Ask Your 2nd Gen Intel Core Processor Questions Here, Update: Now with Answers!
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 5, 2011 1:01 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Sandy Bridge
- Asus
ASUS and Intel are putting together a webcast that they've invited me to attend. The topic of discussion? Sandy Bridge. The webcast will air after Intel's official announcement of Sandy Bridge at 9AM PST on January 5, 2011 at CES.
The discussion will be a conversation between myself, Gary Key (former AT Motherboard Editor, current ASUS Technical Marketing Manager), and Michael Lavacot, an Intel Consumer Field Application Engineer.
If you have any questions you'd like to see me answer on air or that you'd like me to grill ASUS and Intel on, leave them in the comments to this post and I'll do my best to get them addressed.
Of course we will also have our full review of Sandy Bridge around the same time.
Update: Intel posted some of the videos from this webcast on its YouTube channel. I tried to answer as many of the big questions you guys asked as I could in the video or in our Sandy Bridge review.
I'll add links here for more videos as they get posted:
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dougri - Friday, December 10, 2010 - link
Two benefits that I can see: 1) mobile market, and 2) encoding.1) For the past two years, laptops have outsold desktops. Intel, above all, is a corporation out to make money and satisfy its shareholders. Those that build their own PCs are a fraction of a fraction of the big picture. Having the GPU on die allows lower power consumption (which is marketable in the desktop segment as well for the hp and dells of the world).
2) with the explosion of portable devices and media, transcoding is a prime use for new processors/systems. Mainstream buyers will be transcoding if the software is easy enough to use and fast. Pop in the DVD, transcode, move it to your droid and go... wireless even better.
Not everyone is an overclocker, and Intel knows this. I doubt they expect SB to be a hit with the those targeting a $200 DIY build. They do expect it to be a hit with the millions that will be buying android/blackberry/webos tablets this year and cursing at the time it takes to encode video on their 2 yr old laptop. Intel is counting on those with specific needs to purchase SB and build their own. Other than that, SB is made for the big boys. LGA2011 will be for those willing to spend >$1k on a system.
mindless1 - Sunday, January 9, 2011 - link
You are falsely presuming gaming is important to "most" people. In fact, the even slower current and past generations of Intel integrated video were the most popular in PCs sold!Who WOULDN'T buy SB is a better question, since it is nice to have an integrated video feature when the day comes that your primary gaming rig, to which you had a gaming card installed for gaming, has been retired to a secondary use which does not require gaming performance.
The answer to that one is: Price sensitive customers. Decent Intel boards are going to cost a premium disproportionate to the actual performance (needs) benefit of most people. You so often see benchmarks about some high-end application but the truth is, most people don't do these kinds of tasks except rarely and when they do, it is not a race to shave a few seconds off total time doing them. Instead, customers will welcome SB as a cost cutting solution to have the integrated video but only if it actually saves money, remembering that for non-gaming you can pick up a basic PCIe video card for about $10+ after rebate, to be fairer let's call it $30 meaning the Intel platform cost must stay under $30 difference to make sense from a competitive pricing perspective.
rostrow - Friday, December 10, 2010 - link
Will Asus make a motherboard similar to the ASRock P67 Transformer? That board supports an LGA-1156 socket CPU with the Intel P67 chipset.dougri - Friday, December 10, 2010 - link
There have been ramblings in the x264 development crowd that intel will open up the encoding 'parameters' enabling MUCH better encoding performance than available today (in terms of speed at very high quality). The IDF demo showed ~ 400fps for encoding to ipod resolution (with undisclosed quality settings); valuable for a laptop, but well within reach for both 2009 i7 and amd x6 cpus. What improvements to high quality transcoding have been made or are underway (i.e. encoding to 1080p at high quality settings), and what partners are involved?Agamemnon_71 - Friday, December 10, 2010 - link
If I dont want to pay extra for an useless on-die GPU do I have to turn to AMD?Having on-die GPU might make sense for the mobile market and people bying on a tight budget, for HTPC, or in business sollutions.
But for the ones of us building their own higher-end systems it's a complete waste of just about everything...
xxxxxl - Friday, December 10, 2010 - link
How much would a basic LGA1155 MB roughly cost?A little off-topic but :
Will mobile Ivy Bridge come with 35W Quad-cores?
xxxxxl - Saturday, December 11, 2010 - link
My main aim is for a Quad-core i7 Low voltage(LM at 25W) with at least 1.6GHz.xxxxxl - Sunday, December 12, 2010 - link
1. According to some websites, Sandy Bridge core is ~20mm each(true?)And according to http://aceshardware.freeforums.org/intel-avx-kills... , Westmere's core seems to be bigger(true?).
2. CPU and graphics core are connected to the cache and the cache clock rate is dependant on CPU clock, so how does intel(or whoever) ensure that if the game does not use much CPU causing the CPU in turn to clock down, how does the graphics not get affected?
Thanks!
CSMR - Tuesday, December 14, 2010 - link
Are we going to get any improvements in the correctness of the drivers?A lot of correct DirectX / OpenGL software (Photoshop CS5, FastPictureViewer, MPC-HC) does not work completely with current Intel clarkdale/arrandale graphics.
Are there people working on fixing the API support?
don^don - Wednesday, December 15, 2010 - link
hi guys, does sandy bridge boost performance that much compared to current socket 1156? my friend is planning to buy a new midrange gaming rig this month, but i advised him to wait for sandy bridge. but after thinking for awhile, suddenly i felt that there's really no need to wait, since we don't use the discreet graphic at all. juz an i5 with probably a gtx460. should i tell my friend to get 1 now, or wait for SB? since SB will only arrive around january, and availability might even pull it back as late as march or even april.