Anyone got a sandybridge yet?

Started by reck, January 07, 2011, 08:36:18 PM

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reck

ohh ohh lucky you. Yes please let us know how you get on with it. Does it support hyper-threading as I'm interested to know how much of a difference it makes?

Zairyn Arsyn

i'm kinda glad some got a sandy bridge before me, that way i can know how they preform with TG2 before i buy :)
WARNING! WIZARDS! DO NOT PREDICT THE BEHAVIOR OF OTTERS UNLESS YOU OBEY BIG HAPPY TOES.

i7 2600k 3.4GHZ|G.skill 16GB 1600MHZ|Asus P8P67 EVO|Evga 770GTX 4GB|SB X-FI|Antec 750W
http://zlain81.deviantart.com/

Tangled-Universe

Quote from: zaai999 on January 25, 2011, 09:04:39 AM
i'm kinda glad some got a sandy bridge before me, that way i can know how they preform with TG2 before i buy :)

Indeed, but be aware that Oshyan bought a laptop SB processor, which is considerably slower than a desktop SB processor (hence the difference between 2 vs 3.4 GHz). Still pretty damn fast though.

Zairyn Arsyn

yeah, i kinda knew that, but i didn't know of any persons who have a desktop SB cpu.
WARNING! WIZARDS! DO NOT PREDICT THE BEHAVIOR OF OTTERS UNLESS YOU OBEY BIG HAPPY TOES.

i7 2600k 3.4GHZ|G.skill 16GB 1600MHZ|Asus P8P67 EVO|Evga 770GTX 4GB|SB X-FI|Antec 750W
http://zlain81.deviantart.com/

rcallicotte

@Oshyan - Please let us know your results.  These new chips look impressive.

http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=52214
So this is Disney World.  Can we live here?

Oshyan

While it will be slower than a desktop CPU in raw clock terms, I can still compare it to an i7 desktop CPU (Nehalem generation), maybe downclock that to 2.0Ghz for direct comparison. Then you can extrapolate how some of the desktop chips might do.

It does support hyperthreading by the way.

- Oshyan

Tangled-Universe

On a Dutch site there has been published two reviews about the SB CPU's...the first for the desktop models, second for mobile.
Very short conclusions:

SB desktop CPU: The 2600K model (stock @ 3.4 GHz) is roughly 10% faster than a i7-920 OC'ed to 3.8 GHz, but in some cases the i7-920 was faster due to the triple-channel memory being effectively used by some software, like Photoshop.
Still, the SB is a lot of bang for buck.

Mobile SB: at the moment by far the fastest CPU for laptops. IIRC >50% faster than the nehalem i7's.

A clock-to-clock comparison would be the best though.

rcallicotte

Found this - http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083

Still want to hear whatever you have to offer us in terms of your experience and understanding, Oshyan.
So this is Disney World.  Can we live here?

Oshyan

Alright, first results from the 3D Speed Machine benchmark:

i7 920 @ 2.66Ghz (1st gen i7, Desktop): 12 minutes 18 seconds
i7-2630 @ 2.0Ghz (2nd gen i7, Laptop): 11 minutes 57 seconds

Yes, that's right, the 2nd gen laptop CPU with lower clock speed beats my 1st gen desktop with higher clock. It's a surprising and promising result, but it needs to be taken with a grain of salt, there are some caveats.

First off if you visit the link above you'll notice that my i7 920 score is much lower than the other 3 there. I'm pretty sure that at least 1 of those, if not 2, are for overclocked CPUs, but the 10m33s time is for a stock CPU I think and my i7 920 is still not doing anywhere near that, which may indicate some kind of system bottleneck here. I'll be looking into it.

Second, the 3D Speed Machine benchmark that I created has always had a part of it that does not respond well to multithreading. The lower-right corner of the scene is actually where a good portion of render time is spent as it has the furthest depth to draw, interreflection between the reflective sphere and the water, and the densest parts of the plant population. This was done intentionally because at the time multi-core CPUs weren't all you could get, not to mention that not all TG scenes can be as efficiently multithreaded as we would like. So the idea was to have the majority of the screen area be rendered multithreaded, and then have a portion of render time be largely single threaded to sort of balance it out. Whether it is effective at its intended goal is another question, but the important consideration is that both the i7s here would have been working with 1 or at most 2 threads in that area for several minutes. Here's where an improved feature of the 2nd gen i7 comes in. While the CPU core clock is 2.0Ghz, it has TurboBoost which can clock it up to 2.9Ghz. Now the i7 920 has this too and its max turbo frequency is the same but given the other architectural improvements that show clock-for-clock that the 2nd gen i7 beats the previous generation, it makes sense that the slower CPU could pull ahead here.

All this being said I still have more testing to do. I will be trying a more multithreading-friendly scene, which should remove some of the i7-2630's advantage from turboboost. I will also be trying to downclock my 920 to match the 2630. More to come...

- Oshyan

rcallicotte

So this is Disney World.  Can we live here?

Zairyn Arsyn

i think i'm going to wait a little longer... for the upgrade or maybe even wait for the LGA 2011 cpu's
WARNING! WIZARDS! DO NOT PREDICT THE BEHAVIOR OF OTTERS UNLESS YOU OBEY BIG HAPPY TOES.

i7 2600k 3.4GHZ|G.skill 16GB 1600MHZ|Asus P8P67 EVO|Evga 770GTX 4GB|SB X-FI|Antec 750W
http://zlain81.deviantart.com/

rcallicotte

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/cougar-point-sandy-bridge-sata-error,12108.html

Looks like it would be better to wait on Sandy Bridge until maybe March or April.  Otherwise, if you recently bought one (Oshyan), a new motherboard is in your future - the motherboards are likely carrying a 3-year warranty.
So this is Disney World.  Can we live here?

Oshyan

Yeah, I saw this yesterday. Bummer. I'm not clear on whether it affects laptop models, but I'll be looking into it.

- Oshyan

rcallicotte

Oshyan, did you see this article on Anandtech? http://www.anandtech.com/show/4143/the-source-of-intels-cougar-point-sata-bug

Apparently, if the motherboard in your labtop only uses SATA ports 0 and 1, then you shouldn't have a worry.  But, this might be old news.
So this is Disney World.  Can we live here?

Oshyan

Yeah, but I'm still a bit dubious. My laptop is within the reseller return period so I'll probably just send it back and wait to see how this all shakes out. I don't need it desperately right now. Although it's been nice to have. ;D

- Oshyan