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Intel Unveils 'Sandy Bridge' Architecture
njkobie writes "Intel has officially unveiled Sandy Bridge, its latest platform architecture, at the first day of IDF in San Francisco. The platform is the successor to the Nehalem/Westmere architecture and integrates graphics directly onto the CPU die. It also upgrades the Turbo Mode already seen in Core i5 and i7 processors to achieve even greater speed improvements. Turbo Mode on Sandy Bridge processors can now draw more than the chip's nominal TDP where the system is cool enough to do so safely, enabling even greater boosts in core speeds than those seen in Westmere. No details of specific products have been made available, but Intel has confirmed that processors built on the new architecture will be referred to as 'second generation Core processors,' and are expected to go on sale in early 2011. In 2012 it is due to be shrunk to a 22nm process, under the name Ivy Bridge."
The graphics have already been benched. Anand had early samples and showed that the Intel integrated SB video was actually faster than a Radeon 5450 in most cases. Yeah, that's not great, but for integrated graphics that's pretty damned impressive.
AMD has a new arch coming out which will go by Bulldozer for the mainstream and Bobcat for the low end netbook market. It looks to be pretty bad ass, as their hyperthreading will have an actual integer per thread with only the floating point being shared. Last I heard they were using the 5450 Radeon GPU for their integrated so it will definitely pump out the graphics. Next year should be an interesting time for us builders.
Sadly I'll probably sit this round out as my AMD quad is already faster than I am and at 8Gb of RAM I don't see myself needing anything else for quite some time, but Bulldozer based rigs should be great and affordable for my customers and if Bobcat rocks as well as their AMD Neo + Radeon discrete it'll make a kick ass multimedia netbook chip. According to those I've sold Neo dual based netbooks to they are getting around 5 hours on a charge and the graphics and video performance is awesome, and Bobcat is supposed to cut the power by anywhere from 40-60%.
So it looks like either way you go next year is gonna be a nice time for new gear. Faster and better graphics, cool. BTW, does anyone know if the Intel will support some sort of hybrid SLI? The AMD allows you to put a low end discrete with the onboard and bring it up to midrange GPU performance. Of course the way Intel has been trying to hamstring Nvidia lately it wouldn't surprise me if it don't. You'd think Intel would just accept they suck at GPUs and buy Nvidia already. And if Nvidia doesn't end up buying Via so they can offer an "all in one" solution like Intel and AMD I predict it's gonna be some bad times for them, with Intel trying to squeeze them out of their sandbox and AMD not needing them since buying ATI.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Yeah, but for virtualization workloads we're seeing that the processor really isn't being taxed at all. Basically the controlling factor is the amount of RAM and I/O latency. Speaking of which... Sandy Bridge is only two channels of RAM per socket instead of the current three.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Not a single word on Intel killing overclocking, eh? According to anand's article majority of new CPU's won't allow ANY kind of overclocking.
If I want to make my desktop faster, I can replace the graphics card or CPU independently - it's big enough that an integrated CPU/GPU solution doesn't really make that much sense yet.
Mobile devices, on the other hand, make a lot more sense; if you can integrate the CPU and GPU on one chip with a reasonable max TDP, that's significantly less complexity in the design woth more computing power. You should see the heatsink arrangement in my HP laptop with a discrete CPU and GPU - it's insane, heat pipes and fans everywhere.
Well I would say whether you are building this machine as an "ePeen" or not. By that I mean I have a couple of customers who spend frankly insane money just so they can brag they get some huge number on benchmarks. Now if you aren't building for an ePeen, I'd say go AMD as the lower price will allow you to put nicer gear in the rig. For example my PC is an AMD Phenom II Quad 925, with 8Gb of DDR2 800, 2 500Gb HDDs, a nice case with 500w PSU, and finally an HD 4650 (I'm not much of a gamer, so the 4650 is all I need, although it plays Wolfenstein and Bioshock II like a champ) and Windows 7 HP x64, all for $650 before MIR and around $570 after.
If you don't want to wait you can buy AMD now and thanks to socket compatibility drop in a bigger CPU later. That's what I did, buying a cheap dual core kit and upgrading to the quad with some of my Xmas bonus. You can see they have real cheap quad kits and you can even get a 6 core kit for under $600. All you have to do is pick your favorite OS and whichever video card you like (I'm partial to ATI after the bumpgate fiasco, never had a bit of trouble from Gigabyte Radeon cards) and you are good to go. Most games now are just starting to hit dual cores, so a quad will last you quite awhile and a 6 core will be pretty future proof.
