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 EST3D Rendering Performance
Today's desktop processors are more than fast enough to do professional level 3D rendering at home. To look at performance under 3dsmax we ran the SPECapc 3dsmax 8 benchmark (only the CPU rendering tests) under 3dsmax 9 SP1. The results reported are the rendering composite scores.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, we have a new champ once more. The 2600K is slightly ahead of the 980X here, while the 2500K matches the performance of the i7 975 without Hyper Threading enabled. You really can't beat the performance Intel is offering here.
The i3 2100 is 11% faster than last year's i3 540, and the same performance as the Athlon II X4 645.
Created by the Cinema 4D folks we have Cinebench, a popular 3D rendering benchmark that gives us both single and multi-threaded 3D rendering results.
Single threaded performance sees a huge improvement with Sandy Bridge. Even the Core i3 2100 is faster than the 980X in this test. Regardless of workload, light or heavy, Sandy Bridge is the chip to get.
POV-Ray is a popular, open-source raytracing application that also doubles as a great tool to measure CPU floating point performance.
I ran the SMP benchmark in beta 23 of POV-Ray 3.73. The numbers reported are the final score in pixels per second.
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Loki726 - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Thanks a ton Anand for adding a compiler benchmark. I spent the vast majority of my time on builds and this will help me spec out a few new machines. It's interesting to see results indicating that I should not go anywhere near a low-end Sandybridge system, and that a lot of cheap AMD cores might not be a bad idea.estee - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Can't believe the 23.976Hz output bug is still in SB after all this time. Several years ago, the G35 had this issue and Intel proclaimed they'll have a fix for it. Subsequently, G45 still had the problem and even the iCores, but SB? C'mon....it's a big issue for HTPC buffs, because there's too much judder from 1) LCD displays 2) 3:2 cadencing from film to video conversion, so 1:1 (or rather 5:5 for most 120Hz sets) was a must for large screen HPTC setups. Yes, the bitstreaming is good and all, but most folks are content with just 7.1 DD/DTS output. I guess we'll have to wait (again) for iB and cling on to my ol' nVidia 9300 for now. :(mastrdrver - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Was just looking at the pictures that are downloadable and comparing and notice a couple of differences. Maybe they are just a driver tweak but I thought I remember ATI and/or nVidia getting slammed in the past for pulling similar tactics.The first thing I notice was when comparing the AA shots in COD. It appears that maybe the Sandy Bridge graphics isn't applying AA to the twigs in the ground. Or is this just an appearance thing where Intel might have a different algorithm that causing this?
The second is a little more obvious to me. In the Dirt 2 pictures I notice that Sandy Bridge is blurring and not clearly rendering the distance objects. The sign to the right side is what caught my eye.
One last thing is the DAO pictures. I've seen someone (in the past) post up pictures of the same exact place in the game. The quality looks a lot better then what Anand has shown and I was wondering if that is correct. I don't have the game so I have no way to confirm.
As always Anand I appreciate the time you and your staff take to do all of your articles and the quality that results. Its just one of the reasons why I've always found myself coming back here ever since the early years of your website.
RagingDragon - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Why don't K series parts get the full suite of virtualization features?xxtypersxx - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Anand,Great review as always, I love the in depth feature analysis that Anandtech provides.
Bios updates have been released for Gigabyte, Asus, and Intel P67 boards that correct an internal PLL overvolt issue that was artificially limiting overclocks. Users in the thread over at HWbot are reporting that processors that were stuck at 4.8 before are now hitting 5.4ghz.
http://hwbot.org/forum/showthread.php?t=15952
Would you be able to do a quick update on the overclocking results for your chips with the new BIOS updates?
Gothmoth - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
".....Sandy Bridge will be worth the upgrade for Quick Sync alone."you say that and a few pages before you say it will not work on PC´s with a discreet grafic card.
i don´t know you but videoencoding is done here on performance systems.
system that have discreet GFX cards like a 460 GTX or better.
and i think most enthusiast will buy a P67 mainboard and that would mean NO QUICK SYNC for them.
so please do an update on your review and clarify what exactly happens when you use a P67 mainboard with a discreet GFX card.
will quick sync really don´t work...??
Gothmoth - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
please make clear how you have tested quick sync in your review.i saw a few comments from people that are confused about your review.
i guess you tested quick sync on an H67 mainboard but i did not notice that you mentioned that in the text.
for my it looks liek intel is screwing the user who buy this 1. generation sandy bridge chipsets.
i will wait for Z68 thats for sure......
Manabu - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
In the quick sync test I missed a comparison with x264, that is currently the fastest and highest quality encoder for H.264, on an fast CPU. For example, using the presets superfast and very slow (one for speed with reasonable quality, the other for quality with reasonable speed). Also, with an too high bitrate, even the crapiest encoder will look good...I also wanted to see how low you can undervolt an i5-2400 when it has hit the overclocking cap, and how is the power consumption then. The same for the other locked CPUs would be cool too. Also, what is the power consumption of the sandy bridge CPUs running the quick sync hardware encoder?
NJoy - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Wow, what a SLAP in AMD's face! The idea they nursed for gazillion years and were set to finally release somewhere this week is brought to you, dear customer, first to the market, with a sudden change in NDA deadline to please you sooner with a hyperperformer from Intel. Who cares that NDAs make an important play in all planning activities, PR, logistics and whatever follows - what matters is that they are first to put the GPU on-die and this is what the average Joe will now know, with a bit of PR, perhaps. Snatch another design win. Hey, AMD, remember that pocket money the court ordered us to pay you? SLAP! And the licence? SLAP! Nicely planned and executed whilst everyone was so distracted with the DAAMIT versus nVidia battles and, ironically, a lack of leaks from the red camp.I just hope Bulldozer will kick some assess, even though I doubt it's really going to happen...
DanNeely - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
If AMD didn't put a steel toed boot into their own nuts by blowing the original 09Q3 release date for fusion I'd have more sympathy for them. Intel won because they made their launch date while the competition blew theirs by at least half a year.