Intel Promises Big Performance With Sandy Bridge

[noblerabbit]

I'm going to hang tough with my 2 year old Athlon X3 720 BE, clocked at 3.5GHz cooled by a Zalman9900 at 21C idle. In the mean time, I 'might' just replace my GTX460 in a year and a half, if that new Game 'really' requires it. But until 'that' new CPU comes out where I can manipulate , trim, convert 2GB Videofiles 'in near real time', I'll be happy as is now, to just let it do it overnight, and do "everything else" just fine now as it is.

 

[HavoCnMe]

Does this mean the i7-975 will come down by half....$515.99? I must say wishful thinking is awesome!

 

[enzo matrix]

[citation][nom]jtt283[/nom]since it will undoubtedly cost less, very likely that's the way I'll go[/citation]
Why are you so confident it will cost less?

 

[kriminal]

good thing i held of the core i series.
still chugging along with my c2q

 

[zerapio]

[citation][nom]rhino13[/nom]Hmmm... putting a GPU on-board will give you a lot more power on chip but will it give me anything I can't get with a discreet GPU?[/citation]
Yes, lower power. It won't run the proverbial Crysis but for decoding and encoding HD streams, lighter games, etc it should be adequate.

 

[thearm]

[citation][nom]TA152H[/nom]The reason the increase was so big from the Pentium 4 to the Core 2 was because the Pentium 4 was so bad, as well as the Core 2 being excellent. Evidence of that is the relative performance to AMD processors, as well as IBM's. The Nehalem is a very good processor, which makes that type of improvement much more difficult to improve to the same extent. [/citation]

lol If that's true, then AMD REALLY sucked in that time. But it's not. pent. 4's where great for their time. I just put a 3.4HT into my parents PC and it runs VERY well. It's a very acceptable processor.

 

[Onus]

Why are you so confident it will cost less?

Compare the prices of Intel's top tier to AMD's. Now do the same for their bottom tiers. Any different in the middle? Nope. Pretty consistent difference if you ask me...

Anyway, regardless of pricing I am sure that both companies will make CPU's that perform quite well. I'm just hoping for reasonable TDP's to go with that performance.

 

[formin]

[citation][nom]ibemerson[/nom]We don't need no stinkin CPUsBetter chipsets please![/citation]

they have moved the north bridge on chip but im still waiting for the south to join it.

 

[_Pez_]

Translation .... " hold on buying AMD's next cpu's Bulldozer.. we have great prices for our next cpu's" what shall we expect for ?

 

[freiheitner]

@thearm, actually the P4 was pretty bad for its time. Benchmarks on Tom's Hardware at the time showed a (lower clocked) Pentium III beating the (higher clocked) P4 on I believe 5 out of 8 tests, and the Athlon beat the P4 on 6 out of 8 tests. Was the P4 good enough to run Windows and Office? Sure, but so was the Pentium II based Celeron. P4 required higher clock rates to get the same performance as other chips, and I believe that was TA152H's point (though I don't mean to put words in their mouth).

 

[Guest]

Hopefully it will push AMD to get Zambezi out the door faster. When their 4 is faster then your 6, in a true multitasking scenario, then your 6 is just not worth buying.

I really hope that AMD can deliver a huge performance per core increase so this is not the case.

 

[Guest]

AMD sucks!!!!!!

 

[tuch92]

Anyone else think "Sandy Bridge" kinda makes these sound lame?

 

[princessolive]

They are just releasing a speed bump because they are scared of Bulldozer. Remember when they use to class Celeron as the competitor to the first Athlon.
For their next trick they may get into the gigahertz race again.
Because I mostly play games CPU takes second place in my rig, so I'm happy with the cheaper AMD CPUs.

 

[ta152h]

[citation][nom]freiheitner[/nom]@thearm, actually the P4 was pretty bad for its time. Benchmarks on Tom's Hardware at the time showed a (lower clocked) Pentium III beating the (higher clocked) P4 on I believe 5 out of 8 tests, and the Athlon beat the P4 on 6 out of 8 tests. Was the P4 good enough to run Windows and Office? Sure, but so was the Pentium II based Celeron. P4 required higher clock rates to get the same performance as other chips, and I believe that was TA152H's point (though I don't mean to put words in their mouth).[/citation]

That's kind of what I was saying. I agree with you, and disagree with him, that the Pentium 4 was a very good chip for its time. In my opinion, it was horrible compared to other chips. If we compare it to the K8, it was much larger, much slower, and consumed much more power, despite Intel's superior manufacturing technology. I don't see how this is good, and apparently Intel didn't either since they killed it.

I also agree with you that it could run most apps fine - I still use a Tualatin overclocked to 1.6 GHz most of the time, and it works fine. But, even doing that, the Pentium 4 gets way too hot, and uses way too much power. There really isn't one metric where it can be called superior, or even mediocre, except for clock speed, which equated to sub-standard performance anyway.

