Intel Core i7 3820 Review: $285 Quad-Core Sandy Bridge E
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 29, 2011 2:28 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Sandy Bridge
- Sandy Bridge E
Final Words
I see three reasons why you'd want the Core i7 3820:
1. You need PCIe 3.0 today and/or you need more PCIe lanes than a Core i7 2600K can provide,
2. You need tons of memory bandwidth for a particular application,
3. You want a 2600K but you need a platform that can support more memory (32GB+).
If you fall into any of those categories, the 3820 gets the job done. It's easily as fast as the fastest LGA-1155 Sandy Bridge without adding significant power consumption or really being limited on the overclocking side either. The 3820 admittedly targets a niche, but it does so without any real trade offs. If you land outside of the 3820's niche however, you're better served by the 2500/2600K at a lower total platform cost or a 3930K/3960X if you're running a heavily threaded workload and can use the extra cores.
What About Ivy?
By the time the 3820 is available for purchase early next year, Ivy Bridge will be just about a quarter away. For desktop users Ivy Bridge is really only going to bring lower power consumption and a better integrated GPU. If you're seriously considering anything in the SNB-E family, the latter isn't going to matter and the former will be of arguable value. I do expect that we'll see a drop-in upgrade path to IVB-E at some point in early 2013 if you're concerned about platform longevity, although Intel hasn't officially committed to such a thing. It's pretty safe to say that you'll be on your own after IVB-E however, Haswell should be a fairly large departure from IVB-E in a lot of senses.
For everyone else, if you need a desktop system today - the LGA-1155 Sandy Bridge is still a viable option. There's always something better around the corner but I have no issues recommending either that you buy now or you wait for IVB. If you can wait, you'll be getting a cooler CPU with better integrated graphics and faster Quick Sync.
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murray13 - Saturday, December 31, 2011 - link
But the rub is, IF your looking at building a system soon, what's the advantage of buying SB over SB-E, other than saving $ on the mb and maybe ram?I've spec'd out systems both ways and they're within 10% of each other (when the 3820's out).
What your saying is that applications won't take advantage of the new hardware even in 3-4 years, they said that 3-4 years ago, too. Today, some are starting to take advantage.
I'm running a 4 year old Intel system that would probably wax the floor with yours and it IS time for me to upgrade...lol.
vol7ron - Sunday, January 1, 2012 - link
this looks interesting but won't ivy bridge be out around the same time?Denithor - Monday, January 2, 2012 - link
The one advantage SB-E offers over IB is more RAM. At max IB will offer 4x8GB or 32GB (and expensive, those 8GB sticks aren't cheap) while SB-E with its 8 slots will hold up to 8x8GB or 64GB.soultraveler - Monday, January 2, 2012 - link
Just wondering if i should just upgrade my 920 cpu and stay on the 1366 platform now seeing as gaming performance hasn't changed much in the past few years. Any thoughts would be much appreciated.DarkStryke - Tuesday, January 3, 2012 - link
Save your money till Ivybridge. SB-E is a waste of money, and a heavily neutered platform chipset currently (x79 was promised with much more then the garbage it ended up being rolled out as).dj christian - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link
Why isn't this diss board connected to the forums? I can't keep track off my posts or replies.binqq - Friday, January 6, 2012 - link
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Artifex28 - Monday, January 9, 2012 - link
I am a digital composer and hardcore gamer.My current E6750 @ 3.2GHz has certainly outlived itself and I am looking to upgrade my setup soon.
For gaming purposes, I suppose 3820 would be enough. But I am not sure about the digital composing (DAWs, mixing, sample libraries etc). I am aiming for 24-32GB RAM opposed to the 8 GB I got now. Any thoughts if I should wait for Ivy Bridges or not?
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Denithor - Monday, January 9, 2012 - link
IB probably worth the wait. You will be able to use either 4x8GB (32GB) or 2x8GB + 2x4GB (24GB) with IB. Throw in a nice low power quad and you'll be loving it.SBE would save you like $100-150 because you could go with 8x4GB (32GB). Or you could hit 64GB if you really needed that much RAM.
Artifex28 - Tuesday, January 10, 2012 - link
Thanks Denithor.One more vote for waiting! :)