The Sandy Bridge Preview
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 27, 2010 2:38 PM ESTAdobe Photoshop CS4 Performance
To measure performance under Photoshop CS4 we turn to the Retouch Artists’ Speed Test. The test does basic photo editing; there are a couple of color space conversions, many layer creations, color curve adjustment, image and canvas size adjustment, unsharp mask, and finally a gaussian blur performed on the entire image.
The whole process is timed and thanks to the use of Intel's X25-M SSD as our test bed hard drive, performance is far more predictable than back when we used to test on mechanical disks.
Time is reported in seconds and the lower numbers mean better performance. The test is multithreaded and can hit all four cores in a quad-core machine.
Right off the bat Sandy Bridge is killer. In our Photoshop test it’s faster than its closest quad-core price competitor, faster than its identically clocked Lynnfield, faster than AMD’s fastest and loses out only to Intel’s $999 Core i7 980X. That being said, it only takes about 9% longer to complete our benchmark than the 980X.
DivX 6.5.3 with Xmpeg 5.0.3
Our DivX test is the same DivX / XMpeg 5.03 test we've run for the past few years now, the 1080p source file is encoded using the unconstrained DivX profile, quality/performance is set balanced at 5 and enhanced multithreading is enabled:
While not the most stressful encoding test, it’s still a valid measure of performance and once again, Sandy Bridge is faster than all. In this case we’re faster than the Core i5 760 (~16%) and just behind the Core i7 880. Clock for clock there's not a huge improvement in performance here (HT doesn't seem to do much), it's just a better value than the 760 assuming prices remain the same.
x264 HD Video Encoding Performance
Graysky's x264 HD test uses the publicly available x264 encoder to transcode a 4Mbps 720p MPEG-2 source. The focus here is on quality rather than speed, thus the benchmark uses a 2-pass encode and reports the average frame rate in each pass.
Lightly threaded performance is much improved - the 2400 is 14.6% faster than the Core i7 880.
The actual encoding pass favors more threads, so we see a big improvement over the 760 (19%) but it falls short of the Core i7 880. Turn HT on and we get a 12.6% improvement over an identically clocked/configured Lynnfield.
Note that CPU based video encoding performance may not matter if Intel implemented a good video transcode engine in Sandy Bridge.
Windows Media Encoder 9 x64 Advanced Profile
In order to be codec agnostic we've got a Windows Media Encoder benchmark looking at the same sort of thing we've been doing in the DivX and x264 tests, but using WME instead.
Performance in WME rarely scales anymore. Our benchmark doesn’t scale well beyond 4 cores and the only hope for performance are increases in clock speed or IPC. Sandy Bridge delivers the latter.
A 20% increase in performance vs. the similarly clocked 880 in a test that doesn’t scale with anything but IPC tells you a lot. Compared to the Core i5 760, Sandy Bridge is 26% faster.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
200 Comments
View All Comments
Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, August 27, 2010 - link
I don't believe any of these apps have AVX support, they're all too old for that.Take care,
Anand
ESetter - Friday, August 27, 2010 - link
Thank you for the quick answer. It would be great to include some software with AVX support in the full review, when Sandy Bridge launches. Probably the Intel Math Kernel Library will be updated in time.darckhart - Friday, August 27, 2010 - link
1. i'd like to see some temp numbers. along with, does intel stock hsf actually do the job here? (which they have been getting better at really)2. i didnt see anything about accelerated hd video playback using the on die gpu?
3. sure these cpu look great from price point performance gain....until you realize you need a full platform upgrade to go along with it...which if we assume mainstream mobo around the 100$ mark and ram to match since they're taking away the bclk deal... and every 2 yrs is a bit too soon for full platform upgrade imo.
4. hardware virtualization parts? i know the current i3 vs i5/7 chips had some stuff disabled. will these SB chips follow the same profile?
5. mobile versions? we know the mobile ones are usually cut back to fit low tdp profile. will the same cuts apply like the current mobile i3/i5 parts (eg, no real quad core parts)? otoh, what about the quad core mobiles? the current i7 mobile quads are laughable at their performance and heat output (i'm looking at you first gen hp envy). do you think these SB quad mobiles will actually be decent?
DanNeely - Friday, August 27, 2010 - link
Wikipedia lists both 2 and 4 core mobile parts. Not definative but they generally do a good job of keeping up with the latest leaks for things like this.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Bridge_(microar...
hamitaltintop22 - Friday, August 27, 2010 - link
I hope there is a price drop for the i5 750 to around $150 when this comes out or i7 920 to $200 (no microcenter here).DesktopMan - Friday, August 27, 2010 - link
I'm not sure about this, but I seem to recall having read that aes-ni instructions use the GPU, at least partially. Makes sense as the gpu is excellent at parallel tasks. If this is the case, would the 6 EU part perform differently than the 12 EU part at AES?Any news on when the inevitable Q67 would launch? I guess it's likely that Q67 will use AMT 6.0 as it was a pretty recent upgrade.
With sata III support at launch you'd imagine they'd also support sata III on their gen 3 SSDs. Time will tell I guess.
overclocking101 - Friday, August 27, 2010 - link
wow bummer. welcome to the end of intel Bus speed overclocking. I will not be adapting the new sockets unless something happens and intel changes their minds. overclocking is not as easy as switching multiplyers even EE cpu's of nowadays show that. 90% of the high overclocks with EE cpus show that a mixture of multi and bus speed is needed. i sense though that with the higher end socket intel will allow it. if not i think its a very bad move on their part.starfalcon - Friday, August 27, 2010 - link
I don't think any of the sandy bridge graphics will be able to get to GT 240 levels.This one trades blows with the 5450 as we can see, and just looking at 3DMark06 scores the 5450 scores about 3500 or so, while the GT 240 does maybe 9000 or 10000.
If the more powerful sandy bridge graphics can get up to 4000 or 5000 or so that would be great, that would be beating the 9400 GT and closing in on the 9500 GT, not getting to GT 240 levels though. Wonder what the next integrated graphics after this will be like.
TETRONG - Friday, August 27, 2010 - link
I take it this means it will soon be the optimum time to purchase current-gen technology at significantly reduced prices?Just wanting to build a no nonsense system at slightly below the current price/performance sweet-spot.
Seems Intel are only interested in toying with consumers.
They've wasted die space that could've been used for a more capable CPU. How many years have we been chained under 4Ghz frequency? 5 years or so?
Nine women can't make a baby in one month! Not every problem is parallelizable - we need greater frequencies/efficiencies.
Now they are locking processors and playing games with the sockets. No USB 3.0!!?
Garbage, No Thanks!!!
Seems you are giving them a free pass Anand. Very convenient timing to steal AMD's thunder, eh!
I love you man - big fan since the beginning, but you should read Scott Wasson over at Tech Report. Those value scatterplots are very helpful to me - these regurgitated press releases, not so much.
Sorry;(
To be so harsh, but we deserve better than these kiddie chips!
Only you can hold them accountable for these failures of imagination.
wyvernknight - Friday, August 27, 2010 - link
I am a bit disappointed. Seems like since intel is wiping the floor with AMD, decided it was OK to screw us all over with this socket thing. I will still buy an intel processor if AMD has no cards to play, but i wont be pleased.