Sandy Bridge Motherboards Dissected, Compared

crookedvulture writes "As we've learned, Intel's Sandy Bridge CPUs are pretty impressive. If you're going to build yourself a system with one, you'll need a new motherboard with an 1155-pin socket. The Tech Report has an in-depth look at four such boards based on Intel's P67 Express chipset. Although the boards offer identical application performance, there are notable differences between their power consumption and the speed of onboard peripherals like USB 3.0 and Serial ATA ports. Some implement the new UEFI BIOS framework while others do not, and the quality of those implementations varies quite a bit. Recommended reading for anyone thinking about rolling their own desktop with one of Intel's latest CPUs."

Comments

FrRRiiistt psottt

[Noogie Brown]

oh lawdy

Re:FrRRiiistt psottt

[palegray.net]

No. GTFO.

Missing Story Tag : DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

DRM should be one of the tags. After all that is what Intel Insider is and a major part of Sandy Bridge is. Read all about it... what a riot...
http://blogs.intel.com/technology/2011/01/intel_insider_-_what_is_it_no.php

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[TheGratefulNet]

intel says that because it does not involve *media* that its not drm.

I'm so glad they cleared that up for us.

I'm a big fan of the core i3 chips and even some i5 chips. (i7 is overkill and over the price reasonableness curve). I love how low power the older i3 (etc) is. touch a chipset heatsink on an i3 system and its nearly cold. touch a socket 775 northbridge sink and - OUCH! sb is also an ouchie, sometimes even hotter running. but the core series is a real low power winner.

guess I'll keep that 'last gen' stuff running a few more gens. don't like the direction this new intel stuff is going, though.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[TheGratefulNet]

sorry, 'sb' means 'south bridge' in that context NOT sandy bridge! poor choice of abbrev on my part in that sense.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[Nyder]

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9203799/Intel_Sandy_Bridge_s_Insider_is_not_DRM

Claims that Sandy Bridge Insider isn't DRM.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that's what all you bitches say. "I guess I'll go to Linux now." "I guess that's the last Sony product I ever buy." "I guess that's the last time I'll have sex with a transvestite in a public toilet." But we always catch you back at your old games soon enough.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod up... you can't push this point hard enough. Intel occasionally tries to push this shit into hardware (see VIIV)... and each time it needs highlighting. Intel needs a kick in the teeth every time they try it - make them waste their money trying to screw over the consumer.

To paraphrase a famous quote: they only need to win once, we need to win every time.

Sandy Bridge-based machines have DRM in hardware. DON'T BUY THEM.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[h4rr4r]

They say it is like the bluray protected path, which is in fact DRM.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[morgan_greywolf]

That is the biggest load of bullshit I have ever read.

Does it prevent you from making a copy? If so, yes it's DRM, which is essentially a euphemism for the older term 'copy protection'.

They're just trying to say that it's not DRM because DRM has become as much a four-letter word as 'copy protection' has always been, thanks to advocates like the EFF.

Saying that Intel Insider is like HDCP and HDCP is found in BluRay players and the PS3 doesn't make it not DRM, because HDCP is -- surpise! -- DRM.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't bought a Sony product in 12 years, have only bought AMD CPUs since 2001, four out of my last five video cards were ATI, I first started using Linux in 1995 but have always either dual-booted or used separate boxes.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[rudy_wayne]

i7 is overkill and over the price reasonableness curve

I recently bought a laptop with an i7 in it and it's really great. And, the price was good too. But, if you are building your own computer, the retail price of an i7 is insane (maybe that's what the "i" means). The retail price of an i7 alone is about one third the price of my entire laptop.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[yuhong]

This is a motherboard comparison, and it has nothing to do with the DRM features.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[cinderellamanson]

handing in my nerd card, I totally thought it was an abreviated sonofabitch.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[DAldredge]

How about if you don't want to use the "DRM" you simply don't use it? It being on the processor will not harm you.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[h4rr4r]

It must have cost something to put there and to design it.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[DAldredge]

No more than 5 to 10 million dollars.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, must be at real cost too, with the newer CPUs being cheaper than the ones they're replacing.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Will Windows 7 allow you to do that? Will Windows 8?

At some point Microsoft will start to enforce TPM. They might wait until 'app stores' are more popular or whatever their version of a cloud OS is but it will be here before too long. It only takes a few lobbyists paying a few politicians to introduce a TPM requirement law.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Platform_Module/

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile I buy Sony to reward them for generally superior h/w manufacturing, Intel for the same reason (and drivers), and Nvidia for their superior software. Do we cancel eachother out?

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[h4rr4r]

Or people who want to play videos on OSes where no players are available, or people who want to be able to convert videos for mobile devices, or those who want to be able to capture samples for fair use purposes.

Oh wait, that is a whole bunch of non-pirates that hate DRM.

Even worse is that due to DRM AMD will not release proper documentation for its video acceleration hardware nor support it in their open driver. They admit this is to prevent their DRM from being defeated on other platforms.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[dieth]

Actually the pirates normally laugh at DRM as it's easily cracked/circumvented/removed. While those who legitimately purchased the product are encumbered by it.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

so you buy a discrete graphics card, and voila, you are no longer subject to Intel's content protection.

btw, moving the DRM from software to hardware actually eliminates the need for specialty players / baked-on OS DRM and makes it far more likely it will work with other OSes.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[bertok]

The only people who hate DRM are people who want to be able to pirate. No one really cares about keeping those people happy, since they only way to do so is to give them free shit while getting nothing in return.

There's a lot more too it, which you simply do not get to see as a consumer, because it happens behind the scenes.

For example, the protected audio path introduced in Vista made many sound drivers much more complex to write, and resulted in poor performance and system stability problems. This was of course passed on to the customer as an additional expense, as well as yet another source of blue screens of death.

A much more chilling thought it that if DRM is available, it won't just be used for movies. Sooner or later, it will be mandatory for things other than entertainment. It's terrifying to think that a government could simply revoke the keys to, say, evidence stored on a citizen's personal computer because it's inconvenient for someone in a position of power. If you don't think that kind of abuse can happen, take a casual stroll through the material on Wikileaks!

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, except that's not true anymore. Now stuff mostly works if you pay for it, but it's a pain to pirate it and getting harder all the time. Face it, the free entertainment troops are falling off the curve and your cause is going to be forgotten in the end. No one cares about helping you and never will. Sorry!

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[morgan_greywolf]

*sigh*

Notice that I did not make a value judgement in my post above. I simply called out Intel's spokespeople speaking about Intel Insider for being the liars that are and told you, in no uncertain terms, what DRM actually is.

Value judgements are for you to make.

"Does not a rose by any other name smell as sweet?"

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[bertok]

It doesn't work like that.

Sooner or later, if DRM hardware is 'everywhere', then a big corporation can simply make it mandatory for some file format or protocol... for... ahem... 'security'.

This will instantly lock out any possibility of an open source implementation of such a protocol, as most DRM schemes require code signed by a trusted central authority, which is a concept in diametric opposition to the 'open' part of the whole concept of open source.

Without open source, competition will be reduced, prices will go up, and your options as a customer will be restricted.

There are other abuses possible also, most of which you may never see coming until it is too late.

For example, if Microsoft can convince the idiots running most big bureaucracies that their network isn't safe from hackers unless there's an end-to-end DRM on everything, then this will effectively lock out their smaller competitiors from having any hope of even physically talking to any other machine on such a network. It probably won't do anything to increase safety from hackers, but it will certainly make Microsoft safe from their competition! This of course will increase costs for bureaucracies, which come out of your taxes.

