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 ESTGeneral Performance: SYSMark 2007
Our journey starts with SYSMark 2007, the only all-encompassing performance suite in our review today. The idea here is simple: one benchmark to indicate the overall performance of your machine. SYSMark 2007 ends up being more of a dual-core benchmark as the applications/workload show minimal use of more than two threads.
The 2600K is our new champion, the $317 chip is faster than Intel's Core i7 980X here as SYSMark 2007 doesn't really do much with the latter's extra 2 cores. Even the 2500K is a hair faster than the 980X. Compared to the Core i5 750, the upgrade is a no brainer - Sandy Bridge is around 20% faster at the same price point as Lynnfield.
Compared to Clarkdale, the Core i3 2100 only manages a 5% advantage howeer.
Adobe 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.
Once again, we have a new king - the 2600K is 9.7% faster than the 980X in our Photoshop CS4 test and the 2500K is just about equal to it. The Core i3 2100 does much better compared to the i3 540, outpacing it by around 30% and nearly equaling the performance of AMD's Phenom II X6 1100T.
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iwodo - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
1. Transcoding @ 100fps is not uber fast. x264 ultrafast setting is even faster then that. So i hope there are further improvement or potentials in the Quick Sync that we haven't yet discovered.2. OpenCL - No mention of OpenCL? At all?
3. I would think Intel GD has done very well this time around. And there are possibly 20 - 30% more performance to squeeze out given how Intel Gfx Drivers tend to be VERY POOR.
cactusdog - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Thanks for the excellent run down of Sandy Bridge. As i have a x58 system i'm going to skip it and see what happens in Q4 . X58 has been a good platform and lasted longer than most others in recent years.xxxxxl - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
I've thought it over...and i don't believe that H67 only support GPU overclocking.Like what others said, buy a "K" cpu to get HD3000 graphic and cannot overclock...and on the other side, those with P67 buy unlocked "K" CPU get HD3000 but cannot use...then what's the point of making HD3000 graphics?
strikeback03 - Tuesday, January 4, 2011 - link
As they pointed out, with the Z series motherboard you can have both. That said, it does seem stupid that Intel would launch with those official guidelines, and in these comments others are saying some H67 motherboards are allowing the CPU multiplier to be changed.rs2 - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
As tempting is this chip looks, my 3.8 GHz Core 2 Quad is still more CPU than I can really use most of the time. I wonder if we're reaching the point where improved compute performance is not really necessary for mainstream and even most enthusiast users.In any case, the upcoming 6-core/12-thread variant sounds interesting. Maybe I'll upgrade to that if Intel doesn't assign it to the $999 price point.
romanovskis - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
same here. For gaming or multimedia use, core2quad (mine at 4GHz) is still enough, and probably will be enough for 1-2 years. Best value/money is still in GPU upgrades.iwodo - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Beat Value / Money is SSD...cgeorgescu - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Best Value/Money is Beer, everybody knows that. Not 6-core but 6-pack.karlostomy - Thursday, January 6, 2011 - link
WIN ^^^agr8man - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
a great review from you guys, and imo, the i5 2500k is really a steal.