Intel Sandy Bridge CPU benchmarks are up.

uberpixie

http://hardocp.com/news/2011/01/03/intel_sandy_bridge_desktop_review_roundup
{list of reviews from hardocp}

http://hardocp.com/article/2011/01/03/msi_p67agd65_lga1155_chipset_motherboard_review
{hardocp review of a new P67 MSI motherboard.}

I think my poor Q6600s days are numbered finally.....

EDIT: Looks like the i5-2500K is the gaming sweet spot CPU for around €200 or so. For that you get a four core chip well capable of reaching 4Ghz +

Leman

EDIT: Looks like the i5-2500K is the gaming sweet spot CPU for around €200 or so. For that you get a four core chip well capable of reaching 4Ghz +

My i5-750 has been doing that for ages. :pac:

Still, new shiny things are new and shiny. Expect them to be outdated in a month or two! :cool:

roast

I'm a serious tech enthusiast, and even these chips can't bring me to part with my Core i7 920. At 8 threads and 4Ghz, I think I'll wait for a more radical change in technology before I pick up a new CPU.

Saadyst

I'm curious, how much of an actual upgrade would this be from a IP35 based motherboard with a Q6600?

cherryghost

Strange, my i7 860 at the same oc speed as that i7 is faster. Shouldn't be the case. Oh well.

As for the Q6600 difference, in gaming you could expect as much as 40-50% in performance increase in recent games (as long as you dont have a low powered GPU). In terms of encoding/decoding it's miles faster. I know myself since I upgraded from the Q6600 this time last year. It's easily twice as fast as the Q6600, even when it was overclocked

cian1500ww

I think I'll wait another while before upgrading so, I was going to get the i7-950 but these results would suggest that I'd get better bang for buck with the i7-2600k.
Anyone know when pricing becomes available for this side of the water??

tman

That i5 should make a nice upgrade from an ip35 motherboard with an E6750 anyway!

I have a feeling my credit card limit is going to be breached quite early this year!!!

Unregistered.

roast wrote: »

I'm a serious tech enthusiast, and even these chips can't bring me to part with my Core i7 920. At 8 threads and 4Ghz, I think I'll wait for a more radical change in technology before I pick up a new CPU.

EVEN THOUGH the i7-2600K runs stable at 8 threads and >4GHz, it along with the other chips released this week replace Lynnfield (LGA 1156). Your chip's day of reckoning comes in 10 months.

cian1500ww

I've seen some people running it stable at over 5Ghz.

Praetorian

I'm planning my first cpu / mobo / ram upgrade in 3 years.

Sold my Q6600, mobo and ram for €350. What a legendary chip that was. Amazing value for money, and still very little slowed it down. I expect a 2600k or 2500k will last me just as long.

Lots of places apparently have stock of sandybridge, but they can't sell for a few days yet. Rumours circulating now that intel may allow sales of the new cpus tomorrow.

To me sandybridge looks remarkable. Intel have been on a great roll since the first c2d. I still hope AMD can at least compete if not retake the speed crown this year.

Now, where to buy my mobo / cpu / ram...

cian1500ww

I see overclockers.co.uk have the categories added for the new mobos but no sign of any products yet. Anyone see anywhere that had the retail prices for some of the new mobos??

massy086

dont see the hype new mobo and cpu not going to be cheap. i upgraded to the 875k overclocked to 4.2 on air not a bother ht enabled really happy .also dont you need to buy the k-series in these new chips for them to overclock well

Solitaire

AFAIK you need to get a K-series CPU AND the more upmarket P67-based mobos to OC at all :eek: You have to use the unlocked multiplier, you can't OC via mobo bus speed as Intel tied the PCIe and SATA controllers directly to the single clockgen (which is now on the CPU die itself!). A 5% increase in bus speed will cause the SATA controller to royally s*** itself

Also, the non-Extreme Edition LGA1155 chips are useless on LN2 as they max out at 5.7GHz

massy086

Solitaire wrote: »

AFAIK you need to get a K-series CPU AND the more upmarket P67-based mobos to OC at all :eek: You have to use the unlocked multiplier, you can't OC via mobo bus speed as Intel tied the PCIe and SATA controllers directly to the single clockgen (which is now on the CPU die itself!). A 5% increase in bus speed will cause the SATA controller to royally s*** itself

Also, the non-Extreme Edition LGA1155 chips are useless on LN2 as they max out at 5.7GHz

is that a dig at my 875k sol the cheek:D:D

Unregistered.

