Sandy Bridge

[Stereodude]

So, the secrecy is over. I have to say I'm pretty impressed.

Desktop

Mobile

Needless to say I'm very interested to see a dual core Sandy Bridge in a Lenovo T410 notebook. :twistd:

 

[Adcadet]

When do they go on sale? Techreport suggested that they would be on sale as soon as their article published (http://techreport.com/articles.x/20188/2) but this doesn't seem to be the case.

 

[Adcadet]

And is that a huge stock cooler from Intel? http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/cpu/intel/sandybridge/review/_DSC7051.jpg

 

[Stereodude]

You'll probably see the introduction of the new models at CES with availability to be a few days later once the sales pipeline gets full. There have been reports on Engadget of them being available for sale here and there around the world already though.

 

[Stereodude]

And is that a huge stock cooler from Intel? http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/cpu/intel/sandybridge/review/_DSC7051.jpg

I'm not sure what that HSF is all about. Anand's article indicated they used this setup for 4.4gHz.

 

[Adcadet]

Here's another shot showing that giant cooler: http://techreport.com/articles.x/20188/4

 

[CougTek]

While I've been able to buy motherboards for it for at least three weeks, there's still no trace of Sandy Bridge CPU on my price lists. IMO, the 2500K seems to be the one to get.

I'm eager to see how it fares at F@H.

And it will come with the small heatsink. There's no way Intel will waste money shipping a tower heatsink for a 95W processor.

 

[Adcadet]

"All of our overclocking tests were performed with a tower-style air cooler designed by Intel. The cooler has high and low fan speed settings, and switching between them had no impact on our overclocking success. As is always the case with such matters, your mileage may vary."
from http://techreport.com/articles.x/20190/13

 

[Mercutio]

I'd like better onboard graphics as well, but that's not a make or break issue for purchasing a system. I suspect I'd be happier to find notebook-style switchable graphics and a discrete onboard GPU rather than just another iteration of Intel GPU.

In notebooks, I'm perfectly fine with whatever uses the least power.

And Coug, high-end motherboards have been advertising Sandy Bridge compatibility for months at this point.

 

[Handruin]

Looks like on January 9th, MicroCenter will have them in stock. The Core i7 2600K will be $369.99 with an instant discount of $90 for in-store purchase ($279.99). That's not too shabby for a new CPU at the top of that stack.

 

[Adcadet]

And looks like Microcenter will have what seems like a solid Asus board as well for what seems like a reasonable price ($160) and a decent Gigabyte board for $145, making it easy to spend that $90 back.

 

[LunarMist]

Does the Sandy Bridge support more than 24GB of RAM?

 

[Adcadet]

I see that Sandy Bridge supports up to 4 memory channels.

According to this, MSI thinks they can get up to 32 GB on a board: http://www.guru3d.com/news/intel-sandy-bridge-to-support-32gb-ddr3/

 

[Adcadet]

From what I've seen so far (http://techreport.com/articles.x/20190), it seems that Asus may have some of the nicest boards. Their website lists 9 P8P67 boards (!) (http://www.asus.com/ProductGroup2.aspx?PG_ID=mKyCKlQ4oSEtSu5m).

The differences seem to be number/configuration of PCIe slots, multi-GPU support, eSATA, audio chip, number/type of gigabit LAN ports, and number of USB ports.

I'm wondering if I can use the base P8P67 board (http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=Qx3PdnZI9Pq9BcIU) which lacks the SLI support (but does support Cross Fire; regardless, with two cards the most PCI lanes you can get is 8+8), eSATA, and multiple Gigabit ethernet ports tha the pro/Deluxe versions gives you. Any reason I shouldn't use USB3 for future external hard drives (that I would want to share with my wife's USB2-equipped computer) and skip eSATA? Any tangible benefit to Intel's Gigabit ethernet controller versus Realtek's?

 

[Adcadet]

..make that 10 versions: http://hardocp.com/article/2011/01/05/asus_p8p67_ws_revolution_motherboard_review

 

[ddrueding]

Intel's controller is faster than the Realtek, USB will likely stay more prevalent than eSATA, the rest doesn't matter.

I still don't like ASUS boards. They have never worked the way I expect them to out of the box; changing some random setting in the BIOS or doing a full BIOS upgrade has been the norm every time I've tried them.

 

[LunarMist]

I noticed the Sandstone bridge has only 4 cores. Shouldn't there be 6-8 cores by now or are they stringing it out until next year?

 

[ddrueding]

I noticed the Sandstone bridge has only 4 cores. Shouldn't there be 6-8 cores by now or are they stringing it out until next year?

There will be 6-core chips later on, 8-core will only be the in the Xeons. Neither will be out for a while. You still have the fastest CPU (980X).

 

[LunarMist]

They are messing with our heads, I tell you!

 

[CougTek]

And Coug, high-end motherboards have been advertising Sandy Bridge compatibility for months at this point.

