The Sandy Bridge Review: The New Intel CPUs

I'll be picking up a 2500K as soon as they become available on Newegg/Amazon.

BTW, I'm 99% sure that's not the stock heatsink/fan included with these new CPUs.

EDIT: Here:

Newegg.com - Intel Core i5-2400 Sandy Bridge 3.1GHz 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor BX80623I52400

Any minute now...

There is a good set of reviews of several Sandy Bridge processors, with benchmarks, and comparisons to other Intel and AMD processors here:

Intel Sandy Bridge Review | bit-tech.net

I was interested in power consumption. Here are the results for various processors at standard clocks and overclocked, at idle and at load.

The hardware used was:

* ATI Radeon HD 5870 graphics card (Catalyst 10.11 WHQL)
* 2TB Western Digital Caviar Black hard disk
* PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750W PSU
* Asus P8P67 Intel LGA1155 motherboard
* Asus P6TD Deluxe Intel LGA1366 motherboard
* Asus Crosshair IV Formula AMD Socket AM3 motherboard
* Gigabyte GA-H55M-UD2H Intel LGA1156 motherboard
* 4/6GB (3 x 2GB) Corsair 1,600MHz DDR3 memory (CL9)
* Titan Fenrir TTC-NK85TZ CPU cooler, except for LGA1155 systems where we use a Corsair H50 due to the incompatibility between the Fenrir and Asus P8P67 motherboard

234 watts at full load for the most expensive model (i7-2600 K) at max overclock (4.85 GHz), with a Radeon 5870. The same system at the same overclock at idle uses 81 watts.

Without the overclock (3.4 GHz) on the same system: 156 watts at load; 77 watts at idle

The less expensive i5-2400 at max overclock (3.99 GHz): 154 watts at load; 77 watts at idle

The i5-2400, without overclocking (3.1 GHz): 142 watts at load, 75 watts at idle.

Looks like a 350 or 400 watt power supply is easily enough with a single 5870 graphics card, even overclocked.

ignatzatsonic said:

pebbly said:

The price is very good , but I think the inbuilt DRM will put a few people off

Does anyone have a decent understanding as to how intrusive the DRM is going to be? What won't I be able to do?

I've heard complaints about DRM for the last 4 or 5 years and it hasn't affected me yet.

Didn't I read that certain upper end models of Sandy Bridge will not have the DRM component?

From my understanding it'll be movie content, but whatever I can't see it being too much of an issue as Intel wouldn’t want to throttle the chip with a DRM scheme so intrusive that it puts users off from purchasing them. Talk about a step in the wrong direction for a new product launch

As for upper end chips not having DRM, that doesn't sound right nor makes sense. Why would you DRM lower end chips, but not DRM top ones? And what would you be telling content providers? Sorry, you didn't pay us enough to stop piracy at the top end

Anyways I'm interested in seeing what they have in store to the replacement for the i7-900 series chips on the 1366 sockets.

JohnWillyums:

I think 1366 will be around at least through the year. New CPUs for that socket are due out in the third and fourth quarter. Nothing new on that socket till then, I guess.

Microcenter has some amazing prices on the Sandy Bridge 1155 socket CPUs beginning this Sunday. Naturally, there's no Microcenter within a 1000 miles of where I live and you can't get the great price online.

Sygnus:

I think you are right about the movie thing.

See here:



http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE7020FG20110103



And see the pic below. From what I have read this is just "PAVP", which has been around on Intel chips for a while now. It is AKA "content protection" in the marketing documents for Sandy Bridge.

Here is what Wikipedia says about PAVP:

PAVP - Protect Audio Video Path (Intel Corporation)

PAVP protects the data path within a computer during video playback (e.g. Blu-ray discs). It is supported by newer chipsets (e.g. INTEL G45) and operating systems (since Windows Vista). PAVP does the video decoding in the chipset to reduce processor load.

PAVP can be configured in the BIOS. Different modes are supported:

1. Disabled
2. PAVP Lite: Reserves buffer memory for encryption of compressed video data
3. Paranoid PAVP: Reserve memory during boot which isn't seen by the Operating System. This disables Aero in Vista.


I was confused about high end chips not having it. The truth is that it is not implemented in the high end chipset. See the "content protection" row below.

The P67 chipset shows "NA". That is because the P67, which is targeted at enthusiasts, does NOT support the built-in on-processor graphics. If you have that chipset, you MUST use a discrete video card. And as I understand it from looking at that row in the table, if you use a discrete video card, you are untouched by PAVP.

But mebbe I misunderstand?

There is a lot of bitching online about those who spring for the high end chipset will not be able to use onboard graphics.

pparks1 said:

sygnus21 said:

Least we forget.....

Attachment 128785

To be fair, I have this same setup on a couple of different boxes, and a few have light overclocks and that cooler does the job just fine.

True, but 99.9 percent of overclockers disapprove