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 ESTFinal Words
In terms of absolute CPU performance, Sandy Bridge doesn't actually move things forward. This isn't another ultra-high-end CPU launch, but rather a refresh for the performance mainstream and below. As one AnandTech editor put it, you get yesterday's performance at a much lower price point. Lynnfield took away a lot of the reason to buy an X58 system as it delivered most of the performance with much more affordable motherboards; Sandy Bridge all but puts the final nail in X58's coffin. Unless you're running a lot of heavily threaded applications, I would recommend a Core i7-2600K over even a Core i7-980X. While six cores are nice, you're better off pocketing the difference in cost and enjoying nearly the same performance across the board (if not better in many cases).
In all but the heaviest threaded applications, Sandy Bridge is the fastest chip on the block—and you get the performance at a fairly reasonable price. The Core i7-2600K is tempting at $317 but the Core i5-2500K is absolutely a steal at $216. You're getting nearly $999 worth of performance at roughly a quarter of the cost. Compared to a Core i5-750/760, you'll get an additional 10-50% performance across the board in existing applications, and all that from a ~25% increase in clock speed. A big portion of what Sandy Bridge delivers is due to architectural enhancements, the type of thing we've come to expect from an Intel tock. Starting with Conroe, repeating with Nehalem, and going strong once more with Sandy Bridge, Intel makes this all seem so very easy.
Despite all of the nastiness Intel introduced by locking/limiting most of the Sandy Bridge CPUs, if you typically spend around $200 on a new CPU then Sandy Bridge is likely a better overclocker than anything you've ever owned before it. The biggest loser in the overclock locks is the Core i3 which now ships completely locked. Thankfully AMD has taken care of the low-end segments very well over the past couple of years. All Intel is doing by enforcing clock locks for these lower end chips is sending potential customers AMD's way.
The Core i3-2100 is still a step forward, but not nearly as much of one as the 2500K. For the most part you're getting a 5-20% increase in performance (although we did notice some 30-40% gains), but you're giving up overclocking as an option. For multithreaded workloads you're better off with an Athlon II X4 645; however, for lightly threaded work or a general purpose PC the Core i3-2100 is likely faster.
If this were a normal CPU, I'd probably end here, but Sandy Bridge is no normal chip. The on-die GPU and Quick Sync are both noteworthy additions. Back in 2006 I wondered if Intel would be able to stick to its aggressive tick-tock cadence. Today there's no question of whether or not Intel can do it. The question now is whether Intel will be able to sustain a similarly aggressive ramp in GPU performance and feature set. Clarkdale/Arrandale were both nice, but they didn't do much to compete with low-end discrete GPUs. Intel's HD Graphics 3000 makes today's $40-$50 discrete GPUs redundant. The problem there is we've never been happy with $40-$50 discrete GPUs for anything but HTPC use. What I really want to see from Ivy Bridge and beyond is the ability to compete with $70 GPUs. Give us that level of performance and then I'll be happy.
The HD Graphics 2000 is not as impressive. It's generally faster than what we had with Clarkdale, but it's not exactly moving the industry forward. Intel should just do away with the 6 EU version, or at least give more desktop SKUs the 3000 GPU. The lack of DX11 is acceptable for SNB consumers but it's—again—not moving the industry forward. I believe Intel does want to take graphics seriously, but I need to see more going forward.
Game developers need to put forth some effort as well. Intel has clearly tried to fix some of its bad reputation this go around, so simply banning SNB graphics from games isn't helping anyone. Hopefully both sides will put in the requisite testing time to actually improve the situation.
Quick Sync is just awesome. It's simply the best way to get videos onto your smartphone or tablet. Not only do you get most if not all of the quality of a software based transcode, you get performance that's better than what high-end discrete GPUs are able to offer. If you do a lot of video transcoding onto portable devices, Sandy Bridge will be worth the upgrade for Quick Sync alone.
For everyone else, Sandy Bridge is easily a no brainer. Unless you already have a high-end Core i7, this is what you'll want to upgrade to.
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Taft12 - Tuesday, January 4, 2011 - link
You first.ReaM - Tuesday, January 4, 2011 - link
the six core 980x still owns them in all tests where all cores are used.I dont know 22k in cinebench is really not a reason to buy the new i7, I reach 24k on air with i7 860 and my i5 runs on 20k on air.
Short term performance is real good, but I dont care if I wait for a package to unpack for 7 seconds or 8, for long term like rendering, neither there is a reason to upgrade.
I recommend you get the older 1156 off ebay and save a ton of money.
