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

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

[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

[cinderellamanson]

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

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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

[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

[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: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).

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

[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...

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