Monday, November 14th 2011
Intel Releases Core i7 ''Sandy Bridge-E'' Processors
Intel today released its Core i7-3000 series processor family, codenamed "Sandy Bridge-E". These new processors, along with the new Intel X79 chipset, make up for an entirely new platform. The processors are an upscale of the Sandy Bridge architecture found on chips in the LGA1155 package. The Sandy Bridge-E silicon measures 20.8 x 20.9 mm, with a humungous transistor count of 2.27 billion. In its Core i7-3000 configuration, the silicon has up to 6 cores, up to 15 MB of L3 cache, four DDR3 memory channels, and 40 PCI-Express 3.0 lanes ("some" devices "may" support Gen 3.0, Intel's words).
Sandy Bridge-E has the same instruction set as Sandy Bridge, which includes SSE up to version 4.2, AVX, AES, and features Turbo Boost 2.0, HyperThreading. It's the memory controller that's complete upscale. It features four independent 64-bit paths to DDR3 DIMMs, making it a quad-channel DDR3 IMC. DDR3-1600 MHz is natively supported. There are three models, the Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition leads the pack with a clock speed of 3.30 GHz, 3.90 GHz top Turbo Boost speed, and 15 MB of L3 cache. It has 6 cores and 12 threads with HTT enabled. This chip has all its multipliers unlocked and is geared for overclocking. It is priced at US $990 in 1000 unit tray quantities, though retailers might draw a decent margin for the boxed parts.
The next best chip in the series is Core i7-3930K. With clock speeds of 3.20 GHz and 3.80 GHz (Turbo), this chip has a slightly smaller L3 cache size of 12 MB, though it is still unlocked and geared for overclocking. Like the i7-3960X, this is a 6 core / 12 thread chip. This chip commands a price of $555. Touted to be the most affordable model, the Core i7-3820 is a quad-core part drawn out of disabling two cores (there's no evidence so far that they can be unlocked). With HTT enabled, this chip offers 8 threads. Its L3 cache is further reduced, to 10 MB (still higher than any preceding Core i7 quad-core model). Unfortunately, this chip is "partially unlocked", meaning that its base clock multiplier is locked, though you can still effectively overclock it by tinkering with the base clock. What's even more depressing is that this chip won't be available until Q1 2012. It is supposed to be priced in the $299~$399 range. This means that the only people building Sandy Bridge-E desktops this Christmas will be the ones with at least $600 to spare for a processor.
Moving on to the platform itself, the processor is built on the new LGA2011 package, it's the largest CPU package by dimensions, in recent times. Over its 2011 pins, the processor gives out four DDR3 memory channels and 40 PCI-Express 3.0 lanes, a DMI 4 GB/s connection to the X79 chipset, and a large number of pins handling power. The X79 chipset itself doesn't differ much from the P67 chipset in terms of the kind of connectivity it offers, except support for Intel Smart Response SSD-caching technology.
Sandy Bridge-E has the same instruction set as Sandy Bridge, which includes SSE up to version 4.2, AVX, AES, and features Turbo Boost 2.0, HyperThreading. It's the memory controller that's complete upscale. It features four independent 64-bit paths to DDR3 DIMMs, making it a quad-channel DDR3 IMC. DDR3-1600 MHz is natively supported. There are three models, the Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition leads the pack with a clock speed of 3.30 GHz, 3.90 GHz top Turbo Boost speed, and 15 MB of L3 cache. It has 6 cores and 12 threads with HTT enabled. This chip has all its multipliers unlocked and is geared for overclocking. It is priced at US $990 in 1000 unit tray quantities, though retailers might draw a decent margin for the boxed parts.
Moving on to the platform itself, the processor is built on the new LGA2011 package, it's the largest CPU package by dimensions, in recent times. Over its 2011 pins, the processor gives out four DDR3 memory channels and 40 PCI-Express 3.0 lanes, a DMI 4 GB/s connection to the X79 chipset, and a large number of pins handling power. The X79 chipset itself doesn't differ much from the P67 chipset in terms of the kind of connectivity it offers, except support for Intel Smart Response SSD-caching technology.
81 Comments on Intel Releases Core i7 ''Sandy Bridge-E'' Processors
And becuase there are dual memory controllers, not all data may end up in the same ram bank, and this affects single-threaded performance, if only marginally.
I think that again, some people expected too much. SB-E is EXACTLY what I expected. Power consumption, performance..everything is EXACTLY where it was expected to be.
What I want to see is some decent overclocking. And I cannot call it decetn until I play with one myself.
However, the 4-core/8-thread CPU is not out yet.
SO I'm disappointed in two things, but big deal.
www.hardwareheaven.com/reviews/1316/pg16/intel-sandy-bridge-extreme-and-x79-chipset-launch-core-i7-3960x-processor-review-skyrim.html
Will have to wait for the board to be in stock at Amazon or Newegg, it seems no etailer is in procession of this board yet here in America, it'll be a shame to have the CPU and no board yet :p funny when SB was released last year it was the other way around, I had my UD7 almost week before the CPUs were released :ohwell:
Its a disappointment to me because it didnt live up to expectations. The opinion around the net is its expensive and offers very little over current gen. For most tasks people do on the computer there is little to none improvement , it costs double/triple and uses much more power to perform the same as socket 1155.
The X79 boards are cut down with less features than they were meant to have, so there will most likley be a new revision in a couple of months. We dont even know if PCI-E 3.0 is properly supported.
And for the idiot who said socket 1366 was the same as socket 1156, Scoket 1366 came out long before socket 1156. Socket 1366 replaced socket 775 at the time and performed much better.
I'm allowed to give my opinion without being called names. I didnt attack your opinion or anyone elses opinion so shut the fuck up.
I think that boxing day might be a good day to buy, else once the quad comes out
SB-E guys, == Sandy Bridge.
I'm glad to see Intel putting the cache back in. There's certain things about my i2600k that I swear feel slower then my QX9650 was. I blame it on the 4mb of missing cache. The 2600 feels more "AMD'ish" or "Celeron'ish" in comparison. Any news about any "DDR4" memory that attempts to market itself as DDR3 that runs in 4 channels? Something along the lines of "digital ready" speakers?
Oh, and because I'm such an Intel fanboy I was SO happy so see the Bulldozer reviews. :D
@Wile-e: As far as overclocking the sbe. If the cores are the same as 2600k plus an additional mem controller then I would expect the overclocks to be the same as the 2600k IF the additional heat can be managed. Sound about right?
Also, I don't know why are many of you crying about it being bad for gaming, it's not really meant for gaming and guess what! There are actually other things you can do on your computer besides gaming.
And also everyone should note that this is meant to be an upgrade of Gulftowns (6 core version), which was accomplished.
The same way SB was compared to the last generation (1156 socket) SB-E should be compared to 1366.
Anyway, benetanegia cleared that one up for us, here.