Solitaire wrote: »

AFAIK you need to get a K-series CPU AND the more upmarket P67-based mobos to OC at all :eek:

There will be a Z68 chipset released in a couple of months. It's basically a H67 and P67 hybrid.

Solitaire wrote: »

Also, the non-Extreme Edition LGA1155 chips are useless on LN2 as they max out at 5.7GHz

5.98GHz if you're lucky

I have a curious question which, oddly, I haven't seen mentioned in any reviews. What if you can boot from a PCIe SSD? See where this is going? . . .

cian1500ww

For those of us still on socket 775 it's an ideal upgrade, best bang for buck at the moment in the Intel range. It would be pointless to upgrade from an i7 processor to Sandy Bridge, best to wait until the 1366 replacements come out later in the year.

cian1500ww

Unregistered. wrote: »

I have a curious question which, oddly, I haven't seen mentioned in any reviews. What if you can boot from a PCIe SSD? See where this is going? . . .

An outrageously high credit card bill...

Solitaire

massy086 wrote: »

is that a dig at my 875k sol the cheek:D:D

Um... no

Unregistered. wrote: »

I have a curious question which, oddly, I haven't seen mentioned in any reviews. What if you can boot from a PCIe SSD? See where this is going? . . .

You could raise Bclk to the dizzy heights of 110MHz? :pac:

You're forgetting - CPU, memory, SATA and PCIe all use the same clockgen on LGA1155

Unregistered.

Solitaire wrote: »

Um... no



You could raise Bclk to the dizzy heights of 110MHz? :pac:

You're forgetting - CPU, memory, SATA and PCIe all use the same clockgen on LGA1155

Doesn't the PCIe/uncore still have it's own multiplier/divider? It worked with Lynnfield.

Solitaire

AFAIK all the buses still used discrete clockgen(s) on Lynnfield, including PCIe.

Only "divider" on Sandy (aside from memory of course!) is the 1/3 divider for PCI

Unregistered.

Oh yes! That's right, in BIOS there was a separate clock for PCIe. My point was that overclocking the PCIe seemed to be more robust in terms of how far you could go before data corruption. The SATA bus is the weak link for sandy bridge. If we don't use it, we remove the weak link.

massy086

posted on fb
MemoryC.com
Coming soon - G.Skill Ripjaw X Series for Sandy Bridge based motherboards. Watch this space!
Expected into stock on Friday this week.

whats this all about dont tell me it needs special ram too

Unregistered.

massy086 wrote: »

whats this all about dont tell me it needs special ram too

It doesn't. Same spec as Lynnfield.

Solitaire

Yup. <1.66V, up to DDR3-1333. Why the heck didn't they finally add DDR3-1600 support?!? Now unless you get a K chip your RAM is eternally locked at 1333MHz

cian1500ww

massy086 wrote: »

posted on fb
MemoryC.com
Coming soon - G.Skill Ripjaw X Series for Sandy Bridge based motherboards. Watch this space!
Expected into stock on Friday this week.

whats this all about dont tell me it needs special ram too

There'll probably be plenty of manufacturers marketing ram aimed at the new boards but you're fine with any dual channel ddr3 kit.

deceit

Just wondering do any of you know if sandybridge will support triple channel ram on some boards? Just wondering as have a spare 6gb so could be tempted to upgrade my htpc if could use it all.

cian1500ww

Found some prices for the socket 1155 mobos: http://geizhals.at/eu/?cat=mbp4_1155&sort=p&xf=#xf_top
Don't know how accurate that is but it looks about right.

Also on hardwareversand.de: http://www2.hardwareversand.de/articlesearch.jsp?agid=1600&search.reset=1&search.sKey=

I like the look of the Asus Sabertooth P67 and the price

Solitaire

AFAIK only the LGA1366 replacement will do triple-channel.

