转贴--Intel Core i7-2600K (and friends) Sandy Bridge Processor Review

yym

原帖地址 http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=1057&type=expert

我先贴出来这个， 大家到时看看国内的媒体 有多少 拿去就翻译 后变成 他们自己所写的了。我发现好多次国内媒体都这样， 尤其是 驱家的 部分小编。


SNB Processor and Chipset Lineup

As I mentioned on the first page, there are than a handful of processors launching today, but we are really focusing on the mainstream desktop components here today.  This Intel provided roadmap below gives us some basic information on the pending product releases as well including the dual-core variants.  

In both the desktop and mobile fronts, the only processors launching with immediate availability are the quad-core processors while we are told the dual-core versions will be coming very soon after.  The Nehalem-based Bloomfield processors are still listed through the remainder of 2011 as Intel's top-level enthusiast option with Lynnfield keeping its head above water as well.  But based on some the performance we are seeing out of Sandy Bridge based processors, there may not be a reason for it.

This time around, quad-core processors are going to be seeing the Core i7, i5 and even i3 labeling with other features now differentiating the lines.  The table above helps us keep the factors in place: TurboBoost doesn't exist for Core i3 processors, HyperThreading is optional across all the brands though sometimes on two cores rather than four and cache sizes will vary up to as much as 8MB on the [size=1em]high end offerings.  

All of the SNB processors (Sandy Bridge) offer support for Intel integrated graphics (though enabling it requires an H6x series motherboard for now) with two variants on the performance levels of said graphics systems.  Quick Sync Video is the very odd branding given to the hardware decode/encode engines on the CPUs, InTru 3D is for stereoscopic TV output via HDMI 1.4a, and AVX is the new 256-bit instruction set we have discussed many times.  

Overclocking takes yet another bend with this processor release and we'll see that the "K-series" of CPUs is going to be much more important for enthusiasts looking to push their systems.  K-series parts will offer a fully unlocked core while all of the Core i7 and Core i5-25xx CPUs will offer unlocked power, memory and graphics speeds.  Note though that overclocking the CPU cores looks to require a P67 chipset motherboard while to play with graphics speeds you'll need at least an H67 solution.  

What exactly does a "fully" unlocked processor get you that a partially unlocked one does not?  In short it's all about the Turbo Frequency multipliers.  With an unlocked K-series part you can push those limits to anything you want: we are seeing 48-52x multipliers in our initial testing as we approach the 5.0 GHz mark!  A "limited" unlocked part will only let you push the multiplier 4 speed bins higher than the standard TurboMode would push.  For example, a base 3.3 GHz CPU hits 3.7 GHz during normal usage but with the limited overclocking options you can get 4.1 GHz out of it.  

These do turn out to be very hard limits as well; we'll discuss this further in the overclocking section of this article.  

  

I said there were a lot of new processors launching today, and this is just the start.  This table represents the higher end of the Sandy Bridge CPUs that are going to be available starting with the highest performing Core i7-2600K with a base clock of 3.4 GHz, 8MB of last level cache and 3000-series Intel HD Graphics.  The specs compared to the standard Core i7-2600 only differ in support for vPro, 2000/3000 graphics, price ($23) and of course the ability to run fully unlocked.  

The Core i5-2500 and 2400 are quad-core CPUs that don't have HyperThreading enabled and only clock as high as 1100 MHz on the integrated GPU core.  

The Core i3 processors are more hobbled as they are dual-core CPUs with HyperThreading enabling four threads, but obviously at a performance disadvantage to the Core i5s.  Also, they don't support Turbo frequencies and drop support for AES encryption acceleration - which is an odd feature to leave out if you ask me.  

Above are six more SNB processors that fall into the low power categories going as far down as 35W TDPs.  

One thing that might immediate stand out to you about this lineup is the odd placement of the Intel HD Graphics 3000: only on the K-series desktop CPUs.  This seems very counter-intuitive as users that are concerned about the overclocking scaling on their CPUs are more than likely going to be gamers and enthusiasts that have other discrete graphics options in their system, thus disabling and completely defeating the point of increased processor graphics performance.   

