Intel’s Second-Gen Core CPUs: The Sandy Bridge Review

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Although the processing cores in Intel’s Sandy Bridge architecture are decidedly similar to Nehalem, the integration of on-die graphics and a ring bus improves performance for mainstream users. Intel’s Quick Sync is this design’s secret weapon, though.

Blu-ray Playback And Video Performance

That takes care of the encode/transcode optimizations, but what about decode? I really wanted to know what Arcsoft and CyberLink were doing with Quick Sync leading up to launch, so I spent time with both companies talking about their work.

Sub-10 percent utilization on a mobile CPU

It turns out that the decode pipeline on Sandy Bridge is so complete that even the AACS decryption is offloaded to fixed-function hardware. AACS employs AES encryption, which most Sandy Bridge-based CPUs accelerate, so that’s rather convenient.

In a best-case scenario, Arcsoft’s reps say that you bitstream encoded Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio to an HDMI 1.3- or 1.4-capable receiver (meaning there is no audio decoding for the CPU to do) and see CPU utilization as low as 0% playing back Blu-ray content.

Bitstreaming DTS-HD Master Audio

I used CyberLink’s PowerDVD 10 bitstreaming audio and didn’t get results that stunning. However, CPU utilization did hover around 10% on a Core i7-2820QM-equipped notebook while watching Quantum of Solace, which employs AVC.

Chris Angelini
Chris Angelini
Chris Angelini is an Editor Emeritus at Tom's Hardware US. He edits hardware reviews and covers high-profile CPU and GPU launches.