You think I'm joking? Microsoft already tried this, it's called Active Directory Rights Management Services Role. Sounds innocent, right? It's horrifying! It's pure evil, the ultimate lock-in: using military grade cryptography to ensure that their customers stay locked in forever, and cannot possibly get their own data out of the walled garden of Microsoft software. They even tried to change low-level network protocols to prevent their competitors from competing on the 'corporate network' with their offerings by implementing open protocols: Network Access Protection. If you don't know what NAP is, it's a system that does nothing a firewall couldn't, except that to gain access, you must have a DRM-enabled computer running an OS kernel that's digitally signed by... a trusted authority.

Microsoft is pushing hard to have this technology become mandatory in some scenarios, like health data. Can you imagine if you couldn't obtain your own health records if you had one of those filthy 'untrusted' Linux computers? It's a very real possibility, and Microsoft wants it, bad.

I'm not making this up, check it out: Using Digital Rights Management for Securing Data in a Medical Research Environment.

To put it another way: This is not a feature Intel is including for free, out of the goodness of their hearts, just in case you want it. It's about increasing profits of the biggest corporations not just at your expense, but at the cost of your rights and freedoms. How does this not upset you?

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[perryizgr8]

the regular end-user won't ever hear of sandy-bridge. they'll just get their new pc with the latest intel chip i12 or something. they will not have any good alternative too.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[Gadget_Guy]

For example, the protected audio path introduced in Vista made many sound drivers much more complex to write, and resulted in poor performance and system stability problems. This was of course passed on to the customer as an additional expense, as well as yet another source of blue screens of death.

Hey? Vista simplified the audio system by handling more of the audio processing itself. The way they implemented the protected audio path effectively reduced what the companies had to do in their own drivers. Some of the things that used to be done using hardware acceleration is now handled by the OS in software. This resulted in new features such as per-application audio settings and enhancements such as virtual surround, room correction and loudness equalization for even the most basic sound chipset. APIs were introduced to allow the higher end soundcards to implement their custom system effects using the same hooks that Microsoft used to implement the built-in effects. The Universal Audio Architecture provided more structure to the driver model and meant that the driver writers could rely on the OS to provide many of the user configuration needs.

Furthermore, the code was moved from the kernel into userland to prevent buggy drivers from causing blue screens of death.

So rather than this system increasing the cost to consumers, it decreases it because it makes the integrated solutions (that come with every single motherboard) much more useful. There will always be people who prefer a dedicated soundcard, but more and more this is becoming a niche market due to improvements in integrated chipset quality and operating system features.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm always amazed by the perception that what goes on in hardware can't go on in software, and what goes on in software can't go on in hardware. The truth is that what goes on in one, easily goes on in another. They are actually two sides of the same coin. I've seen people *for years* yelping 'the computer is broken, the computer is borken' when in reality, the software is bad (usually microsoft software, but I digress), when I put on other software and its suddenly 'fixed' they want to put their borken software back on and its suddenly, magically broken again. Intel knows what I know. They aren't stupid, but with this embedded DRM, they are trying to play up on common stupidity. There is no swallowing here. I'm calling bullshit on their story. DRM is DRM, whether in hardware or software, or in a policy statement. The hardware tries to 'force' people into swallowing the DRM, instead of getting around it with software, or ignoring it with a policy statement. Chips can be reprogrammed (writeable control store, bios, firmware, etc), and if push came to shove, and they got all anal retentive about it, people just go to another vendor (although there are a lot of ways of bypassing this kind of thing). Its not like people haven't done hardware hacks in the past (hardware is just like software, as I previously typed).

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

They will if you make enough noise... and that was my point

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[DAldredge]

You have no idea what AD Rights management is for. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights_Management_Services It is about companies protected their trade secrets and confidential data. It isn't about stopping you from stealing something off of the piratebay. What NAP really is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Access_Protection It is about ensuring that the client is configured correctly and secure before connecting to a corporate network. I fail to see why this is a bad thing. And what is wrong with securing user data in a Medical Research Environment?

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[keith_nt4]

I would assume the bit about the medical records probably has something to do with the "HIPAA" standards compliance. That's a big deal these and only seems to be getting more so. HIPAA is an American regulation to make sure confidential medical records aren't exposed or leaked (I've worked in IT for at least two different medical-related organizations).

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree. Looking from a hardware standpoint all the intel 'drm' option is, is accelerated aes-256. Intel then took that and said, "What can we do with this?" Advertising it to the mpaa/riaa as accelerated drm from a marketing perspective can help intel make money. And since it isn't anything beyond accelerated aes, I'm not complaining.

I'm planning on buying one of these cpus just for the aes acceleration. Not for DRM, but so I can have a nas server with the HDDs fully encrypted and I will not have to worry about the cpu running at 100% during a file copy, like my current box is.

Hardware accelerated encryption/decryption isn't a bad thing. Label it as whatever you want, but it isn't anything more than something that can accelerate DRM decoding. It isn't forced, it isn't required, it isn't anything bad.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[smash]

No its not. There are different i7 CPUs and the one in your laptop is likely NOT the same as the equivalent desktop model you get in a desktop. I've got an i7 in my laptop as well but its not the same as the desktop part.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[smash]

If you don't like the DRM, then don't buy it. there is plenty of free media out there for you to listen to/watch, the DRM infested shite is no great loss.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[smash]

Exactly. If you're a corp who... y'know, actually has information you want to keep private (that you've won over hard-earned experience to achieve a competitive advantage), but maybe want to share with JV partners on a limited basis, the AD rights management allows you to achieve this.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[mcrbids]

Say what you want to about the i7 being "too expensive"... I have a quad-core i7 laptop with 8 GB of RAM, and it's WONDERFUL.

Running Fedora Core 13 Linux as the host, I'm able to run 3 separate VMPlayer instances each with its own copy of Windows CONCURRENTLY on two screens with minimal fuss and a snappy feel, while running Chrome, Firefox, OpenOffice, VNC, Flash, Acrobat, LogMeIn, a few KDE applets, and GIMP, etc concurrently in all the VMs all at once. And it's smooth!

I know that having gobs of RAM is key to making VMWare play, but even so, this is quite remarkable! But what's even more interesting to me is that this laptop was nearly $1000 cheaper than my previous one - even at the high end, there's been a pronounced drop in price over the past couple years.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[The Hatchet]

I bought an i7 920 the black friday before last. According to my calculations, it was the processor at which the price curve changed places, beyond 920 the price grew way faster than is sensible, and below it the price increase was way too little for the price increase. For something like 250 bucks I got a processor that runs virtually anything I want with ease, and I run engineering applications and rendering software, such as autodesk inventor 2011, matlab, and the adobe CS5. Although I also run two nVidia GTS 250 SLI. The whole computer cost less than 1200 bucks, I run three monitors and have 12 gb of RAM.

