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 ESTThe Test
To keep the review length manageable we're presenting a subset of our results here. For all benchmark results and even more comparisons be sure to use our performance comparison tool: Bench.
| Motherboard: |
ASUS P7H57DV- EVO (Intel H57) |
| Hard Disk: |
Intel X25-M SSD (80GB) Crucial RealSSD C300 |
| Memory: |
Corsair DDR3-1600 2x4GB (9-9-9-24) Corsair DDR3-1333 4x1GB (7-7-7-20) Corsair DDR3-1333 2x2GB (7-7-7-20) Patriot DDR3-1600 2x4GB (9-9-9-24) |
| Video Card: |
eVGA GeForce GTX 280 (Vista 64) ATI Radeon HD 5870 (Windows 7) MSI GeForce GTX 580 (Windows 7) |
| Video Drivers: |
AMD Catalyst 10.12 (Windows 7) NVIDIA ForceWare 293.09 (Windows 7) ATI Catalyst 9.12 (Windows 7) NVIDIA ForceWare 180.43 (Vista64) NVIDIA ForceWare 178.24 (Vista32) |
| Desktop Resolution: | 1920x1200 |
| OS: |
Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit (for SYSMark) Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit Windows 7 x64 |
Special thanks to Corsair for sending an 8GB Vengeance kit for this review:
As well as Patriot for sending an 8GB Viper Xtreme kit:
All of our brand new tests (Civilization V, Visual Studio) use 8GB memory configurations enabled by both Corsair and Patriot.
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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!