Finally, let's not forget the new chipsets for the desktop platform!  The P67 and H67 are really all we are going to be seeing in the consumer space with the H67 offering support for the integrated display output and 3D output while the P67 gets performance tuning options left out of the IGP solutions.  Both chipsets offer 8 lanes of PCI Express 2.0 though which should be helpful for motherboard vendors looking to add on USB 3.0 support and more.  

yym

Retail Motherboards and Testing ConfigurationAs you might imagine, since motherboard vendors have been waiting on this CPU release for quite some time, there is no shortage of retail-ready solutions for your upcoming Sandy Bridge system build.  We got in boards from ASUS, MSI, ECS, Gigabyte, ASRock and more; unfortunately due to a sudden two-day shortening of our schedule we didn't get a chance to do any complete board reviews for you today but we'll have them as soon as we are back from CES.  

ASUS sent over a couple of boards, the first of which we have had hands on time with was the P8P67 Deluxe:

The P8P67 Deluxe offers a lot of great features including multiple USB 3.0 connections, a truly innovative UEFI BIOS implementation and a 16+2 phase digital power design.  

The MSI P67A-GD65 looks to be another great motherboard option for SNB processors:

The MSI P67A-GD65 offers SLI and CrossFire support as well as an updated version of their OC Genie feature that supplies single button press, nearly instant, automatic overclocking.  I have been very impressed with this feature on previous MSI motherboards and it looks like MSI is going to be able to carry it over to Sandy Bridge very well.

Even ECS is in the game with the P67H2-A motherboard:

The ECS offering actually includes a Lucid HYDRA chip on board for cross-vendor multi-GPU scaling - I will be very curious to see how it performs!

Zotac was one of two companies to send over a mini-ITX version of an H67 motherboard:

With integrated WiFi, a PCIe slot for discrete graphics and such a small stature, the Zotac H67-ITX will likely make a great HTPC build option.  

The Sandy Bridge Processors

From the looks of them, the new Sandy Bridge based processors are basically identical to the LGA1156 Lynnfield/Clarkdale CPUs.  The new socket is an LGA1155 - just enough to make sure you don't try to install SNB parts into a Lynnfield board or vice-versa.  

The 2nd Generation Intel Core processor family is built on the new 32nm process technology that Clarkdale CPUs were built on.  Unlike those processors though that included 32nm CPU and 45nm graphics and memory controller chips, Sandy Bridge is a single 32nm monolithic die.  The die size is 214 mm^2 and consists of 995M transistors - very nearly hitting the 1 billion mark!   

Core i7-2600K at idle

The Sandy Bridge processors are powerful but also power efficient: at idle the Core i7-2600K still only runs at 1.6 GHz.

Core i7-2600K with all cores loaded

With all the cores loaded under CineBench, the CPU scales up to as high as 3.5 GHz or so, just over the base rated clock speed of 3.4 GHz.  

Core i7-2600K with one thread load

Without any overclocking employed, the i7-2600K will still hit as high as 3.8 GHz when running single threaded applications though.  We'll demonstrate how far you can really push these processors, even with a multi-threaded workload, when we dive into the overclocking section.

Testing Configuration

Getting a grip on how Sandy Bridge performance compares to other processors out there is pretty straight forward: lots of testing with a focus on a couple of key areas.  On the following pages you'll see our smattering of CPU benchmarks including Sandra, media encoding and more but I will actually start with a detailed look at the integrated processor graphics performance of these new platforms.  Finally, we'll touch on overclocking and power consumption and round it all up with a page of conclusions and questions for future articles.  

yym

[size=1em]Intel HD Graphics 3000 and 2000 PerformanceLikely the most innovative and potentially market shattering aspect of the 2nd Gen Intel Core [size=1em]Processor family is the updated graphics solutions that it brings along for the ride.  In many circles of industry, especially at NVIDIA, the fact that Intel likely has a graphics solution that cuts out the sub-$50 discrete market (both desktop and mobile) is a scary proposition.  But, I can't help but wonder if Intel made some boneheaded mistakes to keep their competition happy.  

By Intel's own admission in their slide deck, the Intel HD Graphics 2000 solution offers only minimal performance gains over the current graphics solution found in the Clarkdale line of desktop CPUs.  The 3000 variant offers "additional headroom" and in our testing is the really killer solution.  Unfortunately for users that might actually want it on a desktop solution, only the K-series processors will offer the faster graphics option (3000) while the lower cost processors are limited to the hobbled option.  

To test these new graphics platforms we used the Intel H67 "Bearup Lake" motherboard in conjunction with the Core i7-2600K (Intel HD Graphics 3000) and Core i5-2400 (Intel HD Graphics 2000) and compared it to the performance of the Core i5-655K CPU on the Intel DH55TC motherboard.  Comparison to desktop discrete options need to be made as well so I used these three:

• [size=1em]NVIDIA GeForce GT 430 ($50)
• AMD [size=1em]Radeon HD 5550 ($50)
• AMD Radeon HD 5450 ($30)
  

These represent what I would consider to be a good sampling of the low-end graphics cards that are low-cost enough to be offered to entry-level PC users RATHER than integrated graphics.  Do AMD and NVIDIA really need to fear the performance of these new [size=1em]Intel processors?