To be honest, I would very much like it if Intel would come out with a new line of processors, with a logarithmic core set, and an even ratio to number of processors and processing power. Like 1 huge processor, 2 large ones, 4 big ones, 8 regular ones, 16 small ones, 32 slightly small ones, 64 very small ones, 128 tiny ones, 256 minuscule processors. With the ability to shut down parts of it and bring them back up based on need. And definitely one that DOES NOT have DRM built in. Because of these "sandy bridge" processors, I will never buy another intel product. They can be sure of that.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[The Hatchet]

And EVERYBODY ELSE who likes technology, freedom, logic, creativity, new things, quality art, etc. You're a dumbass. And also a troll.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[The Hatchet]

Actually that is dead wrong. Out of the past 7 games I played, I purchased 3. The three I paid for did not work, the the rest I pirated (including the original three legal versions that DRM caused not to work right) all of which worked perfectly, and were quite fun.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[The Hatchet]

This above post should be put into a plaque and put on every wall in every classroom in America. People need to learn this, depserately. DRM practices are the most disgusting thing in the computer world, and can do immesurable harm to our society and its progress, and to freedom at large, when so much of our modern freedom is based on the internet.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[bertok]

A lot of this is about turning up the heat on the pot with a live lobster in it. Right now, it's merely pleasantly warm, but it's going to become uncomfortable soon!

You have no idea what AD Rights management is for. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights_Management_Services

It is about companies protected their trade secrets and confidential data. It isn't about stopping you from stealing something off of the piratebay.

Except that the data is not protected from employees, who can steal it all the same. Access control lists and transparent filesystem encryption already provide the necessary features for protecting data from employees. What it does do, is prevent open source applications from interfacing with the data in any way. It protects Microsoft's monopoly on your network, that is all.

What NAP really is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Access_Protection

It is about ensuring that the client is configured correctly and secure before connecting to a corporate network. I fail to see why this is a bad thing.

The phrase "configured correctly and secure before connecting to a corporate network" means exactly: "runs a trusted Windows kernel signed by Microsoft". That's not adding security in any shape, way, or form. It's not like insecure computers have an "evil bit" set on outgoing packets.There has never been a secure release of the Windows kernel, ever. There likely never will be. The machine is basically checked for a hash of the kernel. The checks can be made more complex, but it boils down to the same thing, to pass, the machine must be "one of a set of known and trusted versions of Windows".

Technologies like NAP are simply a method for locking out Linux, BSD, or any other OS that isn't made by a huge corporation. This may not sound bad if you're a "big corp" running "windows PCs", but it has a chilling effect. Developers or power users will no longer be able to run Linux, at all. Consultants and visitors will have to have a commercial OS, or they won't be able to get their job done, even if open source equivalents exist that would otherwise work just fine! Imagine a network with 100% Windows PCs and servers, with 100% enforced NAP. Some small vendor comes in, with a low-cost Linux offering... bzzt... can't play, sorry, try somewhere else.

And what is wrong with securing user data in a Medical Research Environment?

Step #1 along to path to requiring mandatory DRM on all medical data. Small pilot deployments are used as demonstrations to politicians. The vendor lock-in is not going to be obvious to anybody until it is far, far too late.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

This has not been my experience at all. It would be nice if DRM didn't prevent me from using the stuff I purchased. I recently rented a video through Amazon's service and it shut off in the middle of playback and then it would not fast-forward back to the part where I left off. I regretted ever considering a service that uses DRM.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[bertok]

Exactly. If you're a corp who... y'know, actually has information you want to keep private (that you've won over hard-earned experience to achieve a competitive advantage), but maybe want to share with JV partners on a limited basis, the AD rights management allows you to achieve this.

That's the bait.

The hook is that after you've cryptographically ensured that it's physically impossible to extract your data out of the Microsoft-based DRM system, you've also dug yourself a hole down to vendor lock-in hell like you've never imagined.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[hairyfeet]

But isn't the i3 a duallie? Why would you want a duallie when AMD quads are so cheap? Unless of course you are a rabid OCer as I heard the i3 can crank, but then again the AMD duallies can usually unlock, so I'd call it a wash.

I'd say the big problems with Intel is they are too damned high and they have too many sockets ATM. If you look at this chart of top 50 price/performance the only i series comes in all the way down at #27. I was a lifelong Intel man but after all the payola came out I switched to only AMD for myself and my customers and you know what? I can't really tell the difference. Lets be honest, most of us aren't gonna be slamming the living shit out of our CPUs to be able to tell that 15% difference in performance and the price of the CPU plus motherboard is great enough on most of Intel's good chips one can really outfit a nice box for a hell of a lot less. And my customers are sure happy with $450 triples and $500 quad core machines delivered to their door.

So while I've got nothing against Intel users, hell I've got a couple of 775 boxes I just upgraded to Pentium D chips I picked up dirt cheap, after the payola, rigging their compiler, the just announced DRM, even using dirty tricks against the OLPC, Intel just doesn't seem like a company I would feel right about supporting ATM. I'm a firm believer in putting your money where your mouth is and where your beliefs lie and just like I won't buy Sony after the rootkit and the screwing of PS3 owners I just couldn't in good conscience support a company that has played so dirty lately, even for a 15% performance gain.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[hairyfeet]

Or people like me that have to clean up the mess when their buggy as fuck DRM shits itself and dies, breaking shit all the way? Why don't YOU try cleaning up the mess that you get with Starforce+Safedisc+SecuROM, sometimes ending up with multiple versions of each because the older version refuses to hand off to the newer? Do you have ANY idea how many DVD and CD burners of customers I've had to shitcan because those stupid DRM schemas would throw a drive into PIO and the people wouldn't realize and bring it into to me until the motor had burnt? Oh and don't forget those lovely Sony rootkits that I STILL run into occasionally thanks to those "CDs" still floating around like the clap.

Sorry MR AC Troll, but there are plenty of us that buy our media that hate DRM with a passion. It is buggy, badly written, ALWAYS sucks up resources, will default on the side of SCREW YOU, but here is a guy (warning, language NSFW) who sums up better than I ever could why DRM is ultimately completely useless bullshit. And please not the HUGE PILES of legitimate media all around him, meaning that is THEIR CUSTOMER they are pissing on. Enjoy MR AC!

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[smash]

No, you just change the rights to never expire and extract your document.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[rts008]

So switch to AMD.
My current setup is dual-core AMD 64 bit(X2 5400) with 4 GB RAM and I have not felt gimped at all.(Win7_64bit & Kubuntu 10.10_64 dual-boot W/ ATI 5670 1 GBVRAM vid-card)
Most apps now days can't use all of a dual core processor with adequate RAM and video card, much less anything above this.
Maybe when software catches up with hardware, this could be a problem, but we are not there yet, outside of a few niche markets.

As an off-topic side-note, my Intel PIV 3.0 GHz PC makes a wonderful space-heater this time of year!

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

This will instantly lock out any possibility of an open source implementation of such a protocol, as most DRM schemes require code signed by a trusted central authority, which is a concept in diametric opposition to the 'open' part of the whole concept of open source.

Citation needed, aka wtf are you talking about? There are a lot of open source programs that have signed binaries, and guess what -- the projects are alive and healthy and still perfectly open source, you damn troll.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[hairyfeet]

Uhhh...didn't read past the first sentence, did ya friend? Otherwise you might have noticed this part: I was a lifelong Intel man but after all the payola came out I switched to only AMD for myself and my customers . So it is kinda hard to tell me to "switch to AMD" when BOTH the boxes I use AND the boxes I sell are ALL AMD. Hell my oldest even got a nice Turion X2 netbook for college. It does all his schoolwork and games nicely when he doesn't have homework, and at $599 the only competition was from "Intel IGP" machines locally. Yuck!.

