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 6-series Platform
At launch Intel is offering two chipset families for Sandy Bridge: P-series and H-series, just like with Lynnfield. The high level differentiation is easy to understand: P-series doesn’t support processor graphics, H-series does.
There are other differences as well. The P67 chipset supports 2x8 CrossFire and SLI while H67 only supports a single x16 slot off of the SNB CPU (the chip has 16 PCIe 2.0 lanes that stem from it).
While H67 allows for memory and graphics overclocking, it doesn’t support any amount of processor overclocking. If you want to overclock your Sandy Bridge, you need a P67 motherboard.
6Gbps
Had SSDs not arrived when they did, I wouldn’t have cared about faster SATA speeds. That’s how it worked after all in the evolution of the hard drive. We’d get a faster ATA or SATA protocol, and nothing would really change. Sure we’d eventually get a drive that could take advantage of more bandwidth, but it was a sluggish evolution that just wasn’t exciting.
SSDs definitely changed all of that. Today there’s only a single 6Gbps consumer SSD on the market—Crucial’s RealSSD C300. By the middle of the year we’ll have at least two more high-end offerings, including SandForce’s SF-2000. All of these SSDs will be able to fully saturate a 3Gbps SATA interface in real world scenarios.
Intel's DP67BG—The blue SATA ports on the right are 6Gbps, the black ones are 3Gbps
To meet the soon to be growing need for 6Gbps SATA ports Intel outfits the 6-series PCH with two 6Gbps SATA ports in addition to its four 3Gbps SATA ports.
I dusted off my 128GB RealSSD C300 and ran it through a bunch of tests on five different platforms: Intel’s X58 (3Gbps), Intel’s P67 (3Gbps and 6Gbps), AMD’s 890GX (6Gbps) and Intel’s X58 with a Marvell 9128 6Gbps SATA controller. The Marvell 91xx controller is what you’ll find on most 5-series motherboards with 6Gbps SATA support.
I ran sequential read/write and random read/write tests, at a queue depth of 32 to really stress the limits of each chipset’s SATA protocol implementation. I ran the sequential tests for a minute straight and the random tests for three minutes. I tested a multitude of block sizes ranging from 512-bytes all the way up to 32KB. All transfers were 4KB aligned to simulate access in a modern OS. Each benchmark started at LBA 0 and was allowed to use the entire LBA space for accesses. The SSD was TRIMed between runs involving writes.
Among Intel chipsets I found that the X58 has stellar 3Gbps SATA performance, which is why I standardize on it for my SSD testbed. Even compared to the new 6-series platform there are slight advantages at high queue depths to the X58 vs. Intel’s latest chipsets.
Looking at 6Gbps performance though there’s no comparison, the X58 is dated in this respect. Thankfully all of the contenders do well in our 6Gbps tests. AMD’s 8-series platform is a bit faster at certain block sizes but for the most part it, Intel’s 6-series and Marvell’s 91xx controllers perform identically.
I hate to be a bore but when it comes to SATA controllers an uneventful experience is probably the best you can hope for.
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DanNeely - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
The increased power efficiency might allow Apple to squeeze a GPU onto their smaller laptop boards without loosing runtime due to the smaller battery.yuhong - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
"Unlike P55, you can set your SATA controller to compatible/legacy IDE mode. This is something you could do on X58 but not on P55. It’s useful for running HDDERASE to secure erase your SSD for example"Or running old OSes.
DominionSeraph - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
"taking the original Casino Royale Blu-ray, stripping it of its DRM"Whoa, that's illegal.
RussianSensation - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
It would have been nice to include 1st generation Core i7 processors such as 860/870/920-975 in Starcraft 2 bench as it seems to be very CPU intensive.Also, perhaps a section with overclocking which shows us how far 2500k/2600k can go on air cooling with safe voltage limits (say 1.35V) would have been much appreciated.