I ran the configurations through 3DMark Vantage Entry and Performance tests while also adding in StarCraft II, Left 4 Dead 2, F1 2010 and Civilization 5 at 1680x1050 and modest image quality settings to get a good overall picture of modern gaming performance.   

The performance differences between the 3000 and 2000 series of Intel HD Graphics is pretty apparent here - going from 6 EUs (execution units) to 12 makes a nearly linear jump in performance.  Both the GT 430 from NVIDIA and the HD 5550 from AMD are much faster than even the Intel HD Graphics 3000 while the Radeon HD 5450 falls behind it.  

The results in our gaming testing are actually pretty impressive for Intel: going from the Core i5-655K to the Intel HD Graphics 3000 offers a 2-4x improvement in gaming and makes these modern titles actually very playable using the Core i7-2600K CPU.  The real drag here though is that the Intel HD Graphics 2000 option is only marginally better than the Core i5-655K making it less interesting for potential low-end gaming offerings.

Do AMD and NVIDIA have to be worried though?  Sort of.  Both the GT 430 and HD 5550 presented us with a much better gaming experience than even the 12 EU version of the new Intel HD Graphics but the HD 5450 (which represents the world of ~$30 graphics card pretty well) is definitely in a bind.  There aren't many reason I would recommend that someone spend money on a card with that performance level rather than use the integrated graphics solution on the Intel K-series parts.  

I still can't get over the fact that Intel is only going to offer Intel HD Graphics 3000 on the K-series processors - it seems completely against logical thinking to do so.  If the $184 Core i5-2400 offered the same graphics performance as the $317 Core i7-2600K, it would be an automatic choice for a low end or SFF machine that might get modest games played on it.  As it stands now, the cheapest option for that is the Core i5-2500K that is still a decent option at $216.  

yym

Intel Quick Video Sync Transcoding Performance

Besides the processor graphics solution that Intel has implemented on Sandy Bridge, the second major innovation is likely seen in the "Quick Sync Video" feature.  And while it is a completely absurd name that doesn't in any way tell us what the technology DOES, it is pretty impressive.

We already knew that the previous / current generation of Clarkdale/Lynnfield/etc parts are capable of accelerated decode of [size=1em]HD video content - that is what allows for smooth Blu-ray playback t hat gets offloaded from the primary processing cores.  Sandy Bridge goes a step further and implements more processing and even encoding support on the die.  

And this is not simply a GPGPU-based solution by mapping encode/decode functionality on GPU cores like AMD and NVIDIA are currently doing.  Instead, Intel decided to get the most efficient use out of transistors as they could and implemented this feature in as fixed function blocks.  While this makes the process and software the supports it very fast, it also is VERY specific - don't expect these functional blocks to be used for any other purpose down the road.

Here we have one of the three different media applications that Intel had available to us for testing during the last month, Media Espresso.  Used to convert multimedia between formats, such as to your iPhone or for your [size=1em]Xbox 360, this is the very definition of a consumer transcoding application.  The result you see above of 0:52 seconds is how long it took the Core i5-2400 processor to convert a 450 MB video file from my Canon 7D DSLR to an iPad-ready format.  

By going into the options the user can enable (actually this should be enabled by default when the software detects the Intel SNB processors) hardware encoding and decoding support.  

The result?  That same file only took 0:10 seconds to convert - a 5.2x [size=1em]speed up!  That is the power of fixed function hardware when you have very specific and pre-determined goals in mind and explains why your iPhone can still record H.264 video on the fly but many our laptops cannot.  

Not only do we see a big improvement in performance, the primary CPU cores are nearly completely offloaded during the transcode with hardware acceleration enabled.

CPU Usage without hardware acceleration


CPU usage with hardware acceleration

It has to be said though - this is the same functionality that AMD and NVIDIA offer for their GPUs through this exact application, among others.  However, it took both sides years to get the software development to the point it is at today while Intel has three major software applications on its door, day one.  That says a lot about the power of the Intel brand and what processor integration can do when software developers realize that basically all desktop/laptops will have these CPUs by the end of 2011.  

yym

Synthetic CPU and Memory Tests

SiSoft Sandra 2011

---

The latest version of SiSoft Sandra offers up a lot of new features [size=1em]including GPU performance, OpenCL, etc.  

