Intel Sandy Bridge E (LGA2011) review thread

[mczak]

The high clock 8-core don't fit in the 130W TDP. You'd end up with a chip which for desktop workloads was slower than the 6-core.

No. The base clock would be lower (bad for marketing), but thanks to turbo it would be just as fast when fewer threads are used.

 

[Thorburn]

No. The base clock would be lower (bad for marketing), but thanks to turbo it would be just as fast when fewer threads are used.

True, nothing to stop you just buying the Xeon if you are so inclined however.

 

[Mendel]

You mean X$eon?

I could think of thousands of reasons not to buy X$eons. All of them reasons have these signs like $,€ and £

We are talking spending 2000 euros on a decent setup, something you might do once every 3 years, compared to spending 5-10k... something which I sure as heck can´t justify to my wife

 

[Thorburn]

You mean X$eon?

I could think of thousands of reasons not to buy X$eons. All of them reasons have these signs like $,€ and £

We are talking spending 2000 euros on a decent setup, something you might do once every 3 years, compared to spending 5-10k... something which I sure as heck can´t justify to my wife

Yeah, the whole $ thing works with Microsoft because they have an S in the name. Maybe try X€ons?

You can drop a Xeon in to a regular desktop board, and a single top-bin chip isn't 3,000-7,000€ more than an Extreme Edition.

You'd have to push the budget up a little certainly, but not that much.

 

[hoho]

Xeons sure are expensive, espeically if you are after high per-core speed. Then again if you are already using xeons to get more cores then somewhat slower clock speed shouldn't be that bad. I'm actually planning to wait until the 22nm CPUs and see what kind of 2p setup I can build. I surely won't be using the highest-end CPUs for it but if I can get 2x8 real cores for decent cost (€1k'ish?) it'll sure be rather tempting upgrade over my current q6600

 

[DarthShader]

They are going to release the 3980x with all cores and full cache enabled though, right?
I don´t see there would be any sense to release it with 6 cores and a minor MHz bump.

Hahahahaha... No, they won't. Time to get used to how future desktop CPU releases will look like.

 

[mczak]

You can drop a Xeon in to a regular desktop board, and a single top-bin chip isn't 3,000-7,000€ more than an Extreme Edition.

You'd have to push the budget up a little certainly, but not that much.

That is true, though it seems like intel won't release a 8 core xeon from the E5-1000 (single socket) series neither. There are lots of 8 core variants in the E5-2000 series however if the leaked information is to be believed, ranging from like 1000$ (with really low clock) to 2000$ (which still has somewhat lower base clock though I'd guess it'll turbo up to about the same as the Extreme Edition).
So you're essentially looking at 2000$ instead of 1000$ for the cpu if you want to get those 2 cores (and 5MB cache) back on the desktop. That's quite a lot, though if you're willing to waste 500$ for going with the Extreme Edition instead of the regular i7-3930K (which gets you almost exactly nothing with or without overclocking) you might as well spend another 1000$ to actually get some improvement in multithreaded tasks... Though the problem with that is that OC might be limited without the unlocked multiplier, though I guess the new BCLK options help...

 

[denev2004]

They will probably release 8-core 22nm chips before that.

According to sb. in chiphell who looks like has some relation with intel, there won't be chips more than 6-core in desktop untill Haswell release. IVY Bridge sounds like in the same generation as Sandy Bridge-E

 

[homerdog]

Intel's release schedule for these E platforms is backwards. They should be released before the mainstream CPUs and chipsets, like Nehalem was before Lynnfield and LGA1156.

We already went through the Gulftown vs Sandy Bridge flop, and we are about to have a repeat with SNB-E vs Ivy Bridge. The problem is only made worse by Intel's castration of the consumer SNB-E processors. In fact releasing the full 8core SNB-E CPUs would mostly solve the issue.

AndandTech did a good piece on why IVB is still quad core, but as they note even a quad core IVB will perform very favorably compared to a 6core SNB-E at a fraction of the cost, just as quad core SNB compares to Gulftown.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5174/why-ivy-bridge-is-still-quad-core

The problem looks to repeat itself with IVB-E vs Haswell if I'm reading the roadmap correctly.

