The Sandy Bridge Review: Intel Core i7-2600K, i5-2500K and Core i3-2100 Tested
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 3, 2011 12:01 AM ESTZ68
In developing its 6-series chipsets Intel wanted to minimize as much risk as possible, so much of the underlying chipset architecture is borrowed from Lynnfield’s 5-series platform. The conservative chipset development for Sandy Bridge left a hole in the lineup. The P67 chipset lets you overclock CPU and memory but it lacks the flexible display interface necessary to support SNB’s HD Graphics. The H67 chipset has an FDI so you can use the on-die GPU, however it doesn’t support CPU or memory overclocking. What about those users who don’t need a discrete GPU but still want to overclock their CPUs? With the chipsets that Intel is launching today, you’re effectively forced to buy a discrete GPU if you want to overclock your CPU. This is great for AMD/NVIDIA, but not so great for consumers who don’t need a discrete GPU and not the most sensible decision on Intel’s part.
There is a third member of the 6-series family that will begin shipping in Q2: Z68. Take P67, add processor graphics support and you’ve got Z68. It’s as simple as that. Z68 is also slated to support something called SSD Caching, which Intel hasn’t said anything to us about yet. With version 10.5 of Intel’s Rapid Storage Technology drivers, Z68 will support SSD caching. This sounds like the holy grail of SSD/HDD setups, where you have a single drive letter and the driver manages what goes on your SSD vs. HDD. Whether SSD Caching is indeed a DIY hybrid hard drive technology remains to be seen. It’s also unclear whether or not P67/H67 will get SSD Caching once 10.5 ships.
LGA-2011 Coming in Q4
One side effect of Intel’s tick-tock cadence is a staggered release update schedule for various market segments. For example, Nehalem’s release in Q4 2008 took care of the high-end desktop market, however it didn’t see an update until the beginning of 2010 with Gulftown. Similarly, while Lynnfield debuted in Q3 2009 it was left out of the 32nm refresh in early 2010. Sandy Bridge is essentially that 32nm update to Lynnfield.
So where does that leave Nehalem and Gulftown owners? For the most part, the X58 platform is a dead end. While there are some niche benefits (more PCIe lanes, more memory bandwidth, 6-core support), the majority of users would be better served by Sandy Bridge on LGA-1155.
For the users who need those benefits however, there is a version of Sandy Bridge for you. It’s codenamed Sandy Bridge-E and it’ll debut in Q4 2011. The chips will be available in both 4 and 6 core versions with a large L3 cache (Intel isn’t being specific at this point).
SNB-E will get the ring bus, on-die PCIe and all of the other features of the LGA-1155 Sandy Bridge processors, but it won’t have an integrated GPU. While current SNB parts top out at 95W TDP, SNB-E will run all the way up to 130W—similar to existing LGA-1366 parts.
The new high-end platform will require a new socket and motherboard (LGA-2011). Expect CPU prices to start off at around the $294 level of the new i7-2600 and run all the way up to $999.
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hmcindie - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Why is that Quick Sync has better scaling? Very evident in the Dark Knight police car image as all the other versions have definite scaling artifacts on the car.Scaling is something that should be very easy. Why is there so big a difference? Are these programs just made to market new stuff and no-one really uses them because they suck? So big scaling differences between codepaths make no sense.
JarredWalton - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
It looks to me like some of the encodes have a sharpening effect applied, which is either good (makes text legible) or bad (aliasing effects) depending on your perspective. I'm quite happy overall with the slightly blurrier QS encodes, especially considering the speed.xxxxxl - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
I've been so looking forward to SB...only to hear that H67 cant overclock CPU?!?!?!?!Disappointed.
digarda - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Who needs the IGP for a tuned-up desktop PC anyway? Some for sure, but I see the main advantages of the SB GPU for business laptop users. As the charts show, for desktop PC enthusiasts, the GPU is still woefully slow, being blown away even by the (low-end) Radeon 5570. For this reason, I can't help feeling that the vast majority of overclockers will still want to have discrete graphics.I would have preferred to dual core (4-thread) models to have (say) 32 shaders, instead of the 6 or 12 being currently offered. At 32nm, there's probably enough silicon real estate to do it. I guess Intel simply didn't want the quad core processors to have a lower graphics performance than the dual core ones (sigh).
Pity that the socket 2011 processors (without a GPU) are apparently not going to arrive for nearly a year (Q4 2011). I had previously thought the schedule was Q3 2011. Hopefully, AMD's Bulldozer-based CPUs will be around (or at least imminent) by then, forcing intel to lower the prices for its high-end parts. On the other hand, time to go - looks like I'm starting to dream again...
Exodite - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Using myself as an example showing the drawback of limiting overclocking on H67 would be the lack of a good selection of overclocking-friendly micro-ATX boards due to most, if not all, of those being H67.Granted, that's not Intel's fault.
It's just that I have no need for more than one PCIe x16 slot and 3 SATA (DVD, HDD, SSD). I don't need PCI, FDD, PS2, SER, PAR or floppy connectors at all.
Which ideally means I'd prefer a rather basic P67 design in micro-ATX format but those are, currently, in short supply.
The perfect motherboard, for me, would probably be a P67 micro-ATX design with the mandatory x8/x8 Crossfire support, one x1 and one x4 slot, front panel connector for USB 3, dual gigabit LAN and the base audio and SATA port options.
Gigabyte?
Anyone? :)
geofelt - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
The only P67 based micro-ATX motherboard I have found to date is theAsus P8P67-M pro. (or evo?)
Any others?
Rick83 - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
There's also a non-pro P8P67-M.Keep in mind though, that the over-clocking issue may not be as bad as pointed out. There are H67 boards being marketed for over-clocking ability and manuals showing how to adjust the multiplier for CPUs... I'm not yet convinced over-clocking will be disabled on H67.
smilingcrow - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Major bummer as I was going to order a Gigabyte H67 board and an i5-2500K but am put off now. They seem to over-clock so well and with low power consumption that it seemed the perfect platform for me…I don’t mind paying the small premium for the K editions but being forced to use a P67 and lose the graphics and have difficulty finding a mATX P67 board seems crazy!
I wonder if this limit is set in the chipset or it can be changed with a BIOS update?
DanNeely - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Quick Sync only works if the IGP is in use (may be fixable via drivers later); for anyone who cares about video encoding performance that makes the IGP a major feature.mariush - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
On the Dark Knight test...Looking at the Intel software encoding and the AMD encoding, it looks like the AMD is more washed out overall, which makes me think there's actually something related to colorspaces or color space conversion involved....
Are you guys sure there's no PC/TV mixup there with the luminance or ATI using the color matrix for SD content on HD content or something like that?