The Core i7-2600K is a great performer in these synthetic tests easily becoming one of the fastest processors on the test bench, getting beat out really only by the 6-core Gulftown-based Core i7-980X.  The Core i5-2500K matches up well against the Core i7-875K though at a lower price.  

yym

Render TestsCineBench 10

---

This rendering benchmark based off of the Cinema 4D engine is a terrific indicator for multi-threaded processing.

Here we can see some of the architectural improvements in Sandy Bridge at work - the single threaded performance of all four SNB processors beat out any previous result.  

POV-Ray 3.7 Beta

---

POV-Ray has long been the poster child for multi-threaded processing and rendering.

In POV-Ray, the only CPU faster than the Core i7-2600K is the 6-core Gulftown; pretty impressive.  

Blender

---

Blender is a free open source 3D engine that is a popular choice amongst college students and small developers.

In Blender Render all four of the SNB parts are not only faster in the single threaded results but also in the dual-thread run!

yym

Media Encoding TestsLAME 3.97a MT MP3 Encoder

---

This version of the LAME MP3 encoder is multi-threaded and takes advantage of two threads.  

Windows Media Encoder x64

---

WME is a great [size=1em]video encoding application that supports WMV9 [size=1em]HD codecs and more.

VirtualDub

---

VirtualDub is a great application for just about any kind of [size=1em]video conversion but our testing we are using the DivX codec to shrink a collection of [size=1em]videos.

Handbrake

---

Known mainly for its DVD re-encoding prowess, our test uses the Handbrake [size=1em]command line interface.

7-Zip Compression

---

I decided to replace the WinRAR test with a more repeatable and threaded application, 7-Zip.

Again all of the Sandy Bridge options put up impressive numbers with the 2600K once again proving to be a powerful force, even up against the Core i7-980X.  

yym

Experimental TestsEuler 3D Fluid Dynamics

---

This fluid dynamics simulation is very CPU and memory intensive.  From the benchmark source website:

The benchmark testcase is the AGARD 445.6 aeroelastic test wing. The wing uses a NACA 65A004 airfoil section and has a panel aspect ratio of 1.65, a taper ratio of 0.66, and a 45 degree quarter-chord sweep angle. This AGARD wing was tested at the NASA Langley Research Center in the 16-foot Transonic Dynamics Tunnel and is a standard aeroelastic test case used for [size=1em]validation of unsteady, compressible CFD codes. Figure 1 shows the CFD predicted Mach contours for a freestream Mach number of 0.960.

The benchmark CFD grid contains 1.23 million tetrahedral elements and 223 thousand [size=1em]nodes. The benchmark executable advances the Mach 0.50 AGARD flow solution. Our benchmark score is reported as a CFD cycle frequency in Hertz.

Microsoft Image [size=1em]Composite Engine

---

This application takes any number of images and attempts to "stitch" them together to make a single panoramic image.

Hyper PI (Super PI)

---

From Wikipedia: Super PI is a [size=1em]computer program that calculates pi to a specified number of digits after the decimal point - up to a maximum of 32 million. It uses Gauss-Legendre algorithm and is a Windows port of the program used by Yasumasa Kanada in 1995 to compute Pi to 232 digits.

The results continue to point to the power of the SNB architecture with a single threaded application.  

yym

PCMark VantagePCMark Vantage

---

Futuremark's newest benchmark suite, PCMark Vantage, was [size=1em]released earlier this year we [size=1em]published an initial article on the new software that looked at some CPU performance as well as providing overviews for all the individual testing suites it uses and what kind of applications they emulate.  The new Vantage [size=1em]software takes a much more real-world user-scenario approach to testing that previous PCMark software and as such deserves more time our benchmark analysis.

If you haven't yet done so, I would HIGHLY recommend you head over to my previous article that has a lot of detail on what these PCMark Vantage tests actually do.  That will give you a better understanding of the results to aid in your potential purchasing decision.

PCMark Vantage shows the performance of the Sandy Bridge processors in a slightly different light with more modest results.  Again though, the only dominant competition is the Core i7-980X.

yym

Gaming Tests
3DMark Vantage

---

A reliable and popular benchmark, 3DMark Vantage can provide a good insight into overall gaming performance of a system.

Valve Source Particle Simulation

---

Valve [size=1em]released this particle simulation test a while back for benchmarking [size=1em]platforms and CPUs.

