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Sandy Bridge Processors

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
Staff member
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May 18, 1997
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I have seen a lot of conflicting information on this lately so I thought I would set you guys straight. Sandy Bridge basically KILLS FSB/BLCK overclocking. The only processors you will have any luck OCing will be K series processors that are unlocked. And the truth in how good that will be will be found out soon.

On the AMD side of the fence, you will see the same thing with AMD Fusion processors. No FSB overclocking.

It looks like Bulldozer will still have hope as well as Intel's current 1366 line into the near future.
 
GHarris said:
It's disappointing that AMD would apply the same restriction. It could have worked in their (and er... oh yeah, the customers') favour if they'd allowed FSB overclocking to continue. In fact I'm sort of surprised that AMD's CPU division thinks they can afford NOT to tout every overclocking feature possible, they need the market share and sales.
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Maybe Bulldozer will be that badass? They may know something we dont.

Still, I like the ability to OC my chip if I want.
 
Is this what they said about Core i as well?

You will not be able to overclock and so on and that turned out not to be so true. I am sure they know their enthusiast market not f*** with it.
 
The Intel news is old, but would AMD do the same to Llano? Then again, I doubt anyone on [H] are interested in that for anything other than HTPCs and the like.

*fingers crossed Bulldozer doesn't have such bullshit*
 
So...if this goes through, looks like we can kiss budget oriented builds good bye. Intel will probably want $100s more for these 'k' series over their locked brethren.
 
well when I saw a mid-range SB (with 4C/8T) doing 4.9Ghz with the stock air cooler, and another one with 50K Vantage on air(pic) and another one 25% faster than a Lynnfield at the same speed (1 ,2)
and 22nm shipments in the second half of 2011 (I7 Sandy 22m?) and a 16 cores/32 threads SB running cinebench. I thought overclocking has become more fun and something is about to get Bulldozered :D

EDIT: ok not really fun :( (interesting read), I think Intel saw that overclocking has become popular and more mainstream now and decided to make money from it.
 
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Is Intel and/or AMD trying to phase out FSB/BLCK overclocking all together?!
 
In some respects the elimination of FSB/BCLK overclocking makes things easier (as long as you can get unlocked chips). It is a lot easier to just up the multiplier of the chip to get a desired overclock, than it is to mess with so many different settings related to increasing the FSB (voltages, DRAM timings, etc). Not saying it is better, just easier - especially for people who aren't looking for every last inch of performance.
 
Concensus seems to be that AMD is doing itself a disfavor by limiting FSB OCing. I wonder though who made that discussion and what was the reasoning behind it. You (all) are right, OCing could have put a nice and big feather into the AMDs camp hat.

And yes, it feels like we will be back to using pencils to short circuit certain circuits. Back to old school modding.

It looks like we can all understand why Intel is doing it, but why is amd? Anyone [H]ard enough know the answer?
 
Because they're more expensive - look at AMD cores being unlocked. Why do that if you can just buy a quad?
 
needmorecarnitine said:
Why? If Intel is selling unlocked cpus, why?
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Because in view of Intel's past pricing history to "Enthusiast Chips" , which is what the K series appears to be aimed at, first glance, the price point could prohibitive, especially when adding in yet another new motherboard. Enthusiast doesn't automatically equate to deepest pockets.

This is of course merely speculation on my part, but there is an exhisting track record for pricing.
 
First I've heard about AMD preventing FSB overclocks.

That seems like a mistake. The big feather in AMD's hat right now, so to speak, is budget chips that overclock very well, or budget chips with unlockable cores. They have some really great offerings in the under $100 range.

$90 gets you an Phenom II X4 3GHz with an unlocked multiplier
Or for $10 more, you get a Pentium G6950 that has a locked multiplier, is clocked 200MHz slower, and has half as many cores.

AMD has a nice advantage in the sub-$100 range because their stuff unlocks cores and overclocks. Lose that, and it's suddenly a lot less appealing.
 
Megalomaniac said:
It looks like we can all understand why Intel is doing it, but why is amd? Anyone [H]ard enough know the answer?
Click to expand...

