http://www.anandtech.com/show/3871/t...ins-in-a-row/1
Yes folks the GPU slapped into this CPU is actually better than an ATI 5450 video card.
It is also a winner on Power consumption.
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http://www.anandtech.com/show/3871/t...ins-in-a-row/1
Yes folks the GPU slapped into this CPU is actually better than an ATI 5450 video card.
It is also a winner on Power consumption.
helluva chip.
Could we see the end to the 50 buck video card with this SB CPU and the stuff coming out from AMD next year???
I can't believe not one new socket but two new sockets, argh! I realise expecting Intel to support existing sockets with new processors is unrealistic but it's annoying to see socket 1366 dead already pretty much as I'd been hoping for a six core processor cheaper than the current Gulftown.
John
bulldozer is supposedly carrying the on-board capability of a 5570(??) or somesuch, so yeah the low-end vid card market is on its way out.
I'm full on excited about the idea of a Laptop with integrated GPU with enough horsepower to allow for mild gaming and all other tasks I need.
Not to mention, my Q6600 is looking a bit long on the tooth. About time for a platform upgrade on the home system.
And come to think of it, the HTPC could use an upgrade too....
Quote:
Originally Posted by Johnmcl7
I do not like all of these new sockets as well. I hope with the first Sandy Bridge socket it lasts a few years so you can some integrated GPU upgrades with the CPU upgrade at the same time.
Beating a 5450 is really nice, but you need to match like a 5670 in order to get FPS needed for some good light gaming.
Really? I play Starcraft 2 just fine on min detail on my HD 4200. I've been surprised how little the fancier graphics options add to my enjoyment of the game...
it is more than just Starcraft2. At best the SB GPU in the review is good for is 1024 by 768 at low settings.Quote:
Originally Posted by nukefault
Not true at all. The review itself showed up to 1680x1050 (or was it 900p? I forget) at low to medium detail working just fine depending on the game. And remember this was a part with 6 of Intel's shaders (or whatever they are), and there will be 12 shader parts on some unknown number of the chips.
The 1024 low detail GPU you describe is my HD 4200, not Sandy.
I'm actually thinking either a high-end Ontario or low-end Sandy would be great for my next laptop upgrade depending on my budget and final relative performance between the two. Sandy will obviously win hands-down for CPU power and probably for GPU power as well... hope it doesn't come at a huge premium.
What page of the review were you looking at:Quote:
Originally Posted by nukefault
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3871/t...ins-in-a-row/7
Nothing better than 1024 by 768 at minimum details is best for this GPU.
Hmm, I was thinking I'd seen benchmarks at higher resolutions. My bad.
However, note that many of the games they benched at 1024 low detail were pushing 70+ fps. Clearly lots of room to push up the details.
Side points:
1. With a discrete GPU, midrange Sandy is almost equivalent to 980X for gaming, per the review. On early silicon. Without Turbo.
2. This is test silicon with very early drivers and no developer love at all so far. There's a lot of room for optimization, and if nothing else the extremely fast processor means you can crank up settings that aren't GPU-dependent.
3. They tested a 6-shader part and it routinely beat the HD 5450 - a card we know for a fact can do much better than 1024 low detail. There's also a 12-shader part that should theoretically compete well against a 5570, or better. My guess is that the 12-shader part will kill the utility of anything below a 5650, and that it'll take a 5750 to make a strong argument for discrete graphics (given that 5650 is way overpriced for the performance it offers... for $100 you're far better off with a 4850 or 5750).
The question is will you have to spend 300-400 bucks to get the 12-shader part though???Quote:
Originally Posted by nukefault
If you spend that much on the CPU you are most likely to spend 200 bucks plus on regular video card right???
I will agree that a 12 shader part could easily compete or beat up am ATI 5570 video card.
That is the question and the answer largely depends on how competitive AMD is. Given how high they priced the i3 661 for the trifling GPU overclock it offered, you're probably right that the 12 shader parts will be fairly expensive. I'd imagine closer to $200 for a lowest-cost 12 shader but I guess we'll find out soon enough.
You're also right that people buying Sandy are probably also buying a discrete card, but there is a market for people that mostly want a fast non-3D workstation and would just like a little gaming on the side.
I might spring for a mobile version if it's under $600. (wishful thinking? probably at least at first, but I'm in no hurry and if it stays high I wouldn't be adverse to grabbing Ontario as a cheap alternative)
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3876/i...bridge-part-ii
No prices yet, but *all* the Sandy Mobile launch parts are 12 shader/EU/whatever. If it isn't way expensive I'll be grabbing one. Woohoo!
Indeed. Looks like I'll finally commit to a new laptop.
I don't see why people are whining about new sockets, especially at the high-end. The mid-ranged parts could maybe have been done on LGA1156, we won't know until we know more about them.
The high-end, LGA2011 parts definitely would not work with LGA1366. The high-end Sandy Bridge B2/EN/EP processors have a quad channel memory controller while obviously Nehalem/Westmere chips used a three channel one. That not only requires more pins for the extra bandwidth but it also means you have the wrong number of DIMM slots on X58 motherboards. Excepting some of the early, cheap models made with four DIMM slots. Not to mention, that by the time the high-end Sandy Bridge processors launch the middle of next year LGA1366 will be nearly three years old. Get a grip, three years is a long time for a socket.