Valve Source Map [size=1em]Compilation

---

More of a developer test than gamer test, this benchmark is indicative of how long it takes a system to [size=1em]compile a map.

More positive results for the new SNB architecture as it takes a performance lead in 3DMark Vantage and the aging Valve Source tests over everything but the 980X.

yym

Power Consumption and Performance per Watt

Testing power consumption has become just as important and relevant in recent years as judging performance of these processors.  

Well if that isn't the picture of efficiency, what is?  The four new Sandy Bridge processors, [size=1em]including the Core i7-2600K are using much less power under a peak load than their competing options like the Core i7-875K Lynnfield processor or even the Core i7-980X Gulftown.  In fact, even as a group, the four SNB options are using about as much power as the dual-core Core i5-655K!

The incredible power consumption levels of the Sandy Bridge processors definitely give the new family a leg up when it comes to performance per watt.  The Core i7-2600K is easily the most efficient high-performance CPU we have ever tested.

yym

Overclocking on Sandy BridgeOverclocking the 2nd Gen Intel Core Processor family is quite a bit different than even the Lynnfield processors released in 2009.  The changes that were implemented with the next-generation Turbo Boost technology are to blame/thank for these changes as we are no longer able to simply push and push against a thermal wall by adding more voltage and better cooling.  Because the new CPUs are able to monitor its current thermal state much more accurately (necessary for that new Turbo tech) Intel has implemented safety precautions that prevent the previously used overclocking methods, or at least makes them much more difficult to implement and utilize.

For some of you, this will be a disappointment - the days of the LN2 wars could very well be behind us.  (Hopefully more innovative overclockers than I will figure something out though.)  But in my opinion, overclocking has gotten easier and less stressful - if you have a K-series CPU that is.  Increasing the frequency of your processor via the base clock (which is 100 MHz on these) is severely limited with changes of only about 109 MHz being possible in my testing, at ANY multiplier.  That is a drastic change from how we were able to push the Lynnfield/Bloomfield processors in the past.

The primary way to overclock the new SNB processors in my testing has been to adjust the Turbo multipliers to staggeringly high rates.  Without adjusting the voltages in any way, using the ASUS P8P67 Deluxe motherboard, I was able to set the CPU to a 45x maximum Turbo multiplier that brought the CPU's frequency to 4.5 GHz.  Even better, because the C-stepping and other power management features can be left on while doing this type of overclocking, the CPU ran at the same 1600 MHz at idle and only ran at faster speeds when applications and tests were being run.  

According to what I am seeing and discussions with a few motherboard vendors, there do seem to be more limits on the overclocking potential of the new SNB CPUs in general - you will likely find a frequency where you simply can't climb past with any amount of cooling or voltage increases.  And that limit will likely be able to be reached on modest air cooling and modest (if any) voltage increases.  This is what I mean by overclocking being "less stressful" - there seems to be much less of the process:

• Set a speed
• Reboot, see if it crashes
• Adjust
  

While we can't be 100% sure this will always be the case, it would appear that users can feel confident they are getting the most out of the CPU with much less work than they had to do previously.  In other words, SNB might close the gap between what you can do and what the overclocking elite can do.  

That could change of course, and we'd be disappointed in companies like ASUS and [size=1em]MSI didn't continue to push the limits of these processors and find new ways to enable those LN2-type folks to really push things further once again.  

Once we return from CES we plan on spending a lot more time with our sample processors (and few more we ordered) and a handful of motherboard to see what else we can find!  

yym

Price / Performance Comparisons and ConclusionsProcessor Performance

After a few weeks of testing I think it is safe to say I was impressed with the performance of the 2nd Generation Intel Core Processor family and the Sandy Bridge architecture that powers it.  Even though we didn't get any new world records or a super high-performance Extreme Edition part (yet), the Core i7-2600K and its quad cores with HyperThreading were able to beat out all the previous quad-core options and came closer than I expected to rivaling the Gulftown beast that is the 6-core Core i7-980X.  Its direct price competitor is the Core i7-875K and in every case the i7-2600K is faster, more flexible solution.

The Core i5-2500K and i5-2400 were also impressive performers though the lack of HyperThreading support obviously hinders them somewhat in those applications that are heavily multi-threaded such as media encoders and rendering engines.  

The Core i3-2100 was obviously last in the pack with its two cores with HyperThreading support and fixed 3.1 GHz clock speed.  With such a low price though its main competition comes from the Core 2 era still and while the Core 2 Q8400 is rivaling it some performance aspects, the performance advantages that come with the latest Intel HD Graphics 2000 and the Quick [size=1em]Video Sync make it the better choice.  

