The Sandy Bridge Review: Intel Core i7-2600K, i5-2500K and Core i3-2100 Tested
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 3, 2011 12:01 AM ESTOverclocking Intel's HD Graphics
The base clock of both Intel's HD Graphics 2000 and 3000 on desktop SKUs is 850MHz. Thankfully, Intel's 32nm process allows for much headroom in both the CPU and GPU for overclocking. There are no clock locks or K-series parts to worry about when it comes to GPU overclocking; everything is unlocked. I started by trying to see how far I could push the Core i3-2100's HD Graphics 2000.
While I could get into Windows and run games at up to 1.6GHz, I needed to back down to 1.4GHz to maintain stability across all of our tests. That's a 64.7% overclock:
In some cases (Civilization V, WoW, Dawn of War II), the overclocked HD Graphics 2000 was enough to bring the 6 EU part close to the performance of the 3000 model. For the most part however the overclock just helped the Core i3-2100 perform halfway between it and the Core i5-2500K.
I tried the same experiment with the Core i5-2500K. While there's no chance it could catch up to a Radeon HD 5570, I managed to overclock my 2500K to 1.55GHz (the GPU clock can be adjusted in 50MHz increments):
The 82.4% increase in clock speed resulted in anywhere from a 0.6% to 33.7% increase in performance. While that's not terrible, it's also not that great. It looks like we're fairly memory bandwidth constrained here.
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7Enigma - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Do you happen to remember the space heater.....ahem, I mean P4?DanNeely - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
I do. Intel used bigger heatsinks than they do for mainstream parts today.panx3dx - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
The article states that in order for quick sync to function, a display must be connected to the integrated graphics. Since p67 does not support the IGP, then quick sync will be disabled???panx3dx - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Opps, just saw Doormat already asked the question on page three, and I can't find a way to edit or delete my post. However no one has yet to give a clear answer.Next9 - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
There is not any problem with BIOS and 3TB drives. Using GPT you can boot such a drive either on BIOS or UEFI based system. You should only blame Windows and their obsolete MS-DOS partitioning scheme and MS-DOS bootloader.mino - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Microsoft not supporting GPT on BIOS systems (hence 3TB drivers on BIOS systems) was a pure BUSINESS decision.It had nothing to do with technology which is readily available.
mino - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
In the table there is "N" for the i3 CPUs.But in the text there is: "While _all_ SNB parts support VT-x, only three support VT-d"
Could you check it out and clarify? (there is no data on ark.intel.com yet)
mczak - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
It's not exactly true that HD3000 has less compute performance than HD5450, at least it's not that clear cut.It has 12 EUs, and since they are 128bit wide, this would amount to "48SP" if you count like AMD. Factor in the clock difference and that's actually more cores (when running at 1300Mhz at least). Though if you only look at MAD throughput, then it is indeed less (as intel igp still can't quite do MAD, though it can do MAC).
It's a bit disappointing though to see mostly HD2000 on the desktop, with the exception of a few select parts, which is not really that much faster compared to Ironlake IGP (which isn't surprising - after all Ironlake had twice the EUs albeit at a lower clock, so the architectural improvements are still quite obvious).
DanNeely - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
That's not true. Each AMD SP is a pipeline, the 4th one on a 69xx (or 5th on a 58xx) series card is 64 bits wide, not 32. They can't all be combined into a single 128 (160, 196) bit wide FPU.kallogan - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
I'll wait for 22 nm. No point in upgrading for now