Sandy Bridge is a tock. that means new sockets. The high-end, LGA2011 processors look like they're going to be monsters. Eight full cores, sixteen threads with better per clock performance than Nehalem/Westmere, plus AVX instructions, with likely higher clock speeds with a now mature 32nm node.
Nater - If you'd just spent $250 on an X58 mobo last year you'd probably want to get a bit more use out of it. Unless you had enough money to burn that you're routinely buying ultra-expensive mobos that generally only pay for themselves with a $1000 processor (Lynnfield >= Nehalem for just about everything except absurdly memory-intensive tasks below the Extreme CPUs), in which case blowing $250 every year or two might not be an issue...
Still, the problem isn't so much that there's a new socket this year (or two of them, even) as that there are new sockets all the friggin time. AMD's somehow managed to keep rolling on AM3 with massive backward compatibility for so long it should at least be counted as an advantage of the way they do business. Would you rather buy an overpriced sadgasm G45 mobo for that E6320 or would you rather drop a nice new 785G/880GX on your old X2 6000+?
Of course, in my desktop days I sold and upgrade mobo and CPU together, and now that I'm using a lappie I don't really care anymore... but I can still grumble :p
SOOOOOOOOOOOOO Correct.Quote:
Originally Posted by nukefault
Not really. If you'd been watching intel's roadmaps for a couple years you'd know that you get a new socket with a new microarchitecture, which works with the next node. That's it. I don't feel sorry for anyone pissed because LGA1366 isn't going to work with Sandy Bridge B2. I do feel sorry for the LGA1156 guys, but again, when Lynnfield launched everyone assumed that Sandy Bridge DT processors weren't going to slot into LGA1156.
Everyone that asked in 2009 I told not to get on LGA1366 unless they absolutely needed it for a single socket workstation. People buying 920s and a single GPU with a $300 motherboard would have been a lot better suited buying 750s and cheaper boards. Tylersburg's advantages over Ibex Peak weren't going to be realized by the average power user. If you're going to need to attach PCIe SSDs, SAN cards, RAID controllers, and/or GPU co-processors for engineering applications, yes LGA1366 did and still does make sense. For 99% of people out there, they're not going to really use it's advantages over Ibex. PCIe bandwidth and memory capacity/bandwidth.
AMD manages it because they have too on one hand and on the other, they don't innovate as much. Bulldozer is their first completely revamped design in nearly eight years. Intel is banging out new chips at a far higher rate (Conroe, Nehalem, Sandy Bridge).
AMD also has to commit precious engineering resources to ensure that new processors work with old sockets and likely compromises are involved. Intel isn't going to do that, their processors performance speaks for itself. They also want the best electromechanical performance for each individual microarchitecture. AMD has to offer other advantages to people because of their lower performance processors.
Well, that and Intel really likes selling us new mobos every year or two...
Sandy Bridge Graphics Update
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3885/s...raphics-update
Anand is still trying to confirm if that is GT2 graphics in the CPU he previewed.
Will be interesting to see if they're GT2 or not. IMHO if the current rumored roadmap where GT2 on the desktop is only in high-end parts is correct... well, that's pretty effing dumb. You want better IGPs on the cheap processors to handle light tasks on a low budget/small space. You want low-power graphics on the high end chips just as a backup in case the graphics card goes belly up or you don't need 3D horsepower. Hopefully the rumor is just wrong.
I'm sure they do, but in this case conspiracy theories fall to technical requirements. DDR3 doesn't offer much performance advantage over DDR2 and your processors need more memory performance. Then you have to add more memory channels and more memory channels means a new motherboard.Quote:
Originally Posted by nukefault
Intel is going to double (or more) per socket performance of heavily threaded workloads over the original Nehalem-EP with Sandy Bridge-EP. The market that matters (servers) doesn't care that they'll need new sockets because they don't upgrade CPUs to begin with.
As for the high-end desktop chips, everything I've seen so far suggests that they don't have on-die graphics. Considering they're meant for servers, workstations, and very high-end desktops where either graphics aren't important or discrete chips are going to be used anyway...it makes sense not to waste die space on something that isn't going to be used.
Eh? I already agreed that there's a need for 1366 and probably its quad-channel successor. It's just put in a bad light by Intel's general lack of interoperability. Does the tick tock actually require a new socket every 2 years or so? Maybe. But in this case "conspiracy theories" (read: good marketing) coincide with possible technical requirements rather than somehow falling to them. AMD's been doing just fine transitioning to DDR3 with backward-compatible sockets and Intel could certainly do the same if it wanted to.
Of course, it doesn't want to, because it makes more money selling new mobo with new chips. That isn't a conspiracy theory; that's business 101. AMD's B101 consists of making a more budget-conscious crowd happy with long-term compatibility.
As to high-end Sandy, I still like having some form of IGP even if it's a weak one just in case the graphics card dies - or so you can save some money/time/complexity by just dropping in a minimalist IGP. They could probably make an absolutely tiny 2-3 EU part for their high end chips as a fallback if they needed. What the market thinks of that I don't know, but it makes sense to me.