By contrast, Nehalem is broadly excellent at almost everything. So, it's a much harder act to improve on. Still, I have high hopes for Sandy Bridge, but I think the expectations Otellini is creating are just unrealistic and probably will lead to many people being disappointed.

The 286 improvement will be much higher. The 386 sucked. The 486 was also a huge improvement. Pentium, maybe a little less, but still quite large. It has no hope of matching any of those three. The Pentium Pro comparison is ambiguous, since it actually ran the most common code from that time slightly slower than the Pentium (meaning 16-bit), which was somewhat fixed in the Pentium II, and completely fixed by software moving to 32-bit (although it was not really a 16-bit or 32-bit issue, just segment registers were used extensively in Real and 286 Protected, and not generally used in 386 Protected mode).

 

[reprotected]

Leap = Pentium D to Core 2 or GF200 to Fermi?

 

[digiex]

One thing is for sure, when this will come out, it will be expensive. I hope AMD's bulldozer will balance it out.

 

[Pyroflea]

This is nice to hear, hopefully they can hold up their end of the bargain. I'm still using an old C2D, I'm happy with that. Wouldn't mind an upgrade next summer though, so hopefully all goes well.

 

[danwat1234]

[citation][nom]TA152H[/nom] Call me crazy, but I just don't think the Sandy Bridge is going to be over three times faster per clock cycle. This is not to downplay the significance of the chip, since Intel finally left the Pentium Pro behind (again), but his statement is just not correct, or even close to it.[/citation]

Well the way I see it, Paul Otellini is correct in saying: "Sandy Bridge represents the largest increase in computing performance in our history."

Note that he is not referring to a %computing increase compared to the previous leading Intel Chip (i7), but as far as total increase in mathematical ability.

Of course Sandy Bridge will probably be something like 20% faster than core i7 on average, BUT this is a large computational speed increase.

I think this article is stupid. Of course Silicon tech. is exponential and they can make this claim with each (or most) new x86 chip they make. Comparing the rise in computation power of the new generation vs the rise in computation power of the previous generation

 

[Gin Fushicho]

So like what? a 150% increase? I'd like to see a percentage factor and in what.

 

[americanherosandwich]

Intel made a lot of dough by getting into AMD's demographic of low to mid budget systems. I think making Sandy Bridge overpriced will lose them money. Their non-overclocking edition CPU's not being faster than overclocked 1366 or 1156 systems won't do well with the bang-for-your-buck enthusiasts, either. Enthusiasts in general will still pay their premium, like the people who bought the 980x and 975's for $1k.

I'm glad that they're progressing in their line of products, I just don't think Sandy Bridge is going to be as big as everyone thinks.

 

[C0BRA]

lol If that's true, then AMD REALLY sucked in that time. But it's not. pent. 4's where great for their time. I just put a 3.4HT into my parents PC and it runs VERY well. It's a very acceptable processor.

P4's ran great compared to what? P1's? Clock for clock they were the worst performing chip ever. A 2GHz P4 was benching like an 800 MHz P3. Sure they were great for cooking dinner, but they were getting killed by the AMD Athlon 64 X2. I had a 3.2 GHz P4, and had a Laptop with an Athlon 64 2GHz that ran Battlefield 1942 WAY better than the P4 did. When I saw how much better it ran, I dumped my P4 for an Athlon 64 X2 4600 plus. Ran it right up until the Core 2's came out, and then bought a 3GHz. Now I am running a 3 GHz quad core version, but until Intel dumped the P4, they had nothing that touched a Athlon 64, even when people over clocked them to 4GHz, they still could not compete.

 

[AMD_pitbull]

[citation][nom]otacon72[/nom]Bulldozer is looking more and more like a cub cadet compared to Sandy Bridge.[/citation]
You say this based on how big Intel is playing up SB? I'll believe the stats when they start showing benchmarks. Why would Intel hype up their products and tell you to hold off buying a new system? Hmmm...around the same time AMD is launching THEIR on-die CPU/GPU chips?

Anyways, if Intel actually releases this chip at a reasonable price, I'll be a little shocked. I'm sure it'll be performance/premium based pricing, as per usual, but, as the avg CPU is no longer the bottle-neck in a rig, it's going to be hard to push this over a $500 price tag, especially if they limit the overclocking , which has always been sell point to the enthusiasts that enjoy messing around and trying to have as much fun with their new toys as possible.

AMD really needs to come back with something. Sure, it LOOKS like they'll have the GPU market all but locked up, but, Nvidia might have something up their sleeve that we haven't seen yet. If AMD's Bulldozer gets caught flat-footed on this "big leap", it might end up costing them in both markets.

 

[cj_online]

Suck on that AMD...

PS: I'm using a Phenom II... so don't give me the bias crap..

 

[deboyrunner]

simple... it is for tablet computers-specifically the ipad next generation... come on use your head people. Not a desktop cpu by any means.