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 ESTThe Lineup
I don’t include a lot of super markety slides in these launch reviews, but this one is worthy of a mention:
Sandy Bridge is launching with no less than 29 different SKUs today. That’s 15 for mobile and 14 for desktop. Jarred posted his full review of the mobile Core i7-2820QM, so check that out if you want the mobile perspective on all of this.
By comparison, this time last year Intel announced 11 mobile Arrandale CPUs and 7 desktop parts. A year prior we got Lynnfield with 3 SKUs and Clarksfield with 3 as well. That Sandy Bridge is Intel’s biggest launch ever goes without saying. It’s also the most confusing. While Core i7 exclusively refers to processors with 4 or more cores (on the desktop at least), Core i5 can mean either 2 or 4 cores. Core i3 is reserved exclusively for dual-core parts.
Intel promised that the marketing would all make sense one day. Here we are, two and a half years later, and the Core i-branding is no clearer. At the risk of upsetting all of Intel Global Marketing, perhaps we should return to just labeling these things with their clock speeds and core counts? After all, it’s what Apple does—and that’s a company that still refuses to put more than one button on its mice. Maybe it’s worth a try.
Check Jarred’s article out for the mobile lineup, but on desktop here’s how it breaks down:
| Processor | Core Clock | Cores / Threads | L3 Cache | Max Turbo | Max Overclock Multiplier | TDP | Price |
| Intel Core i7-2600K | 3.4GHz | 4 / 8 | 8MB | 3.8GHz | 57x | 95W | $317 |
| Intel Core i7-2600 | 3.4GHz | 4 / 8 | 8MB | 3.8GHz | 42x | 95W | $294 |
| Intel Core i5-2500K | 3.3GHz | 4 / 4 | 6MB | 3.7GHz | 57x | 95W | $216 |
| Intel Core i5-2500 | 3.3GHz | 4 / 4 | 6MB | 3.7GHz | 41x | 95W | $205 |
| Intel Core i5-2400 | 3.1GHz | 4 / 4 | 6MB | 3.4GHz | 38x | 95W | $184 |
| Intel Core i5-2300 | 2.8GHz | 4 / 4 | 6MB | 3.1GHz | 34x | 95W | $177 |
| Intel Core i3-2120 | 3.3GHz | 2 / 4 | 3MB | N/A | N/A | 65W | $138 |
| Intel Core i3-2100 | 2.93GHz | 2 / 4 | 3MB | N/A | N/A | 65W | $117 |
Intel is referring to these chips as the 2nd generation Core processor family, despite three generations of processors carrying the Core architecture name before it (Conroe, Nehalem, and Westmere). The second generation is encapsulated in the model numbers for these chips. While all previous generation Core processors have three digit model numbers, Sandy Bridge CPUs have four digit models. The first digit in all cases is a 2, indicating that these are “2nd generation” chips and the remaining three are business as usual. I’d expect that Ivy Bridge will swap out the 2 for a 3 next year.
What you will see more of this time around are letter suffixes following the four digit model number. K means what it did last time: a fully multiplier unlocked part (similar to AMD’s Black Edition). The K-series SKUs are even more important this time around as some Sandy Bridge CPUs will ship fully locked, as in they cannot be overclocked at all (more on this later).
| Processor | Core Clock | Cores / Threads | L3 Cache | Max Turbo | TDP |
| Intel Core i7-2600S | 2.8GHz | 4 / 8 | 8MB | 3.8GHz | 65W |
| Intel Core i5-2500S | 2.7GHz | 4 / 4 | 6MB | 3.7GHz | 65W |
| Intel Core i5-2500T | 2.3GHz | 4 / 4 | 6MB | 3.3GHz | 45W |
| Intel Core i5-2400S | 2.5GHz | 4 / 4 | 6MB | 3.3GHz | 65W |
| Intel Core i5-2390T | 2.7GHz | 2 / 4 | 3MB | 3.5GHz | 35W |
| Intel Core i5-2100T | 2.5GHz | 2 / 4 | 3MB | N/A | 35W |
There are also T and S series parts for desktop. These are mostly aimed at OEMs building small form factor or power optimized boxes. The S stands for “performance optimized lifestyle” and the T for “power optimized lifestyle”. In actual terms the Ses are lower clocked 65W parts while the Ts are lower clocked 35W or 45W parts. Intel hasn’t disclosed pricing on either of these lines but expect them to carry noticeable premiums over the standard chips. There’s nothing new about this approach; both AMD and Intel have done it for a little while now, it’s just more prevalent in Sandy Bridge than before.