Hrel - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Sounds like this is SO high end it should be the server market. I mean, why make yet ANOTHER socket for servers that use basically the same CPU's? Everything's converging and I'd just really like to see server mobo's converge into "High End Desktop" mobo's. I mean seriously, my E8400 OC'd with a GTX460 is more power than I need. A quad would help with the video editing I do in HD but it works fine now, and with GPU accelerated rendering the rendering times are totally reasonable. I just can't imagine anyone NEEDING a home computer more powerful than the LGS-1155 socket can provide. Hell, 80-90% of people are probably fine with the power Sandy Bridge gives in laptops now.mtoma - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Perhaps it is like you say, however it's always good for buyers to decide if they want server-like features in a PC. I don't like manufacturers to dictate to me only one way to do it (like Intel does now with the odd combination of HD3000 graphics - Intel H67 chipset). Let us not forget that for a long time, all we had were 4 slots for RAM and 4-6 SATA connections (like you probably have). Intel X58 changed all that: suddenly we had the option of having 6 slots for RAM, 6-8 SATA connections and enough PCI-Express lanes.I only hope that LGA 2011 brings back those features, because like you said: it's not only the performance we need, but also the features.
And, remeber that the software doesn't stay still, it usualy requires multiple processor cores (video transcoding, antivirus scanning, HDD defragmenting, modern OS, and so on...).
All this aside, the main issue remains: Intel pus be persuaded to stop luting user's money and implement only one socket at a time. I usually support Intel, but in this regard, AMD deserves congratulations!
DanNeely - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
LGA 2011 is a high end desktop/server convergence socket. Intel started doing this in 2008, with all but the highest end server parts sharing LGA1366 with top end desktop systems. The exception was quad/octo socket CPUs, and those using enormous amounts of ram using LGA 1567.The main reason why LGA 1155 isn't suitable for really high end machines is that it doesn't have the memory bandwidth to feed hex and octo core CPUs. It's also limited to 16 PCIe 2.0 lanes on the CPU vs 36 PCIe 3.0 lanes on LGA2011. For most consumer systems that won't matter, but 3/4 GPU card systems will start loosing a bit of performance when running in a 4x slot (only a few percent, but people who spend $1000-2000 on GPUs want every last frame they can get), high end servers with multiple 10GB ethernet cards and PCIe SSD devices also begin running into bottlenecks.
Not spending an extra dollar or five per system for the QPI connections only used in multi-socket systems in 1155 also adds up to major savings across the hundreds of millions of systems Intel is planning to sell.
Hrel - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
I'm confused by the upset over playing video at 23.967hz. "It makes movies look like, well, movies instead of tv shows"? What? Wouldn't recording at a lower frame rate just mean there's missed detail especially in fast action scenes? Isn't that why HD runs at 60fps instead of 30fps? Isn't more FPS good as long as it's played back at the appropriate speed? IE whatever it's filmed at? I don't understand the complaint.On a related note hollywood and the world need to just agree that everything gets recorded and played back at 60fps at 1920x1080. No variation AT ALL! That way everything would just work. Or better yet 120FPS and with the ability to turn 3D on and off as u see fit. Whatever FPS is best. I've always been told higher is better.
chokran - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
You are right about having more detail when filming with higher FPS, but this isn't about it being good or bad, it's more a matter of tradition and visual style.The look movies have these days, the one we got accustomed to, is mainly achieved by filming it in 24p or 23.967 to be precise. The look you get when filming with higher FPS just doesn't look like cinema anymore but tv. At least to me. A good article on this:
http://www.videopia.org/index.php/read/shorts-main...
The problem with movies looking like TV can be tested at home if you got a TV that has some kind of Motion Interpolation, eg. MotionFlow called by Sony or Intelligent Frame Creation by Panasonic. When turned on, you can see the soap opera effect by adding frames. There are people that don't see it and some that do and like it, but I have to turn it of since it doesn't look "natural" to me.
CyberAngel - Thursday, January 6, 2011 - link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Showscan