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 Test
To keep the review length manageable we're presenting a subset of our results here. For all benchmark results and even more comparisons be sure to use our performance comparison tool: Bench.
| Motherboard: |
ASUS P7H57DV- EVO (Intel H57) |
| Hard Disk: |
Intel X25-M SSD (80GB) Crucial RealSSD C300 |
| Memory: |
Corsair DDR3-1600 2x4GB (9-9-9-24) Corsair DDR3-1333 4x1GB (7-7-7-20) Corsair DDR3-1333 2x2GB (7-7-7-20) Patriot DDR3-1600 2x4GB (9-9-9-24) |
| Video Card: |
eVGA GeForce GTX 280 (Vista 64) ATI Radeon HD 5870 (Windows 7) MSI GeForce GTX 580 (Windows 7) |
| Video Drivers: |
AMD Catalyst 10.12 (Windows 7) NVIDIA ForceWare 293.09 (Windows 7) ATI Catalyst 9.12 (Windows 7) NVIDIA ForceWare 180.43 (Vista64) NVIDIA ForceWare 178.24 (Vista32) |
| Desktop Resolution: | 1920x1200 |
| OS: |
Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit (for SYSMark) Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit Windows 7 x64 |
Special thanks to Corsair for sending an 8GB Vengeance kit for this review:
As well as Patriot for sending an 8GB Viper Xtreme kit:
All of our brand new tests (Civilization V, Visual Studio) use 8GB memory configurations enabled by both Corsair and Patriot.
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iwodo - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
1. Transcoding @ 100fps is not uber fast. x264 ultrafast setting is even faster then that. So i hope there are further improvement or potentials in the Quick Sync that we haven't yet discovered.2. OpenCL - No mention of OpenCL? At all?
3. I would think Intel GD has done very well this time around. And there are possibly 20 - 30% more performance to squeeze out given how Intel Gfx Drivers tend to be VERY POOR.
cactusdog - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Thanks for the excellent run down of Sandy Bridge. As i have a x58 system i'm going to skip it and see what happens in Q4 . X58 has been a good platform and lasted longer than most others in recent years.xxxxxl - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
I've thought it over...and i don't believe that H67 only support GPU overclocking.Like what others said, buy a "K" cpu to get HD3000 graphic and cannot overclock...and on the other side, those with P67 buy unlocked "K" CPU get HD3000 but cannot use...then what's the point of making HD3000 graphics?
strikeback03 - Tuesday, January 4, 2011 - link
As they pointed out, with the Z series motherboard you can have both. That said, it does seem stupid that Intel would launch with those official guidelines, and in these comments others are saying some H67 motherboards are allowing the CPU multiplier to be changed.rs2 - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
As tempting is this chip looks, my 3.8 GHz Core 2 Quad is still more CPU than I can really use most of the time. I wonder if we're reaching the point where improved compute performance is not really necessary for mainstream and even most enthusiast users.In any case, the upcoming 6-core/12-thread variant sounds interesting. Maybe I'll upgrade to that if Intel doesn't assign it to the $999 price point.
romanovskis - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
same here. For gaming or multimedia use, core2quad (mine at 4GHz) is still enough, and probably will be enough for 1-2 years. Best value/money is still in GPU upgrades.iwodo - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Beat Value / Money is SSD...cgeorgescu - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Best Value/Money is Beer, everybody knows that. Not 6-core but 6-pack.karlostomy - Thursday, January 6, 2011 - link
WIN ^^^agr8man - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
a great review from you guys, and imo, the i5 2500k is really a steal.