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 ESTUEFI Support: 3TB Drives & Mouse Support Pre-Boot
Remember the mountain of issues I had trying to get Seagate’s 3TB HDD to work as a boot drive in my X58 system? A couple of weeks ago Intel released version 10.1 of its storage drivers, which added software support for drives larger than 2.2TB. That’s one piece of the puzzle. With Sandy Bridge, many motherboard manufacturers are moving to UEFI instead of traditional 32-bit PC BIOSes. Combine that with a GPT partition and your new Sandy Bridge system should have no problems booting to and accessing 3TB drives made of a single partition.
ASUS' entire SNB lineup is UEFI enabled
ASUS sent over a couple of its 6-series motherboards which boast a custom skinned UEFI implementation. You get all of the functionality of a traditional BIOS but with a GUI, and yes, there’s full mouse support.
You’re either going to love or hate the new UEFI GUIs. They do take a little time to get used to but pretty much everything is where you’d expect it to be. Navigating with the mouse can be quicker than the keyboardin some situations and slower in others. Thankfully the interface, at least ASUS’, is pretty quick. There’s scroll wheel support although no draggable scroll bars, which makes quickly scrolling a little frustrating.
Unlike P55, you can set your SATA controller to compatible/legacy IDE mode. This is something you could do on X58 but not on P55. It’s useful for running HDDERASE to secure erase your SSD for example. If you do want to use HDDERASE on a 6-series motherboard you’ll need to first run HDDERASE4 to disable the UEFI initiated security on your drive and then run HDDERASE3 to secure erase it.
The biggest improvement to me honestly is POST time. Below is a quick comparison of time from power on to the Starting Windows screen. I’m using the exact same hardware in all three cases, just varying motherboard/CPU:
| Intel P67 | Intel P55 | Intel X58 | |
| Time from Power on to Boot Loader | 22.4 seconds | 29.4 seconds | 29.3 seconds |
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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.