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

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Nice I have the q9550 equivalent - xeon x3360 cpu (at the time x3360's were cheaper than q9550's due to demand). Pretty much going to get the core i7 2600K and the asus 1155 deluxe motherboard with it. 100% performance improvement? sure I'll grab that. Seeing how I paid what? $450(us) for the x3360 and this i7 is only 320? pretty sweet.
 
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I don't understand what the big deal is about quick sync. AMD has UVD already.
 
[citation][nom]Proximon[/nom]I knew the numbers would be good, but didn't know they would be this good. Seems like "tick-tock" just went boom. Might as well discontinue i7 980x right now.[/citation]

Keep dreaming.

If you look back at the prices of all the Extreme edition cpu's they never drop even after faster cpu's are out intel doesn't do it.
 

tommysch

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[citation][nom]hardcore_gamer[/nom]Intel wasted a large amount chip area for the integrated graphics.They should have used it for additional cache.[/citation]

Anything else would have been better... Especially in the high end. Seriously, all that integrated graphic will be an extremely elaborate cold spot for me.
 

triculious

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nice new processor family and great review from Tom's
the ball is on AMD's park now and they better hurry
the only question I have now is... when will this things become available?
 

mihaitzateo

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I think that the benchmark could have more gaming testing than just 3 games,and maybe a game that is known to be CPU bottlenecked.

Also overclocking was not presented for K series sandy bridge cpus.
Maybe 3dmark vantage could be also included,so CPU score from 3d mark vantage could be compared between the cpus in this test.


I do not have trust in 3dmark 11 result as a measurement for CPU performance,most games are not useing the technologies used in 3dmark 11.
Also it might be possibile that the actual version of 3dmark 11 is buggy,look at graphics score for example,i3 2100 scores better than i5 2400.
From what I see from this test for low-end Phenom II X2 at under 100$ is still best.Simply because is cheaper and for some user that would not want to do a lot of gaming a board with 760g and a Phenom II X2 would be under 200$.So I do not think AMD will have a lot of problems after Sandy Bridge will be launched.

 

hmp_goose

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Sooooo if'n I was gon'a build a HTPC with one of these, and was looking to avoid the purchase of a video card, would I *have to* buy one of the two "K" models?
 

njoy

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Wow, what a SLAP in AMD's face! The idea they nursed for gazillion years and were set to finally release somewhere this week is brought to you, dear customer, first to the market, with a sudden change in NDA deadline to please you sooner with a hyperperformer from Intel. Who cares that NDAs make an important play in all planning activities, PR, logistics and whatever follows - what matters is that they are first to put the GPU on-die and this is what the average Joe will now know, with a bit of PR, perhaps. Snatch another design win. Hey, AMD, remember that pocket money the court ordered us to pay you? SLAP! And the licence? SLAP! Nicely planned and executed whilst everyone was so distracted with the DAAMIT versus nVidia battles and, ironically, a lack of leaks from the red camp.
I hope Bulldozer will kick some assess, even though I doubt it's really going to happen...
 

jprahman

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AMD is going to be in a heap of trouble unless Bulldozer makes major performance gains. Just looking at the benchmarks the Lynnfields and Clarkdales beat comparable (in terms of core count and market segmentation) AMD processors, albeit with higher prices. Now with Sandy Bridge prices of the Lynnfields and Clarkdales should drop some to the point where AMD will have to make major price drops to avoid being clobbered.
 

bCubed

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Wow, those are some impressive benchmarks from the Sandy Bridges. I wonder if Bulldozer will be able to compete at all with this lineup.
 

ern88

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I wondering should I wait to see what AMD has in store or upgrade now. I have an E8400 OC'd to 3.6 GHZ. But the price of the i5 2500K is making me itch. It looks like the winner to me. What do you guys think?
 

jprahman

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Certainly 32nm will help through better clocks and more cache. What's important is for a higher throughput per clock, which is an area where AMD has struggled to compete with Intel ever since the C2D days. Believe me I hope AMD does give Intel some good competition with Bulldozer, because I don't want Intel to be able to charge huge prices down the road, especially for the LGA 2011 chips due later this year.
 
