Intel’s Second-Gen Core CPUs: The Sandy Bridge Review

[Reynod]

I actually asked that question to Intel this morning. *HUGE* drawback to Quick Sync--it *has* to be used with integrated graphics (added this point to the review itself). It CAN be done with Switchable Graphics on the mobile side, but it's a significant effort. Here's the official response:

"For switchable graphics configurations, Intel® Quick Sync Video may remain functional and enabled. This requires the OEM to work with their preferred graphics and software vendor for validation. In addition, Intel Quick Sync Video can work in multi-monitor using multiple graphics device configurations. However, the application must be enabled through the Media SDK and the processor graphics output must be driving a display. In other words, a monitor must be connected to the Intel processor graphics port."

This does, in fact, suck. I want to be able to use Quick Sync with my discrete card, because I'm not giving up discrete graphics for fast transcoding. Hope that answers your question!!

Best,
Chris

Chris thanks for the clarification as it was not clear from any of the reviews I read.

I can't see any of us going "hang on a minute while I pull out my MONSTER Graphics card (love of my life) and reboot the system on IGP" ... just to do some transcoding??

Many of us (who game) would argueably spend more money on their Graphics card than the CPU ?? Interesting poll I guess?

Hopefully Intel will initiate some special sauce in upcoming BIOS updates ?? Would that sound about right in order to get around the problem?

Thanks for the review and the updates.

 

[scooterboi]

this is bad AMD!! for us 3d modeler your title as "the most bang for the buck" will be snatched by i5 2500k

 

[Guest]

The great question of this results is : What performance gain os loss came from processor, what came from optmized code for a target processor ?

 

[Pallimud]

great review. The google form broke, I don't know if my entry was submitted

 

[senti]

I'm just disgusted at how you ate all the marketing garbage about Quick Sync "advantages" without second thought. If you understand nothing in video encoding/decoding - please don't review it. Some points if you want to start thinking:
1) Get some decent software decoder to compare to, like CoreAVC.
2) Compare to 4+ GHz (over)clocked i7.
3) Compare the quality of hardware encoder output to what you can get with x264. Quality/size ratio is the top concern in video encoding, not who spends 1 second less.
4) Compare the encoding speed to fast profiles of x264 if you love meaningless encoding milliseconds so much.
5) The only other thing that matters besides quality/size ratio (enc only) and total processing time is total system power consumption. Measure it, not completely useless numbers like 1% or 10% CPU utilization.

 

[cangelini]

Is it me? Or have you all stopped rating comments? Very weird!
About the article, all what I can say is: (REALLY!)
I really hated Intel this time, and please don't shoot for this, it's how I see it.

Ratings are currently broken. We've let France know and they're "fixing it," we hear

 

[mihaitzateo]

Intel i5 760 which can be found at 200$ or less and does 4 ghz easyly,on air.
A test to see how i5 760 at 4ghz does against i5 2500k at 4ghz would have been nice.
Also i7 950 is at a comparabile price with i7 2600k and also does easyly 4ghz on air.And we could also see tests to compare i7 950 at 4ghz against i7 2600k at 4 ghz.
Cause there are rumors on inet that i7 2600k at 4.7 ghz is lower in performance than older i7 at 4.2 ghz.

 

[Guest]

Great review as always, thanks!

 

[christop]

I just got a I7-930 off ebay. Damn I will never have the newest tech But I guess I am not wasting money either.

 

[CyberAngel]

These are laptop CPU's
On the desktop/workstation one will want to use a dedicated GPU

32nm 4*CPU+GPU or 6*CPU, which one would you choose?

 

[gaborbarla]

[citation][nom]Maziar[/nom]Thanks for the review Chris QuickSync definitely looks interesting.[/citation]
Yes, indeed. Now only if they could get it working without having to enable on-board graphics. I am quite shocked at what I am seeing.

We use the older i7s for video conversions and they are FAST compared to our old AMD X2 conversion box. QuickSync is just in a league of its own. Obviously there are some major bottlenecks that ATI and NVidia haven't addressed successfully.
The cat is out of the bag now, and there is no turning back.

 

[fwupow]

Socket 1155 will not support more than 4 core Sandy Bridge cpus and BAM! just like that, the upgrade is CANCELLED! Looks like we're gonna be looking at 'Socket 1356'. http://bit.ly/fqnYb4

 

[fwupow]

[citation][nom]cangelini[/nom]"Wow, stupid. The K series chips for overclocking are the only ones to feature the better graphics (3000), however no enthusiests overclockers are even going to use int. graphics and to top it off, the H67 that you need to use it on doesn't support overclocking. LOL
How retarded is that???"[/citation]

That is FULL ON RAGING retardation with a side order of drool buckets!
You get the sense that the cpu engineers at Intel are geniuses but their efforts
are undone by some goofball marketing strategist. 'Oops! Looks like we
accidentally matched the HD3000 integrated graphics'with the wrong cpus. Too
late to fix now, they're already loaded on the trucks.'

 

[gerhardb]

It would have been interesting to see how the gulftown i7-980X stacked up in these benchmarks.

Is there a particular reason the current top-of-the-line CPU was not included in the benchmarks?