LGA1156 is not pin-compatible with LGA1155 and vice-versa. You cannot plug a Core i7 870 on a motherboard with the H67 chipset and the LGA1155 for instance. I'm not sure I'm following you. What motherboards are you refering to? AFAIK, the only thing you can plug into either a P67 or H67 based motherboard is a Sandy Bridge.

 

[Mercutio]

Both Gigabyte and Asus have been advertising compatibility on new-ish LGA1366 boards. It's midnight and I don't feel like looking which specific models, but they were in the $300 range.

 

[Chewy509]

Does the Sandy Bridge support more than 24GB of RAM?

The IMC on Sandy Bridge is limited to 32GB. (4x DIMMS slots x 8GB DIMMS).

http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=52214&processor=i7-2600K&spec-codes=

What may be interesting is the Xeon version of the Sandy Bridge. Will adding Reg ECC support double the RAM to 64GB supported, as it did for Lynfield CPUs (socket 1156 i7 vs the Xeon X3400 series) which went from 16GB supported for the i7 to 32GB for the Xeon.

 

[Adcadet]

Sandy Bridge apparently will go on sale January 9th: http://www.fudzilla.com/processors/item/21429-sandy-bridge-still-under-nda

 

[Stereodude]

There will be 6-core chips later on, 8-core will only be the in the Xeons. Neither will be out for a while. You still have the fastest CPU (980X).

It's only the fastest at some tasks.

 

[Stereodude]

Both Gigabyte and Asus have been advertising compatibility on new-ish LGA1366 boards. It's midnight and I don't feel like looking which specific models, but they were in the $300 range.

Not sure how that works when Sandy Bridge is all LGA 1155. :scratch:

 

[Mercutio]

Perhaps the LGA1155 chip fits in a 1366 socket without modification? I distinctly saw a bullet point on some boxes indicating they would be compatible with next generation CPUs.

 

[BingBangBop]

Merc,

you are really stretching credulity with this LGA-1155 is backwards compatible with LGA-1366 belief and that a LGA-1366 motherboard can be made backwards compatible with a LGA-1155 Sandy Bridge processor. Failing all else the two processors use totally different chipsets.

 

[Mercutio]

There were large metallic stickers on the boxes of several motherboards my students purchased for the last computer building class I taught. I distinctly saw them. Two Asus boards, one Gigabyte. "Sandy Bridge" compatible. Big letters. Hard to miss.

Now, I don't know if a reseller slapped them on there or something, but I did have to have a discussion in class about what "Sandy Bridge" meant, and I wouldn't have if those stickers hadn't been there in the first place.

 

[LunarMist]

Maybe one of these. :joker:

 

[Adcadet]

Merc - were those Asrock boards?

"Upgrading to Intel’s P67 will certainly require a new motherboard, but the fact that you won’t need a new CPU appears to be Intel’s dirty-little-secret. ASRock found the secret and exploited it, bringing next-generation performance to today’s processors."
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/p67-transformer-lga-1155-intel-lynnfield,2815.html

 

[Stereodude]

I read the review, but I'm not sure why someone would buy a motherboard with the new chipset for a last generation CPU. Aside from faster USB 3.0 performance I didn't see a big improvement.

 

[BingBangBop]

MB dies! However, for cost reasons, you don't want to have to replace the CPU too (the old system was fast enough).

 

[Adcadet]

Dumb question - my case (HAF-X) has an eSATA port. It looks like the cable coming off the top panel from the eSATA port is a standard SATA port (with an "L" keyed into it). Does this mean I can plug that into any (internal) SATA connector to convert it to eSATA?

 

[ddrueding]

Yes.

 

[snowhiker]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115070

I've waited a million years already, but maybe I should just pull the trigger instead of waiting for socket 2011.

 

[Stereodude]

FWIW, Microcenter has the 2600K in store for $280 and the 2500K for $180. link

 

[Adcadet]

My microcenter was sold out of the 2600k's in <30 minutes. I'm not sure anybody who didn't order online got one. They still had 2600's and 2500's.

 

[Stereodude]

I'm not sure I'd be in a big hurry to get one. At this point the motherboards are all so new that you're basically guessing which ones are decent.

Not to mention I'm sure Microcenter will be running this promotion for a long time. They sold the Q6600 for $199.99 for a long time.

 

[Adcadet]

My 4-year old computer is dying a slow and not so graceful death. I've held off as long as I possibly can, and at this point, I basically can't work from home anymore (not always a bad thing). I'll likely rebuild my desktop with a Sandy Bridge 2600k late this week.

 

[Handruin]

I did kind of the same as you the day Lynnfield released. I pre-ordered my i7 from microcenter and bought a gigabyte motherboard that was new to that socket (because it was also just released at that time). You'll likely be fine, but you will want to watch the updates on the BIOS or UEFI depending on whatever it comes with. Worst case you replace the motherboard in 6-12 months if it really is terrible, but I doubt it'll be that bad.

Also, like SD said, microcenter will likely be running their promotion for a while. They did the same with my i7 for a long time and even the chip that came out after it.