Took two readings to get all juicy bits integrated.
Thanks for the review THG;
QuickSync is looking very interesting.
Also looking forward to seeing the new crop of laptops due out shortly.
 

cangelini

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[citation][nom]WR2[/nom]Took two readings to get all juicy bits integrated.Thanks for the review THG;QuickSync is looking very interesting. Also looking forward to seeing the new crop of laptops due out shortly.[/citation]

Not a problem, thanks for checking it out WR2. Appreciate the note!

Cheers,
Chris
 

tpi2007

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Three brief notes, including a question to Chris:

1. I think some of the readers didn't quite grasp this sentence when talking about QuickSync: "Neither MediaEspresso or MediaConverter are able to recognize the pipeline with a discrete card installed."

Chris, is this a software limitation of the programs that currently use these optimizations, or is this really a hardware problem ? Can QuickSync be used on a PC with a discrete card, even on a P67 board ? Logically speaking, you don't need a GPU to have a display interface to be able to do these calculations, it should just be used as another part of the CPU, just as SSE instructions are used.

If this doesn't turn out to be this way, it's probably the stupidest thing Intel could have made. You buy a CPU and are unable to get the best performance in media encoding/decoding tasks - I sure hope it's just a software problem.

2. AMD is in deep trouble. I have a Q9550 at stock (and these E0 overclock very well, to Core i5 750 levels on stock voltage), and it was a bit embarrassing to see their flagship 970 at 3.5 Ghz be the next in line in the graphs. This just proves that the current Quad Core line from AMD is really only competing on price, because architecturally they are on par with the Core 2 Quads @ 45nm. Intel just stopped producing any faster variants and moved on, while AMD is still there, two years late, producing higher clocked versions. If I overclock my Q9550 to 3.5 Ghz I will probably have equal or better performance. As I said, it's embarrassing even to me, let alone for AMD, to see it laid out bare in the graphs. At current prices, AMD's best quad-core line is essentially dead. I hope they come up with something soon though. Only people already on an AMD board will consider these if the price doesn't change soon.

3. For the price, I predict the i5-2500k is going to be a best-seller. Only 11$ more expensive than the non-k version and excellent performance with unlocked multiplier; another best-seller for those who want 4 cores, the best performance and save the maximum amount of cash is the i5-2400. 300Mhz base clock faster than the 2300 for only seven bucks more, when the difference upwards is only 200Mhz and 100Mhz and with bigger price differences.

Overall, it's a very welcome nice step up, and I do understand their strategy for overclocking, it might upset those super-value seekers, but hey, unlocked processors just got a lot cheaper, right ? I think the disadvantages are clearly outnumbered by the advantages, and still more platforms to come which allow more overclocking.

My only gripe is with QuickSync for the reasons I stated above, I hope it's just a software problem, otherwise it is useless to many, many people.

Cheers!
 
G

Guest

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Nobody spins up a CPU release like Intel.

Reality:

Core2: Revolutionary
(Phenom II falls right about here performance-wise)
Corei7: Incremental
Sandy: Incremental

With all 4 not being perceptably different in normal, real-world usage(unless you build your system to run benchmarks and transcode video).

Now on to consumer perception:
(Phenom II in a distant last, a magnitude of order behind)
Core2: Revolutionary
Corei7: Revolutionary
Corei5: Revolutionary (a must-have upgrade for early adopters of i7)
Sandy: Revolutionary
 

