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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gruffi - Friday, August 27, 2010 - link
Why not comparing with a HD 5570? That is what Llano is supposed to have, Redwood-class IGP. An HD 5450 is quite pointless. It just reflects competition for Ontario. But Sandy Bridge is not Ontario's competition.And what about image quality or GPGPU support? Pure FPS numbers are only half of the truth.
wiak - Friday, August 27, 2010 - link
dont think so, its said that AMD's Fusion built-in GPU will have 400 SPUs (HD 5670 level-graphics), thats a far cry from HD 5450's 80 SPUs ;)so if you wanna game you still have to use something from a real graphics manufacture like AMD when it comes to GPUs bult into CPUs, as a added bonus you also have updated drivers and a decade old DirectX 9 compatibility, so you old games work without any big problems
icrf - Friday, August 27, 2010 - link
I am impressed that you have a functioning sample at least four months before it's available, run it through enough paces for a review like this, and they let you release the numbers. I mean, are they trying to suppress holiday sales?When do you think you'll have a Bulldozer sample from AMD to run a similar preview? Barring a surprise from AMD, at this point, it looks like I'll be building an i7 2600 early next year. The similar spec chip from today is an i7-975 Extreme, which is the fastest quad core in the bench, and Sandy Bridge runs 13-14% faster in the only benchmark I care about (x264). I guess even that might change significantly if it can take advantage of this "alleged on-die video transcode engine." I'd not heard of that before.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, August 27, 2010 - link
Honestly we're probably several months out from having Bulldozer silicon in a similar state. With the past few generations of Intel CPUs, by around 4 - 6 months before launch we're usually able to get access to them and they perform very well.With AMD the lead time is far shorter. I don't expect us to have access to Bulldozer silicon that's worth benchmarking until Q2 2011 at the earliest. I'm more than happy to be proven wrong though :-P
icrf - Friday, August 27, 2010 - link
I guess I'm mostly surprised that Intel would do it. Conroe made sense. They had to show the world as early as possible that they had something significantly faster than AMD, suppressing sales of that for their own a little later. But now that they own that performance crown, why show previews so many months early? I suppose I could be over-analyzing it and the vast majority of the market couldn't care less so it makes little difference to their bottom line. Bragging rights simply make for good PR.Sad to see Bulldozer so far out. I assume the server chips will ship before the consumer ones, too, so it'll be at least a solid year before it could be in my hands, anyway. Oh well. To be honest, my C2D E6400 still does well enough for me. Maybe I'll just make my upgrade an Intel G3 SSD. If I got both that and SB, I don't know what I'd do with myself.
Thanks, and keep up the good work.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Saturday, August 28, 2010 - link
This preview wasn't Intel sanctioned, I believe Intel will release its own numbers at IDF in a few weeks.Take care,
Anand
icrf - Saturday, August 28, 2010 - link
Oh, I had assumed you got this chip from Intel and they had a typical NDA that said when you could talk about what you found. Where'd it come from, then? One of Intel's motherboard partners with whom you have a friendly relationship?aegisofrime - Saturday, August 28, 2010 - link
I must say, I'm really grateful for this article. I'm in the middle of planning an upgrade and information like this is really valuable to me. (and I guess to a lot of people as well!) I would just like you to know that your articles actually do influence some of our buying choices. So... Thank you! :DNow, all I need is a Bulldozer preview and all the pieces are in place...
vajm1234 - Friday, August 27, 2010 - link
few things clear and few unclear as of nowthis sandy bridge review sample here do not have TURBO enabled. The CPU runs at 3.1GHz all the time, regardless of workload as anand stated
it says "Both the CPU and GPU on SB will be able to turbo independently of one another. If you’re playing a game that uses more GPU than CPU, the CPU may run at stock speed (or lower) and the GPU can use the additional thermal headroom to clock up. The same applies in reverse if you’re running something computationally intensive."
QUESTIONS
Q} will the on die GPU unit work in tandem with the other discrete GPUs out there or it will shut off? if yes will it work when sli or crossfire is enabled :p
Q} whatever the above statement says will it happen if we use discrete graphics from nvidia or ati?
Q} will there be any possibility to disable ONLY GPU and in certain cases ONLY its TURBO FEATURE
Q} any possibility to remain the GPU overclocked the whole time when cpu is IDLE
Q} what about accelerated hd video playback using the on die gpu?
Q} it support VT-x and AVX is it possible for you anand to use specific benchmark for these instructions, same request goes for the AMD
Q} as someone asked will there be a cheap 6 => core processor for mainstream market
Q} again as per the last comment ......When do you think you'll have a Bulldozer sample from AMD to run a similar preview?
this Ques Must be answered
all n all what i think even if there is a 15-19% perf. Jump its not worh the spending when u consider u have to upgrade the entire platform
and moreover limiting Overclocking features damm! a retarded decision i am not in a mood for amd but if the overclocking hits then i will move 10000...% :angry:
regards
DanNeely - Saturday, August 28, 2010 - link
If you're asking about an SLI/CFX pairing with the IGP almost certainly not. The only company to ever attempt something like that has been Lucid with the Hydra chip and the results have been less than impressive. Architecturally I don't know that it'd even be possible for them to try with the on die GPU. The Hydra chip sat between the CPU and the Gfx cards on the PCIe bus and looked like a single card to the OS. There's no way for them to insert themselves into the middle of the connection to the IGP.