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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DanNeely - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
The increased power efficiency might allow Apple to squeeze a GPU onto their smaller laptop boards without loosing runtime due to the smaller battery.yuhong - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
"Unlike P55, you can set your SATA controller to compatible/legacy IDE mode. This is something you could do on X58 but not on P55. It’s useful for running HDDERASE to secure erase your SSD for example"Or running old OSes.
DominionSeraph - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
"taking the original Casino Royale Blu-ray, stripping it of its DRM"Whoa, that's illegal.
RussianSensation - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
It would have been nice to include 1st generation Core i7 processors such as 860/870/920-975 in Starcraft 2 bench as it seems to be very CPU intensive.Also, perhaps a section with overclocking which shows us how far 2500k/2600k can go on air cooling with safe voltage limits (say 1.35V) would have been much appreciated.
Hrel - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Sounds like this is SO high end it should be the server market. I mean, why make yet ANOTHER socket for servers that use basically the same CPU's? Everything's converging and I'd just really like to see server mobo's converge into "High End Desktop" mobo's. I mean seriously, my E8400 OC'd with a GTX460 is more power than I need. A quad would help with the video editing I do in HD but it works fine now, and with GPU accelerated rendering the rendering times are totally reasonable. I just can't imagine anyone NEEDING a home computer more powerful than the LGS-1155 socket can provide. Hell, 80-90% of people are probably fine with the power Sandy Bridge gives in laptops now.mtoma - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Perhaps it is like you say, however it's always good for buyers to decide if they want server-like features in a PC. I don't like manufacturers to dictate to me only one way to do it (like Intel does now with the odd combination of HD3000 graphics - Intel H67 chipset). Let us not forget that for a long time, all we had were 4 slots for RAM and 4-6 SATA connections (like you probably have). Intel X58 changed all that: suddenly we had the option of having 6 slots for RAM, 6-8 SATA connections and enough PCI-Express lanes.I only hope that LGA 2011 brings back those features, because like you said: it's not only the performance we need, but also the features.
And, remeber that the software doesn't stay still, it usualy requires multiple processor cores (video transcoding, antivirus scanning, HDD defragmenting, modern OS, and so on...).
All this aside, the main issue remains: Intel pus be persuaded to stop luting user's money and implement only one socket at a time. I usually support Intel, but in this regard, AMD deserves congratulations!
DanNeely - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
LGA 2011 is a high end desktop/server convergence socket. Intel started doing this in 2008, with all but the highest end server parts sharing LGA1366 with top end desktop systems. The exception was quad/octo socket CPUs, and those using enormous amounts of ram using LGA 1567.The main reason why LGA 1155 isn't suitable for really high end machines is that it doesn't have the memory bandwidth to feed hex and octo core CPUs. It's also limited to 16 PCIe 2.0 lanes on the CPU vs 36 PCIe 3.0 lanes on LGA2011. For most consumer systems that won't matter, but 3/4 GPU card systems will start loosing a bit of performance when running in a 4x slot (only a few percent, but people who spend $1000-2000 on GPUs want every last frame they can get), high end servers with multiple 10GB ethernet cards and PCIe SSD devices also begin running into bottlenecks.
Not spending an extra dollar or five per system for the QPI connections only used in multi-socket systems in 1155 also adds up to major savings across the hundreds of millions of systems Intel is planning to sell.
Hrel - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
I'm confused by the upset over playing video at 23.967hz. "It makes movies look like, well, movies instead of tv shows"? What? Wouldn't recording at a lower frame rate just mean there's missed detail especially in fast action scenes? Isn't that why HD runs at 60fps instead of 30fps? Isn't more FPS good as long as it's played back at the appropriate speed? IE whatever it's filmed at? I don't understand the complaint.On a related note hollywood and the world need to just agree that everything gets recorded and played back at 60fps at 1920x1080. No variation AT ALL! That way everything would just work. Or better yet 120FPS and with the ability to turn 3D on and off as u see fit. Whatever FPS is best. I've always been told higher is better.
chokran - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
You are right about having more detail when filming with higher FPS, but this isn't about it being good or bad, it's more a matter of tradition and visual style.The look movies have these days, the one we got accustomed to, is mainly achieved by filming it in 24p or 23.967 to be precise. The look you get when filming with higher FPS just doesn't look like cinema anymore but tv. At least to me. A good article on this:
http://www.videopia.org/index.php/read/shorts-main...
The problem with movies looking like TV can be tested at home if you got a TV that has some kind of Motion Interpolation, eg. MotionFlow called by Sony or Intelligent Frame Creation by Panasonic. When turned on, you can see the soap opera effect by adding frames. There are people that don't see it and some that do and like it, but I have to turn it of since it doesn't look "natural" to me.
CyberAngel - Thursday, January 6, 2011 - link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Showscan