I doubt if this change is being driven by a decision to limit or eliminate overclocking itself, as that is such a small percentage of Intel and AMD chip sales. Well, maybe a larger portion of AMD's given their smaller OEM base. Putting more and more capability on-chip reduces total system costs by simplifying motherboards, and allows the CPU manufacturer greater control over the final product.

As a bonus, it helps to better segregate the market. I'm sure neither Intel nor AMD is too fond of people buying a $100 CPU and making it perform like a $250 CPU, so that's a great un-designed for benefit. At least they are giving the option by selling K chips, even if it is at a mark-up.
 
Do we have any information about which customer segment buys the most CPUs? I mean, it's easy to say that Intel is shooting themselves in the foot because they're ignoring enthusiasts and that AMD can swoop in and reap the benefits of Intel's mistake...

***begin fake business math***
But if Intel sells 20 Million CPUs to Dell, and another 20 Million to HP, and in retail only sells 1 Million units to individuals, and if 20% of those people are enthusiasts who want to overclock... that's 200,000 CPUs.

Let's say half of those might buy intel anyway, but the other half are so mad they become life long AMD customers.... Well then Intel lost 100,000 sales... out of 41M total.

They might just not care about about that market. Removing the ability to overclock might not be a machiavellian plot by intel to impact overclockers. It might have just been a result of a nonrelated business decision... and to this point, it might not really impact their sales in anyway that's significant.

This guy's musings are interesting: http://www.bit-tech.net/blog/2010/07/29/what-happens-if-intel-does-end-overclocking/

(I personally hope the K series chips are made with overclocker's in mind, and that we all get 5Ghz on air... time will tell!).
 
so we used to pay $500+ for a Q6600 and pay a lot to go from it to the Q6700 or from the Q9550 to the Q9650 ($200 for 200Mhz?) and the little performance difference couldn’t justify the huge price difference, and we used and still have the extreme chips with their insane prices and no one is complained.

now we’ll have CPU’s that can be overclocked and even reach a 50%+ OC on air. but extra $100 for all that extra speed is bad? and we are not happy because playing with the FSB is more fun than the multi? I’m also not happy about this whole thing but don't know why.
 
I think that SB is going to create a nice value segment. Things are looking good.

As for overclocking, I think there will be some creativity to unleash it.
 
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GHarris said:
It's disappointing that AMD would apply the same restriction. It could have worked in their (and er... oh yeah, the customers') favour if they'd allowed FSB overclocking to continue. In fact I'm sort of surprised that AMD's CPU division thinks they can afford NOT to tout every overclocking feature possible, they need the market share and sales.
Click to expand...

I think that it applies the fusion line. If I recall it uses a different bus altogether. Then again Kyle is the first creditable source I have heard on the subject.
 
good stuff TheGuyOnTheCouch and .... as-many-details-as-possible please.
 
nalc said:
$90 gets you an Phenom II X4 3GHz with an unlocked multiplier
Or for $10 more, you get a Pentium G6950 that has a locked multiplier, is clocked 200MHz slower, and has half as many cores.
Click to expand...

Clock for clock the i3 is a good bit quicker than the X4 in the majority of everyday apps.
 
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firas said:
good stuff TheGuyOnTheCouch and .... as-many-details-as-possible please.
Click to expand...

So far I am finding the unlocked I7 to be quite a nice CPU.

Windows 7 installs without issue and the CPU runs at about 45C-50C under load with a Thermaltake cooling solution.

I can confirm that LGA-1156 Cooling Solutions such as the Corsair H70 and others that have LGA-1156 mounting will work just fine.

The Intel Burrage mobo has just 4-Phase power.

You only really need to support a 95W TDP for the high end Sandy Bridge processors if you don’t want to do any overclocking. The Burrage (p67 Intel board) Vreg can achieve about 200A at 1V.

So, it looks like low power consumption, low heat and some other beautiful tech is coming our way.

Windows 7 install is fast as hell, too.
 
The only overclocking people that Intel cares about are either going to
A: step up to the 2500K/2600K instead of a lesser chip
B: step up to a s1336/s2011 chip.

The guys who will switch to AMD Intel doesn't care about at all.
(I'll take A, to replace \\vilya system, BTW. 2500K+4GB+GTX560 sounds good)

Thanks for clarifying that for the masses, Kyle.
 