That still don't change the fact that unless you are just sticking it in a board that can't support anything else (like those 775 Pentium Ds I picked up cheap) then buying dual cores is dumb when you can get triples and quads for so cheap. Even if you don't need the power now you may need it down the road and then not be able to get the chip (as I found with a board that I had in 99 that would take the high end P3 that I waited too long on) and end up boned. With C&Q even the quads sip power when not having work to do but when you do have a job for them such as converting a video you'll be damned glad you got the extra cores.

But buying dual cores nowadays unless you are trying for insane OC speeds thanks to having the larger die for cooling, or going for a cheap shot that may/may not unlock, it just seems silly to be building duallies anymore, especially on the AMD side. Just look again at this chart and notice how few dual cores are on it. The better value nowadays is triple and quad, and by a pretty good margin.

My last dual core build will be this AMD X2 7550 I have sitting in a drawer from my upgrade to a quad that I will end up building into a cheap netbox for my GF. Considering the hardest thing she does on a machine is plays Farmville? I think it is safe to say it will be overkill. But even then I'm gonna get a cheapo core unlocking board just to see if I can get a stable X3 or X4 out of it. If I can get her a free upgrade, why the hell not?

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Or people that purchased their Bluray disc but find they have to connect it to their player to the Internet to upgrade the firmware in order to play their movie.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[h4rm0ny]

Over the last few years, I have bought three computers (well, parts for three computers). But I have been responsible for the purchasing decisions of perhaps a dozen because people come to me for advice. That's one person, fifteen sales. Pissing off the tech-community matters.

And just on the DRM debate, I dislike DRM, but love watermarking. That's because I dislike piracy and watermarking is a counter-measure that doesn't get in my way.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[DAldredge]

It is obvious that you have never used the systems in question. If you actually had used them you would know that most everything you are saying is simply wrong. And what is wrong with restricting who has access to medical data?

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[h4rr4r]

And you don't get video acceleration since the DRM uses that too and they wont release an open driver for it.

Moving DRM to hardware does nothing about that. Even if it did allow its use on other OSes I still would not want it.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile I buy Sony to reward them for generally superior h/w manufacturing

Did you have the rock-solid, bombproof reliability (*cough*) of the Vaio computers in mind?

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[RightSaidFred99]

I'm so tired of people whining about DRM. If you don't like it, don't use the media content that uses it. It's really as simple as that.

Sometimes when I get a cheeseburger they have a pickle on them. Instead of crying for 10 minutes about it and posting a self-righteous post on the Internet about how evil teh picklez are, I take the pickle off and eat the cheeseburger.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[RightSaidFred99]

Oooh, totally! Just like PGP is DRM. Better not use it either, huh?

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[RightSaidFred99]

Noooo! That's crazy talk, I'm so morally opposed to anything labeled DRM that I refuse to even buy a product from a company that advertises on a website that has an article on a motherboard for a CPU that supports DRM functionality!

Joking, of course. Don't try to talk rationally to any of these neckbeards, they are so incensed by the mere mention of DRM that they shut off any logical part of their brain that they may have.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[RightSaidFred99]

I'm so tired of you dumb assholes posting just complete lies, FUD, and generally just nonsense gibber jabber. I have fun coming on here and mocking you but it tries even my patience dealing with this level of stupidity.

The rights management service is indeed incredibly important in e.g. healthcare, large corporations, etc... to ensure that documents are only available to people who should have access to them. If that includes you, you will still have access.

Your long, pointless, factually incorrect rant would be equally applicable to encryption.

Oh noes, teh evil corporations are going to encrypt my data and prevent me from getting to it! Oh noooooo! Fascists!

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[RightSaidFred99]

Uhh, yeah.. unless you pull the data out in the clear and...put it in another system.

Your point is idiotic, as the only way it would be physically impossible to extract your data was if it were effectively deleted or one-way (forever) encrypted.

Introducing the new Microsoft Data Storage System, where even you can't get access to your data!

That would sell real well. Where do you people come up with this shit, seriously?

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[RightSaidFred99]

I'm not sure if you've realized this, but even more obvious than that is that he's a breathless, hysterical idiot. Probably not much point in really carrying on too long a conversation with him other than to mock him.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[m50d]

You have no idea what AD Rights management is for. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rights_Management_Services It is about companies protected their trade secrets and confidential data. It isn't about stopping you from stealing something off of the piratebay.

It's designed to make it so that a document can be distributed to you that you can read, but can't copy. That's exactly the same thing that any other kind of DRM is for, and if it becomes pervasive, sooner or later it'll start being used for music/videos/etc. you buy.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[Cyberax]

"Furthermore, the code was moved from the kernel into userland to prevent buggy drivers from causing blue screens of death."

Which caused much higher latency and throughout, especially for demanding apps like studio recording. So a lot of professional hardware actually implements completely separate audio stacks.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[mug funky]

latency has always been high in the OS and no sane person in a studio would use a built-in soundchip in place of studio gear.

for a start, where would you plug a mic or guitar?

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

Please stop repeating this crap. Any reasonably well implemented DRM is NOT easy to remove -- it's based on largely uncrackable public key cryptography, with only physical access to the device hardware making it reasonable to even ATTEMPT cracking. It took AGES for Linux to find a way to play Bluray discs. Even now, it's not ideal.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[Cyberax]

"latency has always been high in the OS"

Nope, Windows XP worked just fine. Vista with ASIO stack is also fine. However, Vista's native stack is horrible.

"and no sane person in a studio would use a built-in soundchip in place of studio gear."

??? How do you think most of music is produced?

"for a start, where would you plug a mic or guitar?"

In your auid card's input ports ( http://www.motu.com/products/motuaudio/8pre ). Do you think that nothing exists but Intel HDA cards?

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[bertok]

I'm not sure if you've realized this, but even more obvious than that is that he's a breathless, hysterical idiot. Probably not much point in really carrying on too long a conversation with him other than to mock him.

I'm speaking from personal experience. Are you?

I have turned up at a customer site with NAP with a laptop running an "untrusted" OS, and was told it would simply not work.

I had to use one of their Windows desktops to work.*

If it wasn't for NAP, it would have connected to their network just fine, and I'm certain that it was far more secure and virus-free than their network.

This is reality now. If you want to keep your head in the sand, feel free.

*) Yes, I know, in principle one can simply turn off NAP on a switch port. In practice, that just won't happen in situations like this, particularly in big bureaucracies. The whole point of NAP is to prevent access, turning it off defeats the whole purpose, and most paper-pushers won't make an exception for some contractor or consultant. Also, yes, I know it's possible for "big corp" to add an open source kernel to their known trusted kernels list. Again, in practice, that doesn't happen, and definitely won't happen for some visitor with some random Linux or whatever on their laptop.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[rts008]

Sorry, I did miss that part at the first sentence.

As to the rest, I wasn't recommending using dual cores as you gathered, I was just stating my setup handled everything I have thrown at it with ease.
I happen to agree that triple and quad cores are the current sweet spot.

Again, sorry for missing that first bit. Had I caught that, I never would have commented. You are preaching to the choir now.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[B4light]

Yes, this is what we need, 16 equally sized cores is useless, and having 1 large core and 8 parallel cores would have much better performance results than trying to use Turbo Boost. There is the problem of trying to tell the consumer about the configuration of the CPU, but the benefits outweigh the losses of not being able to say 16-core.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[SHaFT7]

Strange, we build computers all day long for sale, and have primarily used LG and ASUS drives. I can count on one hand how many I've had fail in the past 3 years, and those were almost all due to someone putting in some off-balance disc that exploded and damaged the drive internally. Never had an issue with PIO burning a motor. (and we've fixed plenty of PIO issues over the years)

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[zzatz]

Crypto technology of all sorts may be very good, or very bad. The question is who controls it.

