The Sandy Bridge Preview
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 27, 2010 2:38 PM ESTAdobe Photoshop CS4 Performance
To measure performance under Photoshop CS4 we turn to the Retouch Artists’ Speed Test. The test does basic photo editing; there are a couple of color space conversions, many layer creations, color curve adjustment, image and canvas size adjustment, unsharp mask, and finally a gaussian blur performed on the entire image.
The whole process is timed and thanks to the use of Intel's X25-M SSD as our test bed hard drive, performance is far more predictable than back when we used to test on mechanical disks.
Time is reported in seconds and the lower numbers mean better performance. The test is multithreaded and can hit all four cores in a quad-core machine.
Right off the bat Sandy Bridge is killer. In our Photoshop test it’s faster than its closest quad-core price competitor, faster than its identically clocked Lynnfield, faster than AMD’s fastest and loses out only to Intel’s $999 Core i7 980X. That being said, it only takes about 9% longer to complete our benchmark than the 980X.
DivX 6.5.3 with Xmpeg 5.0.3
Our DivX test is the same DivX / XMpeg 5.03 test we've run for the past few years now, the 1080p source file is encoded using the unconstrained DivX profile, quality/performance is set balanced at 5 and enhanced multithreading is enabled:
While not the most stressful encoding test, it’s still a valid measure of performance and once again, Sandy Bridge is faster than all. In this case we’re faster than the Core i5 760 (~16%) and just behind the Core i7 880. Clock for clock there's not a huge improvement in performance here (HT doesn't seem to do much), it's just a better value than the 760 assuming prices remain the same.
x264 HD Video Encoding Performance
Graysky's x264 HD test uses the publicly available x264 encoder to transcode a 4Mbps 720p MPEG-2 source. The focus here is on quality rather than speed, thus the benchmark uses a 2-pass encode and reports the average frame rate in each pass.
Lightly threaded performance is much improved - the 2400 is 14.6% faster than the Core i7 880.
The actual encoding pass favors more threads, so we see a big improvement over the 760 (19%) but it falls short of the Core i7 880. Turn HT on and we get a 12.6% improvement over an identically clocked/configured Lynnfield.
Note that CPU based video encoding performance may not matter if Intel implemented a good video transcode engine in Sandy Bridge.
Windows Media Encoder 9 x64 Advanced Profile
In order to be codec agnostic we've got a Windows Media Encoder benchmark looking at the same sort of thing we've been doing in the DivX and x264 tests, but using WME instead.
Performance in WME rarely scales anymore. Our benchmark doesn’t scale well beyond 4 cores and the only hope for performance are increases in clock speed or IPC. Sandy Bridge delivers the latter.
A 20% increase in performance vs. the similarly clocked 880 in a test that doesn’t scale with anything but IPC tells you a lot. Compared to the Core i5 760, Sandy Bridge is 26% faster.
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wut - Sunday, August 29, 2010 - link
Yep. I bet AMD is really wondering about that right now.greenguy - Saturday, August 28, 2010 - link
I bought basically what is an i5-750 based on Anand's review here. Or at least, the Xeon version with hyperthreading (needed ECC RAM).From what I can tell, you get about a 20%-30% improvement over the i5-750, with the same power consumption. That's pretty good. Not only that, you get some competent entry level graphics... which would have good open source drivers. That's somewhat exciting, though I wonder whether it would do multiple monitors. Any idea on that Anand?
Maybe I'll just stick to the cheapest Nvidia discrete cards I can buy, a couple G210s do the trick (to get 4 1920x1200 monitors). Unless Intel can make those G210s redundant, it represents just an incremental bump in performance, as the only thing that is of interest is the increase in CPU. One thing that is nice is that Intel is reputed to have the best open source support for their GPU drivers, which makes things really interesting now they are producing stuff that will compete with the entry level discrete market. It could be really good for Linux/BSD people like myself.
The other thing of interest for me is in the low power, low cost, high numbers of SATA connections space, with ECC. I wonder if Bobcat will have something there, as AMD don't seek to arbitrarily differentiate their markets like Intel does with the ECC RAM.
Also not really sure what the big thing is with the motherboards and same CPU. I tend to keep the same computer as a build. By the time you want to upgrade the CPU, there is invariably other stuff that needs upgrading, e.g. USB3, graphics, SATA, RAM, whatever. So you end up wasting the old parts for not that much benefit. Better to just re-purpose the old machine, and when you have enough money, buy the most performant parts that are still good bang for buck. A good example was the i5-750 about 8 months ago or so. So I don't fault Intel for this.
wut - Sunday, August 29, 2010 - link
Intel's going after the mid range market, where most of the money is. We'll have to wait and see how good AMD's Fusion mid range ends up being. Even if it catches up all the way and achieves performance parity so AMD can make more money by raising prices, Intel would have their newest gen on the market first. Fusion had better be really, really, good...Hrel - Sunday, August 29, 2010 - link
I'd say if that 2500K is 215 or less it'd be a fair buy. I'd still wait for the price to drop below 200 cause that's my absolute cap on a CPU. I am a little annoyed that it doesn't have hyper threading though, from a moral standpoint, I mean, from a raw material standpoint how much does adding hyperthreading cost? nothing! yeah, that's what I thought.Hrel - Sunday, August 29, 2010 - link
Those are some impressive integrated graphics. I've thought this for a while now, but we really don't need a card any lower than the HD5670, and maybe the 5650 in discrete graphics. Prefferably just the 5670 though. If mobo makers start setting aside a single DDR3 slot for the integrated GPU to use and dedicated GPU only memory, like a discrete GPU, so the integrated GPU doesn't have to share system RAM we really won't need low end graphics in laptops at all anymore.mino - Sunday, August 29, 2010 - link
Adequate.5450 is the LOWEST END card from 2008, A facelifted 4350.
And 780G, it FINALLY manages to out-pace, in 2011, is the mainstream part of 2008 too.
In 2011 there will be a 10W Ontario with 5450-class GPU on 40nm bulk ...
On the other hand it seems Intel is thaking the GPU side seriously. Finally.
But they are still where ATI/NV were in 2004 ...
LuckyKnight - Sunday, August 29, 2010 - link
I would have liked to have seen a better comparison when it comes to idle power consumption? How much has it improved since moving to a 45nm->32nm GPU?Also, has Intel addressed the Clarkdale issue of not outputting industry standard 24fps? (23.976 hz)
Miggleness - Sunday, August 29, 2010 - link
I was planning on purchasing an i5-760 in 2 weeks but looks like I'll have to settle for 2nd hand, low end parts instead and wait for the i5-2400's release.Great job Intel. I for one no longer have that much interest in overclocking when I have Turbo boost to compensate for that.
Hope we hear about the official pricing soon.
jfelano - Sunday, August 29, 2010 - link
Intel could have hit one out of the park with this one if it worked on existing s1155 motherboards....unfortunately it doesn't and it screws over everyone who bought into s1156 or s1366.....yet again.siberian 3 - Sunday, August 29, 2010 - link
Hi everyone i've read the preview and i am not so impresed by the performance of SB.The IGPis great but it make sense only for the mobile section of the pc not the desktop!!
From the preview i understand that this is not a real fusion product but an evolution off clarkdale and arandale products.
So i will wait for Llano to see what Amd has to offer!!!