Intel Reveals More About Sandy Bridge Core CPUs

[gnesterenko]

"The graphics part itself will support DirectX 10.1 features, but anyone who wants DX11 will probably have a discrete part already on his build list."

But you'll go ahead and charge me for the R&D and materials/manufacturing of the 10.1 part anyway, despite admitting that its actually useless as I would be buying discrete graphics? Thanks, but no thanks. Looks like I'm skipping another generation.

"The views expressed here are mine and do not reflect the official opinion of my employer or the organization through which the Internet was accessed."

 

[gnesterenko]

[citation][nom]Dowsire[/nom]quad channel memory[/citation]

Why? Triple channel shows just about 0 improvement for any ordinary task, or rather pretty much any task outside a server/rendering farm applications. Hence the uselessness of the i7/i9 as desktop CPUs (great server CPUs though!). Quad is even more useless. If you really need that sort of performance, then you shouldn't be looking at desktop builds but at server boards.

"The views expressed here are mine and do not reflect the official opinion of my employer or the organization through which the Internet was accessed."

 

[Camikazi]

[citation][nom]truerock[/nom]I'm thinking anything spent on Intel tech in 2011 is going to be almost instantly obsolete. Hopefully 2012 will be a year of tech revolution. Who knows - maybe CPUs with clockspeeds significantly faster than my 7 year old 3.6 GHz Pentium 4.[/citation]
You still think clock speed is that important?

 

[nitrium]

Anand got his hands on actual silicon and has a review up complete with benchmarks, features etc.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3871/the-sandy-bridge-preview-three-wins-in-a-row

 

[back_by_demand]

[citation][nom]truerock[/nom]Waimea Bay / Patsburg = high-end
Cougar Point = low-end[/citation]

So Patsburg will be targeted at enthusiasts
Whereas Cougar Point will be targeted at hot, older ladies

 

[milktea]

CPU+GPU is the future.
Dynamic Resource Allocation between CPU and GPU is the future.
Smart move for Intel.
AMD needs to catch up.

 

[milktea]

Intel, please put one of those CORE processor in my smartphone so that I can do away with the PC altogether.

 

[the_krasno]

Fusion will achieve a Directx 11 APU. Too bad for Intel!!

 

[scook9]

[citation][nom]the_krasno[/nom]Fusion will achieve a Directx 11 APU. Too bad for Intel!![/citation]

Shame....intel wont be able to do the DX11 slideshow....you are acting like the integrated GPU will be able to effectively render dx11 stuff....when the top tier graphics cards have trouble with that right now

Intel has a much stronger CPU then AMD also (at least for now) so I would still call it an overall win for Intel

 

[shin0bi272]

The graphics part itself will support DirectX 10.1 features, but anyone who wants DX11 will probably have a discrete part already on his build list.

Soo youre saying a cpu that's on the horizon for what a year or two from now is going to have a gpu on it that's supporting an already obsolete version of dx? Granted yeah there arent a ton of dx11 games out yet but in a year or two then these cpu's hit the shelves I cant help but think that people will be sorely disappointed in its performance in an "average" dx11 game.


[edit] as Nitrium pointed out anandtech already did a review on it and they announced that it will have what essentially amounts to 6 or 12 cuda cores as nvidia would call them. Nvidia's gtx 470 has 448 cuda cores and it still has problems pushing the pixels. I cant imagine cutting my gpu down to 12 cores from 448 LOL! Did intel learn nothing from their "intel extreme graphics" ? Every gamer called them intel extremely bad/crappy/slow/old graphics! [/edit]

 

[nitrium]

I cant imagine cutting my gpu down to 12 cores from 448 LOL! Did intel learn nothing from their "intel extreme graphics" ?

It is pretty clear that every current discrete GPU will outperform Sandy Bridge. Sandy Bridge is really only good enough for HTPC and office work (which I guess is most of the PC market). For gamers, Sandy Bridge will still have to be combined with a separate GPU, so the graphics component of this new CPU will be just idle and sucking system power for no beneficial reason. No Sandy Bridges currently slated come without integrated graphics.

 

[loomis86]

[citation][nom]milktea[/nom]CPU+GPU is the future.Dynamic Resource Allocation between CPU and GPU is the future.Smart move for Intel.AMD needs to catch up.[/citation]

RIGHT ON!

The DIYer gamers throw a temper tantrum everytime someone suggests this, but it's true none the less. I expect drive bay hard drives to become obsolete eventually too...hard drives will be a card that plugs into your main board...and maybe RAM and hard drive will be integrated onto the same card.

The inescapable eventuality of miniaturization is a complete computer on a single chip(with multiple layers). Either it comes to that, or at some point progress stops.

 

[Guest]

@milktea

because AMD havent figured how to cobble a dx10 card into it's CPU, guess they have to just live with dx11.....

 

[InTheCity]

How come anything half decent, is always about one year out.

 

[Glacier]

Meh....I prefer regular graphics cards!

 

[notty22]

I cant imagine cutting my gpu down to 12 cores from 448 LOL! Did intel learn nothing from their "intel extreme graphics" ?

