Ask Your 2nd Gen Intel Core Processor Questions Here, Update: Now with Answers!
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 5, 2011 1:01 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Sandy Bridge
- Asus
ASUS and Intel are putting together a webcast that they've invited me to attend. The topic of discussion? Sandy Bridge. The webcast will air after Intel's official announcement of Sandy Bridge at 9AM PST on January 5, 2011 at CES.
The discussion will be a conversation between myself, Gary Key (former AT Motherboard Editor, current ASUS Technical Marketing Manager), and Michael Lavacot, an Intel Consumer Field Application Engineer.
If you have any questions you'd like to see me answer on air or that you'd like me to grill ASUS and Intel on, leave them in the comments to this post and I'll do my best to get them addressed.
Of course we will also have our full review of Sandy Bridge around the same time.
Update: Intel posted some of the videos from this webcast on its YouTube channel. I tried to answer as many of the big questions you guys asked as I could in the video or in our Sandy Bridge review.
I'll add links here for more videos as they get posted:
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austonia - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
Hi Anand/tech. I'm still on a Q6600 (from Q3 2007) and looking for a reason to upgrade. I had planned to hold out for hexacore, will SB deliver a reasonably priced ($300) part?I am most interested in the Transcode Engine on SB and how much faster it is compared to software transcode, with the task being 720p or 1080p HD videos (h264 HiP/DTS/mkv) resized to 480p (h264 SP/AAC/mp4) for use on portable devices or remote network streaming. I hope they will help integrate support into x264.
Also, another vote here for including USB 3.0... what is the holdup?
Catalina588 - Wednesday, January 5, 2011 - link
At press conference, Intel quoted 400 MB transcode in 14 seconds. Reviewers are saying its the fastest transcoder in the industry, including high-end discrete graphics cards. The QuickSync transcoder was built to do very fast work while keeping up image quality.gtnx - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
Regarding the "K" Series with unlocked multipliers, how important is the motherboard going to factor in OCing capabilities? We know that currently the difference between a $100 and a $300 motherboard can be huge in terms of OC potential because of the stability of the FSB. But if it's all going to depend on the chip multiplier, is a low-end motherboard going to OC just as well as a high-end one?Catalina588 - Wednesday, January 5, 2011 - link
First, pick the right chipset!The H67 chipsets do not support overclocking, even with a 2500K or 2600K overclockable processor. But the P67 chipset means you have to buy a discrete graphics card and lose the onchip graphics (but not, I believe, the QuickSync transcoder).
You have limited PCIe lanes with any socket 1155 compared to socket 1366, so your mobo choice gets down to what features you're willing to pay for.
Although it's early, the 15 SB reviews I read yesterday did not have much to bitch about regarding differences between the motherboards regarding OCing. Everybody is getting well over 4.3 GHz by pushing the multipliers on the K processors. Since I run my kit 24x7, I am more interested in long-term stability (e.g., not burning up) than absolute one-time superiority. All that says, I think you get what you pay for.
dougri - Friday, January 7, 2011 - link
Jury still out on H67 and overclocking... PC Pro (UK) published a review in which they claimed to have OC'd a 2500K to 4.4GHz on an Intel H67 board with stock heatsink. Correspondence I've had with a system builder indicates it may have been an assumption in other reviews without documentation or verification from Intel (e.g. the ES SB chips could not overclock on H67, but the retail chips can). Intel's H67 product brief states it supports overclocking 'features' with unlocked chips (but that could mean only IGP). Anyway, I would not state definitively that H67 can not overclock. I mean seriously, why would intel only put HD 3000 on the unlocked chips? Do they really think people will pay an extra $100 for a step up in IGP graphics only to the performance of a $50 discrete card? I hope not.sakanade - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
I already own a lynnfield build and im pretty happy with it.I seen in one of the articles that theres a 20-35% increase performance over the 1156 platform with Sandy Bridge.
Would you recommend me to upgrade to 1155 next year?
GTVic - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
Will Sandy Bridge desktop motherboards have EFI replacing the BIOS this year? How soon and what will the percentages be between EFI and BIOS? Same questions for laptops.GullLars - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
Is there any improvement in interrupt handling over Nehalem? If so, what is the difference?It seems systems using high performance SSD RAID from integrated chipset controllers are IOPS limited in the 75-150.000 range by CPU interrupt handling, resulting in massive CPU usage increase when approacing the limit when the RAID is capable of scaling further. Especially when running multiple threads executing IOs with a queue.
PS.
AMDs K10 seems to be less effective than Nehalem at interrupt handling relating to IOPS limitations. Phenom II x6 1090T even when overclocked past 4Ghz can barely pass 100.000 4KB random read IOPS (but can do around 70.000 with one thread), while an i5 750 at stock can pass 120.000. This may also be related to ICHxR vs. SBxxx
mindless1 - Sunday, January 9, 2011 - link
I'd use the word "instead", instead of "also" in your last sentence, possibly even replacing "may" with "is probably".piker84 - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - link
I am one of many who would also like to know if Sandy Bridge processors will see a noticable improvement in gaming over the current Core i5 and i7 market of processors, when combined with a high-end dedicated GPU.Will any significant gains be seen with, say, dual GTX 580's running in SLi?