More Differentiation
In the old days Intel would segment chips based on clock speed and cache size. Then Intel added core count and Hyper Threading to the list. Then hardware accelerated virtualization. With Sandy Bridge the matrix grows even bigger thanks to the on-die GPU.
| Processor | Intel HD Graphics | Graphics Max Turbo | Quick Sync | VT-x | VT-d | TXT | AES-NI |
| Intel Core i7-2600K | 3000 | 1350MHz | Y | Y | N | N | Y |
| Intel Core i7-2600 | 2000 | 1350MHz | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| Intel Core i5-2500K | 3000 | 1100MHz | Y | Y | N | N | Y |
| Intel Core i5-2500 | 2000 | 1100MHz | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| Intel Core i5-2400 | 2000 | 1100MHz | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y |
| Intel Core i5-2300 | 2000 | 1100MHz | Y | Y | N | N | Y |
| Intel Core i3-2120 | 2000 | 1100MHz | Y | N | N | N | N |
| Intel Core i3-2100 | 2000 | 1100MHz | Y | N | N | N | Y |
While almost all SNB parts support VT-x (the poor i3s are left out), only three support VT-d. Intel also uses AES-NI as a reason to force users away from the i3 and towards the i5. I’ll get into the difference in GPUs in a moment.
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krazyderek - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
putting the 3000 on the the 2600k and 2500k parts ALMOST made sense as an up-sell, but you can't even use their IGP when on a P series board when you're overclocking! If the Z series wont' be out for a while why the hell would i buy an overclocking chip now? so i can spend more money to replace my H series motherboard with a Z series? Nice try.It's frustrating that you have to pick your sacrifice.... you either get the 3000 with the K sku, or you get VT-d and TXT with the standard sku. Intel doesn't have an offering with both which is kind of ridiculous for high end chips.
mino - Wednesday, January 5, 2011 - link
Yeah, what is most disappointing is lack of Virtualization support even from i3's (!)For christ's sake, Virtualization is the most BASIC requirement for any box today and even s775 Pentium, not to mention the WHOLE AMD lineup have it!
For me this means nothing sub-i5 is useable in ANY capacity, business or private while i5 are (financially) and overkill for most uses.
Well done Intel. You have just lost ~100 $100 certain sales this year. Whatever, will have to wait for Llano for the mainstream stuff.
DrSlothy - Wednesday, January 12, 2011 - link
I think that's an error in the review table, though one I've seen in every Core review so far - did Intel marketing give out wrong specs?Intel website shows the entire Sandy Bridge line-up to have Hardware Virtualisation (VT-x) support, though some are missing VT-d
tech6 - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Another great review from Anandtech - thanks guys.It seems odd that the 3000 series graphics engine would be only included on a part designed for over clocking and the boards that support overclocking can't handle integrated graphics. I would have thought that the other way around would have made more sense.
In any case the 2600K and 2500K look like great value parts and are just what I was waiting for!
DanNeely - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Does anyone know if QuickSync will appear on LGA-2011 chips? I know they aren't going to have the general purpose GPU components, but this is enough of a performance booster that I'd think Intel would want to keep it on their high end consumer platform in some fashion.ThaHeretic - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
I see TXT in the last chart above with no explanation as to what it is or why it is differentiated. They -took out- functionality from the unlocked parts? That seems backwards...Kevin G - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
This functionality will likely appear in Sandybridge Xeons for socket 1155. Intel *generally* segments the Xeons by core count and clock speed, not by feature set like they do for consumer chips. The other feature Intel is holding back is ECC which should be standard in socket 1155 Xeons.DanNeely - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
It's a hardware security feature. It's best known for the Trusted Platform Module; an on board cryptographic device used in some corporate computers but not used in consumer systems. Probably they just want to keep people from building high end secure servers with cheap, overclocked K parts instead of the much more profitable XEONs for 2-3x as much.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Execution_Tec...
kache - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
I think I'll wait for the SB xeons and the new EVGA SR-2, hoping that EVGA will release it.adrien - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Numbers will probably speak by themselves. ;-)17:37 ~ % md5sum *.png
bee3c83b3ef49504e0608a601a03bfc2 6870.png
bee3c83b3ef49504e0608a601a03bfc2 snb.png
So the 6870 and cpu-rendering have the same image.