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 ESTOverclocking Intel's HD Graphics
The base clock of both Intel's HD Graphics 2000 and 3000 on desktop SKUs is 850MHz. Thankfully, Intel's 32nm process allows for much headroom in both the CPU and GPU for overclocking. There are no clock locks or K-series parts to worry about when it comes to GPU overclocking; everything is unlocked. I started by trying to see how far I could push the Core i3-2100's HD Graphics 2000.
While I could get into Windows and run games at up to 1.6GHz, I needed to back down to 1.4GHz to maintain stability across all of our tests. That's a 64.7% overclock:
In some cases (Civilization V, WoW, Dawn of War II), the overclocked HD Graphics 2000 was enough to bring the 6 EU part close to the performance of the 3000 model. For the most part however the overclock just helped the Core i3-2100 perform halfway between it and the Core i5-2500K.
I tried the same experiment with the Core i5-2500K. While there's no chance it could catch up to a Radeon HD 5570, I managed to overclock my 2500K to 1.55GHz (the GPU clock can be adjusted in 50MHz increments):
The 82.4% increase in clock speed resulted in anywhere from a 0.6% to 33.7% increase in performance. While that's not terrible, it's also not that great. It looks like we're fairly memory bandwidth constrained here.
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omelet - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
> The Sandy Bridge Review: Intel Core i5 2600K, i5 2500K and Core i3 2100 TestedDoesn't look fixed over here.
Zoomer - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Score one for intel marketing!Oh wait...
Beenthere - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
I'll stick with my AMD 965 BE as it delivers a lot of performance for the price and I don't get fleeced on mobo and CPU prices like with Intel stuff.geek4life!! - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Exactly what I have been waiting on, time to build my RIG again. Been without a PC for 1 year now and itching to build a new one.Game on baby!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Doormat - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
If QuickSync is only available to those using the integrated GPU, does that mean you cant use QS with a P67 board, since they don't support integrated graphics? If so, I'll end up having to buy a dedicated QS box (a micro-ATX board, a S or T series CPU seem to be up to that challenge). Also what if the box is headless (e.g. Windows Home Server)?Does the performance of QS have to do with the number of EUs? The QS testing was on a 12-EU CPU, does performance get cut in half on a 6-EU CPU (again, S or T series CPUs would be affected).
No mention of Intel AVX functions. I suppose thats more of an architecture thing (which was covered separately), but no benchmarks (synthetic or otherwise) to demo the new feature.
MeSh1 - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Yeah I think this is the case or according the the blurb below you can connect a monitor to the IGP in order to use QS. Is this a design flaw? Seems like a messy workaround :(" you either have to use the integrated GPU alone or run a multimonitor setup with one monitor connected to Intel’s GPU in order to use Quick Sync."
SandmanWN - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
The sad part is for all the great encoding you get, the playback sucks. Jacked up.Doormat - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
I'm not that interested in playback on that device - its going to be streamed to my PS3, DLNA-enabled TVs, iPad/iPhone, etc. Considering this wont be supported as a hackintosh for a while, I might as well build a combo transcoding station and WHS box.JarredWalton - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
How do you figure "playback sucks"? If you're using MPC-HC, it's currently broken, but that's an application issue not a problem with SNB in general.Absolution75 - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Thank you so much for the VS benchmarks!! Programmers rejoice!