Skerries

i have just ordered an i7-950 should i have held off or is there much of a difference?

Leman

Skerries wrote: »

i have just ordered an i7-950 should i have held off or is there much of a difference?

Don't worry. It's fine. If you MUST HAVE THE SHINY NEW THING OMG!1111!!!!!!!:pac::pac::pac::pac::pac:!!!!!!!!!!!! send it back and buy one.

cherryghost

What a sexy board

Does want

tman

Mad as a bag of cats, and kind of affordable too! I think I'm in love

Think I've already made up my mind about what I'll get for my next upgrade now;
i7-2600K (might as well go all out!), ASUS Sabertooth P67 and 8GB DDR3

Guess I'll just have to get a new gfx card to go along with it as well:o

cian1500ww

Prices are up overclockers.co.uk for the new processors, i7 2600k is listed at £280

Unregistered.

cian1500ww wrote: »

Prices are up overclockers.co.uk for the new processors, i7 2600k is listed at £280

The i5-2500k is the bad boy you want though. At 190, it's the i5-7** of this generation.

cian1500ww

Unregistered. wrote: »

The i5-2500k is the bad boy you want though. At 190, it's the i5-7** of this generation.

I was considering it but I do a lot of folding and the 2600k would be a better option plus I'll probably keep it for a good while.

Jonny7

Some rough German prices at 19% VAT avail from Jan 9th apparently

Core i7 2600K - 309€
Core i5 2500K - 219€
Core i5 2500 - 209€
Core i5 2400 - 189€
Core i5 2300 - 184€
Core i3 2120 - 139€
Core i3 2100 - 119€

Very odd pricing

36 euros between 4 models.. not much of an incentive to buy the lowest one out of the four

Komplett-Tech: Ryan

Saadyst wrote: »

I'm curious, how much of an actual upgrade would this be from a IP35 based motherboard with a Q6600?

Think of it as going from a gameboy to a sony psp. It's pretty huge.

Komplett-Tech: Ryan

Jonny7 wrote: »

Some rough German prices at 19% VAT avail from Jan 9th apparently

Core i7 2600K - 309€
Core i5 2500K - 219€
Core i5 2500 - 209€
Core i5 2400 - 189€
Core i5 2300 - 184€
Core i3 2120 - 139€
Core i3 2100 - 119€

Very odd pricing

36 euros between 4 models.. not much of an incentive to buy the lowest one out of the four

I don't think intel really care, all of the CPU's are exactally the same, just slightly different speeds and a unlocked multiplyer. Which ever people buy they still make money on them.

Unregistered.

Komplett-Tech: Ryan wrote: »

I don't think intel really care, all of the CPU's are exactally the same, just slightly different speeds and a unlocked multiplyer. Which ever people buy they still make money on them.

Any hints on prices? think you'd manage to beat the likes of HWVS+shipping for, say, a cpu + mobo + ram?

Komplett-Tech: Ryan

At the moment i can only see the prices we buy them in bulk from a vendor in quantaties of 5/10/20/50/100 etc etc. And i cant really comment on how much we will be selling them for retail at the moment, but it should be very competitive

Praetorian

I was leaning towards the 2600k, but I may settle for the 2500k. May not be much difference when overclocked with the apps I use anyway.

I have money, but personally I think €300 euros for just a cpu is expensive.

Considering you can get a ps3 for that money or an xbox with kinect...!

Last time I bought mobo / chip / ram for myself, it was a q6600 with ip35 and 4 gigs ram. Back when cpu's were €150 and motherboards were around €90. Hardware has gotten expensive, has no one noticed?

cian1500ww

I'm the kind of person that likes to buy the best hardware I can afford because I don't upgrade that often. I'd still be interested in the 2600k even though the price is a little higher than expected.

Komplett: Will you guys have prices up on the 9th??

Solitaire

Okay... now things are getting even more confusinating... some of the the board partners are hedging their bets over Sandy by making P67 mobos... for LGA1156.

Wait, whut?!

Unregistered.