cangelini

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[citation][nom]tpi2007[/nom]Three brief notes, including a question to Chris:1. I think some of the readers didn't quite grasp this sentence when talking about QuickSync: "Neither MediaEspresso or MediaConverter are able to recognize the pipeline with a discrete card installed."Chris, is this a software limitation of the programs that currently use these optimizations, or is this really a hardware problem ? Can QuickSync be used on a PC with a discrete card, even on a P67 board ? Logically speaking, you don't need a GPU to have a display interface to be able to do these calculations, it should just be used as another part of the CPU, just as SSE instructions are used.If this doesn't turn out to be this way, it's probably the stupidest thing Intel could have made. You buy a CPU and are unable to get the best performance in media encoding/decoding tasks - I sure hope it's just a software problem.2. AMD is in deep trouble. I have a Q9550 at stock (and these E0 overclock very well, to Core i5 750 levels on stock voltage), and it was a bit embarrassing to see their flagship 970 at 3.5 Ghz be the next in line in the graphs. This just proves that the current Quad Core line from AMD is really only competing on price, because architecturally they are on par with the Core 2 Quads @ 45nm. Intel just stopped producing any faster variants and moved on, while AMD is still there, two years late, producing higher clocked versions. If I overclock my Q9550 to 3.5 Ghz I will probably have equal or better performance. As I said, it's embarrassing even to me, let alone for AMD, to see it laid out bare in the graphs. At current prices, AMD's best quad-core line is essentially dead. I hope they come up with something soon though. Only people already on an AMD board will consider these if the price doesn't change soon.3. For the price, I predict the i5-2500k is going to be a best-seller. Only 11$ more expensive than the non-k version and excellent performance with unlocked multiplier; another best-seller for those who want 4 cores, the best performance and save the maximum amount of cash is the i5-2400. 300Mhz base clock faster than the 2300 for only seven bucks more, when the difference upwards is only 200Mhz and 100Mhz and with bigger price differences.Overall, it's a very welcome nice step up, and I do understand their strategy for overclocking, it might upset those super-value seekers, but hey, unlocked processors just got a lot cheaper, right ? I think the disadvantages are clearly outnumbered by the advantages, and still more platforms to come which allow more overclocking.My only gripe is with QuickSync for the reasons I stated above, I hope it's just a software problem, otherwise it is useless to many, many people.Cheers![/citation]

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
 

tpi2007

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Yes, it does, thanks Chris!

I was just reading the image quality tests over at Anand and he said the same thing on the last paragraphs on that page. So, it sucks. But it sucks even more than what you just said because it will not work on a P67 board, since you can't have a monitor connected to the graphics core. But even if you could, that would be a very cumbersome solution.

Add to that the slight image quality compression compared to the x86 codepath, and my guess is they are only going to make it an 100% accurate and viable alternative on the desktop with Ivy Bridge. (For now, it's primarily for laptops which will probably get them a battery life boost from it right away.) Or with the high-end platform later this year. They still have time to correct that. What remains to be seen is if it's doable.

But if Nvidia can use a second or third GPU to run PhysX, why shouldn't Intel be able to do something comparable?
 

kcorp2003

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Looks nice. I have Q9550 @ 3.4Ghz. the applications i used compare to Sandy bridge only beats mine about 2:14sec (average from base clock 2.83Ghz) I certainly can wait extra seconds if its benchmark @ 3.4Ghz. As for games that are CPU intensive are mostly towards Higher clocks and multi core. I don't know if games are optimize for threading on PC.

I rather spend my money on GPU where most games are GPU oriented and I am pretty sure a Q9550 3.4Ghz pair along a GTX580 or a HD5870 or Crossfire HD5850 or SLI 470GTX isn't a bottleneck system.

Currently I play Bad Company 2 comfortable with HD4870 and Q9550 3.4Ghz with DDR2 1066Mhz. with 12ns latency. (you have to know how to over-clock and factoring latency)
I am getting decent frame rates at 45~65
with high texture quality, medium shadow, medium effects quality, medium level of detail with AA2x, AF4x, HBAO on. 1680x1050 @ 60Hz


but if were to win that a sandybridge cpu ill gladly take it and hold off my upgrade :)
Saving up money for a 6 or 8 core CPU from Intel and HD7000 series for Q1 2012. I know Battlefield 3 is taking advantage of multi core CPU for PC.
 

Travis Beane

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And I spent how much on my i7-920 to get its ass kicked? :)
It's been a year and a half since I bought it, bout time it finally got dethroned.
Running 3.675GHz on stock voltage is nice and all on a i7-920 D0, but I just can't wait to see what the x78 can do!

I think the library of games people can smoothly run on PCSX2 with increase tenfold!

Oh Intel, how I hate to love you, I wish I could give you up, but as long as you keep giving us chips like these, I just can't do it.
 
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