Sandy Bridge preview
- Thread starter fellix
- Start date
Interesting, Anand claims the CPU part of the chip has built-in transcoding hardware.
a) What's next? HW firewalls that actually work?
b) There goes any hope of Bulldozer actually being competitive.
Holy damn...
The 'weak' IGP is effectively equal to the ATI 5450. The entire CPU package uses 10% less power than the i5/780 under load, but beats it by basically 20% or more across the board -- and more than a few cases it effectively equals or even exceeds the i7-980X. And not just in single-threaded theoretical stuff, either
And this is the $200 USD part?
The 'weak' IGP is effectively equal to the ATI 5450. The entire CPU package uses 10% less power than the i5/780 under load, but beats it by basically 20% or more across the board -- and more than a few cases it effectively equals or even exceeds the i7-980X. And not just in single-threaded theoretical stuff, either
And this is the $200 USD part?
brain_stew
Regular
The IGP is definitely the most impressive part for me. Beating out one of ATI's latest generation discrete GPUs on super early pre-release drivers is something I think none of us thought we'd ever see just a short while ago. If Anand's suspicion that GPU turbo wasn't working is correct then that thing's going to fly once Intel have some mature drivers out for it. I don't see where the market for low end discrete GPUs can go from here with Fusion also on the horizon, that segment will be dead within 2 years imo.
The drivers worked perfectly in every test as well and the performance remained very consistent no matter what they tested. What a turnaround from the GMA 950 ( :shudders: ) days!
The drivers worked perfectly in every test as well and the performance remained very consistent no matter what they tested. What a turnaround from the GMA 950 ( :shudders: ) days!
Is the Sandy Bridge GPU a DX10 class part?
brain_stew
Regular
Their two previous generations were DX10 class hardware, so yes. Dunno about 10.1 and 11 support though.
itsmydamnation
Veteran
A. host based firewalls are pretty useless for 99.99% of computers ( regardless of consumer or corporate environments). HIPS is far more useful but even the biggest IPS's these days are all software driven ( almost no custom ASICS).
B. WTFBBQPANDA???? quick call AMD and tell them there Datacentre/virtualised orientated CPU is now completely uncompetitive because of transcoding. Even in the consumer space 99% of people buying high end consumer gear aren't going to care either.
Seriously for someone who seems to know more about this stuff(not point A, but B) then me by about a factor of a million you sure say some odd things
There didn't seem to be any transcoding benches there, only encode benches.
Besides, with the kind of perf gains, and the process disadvantage bd is going to have for most of it's life, I am doubtful, if it can keep up with SB.
Wheres that?
I only read that encoding on CPU would be less interesting if Intel can accelerate it by using the integrated GPU.
The mobile GMA X3100, all GMA 4500, and GMA HD supports DX10 in hardware, so Sandy Bridge should support at least that. I'm not sure if they'll go above that though. It's classified as "Gen 6" so DX10.1 might be possible.
Holy damn...
The 'weak' IGP is effectively equal to the ATI 5450. The entire CPU package uses 10% less power than the i5/780 under load, but beats it by basically 20% or more across the board -- and more than a few cases it effectively equals or even exceeds the i7-980X. And not just in single-threaded theoretical stuff, either
And this is the $200 USD part?
At least some competition. I dont think that upgrading to 160SP the 5450(or better 6400) is a giant technical problem for ATI
. At least maybe the 20x performance difference betwen low and high end will finaly decrease.Edit: The reason why 5450 had 80SP-s again is that it was enough to beat everything it needed by a long run. At least it will change.
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I would not consider "beating a tortoise" to be fast.
5400 is tortoise, old GMA is snail.
(5400 has 20 times less calculating speed than high-end chips)
So Sandy bridge, by beating 5400 with some 20% difference, is only 16x times slower than high-end chips!
And Llano will have 3 or 6 times more shaders than 5400, so it should be somehting like 2-4 times faster than SB.
DarthShader
Regular
Are ATI Catalyst 9.12 pre-release drivers? I think they are after release already... still, if SB can only match the lowest ATI card with old drivers, then I am not sure if it's worth any bragging rights.
(See what I did here? One of the biggest sins of Anand is to not update benchmarks. And then people say: "Wow! New stuff is so much faster than old stuff!")All in all it means, this 1C version can match the Ontario GPU. Will the 2C version be able to match Llano?
What about the overclocking controversy Anand mentions? This might be the 200$ part, but if it doesn't overclock at all... ?
brain_stew
Regular
With mature drivers and a fully functioning graphics turbo to add on top of that, its potentially a very capable little unit. Intel will definitely surpass the consoles with their next generation IGPs accross the board if they can keep up the good work. It should make for some killer laptops and SFF PCs.
What about DirectCompute and OpenCL support? If Intel can deliver drivers that make both of them a reality then it'll do absolute wonders for adoption.
I never thought I'd get so excited about Intel integrated graphics!
