The Sandy Bridge Review: Intel Core i7-2600K, i5-2500K and Core i3-2100 Tested
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 3, 2011 12:01 AM ESTThe 6-series Platform
At launch Intel is offering two chipset families for Sandy Bridge: P-series and H-series, just like with Lynnfield. The high level differentiation is easy to understand: P-series doesn’t support processor graphics, H-series does.
There are other differences as well. The P67 chipset supports 2x8 CrossFire and SLI while H67 only supports a single x16 slot off of the SNB CPU (the chip has 16 PCIe 2.0 lanes that stem from it).
While H67 allows for memory and graphics overclocking, it doesn’t support any amount of processor overclocking. If you want to overclock your Sandy Bridge, you need a P67 motherboard.
6Gbps
Had SSDs not arrived when they did, I wouldn’t have cared about faster SATA speeds. That’s how it worked after all in the evolution of the hard drive. We’d get a faster ATA or SATA protocol, and nothing would really change. Sure we’d eventually get a drive that could take advantage of more bandwidth, but it was a sluggish evolution that just wasn’t exciting.
SSDs definitely changed all of that. Today there’s only a single 6Gbps consumer SSD on the market—Crucial’s RealSSD C300. By the middle of the year we’ll have at least two more high-end offerings, including SandForce’s SF-2000. All of these SSDs will be able to fully saturate a 3Gbps SATA interface in real world scenarios.
Intel's DP67BG—The blue SATA ports on the right are 6Gbps, the black ones are 3Gbps
To meet the soon to be growing need for 6Gbps SATA ports Intel outfits the 6-series PCH with two 6Gbps SATA ports in addition to its four 3Gbps SATA ports.
I dusted off my 128GB RealSSD C300 and ran it through a bunch of tests on five different platforms: Intel’s X58 (3Gbps), Intel’s P67 (3Gbps and 6Gbps), AMD’s 890GX (6Gbps) and Intel’s X58 with a Marvell 9128 6Gbps SATA controller. The Marvell 91xx controller is what you’ll find on most 5-series motherboards with 6Gbps SATA support.
I ran sequential read/write and random read/write tests, at a queue depth of 32 to really stress the limits of each chipset’s SATA protocol implementation. I ran the sequential tests for a minute straight and the random tests for three minutes. I tested a multitude of block sizes ranging from 512-bytes all the way up to 32KB. All transfers were 4KB aligned to simulate access in a modern OS. Each benchmark started at LBA 0 and was allowed to use the entire LBA space for accesses. The SSD was TRIMed between runs involving writes.
Among Intel chipsets I found that the X58 has stellar 3Gbps SATA performance, which is why I standardize on it for my SSD testbed. Even compared to the new 6-series platform there are slight advantages at high queue depths to the X58 vs. Intel’s latest chipsets.
Looking at 6Gbps performance though there’s no comparison, the X58 is dated in this respect. Thankfully all of the contenders do well in our 6Gbps tests. AMD’s 8-series platform is a bit faster at certain block sizes but for the most part it, Intel’s 6-series and Marvell’s 91xx controllers perform identically.
I hate to be a bore but when it comes to SATA controllers an uneventful experience is probably the best you can hope for.
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CreativeStandard - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
PC mag reports these new i7's only support up to 1333 DDR3 but you are running faster, is PC mag wrong, what is the maximum supported memory speeds?Akv - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Is it true that it has embedded DRM ?DanNeely - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Only to the extent that like all intel Core2 and later systems it supports a TPM module to allow locking down servers in the enterprise market and that the system *could* be used to implement consumer DRM at some hypothetical point in the future; but since consumer systems aren't sold with TPM modules it would have no impact on systems bought without.shabby - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Drm is only on the h67 chipset, and its basically just for watching movies on demand and nothing more.Akv - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Mmmhh... ok...Nevertheless the intel HD + H67 was already modest, if it has DRM in addition then it becomes not particularly seducing.
marraco - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Thanks for adding Visual Studio compilation benchmark. (Although you omitted the 920).It seems that not even SSD, nor can better processors do much for that annoying time waster. It does not matter how much money you throw at it.
I wish to see also SLI/3-way SLI/crossfire performance, since the better cards frequently are CPU bottlenecked. How much better it does relative to i7 920? And with good cooler at 5Ghz?
Note: you mention 3 video cards on test setup, but what one is on the benchmarks?
Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
You're welcome on the VS compile benchmark. I'm going to keep playing with the test to see if I can use it in our SSD reviews going forward :)I want to do more GPU investigations but they'll have to wait until after CES.
I've also updated the gaming performance page indicating what GPU was used in each game, as well as the settings for each game. Sorry, I just ran out of time last night and had to catch a flight early this morning for CES.
Take care,
Anand
c0d1f1ed - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
I wonder how this CPU scores with SwiftShader. The CPU part actually has more computing power than the GPU part. All that's lacking to really make it efficient at graphics is support for gather/scatter instructions. We could then have CPUs with more generic cores instead.aapocketz - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
I have read that CPU overclock is only available on P67 motherboards, and H67 motherboards cannot overclock the CPU, so you can either use the onboard graphics OR get overclocking? Is this true?"K-series SKUs get Intel’s HD Graphics 3000, while the non-K series SKUs are left with the lower HD Graphics 2000 GPU."
whats the point of improving the graphics on K series, if pretty much everyone who gets one will have a P67 motherboard which cannot even access the GPU?
Let me know if I am totally not reading this right...
MrCromulent - Monday, January 3, 2011 - link
Great review as always, but on the HTPC page I would have wished for a comparison of the deinterlacing quality of SD (480i/576i) and HD (1080i) material. Ati's onboard chips don't offer vector adaptive deinterlacing for 1080i material - can Intel do better?My HD5770 does a pretty fine job, but I want to lose the dedicated video card in my next HTPC.