The Sandy Bridge Preview
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 27, 2010 2:38 PM EST3dsmax 9 - SPECapc 3dsmax CPU Rendering Test
Today's desktop processors are more than fast enough to do professional level 3D rendering at home. To look at performance under 3dsmax we ran the SPECapc 3dsmax 8 benchmark (only the CPU rendering tests) under 3dsmax 9 SP1. The results reported are the rendering composite scores:
This is another one of those situations where the Core i5 2400 without Hyper Threading is able to perform on par with the Core i7 880 with Hyper Threading. Compared to the i5 760 it’s 20.5% faster.
With Hyper Threading enabled, the Core i5 2400 is actually dangerously close to the 6-core 980X. Whatever Intel has done to Sandy Bridge's FP is big.
Cinebench R10
Created by the Cinema 4D folks we have Cinebench, a popular 3D rendering benchmark that gives us both single and multi-threaded 3D rendering results.
Cinebench was particularly surprising because it gives us a good opportunity to look at single threaded FP performance. Compared to a similarly clocked Lynnfield, Sandy Bridge can deliver 11% better performance. Compared to a similarly positioned Lynnfield, Sandy Bridge is about 20% faster. Note that this is without turbo enabled. The retail 3.1GHz chip should turbo up to 3.4GHz in this test, giving it a 9.6% frequency boost.
In the multithreaded test Sandy Bridge’s per-core performance is even better than Lynnfield with HT enabled.
I also ran a few numbers using Cinebench R11.5. I didn’t have the opportunity to test the i5 2400 with HT enabled in this test so I measured performance of the i7 880 with HT enabled/disabled to compare per-thread performance.
Sandy Bridge's FP performance is very good. Clock for clock we see a 15.6% improvement over Lynnfield (4C/4T vs. 4C/4T). Compared to the proposed similarly priced Core i5 760, the i5 2400 would be 29.5% faster.
POV-Ray 3.73 beta 23 Ray Tracing Performance
POV-Ray is a popular, open-source raytracing application that also doubles as a great tool to measure CPU floating point performance.
I ran the SMP benchmark in beta 23 of POV-Ray 3.73. The numbers reported are the final score in pixels per second.
The similarly positioned/priced Core i5 760 is beat by 17%. There’s no replacement for more cores/threads however as the i7 880 and X6 parts both pull ahead. Turn on HT to level the playfield (at least within Intel) and Sandy Bridge is 15% faster than Lynnfield.
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iwodo - Sunday, August 29, 2010 - link
The GPU is on the same die, So depending on what you mean by true "Fusion" product. It is by AMD's definition ( the creator of the tech terms "Fusion" ) a fusion product.iwodo - Sunday, August 29, 2010 - link
You get 10% of IPC on average. It varies widely from 5 % to ~30% clock per clock.None of these Test have had AVX coded. I am not sure if you need to recompile to take advantage of the additional width for faster SSE Code. ( I am thinking such changes in coding of instruction should require one. ) AVX should offer some more improvement in many areas.
So much performance is here with even less Peak Power usage. If you factor in the Turbo Mode, Sandy Bridge actually give you a huge boost in Performance / Watts!!!
So i dont understand why people are complaining.
yuhong - Sunday, August 29, 2010 - link
Yes AVX requires software changes, as well as OS support for using XSAVE to save AVX state.BD2003 - Sunday, August 29, 2010 - link
It sounds like intel has a home run here. At least for my needs. Right now I'm running entirely on core 2 chips, but I can definitely find a use for all these.For my main/gaming desktop, the quad core i5s seem like theyll be the first upgrade thats big enough to move me away from my e6300 from 4 years ago.
For my HTPC, the integrated graphics seem like theyre getting to a point where I can move past my e2180 + 9400 IGP. I need at least some 3d graphics, and the current i3/i5 don't cut it. Even lower power consumption + faster CPU, all in a presumably smaller package - win.
For my home server, I'd love to put the lowest end i3 in there for great idle power consumption but with the speed to make things happen when it needs to. I'd been contemplating throwing in a quad core, but if the on-die video transcoding engine is legitimate there will be no need for that.
Thats still my main unanswered question: what's the deal with the video encoder/transcoder? Does it require explicit software support, or is it compatible with anything that's already out there? I'm mainly interested in real time streaming over LAN/internet to devices such as an ipad or even a laptop - if it can put out good quality 720-1080p h264 at decent bitrates in real time, especially on a low end chip, I'll be absolutely blown away. Any more info on this?
_Q_ - Sunday, August 29, 2010 - link
I do understand some complains, but Intel is running a business and so they do what is in their best interest.Yet, concerning USB 3 it seems to be too much of a disservice to the costumers that it should be in, without any third party add-on chip!
I think it is shameful of them to delay this further just so that they can get their LightPeak thing into to the market. Of which I read nothing in this review so I wonder, when will even that one come?!
I can only hope AMD does support it (haven't read about it) and they start getting more market, maybe that will show these near sighted Intel guys.
tatertot - Sunday, August 29, 2010 - link
Lightpeak would be chipset functionality, at least at first.Also, lightpeak is not a protocol, it's protocol-agnostic, and can in fact carry USB 3.0.
But, rant away if you want...
Guimar - Sunday, August 29, 2010 - link
Really need oneTriple Omega - Sunday, August 29, 2010 - link
I'm really interested to see how Intel is going to price the higher of these new CPU's, as there are several hurdles:1) The non-K's are going up against highly overclockable 1366 and 1156 parts. So pricing the K-models too high could mean trouble.
2) The LGA-1356 platform housing the new consumer high-end(LGA-2011 will be server-only) will also arrive later in 2011. Since these are expected to have up to 8 cores, pricing the higher 1155 CPU's too high will force a massive price-drop when 1356 arrives.(Or the P67 platform will collapse.) And 1366 has shown that such a high-end platform needs the equivalent of an i7 920 to be successful. So pricing the 2600K @ $500 seems impossible. Even $300 would not leave room for a $300 1356 part as that will, with 6-8 cores, easily outperform the 2600K.
It will also be quite interesting to see the development of those limits on overclocking when 1356 comes out. As imposing limits there too, could make the entire platform fail.(OCed 2600K better then 6-core 1356 CPU for example.) And of course AMD's response to all this. Will they profit from the overclocking limits of Intel? Will they grab back some high-end? Will they force Intel to change their pricing on 1155/1356?
@Anand:
It would be nice to see another PCIe 2.0 x8 SLI/CF bottleneck test with the new HD 6xxx series when the time comes. I'm interested to see if the GPU's will catch up with Intels limited platform choice.
thewhat - Sunday, August 29, 2010 - link
I'm disappointed that you didn't test it against 1366 quads. The triple channel memory and a more powerful platform in general have a significant advantage over 1156, so a lot of us are looking at those CPUs. Especially since the i7 950 is about to have its price reduced.A $1000 six-core 980X doesn't really fit in there, since it's at a totally different price point.
I was all for the 1366 as my next upgrade, but the low power consumption of Sandy Bridge looks very promising in terms of silent computing (less heat).
SteelCity1981 - Sunday, August 29, 2010 - link
What do you think the Core i7 980x uses? An LGA 1366 socket with triple channel memory support. So what makes you think that the Core i7 950 is going to perform any diff?????