 

[youssef 2010]

Luckily for AMD, the team that decided to split the gaphics engine in the first place don't seem to know what they're doing.They could've just configured the PCU to disable some EU when not needed.Of course, the one who decided to torment most of the desktop users with the handicapped version of the graphics engine is a complete jerk.

 

[MARSOC_Operator]

"Ignoring 1680x1050 (nobody with high-end graphics and a respectable processor is gaming on a 17” display, right?)"


WOW! What a load of B.S. The author completely ignores the fact there is gamers out there who care about high FPS, quality fast HZ panels, no screen tearing and every settinmg cranked up to the maximum. I have two and not one high-end graphics card and CPU (2x5970/i7@4.2), I game on a 1680x1050 display (Samsung 2233RZ 120Hz 3D monitor) because I rather run solid 120 FPS (Vsync-On@120Hz) than crappy 60 or less FPS on a slow-limited to 60Hz 1980x1080 or larger screen, period. There is simply no comparison.

If you play highly competitive First-Person Shooter games, you need fast FPS rates and perfect image fluidity, and no slow 60Hz big screen monitor can deliver that. These only good for movies...

 

[youssef 2010]

[citation][nom]article[/nom](nobody with high-end graphics and a respectable processor is gaming on a 17” display, right?)[/citation]

That'd be me (955BE & 4870 512MB). I am still gaming at 1280x1024 since I have a Viewsonic VA712b LCD

 

[rmerwede]

the Q9550 has the lowest performance drop off % at higher resolutions. So nice to see it can still run with the pack (gaming at least). think I'll be waiting for Haswell...

 

[dfusco]

What's the big deal? I don't see any reason to upgrade from my I7 860. I don't see any clock for clock speed increase. The new chips win the bench marks but are running @3.3 or 3.4 Ghz. Overclock that I7-875 to the same clock speed and you have a tie. I see overclocking ability removed and quicksynch looks cool until you have to remove your discreet card to use it.
At AMD they must popping corks any increase in Bulldozer will ground gained back on Intel.

 

[mario2409]

Thanks for the review

Too many new features... can not wait...

 

[mihaitzateo]

Here is a review from a chinesse site that have a lot more tests with the new Sandy Bridge cpu:
http://en.inpai.com.cn/doc/enshowcont.asp?id=7947&pageid=7706
Looking at the very strong performance of sandy bridge in super pi it seems that Sandy Bridge is based on wolfdale arhitecture.
The performance in Starcraft 2 is also very good,which game is known to be very cpu intensive.
However I am quite disapointed about the results of Sandy Bridge overclocked.
That poor scaling when overclocking could have been avoided if Intel would permit base clock overclocking for Sandy Bridge.
After seeing that new benchmark I am thinking that for a gamer that is not overclocking i7 2600/i5 2500/i5 2400/i5 2300 are best choices on the market at this moment,if you take into account performance/price ratio.
Here another review which shows sandy bridge CPU score in 3dmark 06 and 3dmark vantage:
http://hothardware.com/Reviews/Intel-Core-i72600K-and-i52500K-Processors-Debut/?page=12
Here it is the performance of the cpu in low res Crysis (which is a very good performance measurement for CPU performance):
http://hothardware.com/Reviews/Intel-Core-i72600K-and-i52500K-Processors-Debut/?page=13
i5 2500 is beating hard AMD X6 1100 here.And is scoring same with i7 870,which seams like a evolutionary improvement (i7 870 is 8 threaded procesor with higher L2 cache,while i5 2500 is only 4 threads.)
if i5 2500 will be 200$ when launched will be best performance/price ratio CPU on the desktop cpus market.

 

[amillion]

Thanks for the graphs tables and stats Yummy

Still not buying SB tho - integrated graphics = unwelcome guest in my soup.

AND, ok don't shout, but why, technically, does a Q9550 get a higher FPS on AvP than an i7-2 and an i7-950? Or am I looking at this graph upside-down...?

 

[amillion]

[citation][nom]dfusco[/nom]What's the big deal? I don't see any reason to upgrade from my I7 860. I don't see any clock for clock speed increase.[/citation]

It's the chipset features that's important to SB - I think the info's on the first page of the article? I.e. proper USB 3.0 and SATA 6GB support. But yeh, if you want speediness of la graphicos, well... that doesn't necessarily need SATA 6GB. Though low load times are nice

 

[amillion]

[citation][nom]TheCapulet[/nom]"Ignoring 1680x1050 (nobody with high-end graphics and a respectable processor is gaming on a 17” display, right?)"You're ignoring the fact that most 22" monitors are at the same res. 22" is definitely the 'mainstream' for the above average and enthusiast machine. There are a ton more people gaming on 1680x1050 rather than 1920x1080[/citation]

Plus, ofc, if the PC is gonna last more than 18 months, we gotta think in THREE DIMENSIONS DUDE. And I'm yet to see any TomsH perf stats for 3D gaming. Which is odd.

*sips cocoa and dunks biscuit, nodding pensively*

 

[goodguy713]

before you freak out about this doing a bit more reading on this new cpu i found there are built in enhibiters that prevent you from decoding encrypted video.. or should i say anti piracy hardware built into the chip.. .. look for your self... http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110105/tc_afp/usitinternetfilmchipintelces