Sandy Bridge review thread.

Clock speeds are up a bit. Seems most 2600k units are hitting 4.4 GHz OCs on air. Not huge, but significant. Still, not significant enough to stop me from waiting to see what Bulldozer has to offer.
 
It's a bit like Nvidia did with their latest gpu's, stuck the performance up and reduced power. The difference is Intel didn't need to do it and nvidia did.

At this rate Intels next tick will blow AMD out of the weeds if they can deliver on the smaller node.
 
At this rate Intels next tick will blow AMD out of the weeds if they can deliver on the smaller node.

I hope not. Without competition things would stagnate and prices would rise quite a bit. Intel needs AMD nipping at their heels (or vice versa) just as NV needs it too. The fanbois on either side are simply nuts for rooting for one to bury the other. This isn't sports for pitty sake.
 
It's a bit like Nvidia did with their latest gpu's, stuck the performance up and reduced power. The difference is Intel didn't need to do it and nvidia did.

At this rate Intels next tick will blow AMD out of the weeds if they can deliver on the smaller node.

The competitive field IMO, is different than few years ago when the primary competitor to Intel was AMD. If Intel slacks now, there's lot more that can nip at its heels than it used to.

BTW anyone see in the datasheet that the new GMA HD core supports DX11 CS function?

The Intel HD Graphics controller features the following:
• 3D Features
⎯ DirectX10.1* and OpenGL* 3.0 compliant
⎯ DirectX11* CS4.0 only compliant
⎯ Shader Model 4.0
 
If that things works without hiccups then SB will likely get my $. It's the lack of headless GPU for Quick Sync that kills SB for me right now. That's the one area where it's performance improvements are huge.

From the article: The only system requirement is to always connect the display screen directly to the motherboard’s Sandy Bridge display output (DVI, HDMI, etc).

That means a H67 mobo and no OC at all (IGP only). Or wait for the Z68 chipset.
 
At this rate Intels next tick will blow AMD out of the weeds if they can deliver on the smaller node.

Intel has been content to allow AMD to be competitive in the under 200 USD market. They could easily have stomped them out at any time the past few years had they wanted to.

Sandy Bridge is just more proof that Intel doesn't want to eliminate AMD from the CPU market. Once you get under 200 USD, all Intel CPs will now either be completely locked down and un-overclockable or partially locked down with limited overclocks.

As well, Intel aren't aggressively increasing performance in the sub 200 USD market. With the headroom available on SB chips they could easily increase clockspeed and thus performance across the board from top to bottom if they wished without affecting price or yields.

Once you go above 200 USD, that's when Intel opens things up to make AMD CPUs less attractive. Increased performance per dollar at lower power useage combined with all chips being partially unlocked or fully unlocked.

So basically when AMD becomes more competitive, Intel will increase value of their CPUs to match. And while AMD will appeal to budget enthusiasts at price points below 200 USD, Intel will ignore budget enthusiasts (locked down CPUs) at prince points below 200 USD.

Regards,
SB
 
From the article: The only system requirement is to always connect the display screen directly to the motherboard’s Sandy Bridge display output (DVI, HDMI, etc).

That means a H67 mobo and no OC at all (IGP only). Or wait for the Z68 chipset.

Yep. But with this baby at least your Z68 won't have to have a monitor on the intel GPU.
 
Or, large portions of the AVC flow don't map well to CUDA.

Could be...I'm gonna keep an eye on things and see how it all shakes out. Hopefully Premiere Pro and Vegas Pro will both add decoding/encoding support for quick sync cpu's like the i7-2600k, then we can do direct comparisons. Would be great to not need a cuda card in my office pc!
 
For those of us that don't care about the integrated GPU, are there any SB CPUs in the pipeline without it?
 
as far as I know no, and the funny thing is that the faster cpu's (that are more likely to be bought by people with discreet gfx cards) have even more powerful gpu's than the slower chips
 
That's why I see SB's gpu as nothing more than a good transcoding feature - something I would like to have if they can fix the whole have to have monitor, can't overclock that chipset thing.
 
You have to wait for LGA2011, if you want more cores (>4) without on-die GPU.
Yup, Anand mentions 4 and 6 cores for the LGA2011 in Q4. No 8 cores though - I guess the power constraints don't allow them to be clocked high enough for the desktop market.
 
Yup, Anand mentions 4 and 6 cores for the LGA2011 in Q4. No 8 cores though - I guess the power constraints don't allow them to be clocked high enough for the desktop market.
That shouldn't really be a problem thanks to Turbo (except for the marketing number Ghz).
Maybe though there will really be only one version (6-core) just with 2 cores disabled (similar to the current Westmere Xeons - heck you can get single core Westmere which is using 6 core die). I think given the much lower volumes this might make sense - even though for LGA1155 there are 3 different dies, and two of them without much of a die size difference (4 core/12 EU/8MB, 2 core/12EU/4MB, 2 core/6EU/3MB - note the latter L3 cache size is just what I assume given the floor plan of SB, and the transistor and die size difference between the chips).
 
Back
Top