For a company that executes as well as Intel, this surprises me. I feel like they're leaving a lot of money on the table.

 

[denev2004]

That's why 3770K is just a kind of 22-nm verson of 2700K....Besides the change of IGP, which is useless most occasion.

 

[homerdog]

Yeah, that's basically the point of the AT article.

 

[swaaye]

I imagine that the primary point of this silicon is the Xeon edition and that the SB-E workstation edition is just something extra for them.

 

[Grall]

I wonder, when you look at a truly monster CPU like this one, 8 cores, 15 megs L3, 4x 64-bit memory interfaces and so on, and then you contrast it with the still small, but rising presence of tiny ARM core servers.

When will those kind of setups start eating Intel's monolithic server CPU lunch? And, how will Intel react?

So many big businesses have found themselves simply collapsing like a house of cards when their primary product/market became obsolete. They were unable to adapt and progress simply rolled over them without looking back. It's happened to a number of computing/IT companies, SGI is one of them for example. Nokia may be another, we'll see.

 

[swaaye]

Intel is working on stuff like Knight's Corner and a 8 core Atom product. I would say they explore all of the latest computing trends in their own way.

 

[homerdog]

Intel's gonna be alright. The Massive Server CPU is only one small facet of their business model. BTW they seem to be really good at making huge fast processors, and if their's a demand for them then they'd be stupid not to.

Certainly their company is not totally reliant on the SNB-E market to stay afloat. They have many other irons in the fire. Just look at the direction they've taken with IVB. 77W max TDP shows that they are starting to adapt to changes in consumer CPU demand.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

The upcoming 3820 version doesn't sound too attractive... yes they gave it slightly higher clock so it doesn't look awful compared to the 2600k, but still it's going to have a higher TDP, probably won't OC as nicely and the chip should cost more than the 2600k or 2700k or atleast the platform will. You'll get a huge chip of which half is disabled and it doesn't seem to be better at anything?

And it won't be long after till the 22nm Ivy Bridge comes.

 

[denev2004]

The upcoming 3820 version doesn't sound too attractive... yes they gave it slightly higher clock so it doesn't look awful compared to the 2600k, but still it's going to have a higher TDP, probably won't OC as nicely and the chip should cost more than the 2600k or 2700k or atleast the platform will. You'll get a huge chip of which half is disabled and it doesn't seem to be better at anything?

And it won't be long after till the 22nm Ivy Bridge comes.

Well. 3820 even looks better than 3770K, with 100mhz higer frequency, large L3 and 4-channel. And 3820 can be even cheaper than 2700K, due to the high price of the mainboard.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Well. 3820 even looks better than 3770K, with 100mhz higer frequency, large L3 and 4-channel. And 3820 can be even cheaper than 2700K, due to the high price of the mainboard.

The reviews for the 6 core models don't show great benefit from the large cache and the mem channel in consumer usage imo. The 100mhz higher clock is just a marketing decision to enable higher price, the chip itself wont be any more capable to reach higher clocks than the Sandy Bridge chips.

I seriously doubt Intel is going to sell their 435mm2 chip cheaper than what the small 200mm2>Ivy Bridge is going to be, they took care of that with the clocking. 2700k or 3770k imo is much more attractive chip.

 

[HMBR]

there is a review here
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i7-3930k-3820-test-benchmark,3090.html

in my opinion it looks quite good, same/lower price as the 2600k but faster/equal, and with a good advantage, if you buy one, you own a motheboard which you can use to upgrade to a 6-8 cores CPU later...

the motheboard price is not to bad, there are some options at 200 USD... many are paying more than that on 1155 MBs...

I would choose this CPU over the 2600/2700k.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Ok it seems it is a bit cheaper than I thought and your upgrade path sounds reasonable. Still if I was planning to build a new rig soon I'd choose between 2600/2700K/3770K or 3930K from the E-platform.