Intel Sandy Bridge: what you need to know

Fuell

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"Problem is, Intel snagged all the low hanging fruit in terms of easy performance gains with the Nehalem architecture. You can only bring features like the memory controller on-die once, for instance. Moreover, we know that Sandy Bridge is not a radical new architecture in the mould of AMD's upcoming Bulldozer [link: ]. Instead, it's a major overhaul of Nehalem."

This stands out on nearly all sites that talk about SB. And although its a new arch, its not bringing anything new to the table really, not thats been shown to us. I think we will see modest increases from Nehalem. They will dial it down a little more, maybe add a few features to add performance and its likely that we will see SMT improved upon, but I don't think we will see any game changers from Intel this time around.

AMD on the other hand is releasing a very different arch, and it looks downright mean.

"Frankly, Intel's current Nehalem-class processors are more than powerful enough for most people's needs. More to the point, they're still much faster than anything Intel's main rival AMD can manage."

This is a point that stands out for me as well. And its true. The CPU's we have available today are more than enough, and unless we can get more speed per core, we won't see much in real world performance with the traditional x86 multi-core CPU design. I think this is what AMD is focusing on. Since software is playing catchup in moving to multi-threaded support, adding more and more cores now is almost a waste of time to the average user for real world performance.

So AMD will do something magical with BD imho. I've stated that here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/289159-28-bring-solution-bulldozer
 

Timop

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Great tech sometimes doesn't translate into real performance. Like K10, Transmeta, and Itanium/Larabbe to a degree. They get lost some-point along the execution.

So until Bulldozer samples and we get a review, the SHOULD is still gonna be there.
 

Fuell

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Agreed Tim. But to be honest, based on the info, and logistics of the approach, AMD's modular design doesn't seem complicated. Rather, it seems its a simplistic approach to Turbo clocking cores. By having the cores share resources that allow for 2 threads(Module), its easy to see how this could translate to an easy implementation of the style of Turbo/SMT/CMT I've stated in my thread.

But as always, the smart consumer waits for a real product to show real results before they make up their mind. I'm hopeful for AMD, but I will wait for the real thing.
 

Timop

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K10 also looked like a nice yet simple step-up from K8, but with the TLB-bug and AMDs horrible handling, it bombed the market.

It wasn't until B3 when AMD really started utilizing K10, but with how K10 was already late in the first place, high expectations, and the tarnished reputation made a decent and competitive architecture look like crap.

With Bulldozer, it either needs to be substantially better than SB, or AMD needs to market, price and release it in a smart and timely manner.

Since it wont be released earlier than SB, nor will performance be like K8 vs. P4. combined with having relatively high expectations and the module/core/thread mess, I doubt this will be AMDs big break like K8, maybe just return to (sorta) even competition. (Unless they steal Apples whole marketing team lol, ITS MAGICAL!)
 
Hmm, that TechRadar report was written about 2 weeks ago. In the meantime, Anandtech has actually benched an I5-2400 Sandy Bridge engineering sample (turbo not working, smaller 6-unit GPU). My guess that the shipping CPUs will be about 20% IPC improvement over Nehalem. In short, enough to make me want to wait for a 6 or 8 core version next year :p.
 
AMD will not shuts down the CPU business Intel has a big part of the CPU market but if Intel doesn't drop the prices as AMD do the big difference that exist now will not be as big in few years.
 
Are u sure of that?

What CPU has Intel under $100 with 3 cores and can defeat the X3 line of AMD? Obviously u are an Intel user but Intel under $100 doesn't have anything against the price/performance of AMD.

This is a news thread for the Sandy bridge not for start a discussion to fin what is better Intel or AMD.
 

yannifb

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why should intel reduce price there cpu thrash amd cpu in every benchmark.So they deserve the extra money.amd is no competetion to intel.Amd is 2 generation behind of intel with launch of sandy.Amd top end epual intel middle end cpu.Half of the world pc user donot know Amd also makes cpu.
I think this post dropped my iq quite a bit.
 

dragon5677

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If bulldozer doesnot give performance as compared to i7 let alone sandybridge then i think its about time AMD shuts down cpu buisness and dedicate all there resources to Ati so that ATI radeon can crush nvidia.

dude the I5-2400 Sandy Bridge almost equals 980x what of amd will remain hahaha :D
 


It isn't always about it being complicated. Intels Netburst was very simple. Lengthen the pipelines and get a higher clock. Considering that up to then it was a clock speed race you would have thought it would provide better performance. Unfortunatley it didn't.

I for one am worried about BD. The last time AMD made major changes to a CPU was with K10. It didn't serve them very well because they relied on what the paper said and so far BD has only had paper to talk. Barcelona had only paper to talk and was boasted way up high only to be brough down low.

SB has had a review on Anand but thats hard to take easily since its not final silicon, mobo or anything for that matter.

Hopefully BD will perform decently enough to compete and not be their next K10. I am not too sure that AMD could afford another K10 at all.
 
^K8 was just K7 with a IMC. Not a major change and probably the smart route to take at the end. Intel didn't say it was a bad idea either. Rather they decided that FSB was the way to go for them for the time.

But K10 had a lot of major changes over K8. K7-K8 was more like Core 2 65nm -> Core 2 45nm. K8 -> K10 was more like Netburst -> Conroe, minus the performance enhancements until K10.5.