The Sandy Bridge Preview
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 27, 2010 2:38 PM ESTFinal Words
If Intel's roadmap and pricing hold true, then the Core i5 2400 should give you an average of 23% better performance than the Core i5 760 at a potentially lower point. If we compare shipping configurations, the Core i5 2400 should actually perform like a Core i7 880 despite not having Hyper Threading enabled. Clock for clock however, Sandy Bridge seems to offer a 10% increase in performance. Keep in mind that this analysis was done without a functional turbo mode, so the shipping Sandy Bridge CPUs should be even quicker. I'd estimate you can add another 3 - 7% to these numbers for the final chips. That's not bad at all for what amounts to a free upgrade compared to what you'd buy today. Power consumption will also see an improvement. Not only will Sandy Bridge be noticeably quicker than Lynnfield, it'll draw less power.
While Nehalem was an easy sell if you had highly threaded workloads, Sandy Bridge looks to improve performance across the board regardless of thread count. It's a key differentiator that should make Sandy Bridge an attractive upgrade to more people.
The overclocking prevention Intel is putting into Sandy Bridge sounds pretty bad at first. However if the roadmap and pricing stay their course, it looks like overclockers looking to spend as much as they did on Core i5 750/760s won't be limited at all thanks to the K SKUs in the mix. The real question is what happens at the low end. While I don't get the impression that the Core i3 2000 series will be completely locked, it's unclear how much rope Intel will give us.
Sandy Bridge's integrated graphics is good. It's fast enough to put all previous attempts at integrated graphics to shame and compete with entry level discrete GPUs. The fact that you can get Radeon HD 5450 performance for free with a Core i5 2400 is just awesome. As I mentioned before, you won't want to throw away your GTX 460, but if you were planning on spending $50 on a GPU - you may not need to with Sandy Bridge.
Assuming mobile Sandy Bridge performs at least as well as the desktop parts, we may finally be at the point where what you get with a mainstream notebook is good enough to actually play some games. I'm really curious to see how well the higher spec integrated graphics parts do once Sandy Bridge makes it a little closer to final (Update: it looks like we may have had a 12 EU part from the start). I should add that despite the GPU performance improvement - don't believe this is enough. I would like to see another doubling in integrated GPU performance before I'm really happy, but now it's very clear that Intel is taking integrated graphics seriously.
Architecturally, I'm very curious to see what Intel has done with Sandy Bridge. Given the improvements in FP performance and what I've heard about general purpose performance, I'm thinking there's a lot more than we've seen here today. Then there are the features that we were unable to test: Sandy Bridge's improved turbo and its alleged on-die video transcode engine. If the latter is as capable as I've heard, you may be able to have better transcoding performance on your notebook than you do on your desktop today. Update: Check out our Sandy Bridge Architecture article for full details on the CPU's architecture.
With Sandy Bridge next year you'll get higher clock speeds, more performance per clock and reasonable integrated graphics at presumably the same prices we're paying today. What's even more exciting is the fact that what we're looking at is just mainstream performance. The high end Sandy Bridge parts don't arrive until the second half of 2011 which add more cores and more memory bandwidth.
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wut - Sunday, August 29, 2010 - link
Yep. I bet AMD is really wondering about that right now.greenguy - Saturday, August 28, 2010 - link
I bought basically what is an i5-750 based on Anand's review here. Or at least, the Xeon version with hyperthreading (needed ECC RAM).From what I can tell, you get about a 20%-30% improvement over the i5-750, with the same power consumption. That's pretty good. Not only that, you get some competent entry level graphics... which would have good open source drivers. That's somewhat exciting, though I wonder whether it would do multiple monitors. Any idea on that Anand?
Maybe I'll just stick to the cheapest Nvidia discrete cards I can buy, a couple G210s do the trick (to get 4 1920x1200 monitors). Unless Intel can make those G210s redundant, it represents just an incremental bump in performance, as the only thing that is of interest is the increase in CPU. One thing that is nice is that Intel is reputed to have the best open source support for their GPU drivers, which makes things really interesting now they are producing stuff that will compete with the entry level discrete market. It could be really good for Linux/BSD people like myself.
The other thing of interest for me is in the low power, low cost, high numbers of SATA connections space, with ECC. I wonder if Bobcat will have something there, as AMD don't seek to arbitrarily differentiate their markets like Intel does with the ECC RAM.
Also not really sure what the big thing is with the motherboards and same CPU. I tend to keep the same computer as a build. By the time you want to upgrade the CPU, there is invariably other stuff that needs upgrading, e.g. USB3, graphics, SATA, RAM, whatever. So you end up wasting the old parts for not that much benefit. Better to just re-purpose the old machine, and when you have enough money, buy the most performant parts that are still good bang for buck. A good example was the i5-750 about 8 months ago or so. So I don't fault Intel for this.
wut - Sunday, August 29, 2010 - link
Intel's going after the mid range market, where most of the money is. We'll have to wait and see how good AMD's Fusion mid range ends up being. Even if it catches up all the way and achieves performance parity so AMD can make more money by raising prices, Intel would have their newest gen on the market first. Fusion had better be really, really, good...Hrel - Sunday, August 29, 2010 - link
I'd say if that 2500K is 215 or less it'd be a fair buy. I'd still wait for the price to drop below 200 cause that's my absolute cap on a CPU. I am a little annoyed that it doesn't have hyper threading though, from a moral standpoint, I mean, from a raw material standpoint how much does adding hyperthreading cost? nothing! yeah, that's what I thought.Hrel - Sunday, August 29, 2010 - link
Those are some impressive integrated graphics. I've thought this for a while now, but we really don't need a card any lower than the HD5670, and maybe the 5650 in discrete graphics. Prefferably just the 5670 though. If mobo makers start setting aside a single DDR3 slot for the integrated GPU to use and dedicated GPU only memory, like a discrete GPU, so the integrated GPU doesn't have to share system RAM we really won't need low end graphics in laptops at all anymore.mino - Sunday, August 29, 2010 - link
Adequate.5450 is the LOWEST END card from 2008, A facelifted 4350.
And 780G, it FINALLY manages to out-pace, in 2011, is the mainstream part of 2008 too.
In 2011 there will be a 10W Ontario with 5450-class GPU on 40nm bulk ...
On the other hand it seems Intel is thaking the GPU side seriously. Finally.
But they are still where ATI/NV were in 2004 ...
LuckyKnight - Sunday, August 29, 2010 - link
I would have liked to have seen a better comparison when it comes to idle power consumption? How much has it improved since moving to a 45nm->32nm GPU?Also, has Intel addressed the Clarkdale issue of not outputting industry standard 24fps? (23.976 hz)
Miggleness - Sunday, August 29, 2010 - link
I was planning on purchasing an i5-760 in 2 weeks but looks like I'll have to settle for 2nd hand, low end parts instead and wait for the i5-2400's release.Great job Intel. I for one no longer have that much interest in overclocking when I have Turbo boost to compensate for that.
Hope we hear about the official pricing soon.
jfelano - Sunday, August 29, 2010 - link
Intel could have hit one out of the park with this one if it worked on existing s1155 motherboards....unfortunately it doesn't and it screws over everyone who bought into s1156 or s1366.....yet again.siberian 3 - Sunday, August 29, 2010 - link
Hi everyone i've read the preview and i am not so impresed by the performance of SB.The IGPis great but it make sense only for the mobile section of the pc not the desktop!!
From the preview i understand that this is not a real fusion product but an evolution off clarkdale and arandale products.
So i will wait for Llano to see what Amd has to offer!!!