So if you are just getting back into the game personally I'd go AMD. There is nothing wrong with the Intel but when you figure in the higher prices plus them getting caught paying off OEMs...well I believe in competition and a REAL free market. But of course your main reason will be performance and my AMD quad purrs like a kitten, with an idle of less than 96f and the hottest it ever got was 135f after hours of transcoding, and that is on a stock HSF. But I really torture my machines, audio and video recording and transcoding, audio and video editing, and my AMD takes everything I throw at it and then some. I can also tell you as a system builder I've not had a bit of trouble from any of my AMD builds, even those I have built for extreme conditions like construction trailers. They take a licking and keep on ticking. Let me know how it goes!
Oh, a word of advice...Once your build is done use Autopatcher and Ninite. Just use Autopatcher to have the updates for whichever Windows you choose already downloaded and ready to go, and then use Ninite to get all the basics like Firefox, K-Lite Codec Pack (great for hardware acceleration) and Open Office. Using those two together will save you several hours on a build. Enjoy!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
The ironic thing is, that the "Turbo" speed was actually the native speed of the CPU. When you disabled turbo, you were actually underclocking it so that applications (games really), would run slower.
Basically, the parent wants to use the turbo button to overclock the CPU. This is the opposite implementation of when used in the past.
Life is not for the lazy.
"You'd think Intel would just accept they suck at GPUs and buy Nvidia already."
Should Intel buy nVidia? Jen-Hsun Huang, who averages about $23.02 million per year, is not the sort of person who would easily integrate into Intel, and he is important to the leadership of nVidia. Intel's CEO, Paul Otellini, makes about $14 million.
Soon Intel's integrated graphics will have mid-range speed, leaving only the high range for nVidia. The high range of video adapters is mostly bought by teenagers who want to practice being violent with video games, instead of practicing being involved with other people. That means nVidia will be dependent on buyers who are being self-defeating; eventually there may be a backlash against that.
The high range of video performance will always be needed for architectural drawing and machine design, for example, but the total demand will drop, as the nVidia stock price seems to indicate. So, maybe nVidia is not a good purchase for any company.
Should Intel CEO Paul Otellini be replaced? Another reason Intel should not buy nVidia is that Intel is generally a failure at anything besides making new CPUs and support chips. For the success of Intel and AMD in making CPUs, the world can be extremely thankful; that's enough success for any company.
But Intel in other areas seems amazingly badly managed. Intel marketing seems completely out of control. Is the product confusion at Intel a deliberate, sneaky way to sell slow processors to technically challenged customers, or just stupid?
Quote from the article linked just above: "Sandy Bridge PC processors will keep the CORE-i3, i5, and i7 designations and will be rebranded the "new CORE-i3..." That approach is likely to create confusion among customers about exactly what they're buying, given that the average user likely wouldn't be able to pick a Nehalem i7 from a Westmere i7 or Sandy Bridge i7."
Either Intel's purchase of the inferior security software maker McAfee for a "lofty 60% premium" is a HUGE mistake, or the reasons why it is not a mistake should be explained by Intel marketing. No explanation was given, apparently. McAfee has a 21.9% market share selling software often pre-loaded on a computer to technically challenged buyers.
Quote from the article: " 'We believe security will be most effective when enabled in hardware,' Intel Chief Executive Paul Otellini said in a conference call." That seems a particularly wacky statement. "Security software" is needed only because, in my opinion, Microsoft deliberately allows its software to be insecure. Insecure software makes Microsoft more money because people with infected computers often buy another computer. For example, see the New York Times article, Corrupted PC's Find New Home in the Dumpster. The Apple Mac OS, Linux, and BSD operating systems do not require "security software" because they are made to be secure.
Intel CEO Otellini does not seem to have the social sophistication necessary to running a big company. When he made an announcement in 2006 about the Intel Eduwise laptop, he seemed to be intending to have Intel compete with MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) charity program. However, Intel's intention seems to be just to make a market fo
i had a AMD 486 DX5 at 133MHz on a 386 case, after some upgrades...
i connected the turbo button to the Bus speed jumpers, so when i pressed, the bus jumped from 33Mhz to 40Mhz, overclocking the cpu to 160Mhz... i run at "full" speed when i was at home and put the normal speed when i left it idle
To my surprise, it worked really well, the PCI bus accepted that speed, the network and SCSI card never gave any error until i disconnect the computer about 6 years ago
i also tried to up the bus to 50Mhz and the CPU, RAM, the vesa local bus (for the graphic card) and the ISA bus (sound card) worked fine, but it was too much for the PCI bus and the network and scsi cards didnt work so gave up from having a 200MHz 486 CPU and fall back to the already "good" 160Mhz... relative power of the setup was about a Pentium 90-100Mhz... running at normal 133Mhz, the performance was a little lower than a Pentium 75Mhz
Higuita