Intel Sandy Bridge tested!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Here are some benchmarks of an engineering standard processor running at 2.5GHZ:

http://www.techpowerup.com/124273/In...or_Tested.html

[kalniel]

This is the mainstream skt 1155 variant, which annoyingly has an IGP built in. I'm looking forward to the skt 2011 enthusiast version

[Hicks12]

whats with all these sockets?? Im just going to avoid intel from now on, cant believe how often the boards changing, its changed like 3 or 4 times now just for the newer gen right?.

Its pretty damn good performance though and as always with intel . Now im just waiting for bulldozer next year and im sorted!.

[kalniel]

whats with all these sockets?? Im just going to avoid intel from now on, cant believe how often the boards changing, its changed like 3 or 4 times now just for the newer gen right?.

Always been the case with Intel - even if the socket didn't change then the VRM changed so you still needed a new motherboard. Not entirely sure why Intel would abandon 1156 and 1366 so quickly - the latter might be something to do with getting rid of northbridges from chipsets, but 1156 had that covered already.

Now im just waiting for bulldozer next year and im sorted!.

But.. which socket will that be on?

[Hicks12]

Its on AM3 , or thats what im hoping for!. It doesnt bother me too much if its on say AM4 because i would have to change motherboards to move to amd but atleast amd try to preserve the platform as much as possible (am2/3 are doing good, socket 939 was a blip i hope). Been waiting for bulldozer for many many years, and iirc its due next year so i cant wait as its nearly here haha.

True with the new changes but yeh they already had it sorted so to me it just seems as intel wants to get as much money from selling its chipsets and forcing people to upgrade their boards.

[jim]

I agree with Hicks tbh

Splitting it off into 1366 and 1156 was daft enough - moving onto a new socket already? I've already seen the Intel fanboys out in force, saying that moving from one socket to another is no big deal, but I completely disagree.

At home now I've got my girlfriend's PC based on AM2+ with a Phenom, my HTPC based on AM2+ with a Phenom II, spare parts based on AM2+ with an Athlon X2, and could potentially have my gaming rig based on AM2+ or AM3 with a Phenom II X6. Most of the parts would be interchangeable, and my girlfriend's PC could easily last a decade - it's only for light usage, so in 4 years' time I can drop an X6 or similar into it and keep going.

The convenience is worth a lot. I remember when everyone was getting an i7 rig a while back - got problems? Want to try it out with a test chip? No £10 Semprons, so you can either send it back to manufacturer or buy a £200 920 to test it with. Great!

[scaryjim]

... Splitting it off into 1366 and 1156 was daft enough ...

A great way to do business is to learn from your competitor's mistakes. AMD split into mainstream and enthusiast sockets with 754 / 939, and that didn't last very long at all. They then learnt from that mistake, putting every processor on a single socket, made the next revision backwards compatible, and then brought out a new socket whilst making the processors backwards compatible. They learnt from that mistake. It would appear that Intel haven't, although they've almost certainly got a strong enough market position to get away with it for a while. I do believe that they'll be letting AMD gain market share with the major OEMs though (I've seen a few big system integrators selling machines with Athlon II processors in older AM2(+) mobos...)

[arthurleung]

I gave up the thought of upgrading. It just doesn't work. On AMD boards I'm stuck with broken BIOS (780G) that support new CPU but something else broke, like can't set ram timing. On Intel boards I'm stuck with crappy Northbridge (X38) that couldn't hit high FSB, or overclocking with 8GB of ram. Or that it took me a 4 month wait to get a compatible BIOS for my CPU on my ancient board (P965).

I'm expected to see the same thing happen to my 1366 board.

The easiest way to get more processor power is just to increase the number of machines you have.
And any old quad is still half as fast as an i7 which give even less advantage for upgrading.

I also don't see the point of adding more cores on the 1156 because the ram bandwidth is probably not enough.

I've now got more raw processing power than a dual Nehalem or a pair of 12-Cores Opteron, just not as much ram though.