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The biggest losers out of this would be the budget overclockers who want to squeeze every bit of performance from their $100 CPUs. The thing is, those kind of overclockers are already running AMD anyway, whether it be budget Athlon II X3s/X4s or unlockable Phenom II BEs. Intel doesn't really have anything comparable in this price range except Core i3 and in most cases (except gaming) AMD has it covered easily. The <$150 enthusiast market is almost entirely AMD's domain, and it looks like will remain that way for some time to come.

Most of the Intel enthusiast camp are running either i5 or i7 QC chips that cost $200 and up. From what I've seen so far, the lower end 'K' SB chips will cost around the $200 mark also, so it's not like current Intel folks will suddenly be paying twice the price to get an overclockable chip.

I predict the O/C market will become very segregated, even more so than today. You will have the <$150 crowd almost exclusively AMD and the >$200 crowd almost exclusively Intel.

Personally it's a non issue for me because the way I'm looking at it, early next year I'll be paying the same money I did this year for my i5 750 chip, yet SB will have 1. an unlocked multiplier, 2. 10 - 15% higher IPC and 3. overclock to ~5GHz instead of ~4GHz on average. So I'll be looking at a performance increase of ~40% compared to my current i5 750 @ 4GHz. Can't really complain about that.

Of course, it sucks for the budget overclocks who can't afford Intel, but it's like that already...
 
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So far I have a Gigabyte P67 board and Intel Burrage. The Gigabyte has a bit beefier power phase management and I can't wait to try it out.
 
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As long as they have the K chips and keep em comin with good 1Ghz overclocks I'm happy and I'll pay a bill more. That works for me. You won't catch me forking out for an x series chip just so I can overclock though. If they want to sell more of those release those babies with more cores and 5Ghz+ base clocks.
 
TheGuyOnTheCouch said:
If anybody has any questions for an engineer on the Sandy Bridge platform, let me know.
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we are still waiting on the OC results :D. other then that I only have a few hundred questions. but I would settle for your first impressions with gaming (scaling) or the like if you had the time
 
Valset said:
we are still waiting on the OC results :D. other then that I only have a few hundred questions. but I would settle for your first impressions with gaming (scaling) or the like if you had the time
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I didn't sign any NDA or anything, so I'll post all my benchmarks, CPU-Z screens, etc. this week
 
Valset said:
we are still waiting on the OC results :D. other then that I only have a few hundred questions. but I would settle for your first impressions with gaming (scaling) or the like if you had the time
Click to expand...

Gaming will have to wait until I receive drivers from Intel for a few things on the Burrage board

A new BIOS just got released, making the board more stable. Burrage board is cool, it has a funny skull on it that has light up eyes.

4 Phase PM is enough to overclock these CPU's.
 
Intel is a lot better about sending me cool stuff than AMD, I might add.

Just thought I'd throw that out there. They are always good to people who work with them. I give them great feedback and they also make sure our stuff is going to work on their upcoming platforms. P67 is cool. I got a Smackover 2 in the mail.
 
TheGuyOnTheCouch said:
Intel is a lot better about sending me cool stuff than AMD, I might add.

Just thought I'd throw that out there. They are always good to people who work with them. I give them great feedback and they also make sure our stuff is going to work on their upcoming platforms. P67 is cool. I got a Smackover 2 in the mail.
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that's cool as hell and thank you by the way. We appreciate the inside look.

BTW as far as not being able to OC the locked chips is there an architectural reason like AMD (if that is indeed the case) fusion line or is it a marketing decision in your opinion?
 
I'm curious about the 1366 replacement, does anybody know when Intel will release them. I've heard sources thats either later 2011 or early 2012.
 
Valset said:
BTW as far as not being able to OC the locked chips is there an architectural reason like AMD (if that is indeed the case) fusion line or is it a marketing decision in your opinion?
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It's an architectural reason - they've tied moved the clock generator on-chip.

From Anand's architecture piece:

With Sandy Bridge, Intel integrated the clock generator, usually present on the motherboard, onto the 6-series chipset die. While BCLK is adjustable on current Core iX processors, with Sandy Bridge it’s mostly locked at 100MHz.
Click to expand...
 
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