Everyone, individuals or companies, should be able to secure their own data. But that's not enough. They also need to be able to issue their own keys or certificates. And the technology that uses those keys or certificates needs to be available from more than one vendor.

Sole source solutions are not solutions, they are traps. They may be acceptable for non-critical areas. Data which can only be recovered with a single product is NOT secure.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[morgan_greywolf]

Troll much, astroturfer?

No, I haven't forgotten who you are.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[iiiears]

Why do we have to pay more and get less performance for every chip that includes encryption that you and i don't want and didn't ask for. Never mind that in five years this encryption will not protect anything and you will be "asked?" again to pay for their latest super-d-duper T.V./Computer/Phone format and media.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[iiiears]

If the previous poster said "Linux" and you tuned out the rest of what was said consider how few features were available in Internet Explorer until Firefox became available. Intel is more innovative when there are others aren't restricted by patent or fiat to compete with them.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[The Hatchet]

Yea, but you would think they would make the awesome processor I speak of to please the high end crowd.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[iiiears]

In this scenario If your new network consisted entirely of new highly portable ARM chips what operating system would you be forced to use? if you said a Microsoft product you would be right. What best motivates a Microsoft employee? If you said new ideas you would be right. (okay supporting his/her family wouldn't be far off either.) With fewer competitor there are fewer incentives for new ideas to be developed. Yeah, yeah Linux/BSD smothered in it's cradle blah blah. What browser are you using now? Have you tried a different pdf viewer in place of Adobe's? Why does your new phone, T.V..Roomba, tablet, netbook, LAN router. Run Linux? If you said flexibility and low cost you are right. (And this competition saved you enough in the process to buy more than a few nice dinners for your wife. enjoy the wine!)

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[iiiears]

It isn't fascism and it isn't evil. It IS flexibility and efficiency. When you are limited to a smaller subset of ideas and implementations the cost of effective solutions rise. No large single corporation or small group of corporations will give you the diversity necessary to do what you will want to do. They haven't thought of it and likely won't until they are forced to by a twenty something developer in a now unrecognized company.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[iiiears]

"Neckbeards"? Rhetoric aside I like to visit the local electronics shop regularly don't you? How long does it take to make a buying decision? Yeah, It can be tough. Are you saying you would like to simplify that and pay more for the privilege of simplicity? Every time you buy something you "vote" did you ask content producers to add DRM? How exactly does this new feature make the next movie or song better? You are paying extra for it. What other industries can force you to pay more initially and further down the road by reducing your choices? How many more freakin' times are content producers going to ask you to buy Abby Road or Star Wars because they arbitrarily changed the format? Every time your legislator is given the chance to write new legislation and receive help from donors to keep their jobs they gladly do. This motherboard is awesome but ask yourself what is the complete cost of the Hollywood business model of artificial scarcity?

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

I've shit things I care about more.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[hairyfeet]

Have you tried unlocking any cores yet? That is the one thing I haven't tried I'm really debating. The trouble is while the 7550 dual I have in the drawer is no doubt a 4 core with two switched off, the only boards I see with selective unlocking at cheap prices is the Nvidia 6050 based boards which is a shitty GPU. On the other hand the AMD based boards have a nice HD4200, which for my GF whose idea of "gaming" is Farmville style flash games along with the occasional CSI game, having flash accelerated would be nice. Of course having a triple or quad to hand her instead of a dual would be nice too...ARGH!

Talk about a PITA, but it is about time I got my GF off the P4 she has been running and a nice custom built box would make a perfect early BDay gift. I guess I'll just end up flipping a quarter and picking whichever wins the toss. As long as it is a dual core with a couple of GB of RAM and XP she'll be a happy camper anyway, and I have that 7550 and an XP Pro license just sitting here unused. But I'd love to hear if you had any luck trying unlock and how much of a PITA it is, because if it is easy sailing I suppose I could always pick up a cheapo Radeon card for her, or maybe even pick up that 4850 I spotted cheap and give her my HD4650.

But I agree that anybody buying duals, especially Intel ones, are just nuts with triple and quads so cheap. If I didn't have the 7550 already sitting there I wouldn't even think of less than a triple, and the only reason I picked up the Pentium Ds is that my kids PCs are old 775 boards that won't take bigger and at $30 each they were a dirt cheap upgrade. Hey if you've got any older boards you'd like to upgrade cheap let me recommend these guys. Fast service, cheap prices, they were even nice enough to call me after the order just to make sure I hadn't pushed a wrong button because I ordered two of the same chip. Really nice folks and the chips were perfect. With prices that low I'll probably max out the CPUs on all my older machines while I can, my family don't slam PCs hard so they'll last them for years anyway.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[mug funky]

wtf are you talking about?

if you have a sound card with more than a 3.5mm unbalanced stereo input, you'll have ASIO as well.

even if you don't have a decent interface, you can get well below directsound (in ANY flavour of windows) latency using ASIO4ALL.

honestly, you think most music is produced using directsound?

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[hairyfeet]

That is because it is NOT the drive, it is the particular combo of DRM and OS. I wish I could have afforded to do experiments to find out which combos did what, but since all the ring 0 DRM is so much voodoo I've found you can have three machines with identical software and one trip it and the others don't. What I HAVE found and will be happy to inform you is it HAS TO BE A COMBO...it NEVER hits on JUST Starforce or JUST Safedisc, but always a mix.

The problem is when you get a gamer you will often have a large range of DRM bullshit clogging the PC, so finding which straw broke the back is damned near impossible. I have seen machines with over a half a dozen pieces of ring 0 DRM installed at once, and with more and more getting large HDDs I have a feeling it is gonna get worse. I have also sen several machines with multiple versions of the SAME DRM, like SecuROM 2&3 and Starforce 1&2 because they installed a newer game with an older and the older refuse to hand off to the newer "protection".

But if you work in the biz what you'll want to look for is what I call "battling DRM" which causes all kinds of fuckups including PIO cook off. You see the DRM of one will interfere with the DRM of another, which will default to "Fuck u ya filthy piratez!" and try to lock down the machine, which will set the first off, you get the picture. I have also found it to happen more often on those machines that have one DVD burner and a "combo" drive, ala DVD ROM/CDRW, like some of the Dell and eMachines mid ranges. The drives are a mix so it isn't that, and when I install a new drive without removing the offending DRM it starts to throw the NEW drive into PIO, so I lay the blame square at the DRM manufacturers.

But type "DRM causes crash" "DRM causes BSOD" and "DRM PIO MOde" into Google if you don't believe me, it is a problem that has been going on for a LONG time, and if you haven't run across it consider yourself lucky. Or maybe your gaming customers just use cracks for their older games.

A final warning in case you didn't know FYI X86 ring 0 DRM WILL NOT UNINSTALL on X64 OSes! and their "uninstallers" they host on their sites will not work on X64 especially with the older installers. So what you get is someone with a nice new Windows 7 X64, that installs their favorite older games, which BTW the X86 DRM won't say shit and will happily try to jam X86 ring 0 driver into an X64 kernel (which I'm sure you know is a BIG NO NO) followed by all kinds of freaky "quirks" starting from the classic "insert disc into drive" when it is all the way to random hard locks, jerks, and full out BSODs. The only way I've found to reliably remove that shite is to boot into an XP Live CD and strip the files from there. Otherwise it is damned near impossible to remove all the ring 0 BS.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[Cyberax]

No, I'm talking that music is produced on common computers, not some kind of magical devices.

