Sandy Bridge review thread.

[I.S.T.]

http://techreport.com/articles.x/20188

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/...ore-i5-2600k-i5-2500k-and-core-i3-2100-tested

http://hothardware.com/Reviews/Intel-Core-i72600K-and-i52500K-Processors-Debut/

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sandy-bridge-core-i7-2600k-core-i5-2500k,2833.html

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2011/01/03/intel-sandy-bridge-review/1

http://www.guru3d.com/article/core-i5-2500k-and-core-i7-2600k-review/

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1501/1/

http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/Intel_i7_2600K_i5_2500K/

http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/cpu_mainboard/i7_2600k_i5_2500k_2300_1155_sandy_bridge_review/1

http://www.overclockers.com/intel-i7-2600k-sandy-bridge-review

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=1057

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/processors/363982/intel-sandy-bridge

http://www.techspot.com/review/353-intel-sandy-bridge-corei5-2500k-corei7-2600k/

http://www.techreaction.net/2011/01

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/37...nd_core_i5_2500k_sandy_bridge_cpus/index.html

http://www.lostcircuits.com/mambo//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=98&Itemid=1

http://www.computerbase.de/artikel/prozessoren/2011/test-intel-sandy-bridge/

 

[ShaidarHaran]

Guess these are all the "early looks" going to "preferred sites". Too bad no one had the time to do a decent review with some meaningful gaming benches, nor took a serious look at overclocking, or Folding.

 

[Mize]

kinda funny that the first two arrive at opposite conclusions ("FASTEST evah!" vs. "Doesn't move absolute performance ahead")

Guess I'll wait on a more thorough review with same-clock benches between i7 and SB...oh and Bulldozer too.

 

[I.S.T.]

Updated with several more reviews. These are stolen from tech report's own SB reviews thread. >_>

 

[Mize]

Shame one cannot use the new transcoder without having a display connected to SB's GPU. Is CUDA encoding really as bad as Anand shows? Ugh.

 

[fellix]

SNB is impressive by its own merits, but I'll stick with my trusty i7-920 @ 4GHz for at least another year. AVX is the only lucrative point I see in the new architecture, and I hope AMD will strike hard with Bulldozer sometime this year so I can snatch a cheap 6-core Gulftown, for a decent mid-term upgrade.

 

[swaaye]

I'm thinking of sticking with my 3 yr old Q6600 @ 3.2 GHz and 2 yr old PIIX4 940 for another year. SB is super fast in some apps but I just don't need the speed. I'm not even sure I would notice the extra speed unless I turned into a video encoding shop or render farm.

SB is sure to make an awesome notebook CPU with its evolved Turbo stuff.

 

[codedivine]

Does any review compare performance with turbo on and turbo off? And does any review report clock-per-clock performance with CPUs set to same frequency? That will make for interesting reading.

 

[pjbliverpool]

I'm still using an E6600! Its actually fine for most games with the exception of GTA4: LCS which is borderline unplayable despite me having a 4890.

Every other game I've tried works perfectly but I have a feeling one or two might be a bit smoother with a faster CPU. When I can afford it I see me shelling out for an i7-2600 although depending on how cheap I'm feeling I might opt for the i5-2500 instead. Its not like I'll really notice a difference in games.

 

[Mize]

I'm running an overclocked Q9550 on my main rig and one of those low power Athlon 64 x2 5050e on my server. To be honest I was planning a SB build on the main rig for March, but I might wait to see what AMD shows up with now. Headless Quick Sync on an overclockable chipset would have sold me but that's not in the cards apparently.

 

[fellix]

Does any review compare performance with turbo on and turbo off? And does any review report clock-per-clock performance with CPUs set to same frequency? That will make for interesting reading.

Check here!

 

[codedivine]

Check here!

Thats exactly what I was looking for! Thanks!

edit: That is an excellent review overall! The author should be commended!

 

[DarthShader]

It's also the first review to even mention OpenCL 1.0 compatibility of the IGP. I almost started to think it's not present at all...

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I might get SB just for the increased power savings. That'll allow me to retire my power hungry dual opteron server. Now I just have to decide if I should use SB for my main rig and migrate my Lynnfield system down to take over for the Opterons, or directly replace the opterons with a lower power SB.

Oh wait. SB MBs are going to be UEFI instead of BIOS allowing for easier use of HDD's greater than 2 TB in size.

Hmmm, OK, I may have to try to budget an upgrade to both my main rig and server/HTPC. Maybe I'll hold off on the server/HTPC for a bit to see what Bulldozer brings in that area.

And SB GPU slightly faster than I expected. I was thinking it would be slower than 5450 in all cases, but it's actually faster in roughly half the games I've seen it tested on. And as expected doesn't come anywhere close to a 5570. Argh, still no proper support for 23.976 fps playback. Looks like 5450 remains my only choice for HTPC work then.

Regards,
SB

 

[I.S.T.]

Two reviews added.

 

[Mize]

At least Kyle did clock-for-clock benchmarks. Thanks Kyle!

 

[pjbliverpool]

Thats exactly what I was looking for! Thanks!

edit: That is an excellent review overall! The author should be commended!

Agreed, I took more from that than the 2other reviews I've read even though I don't read German!

SB definately seems to be the way to go for me. I wonder if a 2600 will be fast enough to keep up with whatever CPU's the next gen consoles use. I'd hate to have to upgrade again in another year or so just to play console ports.

 

[joker454]

Is CUDA encoding really as bad as Anand shows? Ugh.

I think most Cuda encoders are still fairly primitive. I do extensive video editing for my new business, and I notice that during an avc encode with Vegas Pro 10 my gpu load only goes to 9% so it's barely making use of the gpu. I do know that my gpu can decode far more than my i7-920 can because my i7 chokes when trying to play back just two simultaneous avchd streams, while Premiere Pro CS5 with Cuda support can play back 7+ streams easily with it's much better Cuda gpu decoding assist. In other words, Cuda decoding is almost an order of magnitude faster than my i7, whereas Cuda encoding is a mere 10% or so faster than my i7, which to me implies that Cuda encoders just need more work.

Either way, the i7-2600k looks like an amazing deal for the price. It's definitely time to upgrade my aging q6600 which is holding back my gaming framerates.

I wonder if a 2600 will be fast enough to keep up with whatever CPU's the next gen consoles use. I'd hate to have to upgrade again in another year or so just to play console ports.

Wouldn't worry about it, no one has next gen console dev kits yet, so the next gen consoles are minimum two+ years away.

 

[aaronspink]

I think most Cuda encoders are still fairly primitive. I do extensive video editing for my new business, and I notice that during an avc encode with Vegas Pro 10 my gpu load only goes to 9% so it's barely making use of the gpu. I do know that my gpu can decode far more than my i7-920 can because my i7 chokes when trying to play back just two simultaneous avchd streams, while Premiere Pro CS5 with Cuda support can play back 7+ streams easily with it's much better Cuda gpu decoding assist. In other words, Cuda decoding is almost an order of magnitude faster than my i7, whereas Cuda encoding is a mere 10% or so faster than my i7, which to me implies that Cuda encoders just need more work.

Or, large portions of the AVC flow don't map well to CUDA.

 

[Davros]

from what i can tell sb is about 25% faster per clock than the core2 quads
and as clock speed doesnt seem to be going up it doesnt seem like a great upgrade