The Sandy Bridge Preview
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 27, 2010 2:38 PM ESTA New Socket and New Chipsets
There’s no nice way to put this: Sandy Bridge marks the third new socket Intel will have introduced since 2008. The first was LGA-1366 for the original Nehalem based Core i7. In 2009 we got LGA-1156 for Lynnfield, later updated with support for the dual-core Clarkdale CPUs launched in 2010. Next year, Sandy Bridge will launch with LGA-1155.
The CPU and socket are not compatible with existing motherboards or CPUs. That’s right, if you want to buy Sandy Bridge you’ll need a new motherboard.
As is the case today, there are two lines of chipsets for consumer desktops: H and P series. The H series supports Sandy Bridge’s on-die graphics, while the P series is strictly for discrete graphics.
At launch we’ll have P67 and H67 based motherboards, both of which are in testing right now. A quarter later we’ll see value H61 motherboards added to the mix.
| Chipset Comparison | ||||||
| P67 | H67 | H61 | P55 | H57 | H55 | |
| CPU Support | Sandy Bridge LGA-1155 | Sandy Bridge LGA-1155 | Sandy Bridge LGA-1155 | Lynnfield / Clarkdale LGA-1156 | Lynnfield / Clarkdale LGA-1156 | Lynnfield / Clarkdale LGA-1156 |
| CPU PCIe Config | 1 x 16 or 2 x 8 PCIe 2.0 | 1 x 16 PCIe 2.0 | 1 x 16 PCIe 2.0 | 1 x 16 or 2 x 8 PCIe 2.0 | 1 x 16 PCIe 2.0 | 1 x 16 PCIe 2.0 |
| RAID Support | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Mp |
| USB 2.0 Ports | 14 | 14 | 10 | 14 | 14 | 12 |
| SATA Total (Max Number of 6Gbps Ports) | 6 (2) | 6 (2) | 4 (0) | 6 (0) | 6 (0) | 6 (0) |
| PCIe Lanes | 8 (5GT/s) | 8 (5GT/s) | 6 (5GT/s) | 8 (2.5GT/s) | 8 (2.5GT/s) | 6 (2.5GT/s) |
With P67 you lose integrated graphics but you gain the ability to run two PCIe x8 cards off of the CPU. You also get fully unlocked memory multipliers with P67, whereas H67 is locked to whatever official DDR3 speeds Intel supports with Sandy Bridge (currently DDR3-1333).
Both H67 and P67 support 6Gbps SATA, however only on two ports. The remaining 4 SATA ports are 3Gbps. Motherboard manufacturers will color the 6Gbps ports differently to differentiate.
There’s no native USB 3.0 support on these chipsets, but most motherboard makers are looking to third party solutions to enable USB 3 on Sandy Bridge boards.
The other major (and welcome) change is the move to PCIe 2.0 lanes running at 5GT/s. Currently, Intel chipsets support PCIe 2.0 but they only run at 2.5GT/s, which limits them to a maximum of 250MB/s per direction per lane. This is a problem with high bandwidth USB 3.0 and 6Gbps SATA interfaces connected over PCIe x1 slots. With the move to 5GT/s, Intel is at feature parity with AMD’s chipsets and more importantly the bandwidth limits are a lot higher. A single PCIe x1 slot on a P67 motherboard can support up to 500MB/s of bandwidth in each direction (1GB/s bidirectional bandwidth).
With native 6Gbps SATA support, the faster PCIe interface will be useful for any third party USB 3.0 controllers.
Original Nehalem and Gulftown owners have their own socket replacement to look forward to. In the second half of 2011 Intel will replace LGA-1366 with LGA-2011. LGA-2011 adds support for four DDR3 memory channels and the first 6+ core Sandy Bridge processors.
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overzealot - Saturday, August 28, 2010 - link
Now, that's a name I've not heard in a long time. A long time.mapesdhs - Saturday, August 28, 2010 - link
Seems to be Intel is slowly locking up the overclocking scene because it has no
competition. If so, and Intel continues in that direction, then it would be a great
chance for AMD to win back overclocking fans with something that just isn't
locked out in the same way.
Looking at the performance numbers, I see nothing which suggests a product that
would beat my current 4GHz i7 860, except for the expensive top-end unlocked
option which I wouldn't consider anyway given the price.
Oh well, perhaps my next system will be a 6-core AMD.
Ian.