Solitaire wrote: »

Okay... now things are getting even more confusinating... some of the the board partners are hedging their bets over Sandy by making P67 mobos... for LGA1156.

Wait, whut?!

Makes sense. It's essentially the same chipset with SATA 3 support.

srsly78

roast wrote: »

I'm a serious tech enthusiast, and even these chips can't bring me to part with my Core i7 920. At 8 threads and 4Ghz, I think I'll wait for a more radical change in technology before I pick up a new CPU.

Look how wrong you are. In serious applications we disable hyperthreading because it gives a decrease in performance. Enthusiast != knowing anything about what they are paying for.

Solitaire

Many "enthusiasts" know that all too well. About the only time a lot of us would get much use out of an i7's HT is protein folding, we'd be forever switching the blooming thing on and off!

Jonny7

Praetorian wrote: »

I was leaning towards the 2600k, but I may settle for the 2500k. May not be much difference when overclocked with the apps I use anyway.

I have money, but personally I think €300 euros for just a cpu is expensive.

Considering you can get a ps3 for that money or an xbox with kinect...!

Last time I bought mobo / chip / ram for myself, it was a q6600 with ip35 and 4 gigs ram. Back when cpu's were €150 and motherboards were around €90. Hardware has gotten expensive, has no one noticed?

You are going for the top or second from top chip.. its not too bad really

It would've been like going for the q6700 (before the big price drop) or extreme version which were bloody expensive as I remember

If there was a pc with a 65 euro tricore AMD and another with the 2600K, I think we'd struggle to see the difference visually in anything other than heavy encoding, etc.

I mean I have 2 pc's side by side, one is an old core2 and the other is a fast AMD quad overclocked, the difference in everyday browsing and gaming is barely noticeable

The biggest noticeable difference in any PC is the addition of an SSD

All that said.. i really want one of these chips... must.. resist.. dont.. even.. need.. it

weiland79

Hi guy's could someone explain to me please a little about this ' Sandy beach' processor. I'm less than clueless about this type of thing and am currently trying to educate myself as i'd like to build my own pc.
Firstly am i right in saying it is intels newest processor?
I will be using my pc for basic office files, databases etc
and for Gaming. Will this processor do the job.( i assume it will)
And lastly what is the processor actually called? is it part of the i7 range or what should i be looking for.

Unregistered.

weiland79 wrote: »

Hi guy's could someone explain to me please a little about this ' Sandy beach' processor. I'm less than clueless about this type of thing and am currently trying to educate myself as i'd like to build my own pc.
Firstly am i right in saying it is intels newest processor?
I will be using my pc for basic office files, databases etc
and for Gaming. Will this processor do the job.( i assume it will)
And lastly what is the processor actually called? is it part of the i7 range or what should i be looking for.

Sandy Bridge is simply the code name for the architecture inside the chips. i5, i7, etc are just labels to separate the chips into different performance categories - i5 has four cores only. i7's have four cores and eight threads. i3 only has 2 cores and 4 threads.
If you're building you PC you need to determine, if you need i3, i5 or i7. Then what speed you desire. After that, some processors offer unlocked multipliers(with better integrated graphics) or low-voltage versions.

I think that's as simple as I can make it to start off. You're aim should be not to spend big bucks on something that you don't need. Why get an €300 i7 when you only need a €150 i3, right?

cherryghost

Unregistered. wrote: »

Sandy Bridge is simply the code name for the architecture inside the chips. i5, i7, etc are just labels to separate the chips into different performance categories - i5 has four cores only. i7's have four cores and eight threads. i3 only has 2 cores and 4 threads.
If you're building you PC you need to determine, if you need i3, i5 or i7. Then what speed you desire. After that, some processors offer unlocked multipliers(with better integrated graphics) or low-voltage versions.

I think that's as simple as I can make it to start off. You're aim should be not to spend big bucks on something that you don't need. Why get an €300 i7 when you only need a €150 i3, right?

Partial lies. Do your homework :P Not all i5s are quads

cian1500ww

Overclockers.co.uk are officially selling them now: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18226565

Processor prices aren't to bad but some of the motherboard prices are crazy high!!