Sandy Bridge Review

[neonplanet40]

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpu...ridge-review/1

What can I say, im impressed . . . .

What are your thoughts guys? I know a lot of you's like me have been holding off our upgrade to see it!

[Professor Frink]

Looks good. Probably should have waited. Any idea about price yet?

[razer121]

All i can say is i'm pretty sure my core i5 i own now can OC and keep up...ah of course it can the only advatage im aware of is the integerated gpu which to me is useless...

[neonplanet40]

Pc Pro has some price estimations
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/proce...l-sandy-bridge

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I think you should better wait until proper reviews are released by websites like Anandtech. Sandy Bridge will be fast but Bit-tech is a crap site nowadays.

[Blackmage]

All i can say is i'm pretty sure my core i5 i own now can OC and keep up...ah of course it can the only advatage im aware of is the integerated gpu which to me is useless...

Have you looked at the benchmarks?

[neonplanet40]

To be honest ive always found bit-tech reviews to be fine and always pull the same results as other sites such as Hexus and Anandtech. And it definetely gives us a good idea what to expect.

The NDA was moved by intel to the 2/1/11. Don't know why the other sites such as Hexus dont have the reviews up yet as im sure they have had the cpu's for quite a while.

[ik9000]

reviews are up on anandtech - several of them, and good descriptions of the architecture.

[GaryRW]

The Gaming scores on anandtech make me wonder if my shiny new 6870 is CPU limited by my Q6600 - looking at those numbers I'd guess so, but difficult to tell as they list 3 different GPU cards in the test setup and don't tell you what resolution or settings they tested at - not like Anandtech to leave out details like that. EDIT: comparing against the bit-tech gaming numbers, of the 2 games bit tech tested there's only crysis vs crysis warhead from anandtech. Anantech got 90FPS, presumably average, Bit tech got around 60 fps average at 1680x1050, so guessing the anandtech might be using a lower resolution to amplify the CPU impact??

Still, at least Anandtech tested an old Q6600 - Bit-Tech said they didn't bother testing lower spec CPU's as the new one walked all other them. But surely a lot of people reading are considering upgrades and whether to upgrade, not just what to upgrade to...

[neonplanet40]

Im just waiting on Scan annoucing prices . . . .

[kalniel]

Yep the anandtech review is good. And it's performing exactly as expected. If you don't need lots of unbridged PCI-E lanes then it's a great one to get.

[GaryRW]

to answer my own query, the review on tech-report gives a bit more info about gaming. Things like starcraft 2 and civ 5 look like they stand a much higher chance of being CPU limited, but tech-report doesn't give resolution info.

They do give resolution for F1 2010, and there at 1680x1050 a Q9400 averages 42 vs 50 odd for the SB's. At 1920x1200 the Q9400 is 40 vs 43/44 for the SB's. Likewise for metro 2033, the conclusion seems to be that the CPU only makes a minor difference as you increase the resolution.

So probably not massively CPU limited at the 1680x1050 I game at, but just enough to make the upgrade bug start itching again And for encoding and other CPU stuff obviously a big improvement between my Q6600 and the i5-2500k - seems roughly 100% improvement at stock speeds.

[miXer]

I think I've creamed my boxers
The i7 2600k looks promising! :]

btw what's all the beef about the number of PCI-E slots, what does it do?

[kalniel]

btw what's all the beef about the number of PCI-E slots, what does it do?

If you don't know then it's not an issue for you But at the moment the sandy bridge boards aren't too generous on PCI-E lanes, as most of them come straight off the CPU. Some use nVidia bridging chips to provide more, but that's only really effective if you're using the slots for graphics card bridging. Some people (like myself) want the lanes for non-graphical purposes.

As for what they do, they're just high speed connections between things.

[miXer]

If you don't know then it's not an issue for you But at the moment the sandy bridge boards aren't too generous on PCI-E lanes, as most of them come straight off the CPU. Some use nVidia bridging chips to provide more, but that's only really effective if you're using the slots for graphics card bridging. Some people (like myself) want the lanes for non-graphical purposes.

As for what they do, they're just high speed connections between things.

I just I can't I believed I asked what a PCI-E slot was -___-
I'm still drunk from last night and rather excited about the SandBridge, I ain't in no fit state of mind to be asking questions! haha

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

To be honest ive always found bit-tech reviews to be fine and always pull the same results as other sites such as Hexus and Anandtech. And it definetely gives us a good idea what to expect.

The NDA was moved by intel to the 2/1/11. Don't know why the other sites such as Hexus dont have the reviews up yet as im sure they have had the cpu's for quite a while.

Bit-tech reviews are not that great especially since their test suite is rubbish compared to other sites like Anandtech for example. Things have gone massively downhill especially after their merger with CPC.