600MHz + ram, but I think I'll get 4 x 2gb so I can move it a quad channel 2011 setup if the 1155 platform goes nowhere, core-wise.
 
matrix563 said:
light peak sounds good if its fairly easy to plug in like spdif, but as long as its a lil bigger so you are not fumbling :p. make it circular too if possible intel ;)
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They show some of the cables for it in the videos. Their white flexible cables less about half a cm thick. It doesn't really show the connectors on the end but they look similar to display port connectors from the pixelly image in the video. Circular would make sense so it would be like the optical sound output.
 
Intel giveth and Intel taketh away.

Jury still out but for a serious "tweaker" like me it sucks big sweaty ape nuts as the writing is on the wall about the relentless march to a computer on a chip.

AMD.. can you hear that? It's opportunity calling
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Yep, they have done it before but the task is daunting this time.
 
Well I hope Intel doesn't take to long to rollout Lightpeak and PCI-E 3.0 with Sandy Bridge, because once those come out I am absolutely upgrading.
 
Question about the K series. The article says "fully unlocked" does that mean in terms of both the BCLK AND multiplier or just the multiplier? It's not THAT big a deal, but it would be nice if both sides were unlocked for some added fine tuning. Either way, these look like good candidates for my Q6600 replacement.
 
RamonGTP said:
Question about the K series. The article says "fully unlocked" does that mean in terms of both the BCLK AND multiplier or just the multiplier? It's not THAT big a deal, but it would be nice if both sides were unlocked for some added fine tuning. Either way, these look like good candidates for my Q6600 replacement.
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The multiplier - up to 57x. This theoretically allows an overclock up to 5.7GHz. The BCLK will not be locked per se - but instead, all of the buses on both the i3/i5/i7-2xxx series CPUs and the H67 and P67 chipsets will be tied to the BCLK. And the bus components do not like being run at speeds that are more than 3MHz away from the stock BCLK speed. This does not mean that the buses will also be at 100MHz, the nominal speed of the Sandy Bridge CPUs' BCLK. They will run at their native speeds - but when the BCLK of the CPU gets raised, all of the buses will go up proportionately from their native clock speeds. So, (as to take a hypothetical example) a certain bus runs at 333MHz with the BCLK set at the CPU's stock 100MHz. Raising the BCLK by 10MHz will result in that 333MHz bus being raised by 33.3MHz.
 
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Got it... All I need now is for an Intel chipset to have native support for USB 3.0 and I can start planning my next build. :)
 
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