Of course, ASIO (or JACK) is used and that's the point - built-in audio stack in Vista is crap.

Re:Missing Story Tag : DRM

[Alsee]

what AD Rights management is for

Your goal is irrelevant if the means themselves are invalid. It doesn't matter if you're "for" curing cancer, that obviously doesn't make it valid to kidnap people to work as slaves in a research lab. Some people dreamed up the idea of DRM with the valid goal of preventing copyright infringement, but their goal does not mean their means of pursuing that goal are valid, doesn't mean those means will actually work, doesn't mean they it's valid to expect those means to actually work. It doesn't matter what purpose Microsoft advertises for Rights Management Services if the means themselves are invalid, if it is invalid to expect them to actually work. It doesn't matter what purposes Microsoft advertises for Network Access Protection if the means themselves are invalid, if it is invalid to expect them to actually work.

DRM is fundamentally the notion that people don't down their computers. The notion that people cannot or should not look at the data or hardware inside their own computers. The notion that people cannot or should be able to look at the keys inside their own computers. The notion that people cannot or should not be able to know, control, or alter the instructions/computations being done by their own computer.

Is there anything in the above paragraph that is not obviously false? DRM is the opposite of security. It's the notion of "securing" a computer against the owner.

AD Rights Management and Network Access Protection are simply DRM with fancy wrapping paper and fancy advertising claims.

The idea that DRM, AD Rights Management, or Network Access Protection can or should work are obviously false. People own their computers, people can look inside their computers, people have every right to look inside and change their own computers. The most that can be done is to make it a pain in the ass for people in the hope of discouraging most people from doing so. However it is obviously false to expect people cannot, it is obviously false to expect people should not, and it is obviously false to claim or expect people are doing anything wrong if they do.

If I buy a record player it would obviously be insane for anyone to claim I'm doing anything wrong if I open it up, examine it, and flip the drive belt to play songs backwards if I want. It is equally obviously insane for anyone to claim I'm doing anything wrong if look inside my computer, examine it, and write my own software to play a music file backwards. It doesn't matter if the DRM on the music is "for" preventing copyright infringement - because I'm not committing copyright infringement!!! It doesn't matter what DRM is "for", it doesn't matter what AD Rights Management is "for", it doesn't matter what Network Access Protection is "for", they are all based upon obviously false assumptions. They are all based on obviously invalid means, none of them can actually work, it is obviously false to expect any of them to work. It is obviously false to expect someone else's computer to be "secure" against the owner. If someone is not committing copyright infringement or something, then there is absolutely nothing wrong or illegitimate when people "break" DRM, AD Rights Management, or Network Access Protection. It's like a printer manufacturer claiming you're doing something wrong if you buy a printer and alter the ink-slot to fit cheaper ink cartridges. It's a like a car manufacturer claiming you're doing something wrong if you buy a car and then pick a lock on the hood to replace the oil filter yourself.

The idea that computers or other objects can - or should be "secure" against their owners is wildly absurd. DRM, AD Rights Management, and Network Access Protection are all wildly absurd. A company securing their own computers and their own software is security. DRM, AD Rights Management, and Network Access Protection are all absurd and invalid because they are all based on the notion that other people's co

15 pages -.-

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 if you saw 15 pages and just skipped to the conclusion

cut pci but keep usb 2.0 and sata 3?

[Joe The Dragon]

cut pci but keep usb 2.0 and sata 3? Will some boards needing add on chips for USB 3.0 and more then 2 sata 6 ports. AMD has 6 sata 6 ports.

Build in pci does still have use for stuff like on board sound and there still lots pci cards out there

Re:cut pci but keep usb 2.0 and sata 3?

[Carnivorous Vulgaris]

PCI slots dried up. My latest mobo has just the one.
However PCIe devices, except graphics cards, just aren't there in terms of availability and choice.

In the mean time, everything moved onto the motherboard, so you hardly need any expansion cards.

Re:cut pci but keep usb 2.0 and sata 3?

[petermgreen]

cut pci but keep usb 2.0 and sata 3?
Makes sense to me to keep most of the USB ports 2.0. USB 3 takes up a lot more pins (both more lines and they probably need much better grounding too). Remember despite the name USB3 is really a whole new interface that happens to have USB2 on the same connector. I really don't know why they didn't put ANY USB3 ports on there though (I heard rumours they were having some issues getting it to work properly but frankly I'd expect better than that from Intel).

I dunno why they didn't make all the sata ports 6G, maybe it is harder to deal with on the chip or maybe they just want to segment the market. Either way two 6G ports should be fine for the majority of systems (just how many systems are going to have more than two SSDs?)

PCI takes up a load of pins and is almost certainly a PITA to route (large fast paralell busses usually are). Having a bridge chip next to the PCI slots saves pins on the southbridge/PCH (which don't forget now has to take integrated graphics as well. Yes there WERE previous gen southbridges with integrated graphics but they were seriously limited in PCIe lanes) and should also make PCB routing easier.

Build in pci does still have use for stuff like on board sound
Onboard sound isn't on PCI these days (i'm not sure if it ever was). Intel put the core of sound stuff (buffering etc) in the south-bridge and then connected it by a dedicated low speed (but streaming optimised) bus (initially AC97, later HDA) to separate chips that turn it to analog audio and/or S/PDIF (usually made by realtek or analog it seems). Modems could also use the bus (this was common in laptops but rare in desktops) and there were even special slots for it at times (though these never gained much favour afaict).

But minor points asside Intel has thrown high end users into a dilemma by releasing the mainstream platform for sandy bridge first. Do we go for LGA1155 and get the fastest quad core to date but on a low end platform or do we go for LGA1366 and get a worse selection of processors but on a high end platform. Motherboard vendors are trying to patch this up with third party chips but the creaks are showing (in particular a lot of the PCH PCIe is getting used up by all those extra chips leaving little for slots). I understand why they are doing things this way round, they royally fucked up the previous generation from a corporate desktop standard by not offering quad cores with integrated graphics).

Re:cut pci but keep usb 2.0 and sata 3?

[multisync]

PCI slots dried up. My latest mobo has just the one.

My new motherboard has one PCI slot that's essentially useless, as it's right up next to the first PCIe slot, which the manual says you must use to get best performance. Most video cards take two slots, and there's no onboard video, so the only way I can see using it is on a headless system, and you wouldn't use a board with three PCIe slots for that.

The only PCI card I have that I might want to use is a TV tuner card, and PCIe tuner cards are cheap and plentiful, so that didn't stop me from using the board. But it is too bad the board manufacturers seem to have abandoned PCI expansion slots.

Re:cut pci but keep usb 2.0 and sata 3?

[yuhong]

I understand why they are doing things this way round, they royally fucked up the previous generation from a corporate desktop standard by not offering quad cores with integrated graphics

Not to mention mobile too, where battery life matter. The AnandTech review on mobile Sandy Bridge claimed that 45nm Clarksfield laptops would get from 40 min to at best about 2 hours of battery life because it was based on the older 45nm process and lacked integrated graphics. And the 45nm quad-core vs 32nm dual-core also led to things like losing AES-NI because you opted for a quad-core over a dual-core.

