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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DanNeely - Sunday, January 2, 2011 - link
RE the PCH, a combination of wiring issues (the CPU socket area is already extremely crowded with wires resulting in more EMI problems and the need for more expensive boards with thicker layers), and because there's nothing in the PCH that actaully requires the expense of a current generation process, vs one that's 2 or 3 generations old. Most of the cost of a process is the R&D/construction costs so legacy processes are almost free to use. You'll see newer processes used on mobile chipsets where shaving an extra watt or two off matters; but doing the same for desktops isn't worth spending billions on additional fabs.Putting dram on die is never going to happen due to size constraints. DRAM chips are already made on current generation processes, and your dimms are already sized around the chips attached to them. Trying to combine them with the CPU would result in insanely huge die sizes.
Out of Box Experience - Sunday, December 26, 2010 - link
If Turbo Boost can temporarily overclock a Sandy Bridge Chip for 20 seconds or so until the temp sensors start knocking the clocks back to "Normal"
Then, will the Turbo Boost overclock for much longer periods of time if we simply replace the stock air cooler with a Watercooled unit???
Out of Box Experience - Sunday, December 26, 2010 - link
Will INTEL make drivers available for XP or is everyone now stuck with Windows 7 or Bust with Sandy Bridge in Notebooks especially???stun - Tuesday, December 28, 2010 - link
Isn't LGA 1155 lifespan going to be just a year, with the LGA 2011 coming in the 2nd half of 2011?So what is the point of upgrading to Core i7 Sandy Bridge CPUs?
Out of Box Experience - Wednesday, December 29, 2010 - link
I guess some people can't wait another 6-8 months for a really fast 35 watt dual-core processor..I might be one of them
DanNeely - Wednesday, January 5, 2011 - link
2011 is the LGA1366 replacement for high performance computers/servers, it's not intended to replace LGA1155's mainstream systems. That said, dual channel DD3 was only sufficient to feed a quadcore nehalem system, I don't expect that sandybridge has significantly lower memory needs so I assume that's still the case. This would require a different socket if IvyBridge brings mass market hex core chips. A resurection of LGA 1356, or a new LGA1154 (dual channel DDR4) socket would be my guesses.René André Poeltl - Wednesday, December 29, 2010 - link
I do not develop games but financial software.Whilst I already tried to program with opencl (I wanted to increase function calc speed), I would say that the idea of sending a string containing the opencl source to the gpu and to compile it there is not really user-friendly.
Why not have the source compiled by the cpu as usual for a computer program, and define its execution target gpu and the factor (how many times in parallel) in the source of that computer program. That would not make much of a difference for most programmers to what they are used to and would be a implementation of gpu programming that is well integrated. That is not impossible. I know that there is a opencl.dll I can use from c, pascal. But the functions are that poorly developed that there is little if not less userfriendlyness available.
I know that gpu is not cpu and that those two are different. But if opencl is the best what is offered then I doubt that nvidia understands what developers want.
will2 - Wednesday, December 29, 2010 - link
I have followed your main articles on SB, but have seen no specs or pricing for the 2 Core/4 Thread lower TDP versions. All I see (no interest in desktops) are limited specs, neglible benchmarks for the 4 core expensive power guzzlers. With only a week to go to CES, surely more info should now be available ?A further question: I am looking for a 14" or 15" SB Notebook, with 900 line or more resolution AND a more photo-realistic display (perhaps like the one on the XPS15 your reviewed last October), at least 1 USB3, and hopefully 2 mini-PCIe slots that will accept a mSSD for running OS & Apps. Will SB allow this class of NB to be lighter & thinner ?
René André Poeltl - Thursday, December 30, 2010 - link
Well what you want are mobo-features, not SB features.will2 - Friday, December 31, 2010 - link
ok, as now less than a week to what we were told is the official launch, when will CPU specs be available for the 18W, 25W, 35W Sandy Bridge CPUs be available ?