The Sandy Bridge Preview
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 27, 2010 2:38 PM ESTWindows 7 Gaming Performance
Our Bench suite is getting a little long in the tooth, so I added a few more gaming tests under Windows 7 with a new group of processors. We'll be adding some of these tests to Bench in the future but the number of datapoints is obviously going to be small as we build up the results.
Batman is an Unreal Engine 3 game and a fairly well received one at that. Performance is measured using the built in benchmark at the highest image quality settings without AA enabled.
Gaming performance is competitive, but we don't see any huge improvements under Batman.
Dragon Age Origins is another very well received game. The 3rd person RPG gives our CPUs a different sort of workload to enjoy:
Dragon Age on the other hand shows an 11.6% gain vs. the i5 760 and equal performance to the Core i7 880. Given that the i5 2400 is slated to be cheaper than the i5 760, I can't complain.
World of Warcraft needs no introduction. An absurd number of people play it, so we're here to benchmark it. Our test favors repeatability over real world frame rates, so our results here will be higher than in the real world with lots of server load. But what our results will tell you is what the best CPU is to get for playing WoW:
Performance in our WoW test is top notch. The i5 2400 is now the fastest CPU we've ever run through our WoW benchmark, the Core i7 980X included.
We've been working on putting together Starcraft II performance numbers, so here's a quick teaser:
A 12% advantage over the Core i7 880 and an 18% improvement over the Core i5 760.
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Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, August 27, 2010 - link
I don't believe any of these apps have AVX support, they're all too old for that.Take care,
Anand
ESetter - Friday, August 27, 2010 - link
Thank you for the quick answer. It would be great to include some software with AVX support in the full review, when Sandy Bridge launches. Probably the Intel Math Kernel Library will be updated in time.darckhart - Friday, August 27, 2010 - link
1. i'd like to see some temp numbers. along with, does intel stock hsf actually do the job here? (which they have been getting better at really)2. i didnt see anything about accelerated hd video playback using the on die gpu?
3. sure these cpu look great from price point performance gain....until you realize you need a full platform upgrade to go along with it...which if we assume mainstream mobo around the 100$ mark and ram to match since they're taking away the bclk deal... and every 2 yrs is a bit too soon for full platform upgrade imo.
4. hardware virtualization parts? i know the current i3 vs i5/7 chips had some stuff disabled. will these SB chips follow the same profile?
5. mobile versions? we know the mobile ones are usually cut back to fit low tdp profile. will the same cuts apply like the current mobile i3/i5 parts (eg, no real quad core parts)? otoh, what about the quad core mobiles? the current i7 mobile quads are laughable at their performance and heat output (i'm looking at you first gen hp envy). do you think these SB quad mobiles will actually be decent?
DanNeely - Friday, August 27, 2010 - link
Wikipedia lists both 2 and 4 core mobile parts. Not definative but they generally do a good job of keeping up with the latest leaks for things like this.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Bridge_(microar...
hamitaltintop22 - Friday, August 27, 2010 - link
I hope there is a price drop for the i5 750 to around $150 when this comes out or i7 920 to $200 (no microcenter here).DesktopMan - Friday, August 27, 2010 - link
I'm not sure about this, but I seem to recall having read that aes-ni instructions use the GPU, at least partially. Makes sense as the gpu is excellent at parallel tasks. If this is the case, would the 6 EU part perform differently than the 12 EU part at AES?Any news on when the inevitable Q67 would launch? I guess it's likely that Q67 will use AMT 6.0 as it was a pretty recent upgrade.
With sata III support at launch you'd imagine they'd also support sata III on their gen 3 SSDs. Time will tell I guess.
overclocking101 - Friday, August 27, 2010 - link
wow bummer. welcome to the end of intel Bus speed overclocking. I will not be adapting the new sockets unless something happens and intel changes their minds. overclocking is not as easy as switching multiplyers even EE cpu's of nowadays show that. 90% of the high overclocks with EE cpus show that a mixture of multi and bus speed is needed. i sense though that with the higher end socket intel will allow it. if not i think its a very bad move on their part.starfalcon - Friday, August 27, 2010 - link
I don't think any of the sandy bridge graphics will be able to get to GT 240 levels.This one trades blows with the 5450 as we can see, and just looking at 3DMark06 scores the 5450 scores about 3500 or so, while the GT 240 does maybe 9000 or 10000.
If the more powerful sandy bridge graphics can get up to 4000 or 5000 or so that would be great, that would be beating the 9400 GT and closing in on the 9500 GT, not getting to GT 240 levels though. Wonder what the next integrated graphics after this will be like.
TETRONG - Friday, August 27, 2010 - link
I take it this means it will soon be the optimum time to purchase current-gen technology at significantly reduced prices?Just wanting to build a no nonsense system at slightly below the current price/performance sweet-spot.
Seems Intel are only interested in toying with consumers.
They've wasted die space that could've been used for a more capable CPU. How many years have we been chained under 4Ghz frequency? 5 years or so?
Nine women can't make a baby in one month! Not every problem is parallelizable - we need greater frequencies/efficiencies.
Now they are locking processors and playing games with the sockets. No USB 3.0!!?
Garbage, No Thanks!!!
Seems you are giving them a free pass Anand. Very convenient timing to steal AMD's thunder, eh!
I love you man - big fan since the beginning, but you should read Scott Wasson over at Tech Report. Those value scatterplots are very helpful to me - these regurgitated press releases, not so much.
Sorry;(
To be so harsh, but we deserve better than these kiddie chips!
Only you can hold them accountable for these failures of imagination.
wyvernknight - Friday, August 27, 2010 - link
I am a bit disappointed. Seems like since intel is wiping the floor with AMD, decided it was OK to screw us all over with this socket thing. I will still buy an intel processor if AMD has no cards to play, but i wont be pleased.