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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thewhat - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
Because the 980X is a 6 core and the 950 is a 4 core!It doesn't make sense to compare a 6 core to a 4 core when there's an $800 price difference.
A 1366 4 core (preferably at the same CPU speed) would make much more sense to see the differences in various architectures/sockets.
SteelCity1981 - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
ok and the diff in performance would be what now? if they are showing you the diff and how well the new 2 gen cpu's are to even a $1000 cpu what makes you think that the Core i7 950 which is slower in performance then a 980X would fair? I mean it's common logic that if the 2nd gens can run almost on par in many bench test with a 980X then obv it's going to run better then the Core i7 950's.kake - Sunday, August 29, 2010 - link
Damn you Intel! Damn you to hell!!I have been living with an AMD Athlon XP 1800+ since 2003ish. This was mostly because I liked the Soundstorm that did a very good Dolby Digital Live output. For the last eight months I've been having to run it at about 2/3rds speed because all the caps on the motherboard burst, and it ran at 80C all the time. The GPU fan died and I wired a 80mm fan on top of it, but it had overheated once too often to do any 3D work. The DVD burner wouldn't read or write, the DVD reader wouldn't open except under duress. The SATA bus started to scramble any data read or written through it, the second LAN port (the good one) died, and the USB would usually demand a musical chairs routine with the mouse and keyboard to get them to work.
So last week I bought all the bits and built a very reasonably priced (370 with shipping and tax) i3-530 based HTPC. I've never seen anything so gorgeous as the first time I played Avatar in 1080p on the plasma.
And now you tell me all this?
Damn you Intel, I'm sick of progress.
juampavalverde - Sunday, August 29, 2010 - link
There is a technological reason to bury 2 sockets that are still alive? they are screaming performance yet! i dont get what intel wants with this behavior, ¿Hate from the IT sector? i love the performance, but it is designed in a so closed and trickery way, and completely dropping two nice and stablished platforms, this thing wants to be hated. I hope amd destroys this crazy ideas of intel with llano oem sales, even being inferior in cpu performance.Googer - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
What exactly does a Lifestyle processor do?mino - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
Probably cuts your hair while playing Crisis :)Googer - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
More like it shops for a convertible for you while you worry about your hair loss in your mid life Crysis.Googer - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
More like it shops for a convertible for you while you worry about your hair loss in your mid life Crysis.Googer - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
I understand what the difference between unlocked, regular, and power saving CPUs are. But what exactly does Intel mean by a Lifestyle processor? How is it different from the others? What exactly is a "Lifestyle CPU"?zepi - Monday, August 30, 2010 - link
What does the mystical "load power" mean? Does it mean running Prime95, Furmark, both or even something "real world" like Starcraft 2?