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 EST3D Rendering Performance
Today's desktop processors are more than fast enough to do professional level 3D rendering at home. To look at performance under 3dsmax we ran the SPECapc 3dsmax 8 benchmark (only the CPU rendering tests) under 3dsmax 9 SP1. The results reported are the rendering composite scores.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, we have a new champ once more. The 2600K is slightly ahead of the 980X here, while the 2500K matches the performance of the i7 975 without Hyper Threading enabled. You really can't beat the performance Intel is offering here.
The i3 2100 is 11% faster than last year's i3 540, and the same performance as the Athlon II X4 645.
Created by the Cinema 4D folks we have Cinebench, a popular 3D rendering benchmark that gives us both single and multi-threaded 3D rendering results.
Single threaded performance sees a huge improvement with Sandy Bridge. Even the Core i3 2100 is faster than the 980X in this test. Regardless of workload, light or heavy, Sandy Bridge is the chip to get.
POV-Ray is a popular, open-source raytracing application that also doubles as a great tool to measure CPU floating point performance.
I ran the SMP benchmark in beta 23 of POV-Ray 3.73. The numbers reported are the final score in pixels per second.
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Didn't turn out well did it?BSMonitor - Tuesday, January 4, 2011 - link
You'd spend $80 on a 6-core MB ?? LOLIf you buy a 6-core Phenom, likely you'll be in th 140-180 range for a decent MB..
Funny how the cheapers rationalize their cheapness.
zipzoomflyhigh - Tuesday, January 4, 2011 - link
That's not true at all. Most $40-50 AM3 mobo's support X6. If you don't game or overclock, you don't need extra pci-e lanes and extra cooling. Especially for a workstation.Oxford Guy - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Yeah, I'm stoked about the new low-level DRM.This is sure to run it fast.
talevski - Thursday, January 6, 2011 - link
i think that amd 880g mainbord with cpu araound 90 dolars plus some 55xx series gpu can do better in terms of encoding decoding video playback games etc. and all that without alot of money spend on inetl new socekets wich you have to trow away when they make the next cpu.So please corect me if i am wrongto anandtech&co
pshen7 - Tuesday, February 22, 2011 - link
The charts and the numbers say it all. This is definitely worth an upgrade for me!Peter Shen, founder Koowie.com
Shifu_V - Saturday, April 16, 2011 - link
Hi everyone, i dicided to build a PC but made an 1 error getting the i7 2600 if anyone is interested in buying one please let me, it's brand new sealed in it original contents.and i dont mind trading it in for a i7 2600k.
and i will match the price maybe even better
My email:vinay_chauhan20042000@yahoo.co.uk
Skott - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
I'm wondering how supply will be on release day? Often we see new components with low supply and online stores start price gouging from day one. New Egg is particularly known for such. Lets hope supply is very good off the bat. That 2600K looks really appealing to me.evilspoons - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
One of the local computer stores had Sandy Bridge parts up for sale last week, but they're all gone now save for a few Asus P8P67 standard, pro, and deluxe boards.I wasn't able to see what kind of money they were asking.
This review has convinced me that once the 2600K shows up again it's all I'll need. I was going to wait for socket 2011 but damn, the 2600 is already more than twice as fast in everything than my poor ol' Q6600.