Re:cut pci but keep usb 2.0 and sata 3?

[petermgreen]

Not to mention mobile too, where battery life matter.
Afaict there was never really a decent low power quad core laptop option. It's not like a C2Q was light on power either and I bet laptops big enough to have a C2Q also often had discrete graphics. So by and large migrating to nahelm was a positive for laptop vendors. When I look at dell most of their lattitude laptops are i series as are most other laptops i've looked at recently (other than ultrportables)

OTOH with corporate desktops at least dell and HP are still selling mostly LGA775 lineups (with the odd AMD and the odd LGA1156). If I was intel I'd really want to change that.

Re:cut pci but keep usb 2.0 and sata 3?

[yuhong]

Afaict there was never really a decent low power quad core laptop option. It's not like a C2Q was light on power either and I bet laptops big enough to have a C2Q also often had discrete graphics.

Until Sandy Bridge, which is supposed to solve this by offering quad-core with integrated graphics.

Re:cut pci but keep usb 2.0 and sata 3?

[Gadget_Guy]

PCI slots dried up. My latest mobo has just the one.

A lot of motherboards use PCI internally as the interface for their onboard systems such as audio. Just because you don't see or use the physical slot doesn't mean that it is completely unused.

NF200

[petermgreen]

Anyone know if there are any boards with a NF200 connected up in the sane way to ease the PCIe situation. LGA1155 has only 16 lanes from the CPU and those from the southbridge are now under even more pressure than they were before (because of onboard USB3, extra sata 6G ports and the fact that PCI slots now have to be driven off a seperate bridge connected by PCIe)with the result that on many boards there is a decided shortage of slots better than x1 (on some i've seen there was a slot that could operate in x4 but only if all the x1 slots were empty). I found a review of one board that had one but it had it connected in a rather strange way (From the reviews i've seen the sane way to connect a NF200 is to take ALL the CPUs PCIe lanes to it). It's not that I need it right now but if I decide to build a new computer i'd like to have a board that I know will have plenty of expandability since I tend to keep my machines for a long time.

BTW note that the article (intel do it too IIRC) quotes the TOTAL of the two directions of bandwidth for PCIe. This is as misleading as advertising full duplex fast ethernet as "200Mbps" (which a lot of vendors used to do in the early days of full duplex)

It is even more confusing with PCIe than with ethernet as PCIe only tends to improve by 2x each generation.

Meh.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be more excited if there were any mini-ITX P67s. I'll likely purchase a SB-based laptop -- I recoil now whenever I see those monstrous full-tower ATX builds. Gimme something I can pick up with one arm.

most build in wifi is just usb based pci / pci-e b

[Joe The Dragon]

most build in wifi is just usb based pci / pci-e better.

Also there is that new 4 tuner cable card pci-e card.

As well OTA tv cards.

Better sound cards.

PCI-E SDD cards are coming up.

light peak likely will come on pci-e cards for use in older systems.

this is where AMD better and why hypertransport

[Joe The Dragon]

this is where AMD better and why hypertransport is good so you can take a low or high end cpu and have more chip set choice.

Intel only has QPI in the high end cpu and drive up the cost if need a lot of pci-e IO but not a high end cpu.

Re:this is where AMD better and why hypertransport

[hedwards]

Don't forget that the on die graphics core should be a lot better than whatever crap Intel tries to put on Sandy Bridge. Why they haven't given up on providing a graphics solution is beyond me. It's been well over a decade since they released anything that could be confused as a competent graphics chipset. Seriously, in the time it took Apple to develop OSX and the iterations since then, Intel hasn't had any that didn't totally suck balls.

Re:this is where AMD better and why hypertransport

[petermgreen]

Intel only has QPI in the high end cpu and drive up the cost if need a lot of pci-e IO but not a high end cpu.
Worse is for those who DO want a fast CPU but also want expandability. At least those who want a low end CPU and an expandable platform can go AMD. Those who want a fast processor don't really have that option.

The blunt fact is that the high end sandy bridge processors beat every previous quad core CPU from BOTH AMD and INTEL by quite a significant margin. They don't quite keep up with the 980x in highly multithreaded benchmarks but many apps are still limited to four or less (often only 1) threads doing actual work*

I don't care about muli-gpu gaming but I do care about the flexibility to drop in a card for whatever the next standard to come along is and with the speeds USB3 and SATA 6G have already reached the few lanes leftover after the vendors have hung a load of stuff of the southbridge may not cut it. A NF200 connected in the sane way gives me the flexibility to use the 16 CPU lanes for graphics while gaming and yet use those same lanes for something else when not gaming.

*Many people will look at the number of threads in task manager and claim a program must be mulithreaded. The thing is many of those threads are created to do some specific task and spend most of their time blocked on IO. What counts are those threads actually doing significant work on the problem at hand.

Re:this is where AMD better and why hypertransport

[Anonymous Coward]

You're totally right... except when you're not. SB is quite a bit faster than budget AMD cards, especially in the mobile variants. Most laptops don't have an HD 5870M.

Re:this is where AMD better and why hypertransport

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget that the on die graphics core should be a lot better than whatever crap Intel tries to put on Sandy Bridge. Why they haven't given up on providing a graphics solution is beyond me. It's been well over a decade since they released anything that could be confused as a competent graphics chipset. Seriously, in the time it took Apple to develop OSX and the iterations since then, Intel hasn't had any that didn't totally suck balls.

I'm still holding out for a high-end Intel CPU with an integrated GPGPU similar to their 48 core R&D project. Something that could be used to actually do RTRT, even if it somehow needed assistance from a traditional GPU.

Re:this is where AMD better and why hypertransport

[hedwards]

We've heard that talk before, and I'm skeptical. Intel doesn't have any designs for a graphics chip on die or off that doesn't suck. Otherwise we'd already have one released. Putting it on die is not going to fix the problems of poor architecture and a lack of expertise.

AMD's solution, at least as far as the graphics chip integration, is almost certain to be significantly better. Which won't matter seeing as Intel will probably go back to bribing companies not to use AMD products like they did last time AMD got ahead of them.

Re:this is where AMD better and why hypertransport

[mobets]

Intel still makes their graphics solution because they can do it cheap. It's really all you need for most low end consumer or business systems.

Re:this is where AMD better and why hypertransport

[Rockoon]

Worse is for those who DO want a fast CPU but also want expandability. At least those who want a low end CPU and an expandable platform can go AMD. Those who want a fast processor don't really have that option.

This isnt entirely true. AMD has options that arent considered "consumer grade" but are as cheap as Intels $1000 high end "consumer grade" and I'll speak more of this is a moment.

The blunt fact is that the high end sandy bridge processors beat every previous quad core CPU from BOTH AMD and INTEL by quite a significant margin. They don't quite keep up with the 980x in highly multithreaded benchmarks

If you want to build a high end system for multi-threaded performance without breaking the bank with $1000 parts, a pair of Opteron 6128's score only slightly worse than a single i7 980X.

Thats a true 16-core server system you will be building, only benchmarks slightly worse than Intels flagship i7 980X, and its notably cheaper (2 x 6128 + 1 x motherboard for $952, less than that i7-980X chip for $1000 that still needs a motherboard.)

Re:this is where AMD better and why hypertransport

[smash]

For business use where you're not playing 3d games but merely want nice desktop effects and accelerated video decoding, intels onboard chipsets are fine.

