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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starx5 - Tuesday, September 7, 2010 - link
And why didn't you ran 2560x1600(or higher resolution like eyefinity) benchmark either?Is this because sandybrige is not that good?
wut - Friday, September 10, 2010 - link
So you're expecting eyeinfinity out of a single integrated graphics connection out the back of a motherboard?Are you okay?
gundersausage - Tuesday, October 26, 2010 - link
i7-950 vs i7-2500K... So which will be faster and a better gaming chip? anyone?WillyMcNilly - Thursday, October 28, 2010 - link
Fantastic preview! I am definetly getting sandy bridge now. Apparently the Gigabyte P67-UD7 will have a geforce n200 chipset and support full 16X/16X sli AND crossfire! It will make a significant upgrade from my Phenom 2 and I cannot see myself waiting for bulldozer which has apparently been delayed (gee what a surprise!) until Q4 2011.Chrisch - Wednesday, November 24, 2010 - link
which sample did you use for your tests?QDF Q12W = GT1 (850-1100MHz)
QDF Q12X = GT2 (850-1100MHz)
techeadtrevor - Thursday, December 30, 2010 - link
Hey guys, checkout this review of the i7-2600k... I think its bogus...tell me what you think of it on here.( http://en.inpai.com.cn/doc/enshowcont.asp?id=7944 )
psiboy - Sunday, January 2, 2011 - link
Catalyst 8.12... WTF! 2 year old drivers? How much did intel bribe you to use drivers that old for their competition? That is a really bad path to guy down... Tom's did weird stuff like that a while back and lost readers because of it.... You just lost my respect Anand....kmidm - Thursday, January 6, 2011 - link
I don't think an entire product line of CPU's with on-board graphics is anything really to get excited about, especially for us geeks. I guess I'm just old-school. The Sandy Bridge ,like Clarksdale, has similar benefits from a single-chip chipset which is very appealing from a throughput and control standpoint.katleo123 - Tuesday, February 1, 2011 - link
Take nother look at Sandy bridgevisit http://www.techreign.com/2010/12/intels-sandy-brid...
hapeid - Friday, March 10, 2017 - link
Wow Intel owns when it came to converting video, beating out much faster dedicated solutions, which was strange but still awesome.I don't know how AMD's going to fare but i hope their new architecture will at least compete with these CPU's, because for a few years now AMD has been at least a generation worth of speed behind Intel.
Also Intel's IGP's are finally gaining some ground in the games department.