The Sandy Bridge Preview
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 27, 2010 2:38 PM ESTThe Roadmap & Pricing
I’ve defined the launch parts earlier in this article, but now I’m going to put them in perspective. When Intel provides its partners with roadmaps it also provides them with an idea of where future CPUs slot into various segments/price points. For example, Intel’s LGA-1366 roadmap tell us that in the “Extreme” market segment Intel only has a single product offering: the Core i7 980X. And in Q1 2011 the 980X gets replaced by the 990X.
Usually based on this information you can get a general idea of how much future products will cost - or at least what they will be comparable to. In this example the 990X will most likely be priced at whatever the 980X is priced at. Products may change, but the price people are willing to pay in a certain market segment usually doesn’t.
What we have below is the Intel roadmap, with Sandy Bridge included, for Q3 2010 through Q3 2011. The further out you go in a roadmap the lower your accuracy becomes, so I wouldn’t worry too much about us not seeing LGA-2011 on there yet.
It’s based on this roadmap that I mentioned some pricing earlier. If all stays the same, the Core i7 2600K will take the place of the Core i7 950, currently priced at $562. The 2600 will fit somewhere around the 680 and 875K ($342) and the 2500K will replace the i5 760/655K ($205 - $216).
The cheapest Sandy Bridge at launch will be the Core i3 2100, which will replace the i3 560 at around $138.
Now pricing is always a huge variable, but I have to say, based on the performance you’re about to see - these parts would be priced right.
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DrRap - Friday, August 27, 2010 - link
It's Anand "intel" lal Shimpi.Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, August 27, 2010 - link
I agree that single threaded performance is important to keep in mind. Sandy Bridge had a larger ILP boost than I expected. Final silicon with turbo enabled should address that even more.We got into trouble chasing the ILP train for years. At this point both AMD and Intel are focused on thread level parallelism. I'm not sure that we'll see significant ILP gains from either party for quite a while now.
The socket move is silly, unfortunately there's nothing that can be done about that. AMD takes better care of its existing board owners, that's something we've pointed out in prior reviews (e.g. our Phenom II X6 review).
I'm not sure I'd call Sandy Bridge a kiddie chip however. It looks like it'll deliver great bang for your buck when it launches in Q1 regardless of how threaded your workload is.
Value scatterplots are a great idea, Scott does a wonderful job with them. We're going to eventually integrate pricing data with Bench (www.anandtech.com/bench) which should help you as well :)
Take care,
Anand
ssj4Gogeta - Saturday, August 28, 2010 - link
I'm guessing USB 3.0 support will be introduced later with a chipset upgrade. Why are you so concerned with GHz when Sandy Bridge delivers more IPC? I think having better IPC instead of more GHz is better as you'll get potentially lower power consumption.asmoma - Friday, August 27, 2010 - link
Lets just hope AMD trhows in 80 gpu cores into ontario to bring this SB igp to shame(almost the same performance but less than 10w tdp). And lets also hope they throw in those 400 cores into Llano we have been hearing about.mfago - Friday, August 27, 2010 - link
Any news on OpenCL support? I image Apple may hold off on a purely integrated GPU unless that is supported.Thanks!
Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, August 27, 2010 - link
Sandy Bridge's GPU does not support OpenCL. This is strictly a graphics play, Intel doesn't have an announced GPU compute strategy outside of what it's doing with Larrabee.Take care,
Anand
DanNeely - Friday, August 27, 2010 - link
Is intel actually still doing anything with Larrabee on the gfx side? I thought they killed it on that end entirely and were looking at it strictly as a compute platform now.Anand Lal Shimpi - Saturday, August 28, 2010 - link
Correct - as of today the only Larrabee parts are for the HPC market. Didn't mean to confuse there :)Take care,
Anand
JonnyDough - Friday, August 27, 2010 - link
"Correction, you'll be able to buy it next year, but you'll get to meet her today."Sandy could be a boy too!
JonnyDough - Friday, August 27, 2010 - link
By the way, is it a an it, or a girl? You can't have it both ways!