If you're wanting to do 3d modelling (at work) or gaming (at home), you're in a small segment of the market. This is not what intel are aiming at with their onboard graphics solutions, so don't be surprised that they have generally sucked at it.

Re:this is where AMD better and why hypertransport

[Anonymous Coward]

"We've all heard that talk?" Have you even read the reviews and benchmarks? Seriously, WTF kind of remark is that? "We've all heard that an object falls when you drop it, but I'm skeptical." These aren't the same integrated graphics of yesteryear.

Re:this is where AMD better and why hypertransport

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd love to see the power usage envelope for that comparison (idle and full load). I'm going to hazard a guess that the i7 solution will have significantly better power usage.

How About No

[grumpygrodyguy]

One word: Boycott.

Re:How About No

[thatskinnyguy]

How about another three words instead of sounding like a douche: "Buy AMD instead."

Re:How About No

[Anonymous Coward]

One word: Boycott.

That would be more feasable if Intel had any competition that could meet their performance. Only fanboys will buy into the lower performance of AMD just because of some built-in DRM which provides no practical limitations outside of Intel's own service.

Re:How About No

[gnufreex]

They have competition from ARM chips. No need to buy anything from Intel unless you are Microsoft junkie. And if you are Chinese are coming with Godson MIPS chips that have x86 emulation acceleration with QEMU. Also AMD bulldozer is around the corner.

Re:How About No

[RightSaidFred99]

Better boycott all CPUs then, genius, because DRM can be implemented in software (remember old days iTunes?).

I have a crazy idea though. If a piece of media content has DRM restrictions that you feel are too restrictive...don't buy it. Crazy, I know...

Re:How About No

[RightSaidFred99]

Lol. ARM chips. Seriously. Price and efficiency, sure. Performance? Not even remotely close.

SPAMMER! PLEASE DELETE POSTING!

[billstewart]

... we've got some handbags that don't have much spam in them....

Impressive?

[bl8n8r]

Yeah, if you're impressed with the ability to DRM your streaming video, then yeah, I'm impressed with Intel's audacity.

Re:Impressive?

[Anonymous Coward]

With a Sandy Bridge processor: Yay I can watch this protected video.
Without a Sandy Bridge processor: Damn I can't watch this protected video (without stripping it).

It won't harm anyone who has it; rather, it will harm everyone who doesn't have it.

Re:Impressive?

[Rockoon]

You can play that protected video, but your CPU can be disabled remotely.

..and thats over 3G, and even works if the system isnt even turned on.

Re:Impressive?

[Anonymous Coward]

Before spreading FUD maybe you should read this. Killbits aren't new in the CPU arena; this is just the first (AFAIK) with 3G support (which you (1) need to pay an additional fee for and (2) you need a supporting chipset and board).

For laptops I own I'd be thrilled about this feature. For desktops I own it's not a concern because it won't even exist in hobbyist components.

Re:Impressive?

[RightSaidFred99]

Your FUD is boring me.

Don't have to throw out your old MB/CPU you know

[Aargau]

The DRM issue is easily worked around: all you need is one un-DRMed version out in the wild. In fact, Sandy Bridge is facilitating non-DRMed video anywhere. Their Quick Sync technology allows you to take your base video and transcode for all your devices very quickly with high quality. I plan to grab blu-rays and transcode to the kids iPad much more often now. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odyl6952aRg

Bye bye intel

[Erie Ed]

Yeah no thanks intel after 6 years of buying overpriced motherboards and cpu's I'm ready to switch back to AMD...and everyone wonders why intels stock is slipping, it's because they are losing their touch with the customer base.

Re:Don't have to throw out your old MB/CPU you kno

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually all you need is an IGP or graphics card in your Sandy Bridge PC, with the monitor connected to it. Which anyone who buys it for gaming is already going to have.

Well then.

[Anonymous Coward]

It won't cost much to take it out then, will it? If Intel wants to serve their customers who would prefer not to have this feature it should be a minor revision. And if they don't want to serve the customers who find the feature offensive, well, there are other vendors.

Re:Well then.

[RightSaidFred99]

How about you quit being a crybaby and not use DRM-locked media if you don't like it? Your entire point is asinine.

Re:Well then.

[iiiears]

@RightSaidFred99 Look up "Psychological Projection"

DRMed CPU

[gnufreex]

Isn't Sandy Bridge that Intel's DRMed CPU? 'Nuff said, waiting Bulldozer or 64-bit ARM chips.

Re:DRMed CPU

[Kernel Krumpit]

“DRM Inside!”

Re:Don't have to throw out your old MB/CPU you kno

[gnufreex]

Why should I be fixing and working around new CPU? Just don't buy anything from Intel, buy DRM-Free CPUs until we are left without any.

Re: DRM - DON'T go NEAR this Chip!

[gabrieltss]

Glenn Chapman
The Sydney Morning Herald
January 6, 2011

US chip giant Intel has introduced a speedy new generation of chips that thwart film piracy and enable quick handling of data-rich video and games.

The second-generation Intel Core processors, referred to as “Sandy Bridge”, have been built into computers big and small, many of which will be displayed at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

“This is the best product we’ve ever built,” said Intel chief executive Paul Otellini. “We’ve shifted to processor-based graphics.”

New Intel chip that thwarts film piracy a coup for Hollywood
http://www.infowars.com/new-intel-chip-that-thwarts-film-piracy-a-coup-for-hollywood/

Why is the performance not improved first?

[esquece_lembrar]

CPUs of the i386/amd64 architecture are- with very few exceptions- not able to handle large loads without bottlenecking, creating excessive lag, and forcing the system to shut down. "Ooooh, look. The transistors are smaller." Ooooh, look. SPARC and POWER CPUs still outperform i386/amd64 processors. Why do the x86(_64) processors require so much memory when performing a task?

h67 chipset

[Espectr0]

Wonder why they didn't review the H67 chipset. I've got a gigabyte H67A-UD3H and it's working fine. The only thing is that it only comes with one PS2 port so i had to buy a usb mouse.

Re:Don't have to throw out your old MB/CPU you kno

[iiiears]

Why must i extra in development costs and implementation for a feature i didn't ask for and won't do it's job for even a week after a movie is released?

Thought about going duallie on the P4?

[hairyfeet]

I just thought I'd let you know FYI if that socket 775 will support it you can get Pentium Ds for dirt cheap $28 and as you can see they have chips for just about ANY older PC you may have, and have some crazy deals on AM2 if you would like to upgrade to a triple. I mean how can you turn down a triple for $42?

I have bought plenty from these guys, the last a pair of Pentiums Ds to upgrade my nephews for Xmas, and they have top notch service. They even called me just to make sure I hadn't hit the order button twice because I bought two of the same chip. So if your board will take it you really can't beat a $28 CPU upgrade since as you pointed out most games don't even slam a duallie yet. BTW those Pentium Ds are CRAZY OCers, talking to guys online 3.6Ghz-3.8GHz is easily doable with good air cooling. all my nephews play are MMOs so frankly the dual by itself is overkill. But if I was you I'd snatch a cheap duallie to drop into that 775 if it will take it (I've found most will take the 805 D if nothing else) because at $28 the performance boost would be incredibly cheap. They also have X4s but the sweet spot from them on the AMD side has got to be the $42 8650. Anyway I just thought you might want to see some cheapie upgrade options, happy hunting!