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 ESTPower Consumption
Power consumption is very low thanks to core power gating and Intel's 32nm process. Also, when the integrated GPU is not in use it is completely power gated as to not waste any power either. The end result is lower power consumption than virtually any other platform out there under load.
I also measured power at the ATX12V connector to give you an idea of what actual CPU power consumption is like (excluding the motherboard, PSU loss, etc...):
| Processor | Idle | Load (Cinebench R11.5) |
| Intel Core i7 2600K @ 4.4GHz | 5W | 111W |
| Intel Core i7 2600K (3.4GHz) | 5W | 86W |
| AMD Phenom II X4 975 BE (3.6GHz) | 14W | 96W |
| AMD Phenom II X6 1100T (3.3GHz) | 20W | 109W |
| Intel Core i5 661 (3.33GHz) | 4W | 33W |
| Intel Core i7 880 (3.06GHz) | 3W | 106W |
Idle power is a strength of Intel's as the cores are fully power gated when idle resulting in these great single digit power levels. Under load, there's actually not too much difference between an i7 2600K and a 3.6GHz Phenom II (only 10W). There's obviously a big difference in performance however (7.45 vs. 4.23 for the Phenom II in Cinebench R11.5), thus giving Intel better performance per watt. The fact that AMD is able to add two more cores at only a 13W load and 300MHz frequency penalty is pretty impressive as well.
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samrty22331 - Wednesday, June 1, 2011 - link
visual studio 2010 professional not supported intel i5 2500kso
can you say
how to install vs 2010 in this
Okurka - Saturday, August 13, 2011 - link
The base clock of the HD 3000 GPU is 1100 MHz, not 850 MHz.That makes the 1550 MHz an overclock of 40,9 %, not 82,4 % as stated in the article.
khalnayak - Sunday, January 22, 2012 - link
I am having Intel HD 3000 - Sandy Bridge in my system and i was willing to get the game called "oil rush" but then i have found weird response for the game here http://www.futurehardware.com/pc-gaming/288.htm , so i just wanted to know is there any one who have tested the Intel HD 3000 - Sandy Bridge for oil rush, any help for this will be highly appreciated.thr0nez101 - Sunday, January 29, 2012 - link
I've got intel hd graphics 3000 and according to this forum/review it has a prob running dawn of war 2 on low graphics... i have it set to max graphics and i runs a dream... same with a lot of games i play on it...oliverr - Saturday, February 11, 2012 - link
guys, is it safe to overclock the Intel HD 3000 GPU ? I own a 2500K CPU. I can overclock the GPU to 1450mhz and it looks stable . But i dont know how to read the temperature from the GPU unit, so iam afraid i could burn my GPU/CPU .cerberaspeed12 - Thursday, February 16, 2012 - link
hi.first off all sorry for my english.I have a doubt .I have seen the dells lap top.they are identical but one have the Intel Core i3-2350M 2.3GHz ,the odher is Intel Core i5-2450M 2.5GHz , and the third have Intel Core i7 -2670M 2.4GH
the prices is 600 $,670$ and 800 $,I am working some live multi channel audio production and .net teh programing.So for wich one i soud go.Thanks
indyaah - Tuesday, February 21, 2012 - link
any suggestions how can i??weirdo2989 - Sunday, March 4, 2012 - link
Hi Techies,I recently got this processor. It is ultimate for gaming.
However in my windows CPU meter gadget, i can see only 2 cores functioning. Stock comes with unlocked multiplier afaik. But here in my system, it shows only 2 cores. Is there any way to activate all the cores for better performance?
Any suggestions/tips would be highly appreciated.
Thanks.
Regards,
Parth
0121birmingham - Saturday, May 12, 2012 - link
Just to say i wrote a small post on this issue at http://intel23976fpsproblem.blogspot.co.uk/It does not look like the problem has been fixed in the new z77 line up. DAM
milutzuk - Saturday, July 14, 2012 - link
Beside VS2008 compiler performance I would like to see growing a database with some Java compiler performance, either under NetBeans or Eclipse. Thank you.