LuckyKnight - Saturday, August 28, 2010 - link
Do we have something more precise about the release date? Q1 is what - Jan/Feb/March/Apri?Looking to upgrade a core 2 duo at the moment - not sure whether to wait
mino - Saturday, August 28, 2010 - link
Q1 (in this case) means tricle amounts in Jan/Feb, mainstream availability Mar/April and worth-buying mature mobos in May/June timeframe.tatertot - Saturday, August 28, 2010 - link
Intel has already announced that shipments for revenue will occur in Q4 of this year. So, January launch.They've also commented that Sandy Bridge OEM demand is very strong, and they are adjusting the 32nm ramp up to increase supply. So January should be a decent launch.
Not surprising-- these parts have been in silicon since LAST summer.
chrsjav - Saturday, August 28, 2010 - link
Do modern clock generators use a quartz resonator? How would that be put on-die?iwodo - Saturday, August 28, 2010 - link
Since you didn't get this chip directly from Intel , i suspect there were no reviews guideline for you to follow, like which test to run and what test not to run etc.Therefore those benchmark from Games were not a results of special optimization in drivers. Which is great, because drivers matter much more then Hardware in GPU. If these are only early indication of what Intel new GPU can do, i expect there are more to extract from drivers.
You mention 2 Core GPU ( 12 EU ) verus 1 GPU ( 6 EU ), Any Guess as to what "E" stand for? And it seems like a SLI like tech rather then actually having more EU in one chip. The different being SLI or crossfire does not get any advantage unless drivers and games are working together. Which greatly reduces the chances of it working at full performance.
It also seems every one fail to realize one of the greatest performance will be coming from AVX. AVX will be like MMX again when we had the Pentium. I cant think of any other SSE having as great important to performance as AVX. Once software are specially optimize for AVX we should get another major lift in performance.
I also heard about rumors that 64bit in Sandy Bridge will work much better. But i dont know if there are anything we could test this.
The OpenCL sounds like a Intel management decision rather then a technical decision. May be Intel will provide or work with Apple to provide OpenCL on these GPU?
You also mention that Intel somehow support PCI -Express 2.0 with 1.0 performance. I dont get that bit there. Could you elaborate? 2.5GT/s for G45 Chipset??
If Intel ever decide to finally work on their drivers, then their GPU will be great for entry levels.
Are Dual Channel DDR3 1333 enough for Quad Core CPU + GPU? or even Dual core CPU.
Is GPU memory bandwidth limited?
Any update on Hardware Decoder? And what about transcoding part?
Would there be ways to lock the GPU to run at Turbo Clock all the time? Or GPU gets higher priority in Turbo etc..
How big is the Die?
P.S - ( Any news on Intel G3 SSD? i am getting worried that next Gen Sandforce is too good for intel. )
ssj4Gogeta - Saturday, August 28, 2010 - link
I believe EU means execution units.DanNeely - Sunday, August 29, 2010 - link
"You also mention that Intel somehow support PCI -Express 2.0 with 1.0 performance. I dont get that bit there. Could you elaborate? 2.5GT/s for G45 Chipset??"PCIE 2.0 included other low level protocol improvements in addition to the doubled clock speed. Intel only implemented the former; probably because the latter would have strangled the DMI bus.
"Are Dual Channel DDR3 1333 enough for Quad Core CPU + GPU? or even Dual core CPU."
Probably. The performance gains vs the previous generation isn't that large and it was enough for anything except pathological test cases (eg memory benchmarks). If it wasn't there'd be no reason why Intel couldn't officially support DDR3-1600 in their locked chipsets to give a bit of extra bandwidth.
chizow - Saturday, August 28, 2010 - link
@AnandCould you please clarify and expand on this comment please? Is this true for all Intel chipsets that claim support for PCIe 2.0?
[q]The other major (and welcome) change is the move to PCIe 2.0 lanes running at 5GT/s. Currently, Intel chipsets support PCIe 2.0 but they only run at 2.5GT/s, which limits them to a maximum of 250MB/s per direction per lane. This is a problem with high bandwidth USB 3.0 and 6Gbps SATA interfaces connected over PCIe x1 slots. With the move to 5GT/s, Intel is at feature parity with AMD’s chipsets and more importantly the bandwidth limits are a lot higher. A single PCIe x1 slot on a P67 motherboard can support up to 500MB/s of bandwidth in each direction (1GB/s bidirectional bandwidth).[/q]
If this is true, current Intel chipsets do not support PCIe 2.0 as 2.5GT/s and 250MB/s is actually the same effective bandwidth as PCIe 1.1. How did you come across this information? I was looking for ways to measure PCIe bandwidth but only found obscure proprietary tools not available publicly.
If Intel chipsets are only running at PCIe 1.1 regardless of what they're claiming externally, that would explain some of the complaints/concerns about bandwidth on older Intel chipsets.