It is pretty clear that every current discrete GPU will outperform Sandy Bridge. Sandy Bridge is really only good enough for HTPC and office work (which I guess is most of the PC market). For gamers, Sandy Bridge will still have to be combined with a separate GPU, so the graphics component of this new CPU will be just idle and sucking system power for no beneficial reason. No Sandy Bridges currently slated come without integrated graphics.

How much power do you think its going to take idle. I bet its practically null.
Also socket 2011 the 1366 replacement is not slated to have igp, at least unannounced.

 

[titosor]

What I would like to see is an IGP that assists in communication between the CPU and discreet graphics if present.

For example, if a consumer intends to just use integrated graphics, the IGP on the chip will naturally function as the graphics processor, but if another consumer intends on using a high end dedicated graphics card, then the same IGP on the CPU should be able to feed info to the card faster than the CPU could normally. This would require new architecture for about every component, but it seems the smartest, least alienating decision.

 

[cj_online]

[citation][nom]victorintelr[/nom]Very interesting concept to put together the CPU and GPU, though if they ever hope to catch with AMD/Nvidia graphic performance...They still have a loooooong way to go. AMD have ATI at its disposition and certainly got a good advantage already. Intels still relies on its CPU for the most taxing tasks.[/citation]
Well what the **** else are they gonna rely one?

 

[sinfulpotato]

The real question is can the GPU Stream Processors be used for computing, like CUDA without writing code just for it. The integrated graphics are useless for me. Llano should be capable of this feat.

 

[f-14]

[citation][nom]milktea[/nom]CPU+GPU is the future.Dynamic Resource Allocation between CPU and GPU is the future.Smart move for Intel.AMD needs to catch up.[/citation]
catch up to what? intel graphics is a huge bottleneck, haven't you noticed the benchmarks on those yet? good god man even consoles have better graphics processors than intel.

[citation][nom]banthracis[/nom]Clock speed has zero correlation to performance between different architectures. I guarantee you an i7-930 under clocked to 2ghz will beat a 4.0ghz P4 in any benchmark.[/citation]
[citation]
cool lets go one step further and limit the I-930 to pc6400 memory speed as well. now that your quard core just got it's speed crippled the only three advantages it has is 4 cores, and higher cache, and a crippled FSB at 800mhz instead of 1600/2000mhz now your right back inline with core2 which we have charts showing P4 vs dual core/core2/core2quad. i think you'd find the encoding charts a bit interesting

[nom]banthracis[/nom]So slide 17 says they're keeping the integrated PCI-e from P55. Does this mean that we'll once again have a 16 total PCIe Lane limit or was this issue resolved?Also, did Intel decouple the PCIe controller from BCLK? One of the biggest issues with Lynnfield was the stupid (and pointless) coupling of the 2 which limited stock v overclocking greatly.[/citation]

i'm hearing that sli/crossfire will have an 8X limit in sandy bridge, is this right? if that is the case swear i'm hearing 'jaws' music from AMD.

 

[f-14]

[citation][nom]loomis86[/nom]RIGHT ON!The DIYer gamers throw a temper tantrum everytime someone suggests this, but it's true none the less. I expect drive bay hard drives to become obsolete eventually too...hard drives will be a card that plugs into your main board...and maybe RAM and hard drive will be integrated onto the same card.The inescapable eventuality of miniaturization is a complete computer on a single chip(with multiple layers). Either it comes to that, or at some point progress stops.[/citation]

let me guess you game with an Ipad right my Klingon federation of planets friend. a real pipe dream would be the holodeck where you don't just push buttons, but actually have to play a FPS like you would real war or paintball/airsoft.

 

[loomis86]

[citation][nom]f-14[/nom]let me guess you game with an Ipad right my Klingon federation of planets friend. a real pipe dream would be the holodeck where you don't just push buttons, but actually have to play a FPS like you would real war or paintball/airsoft.[/citation]

lemme guess, you get your jollies gaining ten more frames per second. Hot rodding personal computers with a gpu will one day be as retarded as hotrodding a 1970 chevy nova with a holley 4-barrel carburetor.

 

[dEAne]

I'm impress.

 

[kingnoobe]

scook I don't see how you can say that. They do have stronger cpu's, but amd has the stronger gpu's. So really going by that logic you could say these things would even out. Of course I don't think it's gonna work that way. But I don't see how anybody can jump to any conclusion yet.

Personally I'm not a fanboy of either, when it comes to cpu's I just go with who is the best at the time. As I havn't had problems with either amd/intel.

 

[saturnus]

I'm thoughroughly underwhelmed by Sandy Bridge, or more accurately iCore 2.

It's basically a slight upgrade on the iCore structure with a low-end GPU built in. That's all and well, and as expected.

However, you have to consider the market segment it has to compete in. It's going to go up against AMDs Llano which is a Phenom upgrade with a mid-level GPU built in. Both are coming to market at roughly the same time, Q1 2011, and both are built on a 32nm process.

The SB will probably be on par with the Llano overall but it's my firm estimate that the Llano will be priced far below the SB, and that for the price of an SB APU you could get both a better performing CPU (iCore or Bulldozer) and discrete graphics (AMD/Nvidia).

AMD has had the Fusion project in the pipeline for years and the SB does increasingly look like a last-minute thrown-together chip that is meant to compete with it.