With Sandy Bridge GT2 graphics, you can play many mainstream titles like Dirt 2 at 720p and 25 frames per second. You only get the faster GT2 performance (12 EUs) with more expensive K-SKU desktop parts, or Sandy Bridge mobile CPUs found in laptops – and that’s where the real story is. Integrated graphics performance was a mixed bag. Moving on to video encoding using the x264 HD benchmark (Pass 2), the Core i5 2500K slightly trailed the Core i7 950 and AMD Phenom II X6, which were tied, but the Core i7 2600K outpaced them all by almost 20 percent. When I ran single-threaded benchmarks, however, Turbo Boost and pure IPC power showed that every Sandy Bridge chip I tested was faster than both the Core i7 950 and the AMD Phenom II X6. Not bad for a CPU that costs two thirds the price. The 2500K, with its lack of HyperThreading and 2MB less of 元 cache, came in slightly behind the Core i7 950, but nothing noticeable. And the AMD Phenom II X6 was only able to pull in a 5.7 – and this is one of the few tests where the six-core monolith should shine. In Cinebench, a program used to test single- and multi-core rendering capabilities, I found that the 2600K came out way ahead of the Core i7 950 – 6.9 vs 5.52, respectively. Moving down to the low end, I knew that AMD’s triple-core offerings were going to be cheaper than the lowest-end Sandy Bridge parts, but at what point is “a few bucks more” worth it for a notable increase in performance? The results, I found, were impressive. I also wanted to see how it performed against AMD’s six-core flagship, the Phenom II X6 1090T. I wanted to see how the Intel Core i7 2600K performed vs the Intel Core i7 950 – its closest rival in terms of price. To get a good picture of where Sandy Bridge would fit – I tested similarly priced parts from Intel and AMD. A word to overclockers – you’ll need to make sure you’re buying special “K” SKUs – currently the 2500K and the 2600K, in order to get the unlocked features necessary to facilitate overclocking. Speaking of overclocking – how does 5GHz sound? At Maingear we’re hitting over 5GHz on select chips, and it’s pretty exciting to see this kind of performance out of a $300 processor. One can find Sandy Bridge motherboards south of $100, and enthusiasts can find three-way GPU, hardcore overclocking motherboards for over $300. One of the cool things about Sandy Bridge is how well the platform scales up and down the price and performance stack. The best part is that unlike Intel’s previous mainstream platform, they’ve made sure to provide enough bandwidth to each of these components to prevent data bottlenecks. ![]() Also, while not native to the platform, you’ll find almost all Sandy Bridge motherboards featuring USB 3.0 – a welcome endorsement of this high speed update to a venerable standard. Intel has added SATA 6G to their chipset, replacing the need for finicky and often under-performing third-party controllers. What you get in return is a very well-outfitted platform with smart configuration choices and most importantly, the bandwidth to support these new features. Sandy Bridge requires a new socket and a new chipset, however, so those of you looking to upgrade from your existing configuration will need at the very minimum a new motherboard, and if you’re not using the latest DDR3 memory, you’ll find yourself forking over even more money.
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