I have the i5 on hackintosh, I am wondering if 1155 will be hackintoshable
Spivonious - Tuesday, January 4, 2011 - link
I have to disagree with Anand; I feel the QuickSync image is the best of the four in all cases. Yes, there is some edge-softening going on, so you lose some of the finer detail that ATi and SNB gives you, but when viewing on a small screen such as one on an iPhone/iPod, I'd rather have the smoothed-out shapes than pixel-perfect detail.wutsurstyle - Tuesday, January 4, 2011 - link
I started my computing days with Intel but I'm so put off by the way Intel is marketing their new toys. Get this but you can't have that...buy that, but your purchase must include other things. And even after I throw my wallet to Intel, I still would not have a OC'd Sandy Bridge with useful IGP and Quicksync. But wait, throw more money on a Z68 a little later. Oh...and there's a shiny new LGA2011 in the works. Anyone worried that they started naming sockets after the year it comes out? Yay for spending!AMD..please save us!
MrCrispy - Tuesday, January 4, 2011 - link
Why the bloody hell don't the K parts support VT-d ?! I can only imagine it will be introduced at a price premium in a later part.slick121 - Tuesday, January 4, 2011 - link
Wow I just realized this. I really hate this type of market segmentation.Navier - Tuesday, January 4, 2011 - link
I'm a little confused why Quick Sync needs to have a monitor connected to the MB to work. I'm trying to understand why having a monitor connected is so important for video transcoding, vs. playback etc.Is this a software limitation? Either in the UEFI (BIOS) or drivers? Or something more systemic in the hardware.
What happens on a P67 motherboard? Does the P67 board disable the on die GPU? Effectively disabling Quick Sync support? This seems a very unfortunate over-site for such a promising feature. Will a future driver/firmware update resolve this limitation?
Thanks
NUSNA_moebius - Tuesday, January 4, 2011 - link
Intel HD 3000 - ~115 Million transistorsAMD Radeon HD 3450 - 181 Million transistors - 8 SIMDs
AMD Radeon HD 4550 - 242 Million transistors - 16 SIMDs
AMD Radeon HD 5450 - 292 Million transistors - 16 SIMDs
AMD Xenos (Xbox 360 GPU) - 232 Million transistors + 105 Million (eDRAM daughter die) = 337 Million transistors - 48 SIMDs
Xenos I think in the end is still a good two, two and a half times more powerful than the Radeon 5450. Xenos does not have to be OpenCL, Direct Compute, DX11 nor fully DX10 compliant (a 50 million jump from the 4550 going from DX10.1 to 11), nor contains hardware video decode, integrated HDMI output with 5.1 audio controller (even the old Radeon 3200 clocks in at 150 million + transistors). What I would like some clarification on is if the transistor count for the Xenos includes Northbridge functions..............
Clearly PC GPUs have insane transistor counts in order to be highly compatible. It is commendable how well the Intel HD 3000 does with only 115 Million, but it's important to note that older products like the X1900 had 384 Million transistors, back when DX9.0c was the aim and in pure throughput, it should match or closely trail Xenos at 500 MHz. Going from the 3450 to 4550 GPUs, we go up another 60 million for 8 more SIMDs of a similar DX10.1 compatible nature, as well as the probable increases for hardware video decode, etc. So basically, to come into similar order as the Xenos in terms of SIMD counts (of which Xenos is 48 of it's own type I must emphasize), we would need 60 million transistors per 8 SIMDs, which would put us at about 360 million transistors for a 48 SIMD (240 SP) AMD part that is DX 10.1 compatible and not equipped with anything unrelated to graphics processing.
Yes, it's a most basic comparison (and probably fundamentally wrong in some regards), but I think it sheds some light on the idea that the Radeon HD 5450 really still pales in comparison to the Xenos. We have much better GPUs like Redwood that are twice as powerful with their higher clock speeds + 400 SPs (627 Million transistors total) and consume less energy than Xenos ever did. Of course, this isn't taking memory bandwidth or framebuffer size into account, nor the added benefits of console optimization.
frankanderson - Tuesday, January 4, 2011 - link
I'm still rocking my Q6600 + Gigabyte X38 DS5 board, upgraded to a GTX580 and been waiting for Sandy, definitely looking forward to this once the dust settles..Thanks Anand...
Spivonious - Wednesday, January 5, 2011 - link
I'm still on E6600 + P965 board. Honestly, I would upgrade my video card (HD3850) before doing a complete system upgrade, even with Sandy Bridge being so much faster than my old Conroe. I have yet to run a game that wasn't playable at full detail. Maybe my standards are just lower than others.