Graphics Performance

The new Intel HD Graphics is without a doubt the fastest integrated graphics Intel has ever put on a consumer platform.  While the 2000 variant was only marginally faster than the processor graphics found on the Clarkdale CPUs, the 3000 variant was about twice as fast and really does make a noticeable different in creating a playable [size=1em]gaming experience in modern [size=1em]PC games.  I was able to run what I consider to be modern titles (StarCraft II, Left 4 Dead 2, F1 2010, Civilization V) on "medium" settings at 1680x1050 at acceptable frame rates.  The problem?  The Intel HD Graphics 3000 is only available currently on the K-series of CPUs that is actually aimed at overclocking enthusiasts - not the group most likely to use integrated graphics to begin with.  

When Sandy Bridge was first being discussed it was considered cool to say that it would mean the end of the low-end discrete graphics market.  Based on my testing, I don't think that is the case as even the $50-60 GeForce GT 430 and [size=1em]Radeon HD 5550 were able to offer a much better gaming experience than the 3000 variant of Intel's HD Graphics.  The ~$30 Radeon HD 5450 does look like a victim of hardware consolidation but I would expect both [size=1em]NVIDIA and AMD to simply drop the prices on some of these other, faster discrete cards to stay competitive and to keep discrete graphics on everyone's mind.

Media Features

Intel has definitely been paying attention to the market and has really made the Sandy Bridge design with multimedia at the forefront.  Besides the new processor graphics implementations mentioned above, all the new processors offer support for Intel InTru 3D stereoscopic output (on H67 boards at least), Clear Video pre- and post-processing for [size=1em]videos, wireless display (on notebooks) and the oddly named, but very impressive, Quick Sync Video technology.  

By moving the media encoding and [size=1em]decoding to a fixed function design rather than a more flexible programmable design similar to what Intel used before and what AMD and NVIDIA are currently doing, Intel increased the performance and efficiency of their product at the expense of extra transistors on the die and future-proofing.  My initial time with Quick Sync Video enabled applications looks very positive but I am curious if anything else will happen with the mediPro-Acessing technology in the future or if all we will ever get is this initial launch push and promotion.  
Pricing and Availability
All of the quad-core variants of the Sandy Bridge processors we looked at today should be available in the next week or so with the dual-core versions coming maybe a month later.  Intel's street pricing looks like this:

• Core i7-2600K - $317
• Core i5 2500K - $216
• Core i5-2400 - $184
• Core i3-2100 - $117
  

All things considered, I think these prices are very compelling and it's going to hard to keep the Core i7-2600K out of multiple locations on our Hardware Leaderboard for long.

Price/Performance Metrics

Now that you know where the two new processors fit in terms of cost, who do they compare in that all important cost-to-performance metric?

Because of those low prices, all four of the Sandy Bridge offerings we tested proved to be very competitive in the price/performance metrics with the Core i5-2400 and Core i3-2100 trading high scores on 4 of the 5 results listed in the table above.  

Closing Thoughts
Intel's Sandy Bridge architecture is finally here and I was impressed at nearly every turn.  The Core i7-2600K should quickly become the mid-range processor of choice for gamers and enthusiasts alike with a combination of performance and value we haven't seen in a long time.  Even the lower end Core i3-2100 and Core i5-2400 impressed on the performance front and are actually starting out lower than any Lynnfield processors on the market making them an easy selection for a budget build.  The inclusion of the Quick Sync Video is a great feature for consumers and should finally push fast transcoding to the entire market - something the GPU guys have been striving for years now.  If only Intel could figure out this whole Intel HD Graphics 3000/2000 segmentation thing, they might have had one of the best and most complete processor launches I can remember.  Even as it stands now though, the 2nd Generation Intel Core Processor family is again pushing Intel forward as the dominant microprocessor brand.

ravage4

啥时候又冒了个B65出来？

frankincense

2600在取得干翻975直追980X的强悍性能的前提下功耗只有双核心Clackdale的水平，性能功耗比又一次大跃进了

naze

坐等 上方xx翻译anandtech的文章然后打上"原创"

boris_lee

I still can't get over the fact that Intel isonly going to offer Intel HD Graphics 3000 on the K-series processors - it seems completely against logical thinking to do so.

xiangshui

2600K出来会是天价吗？

player52

intel i7 2600k的集成显卡性能还行，可以干翻hd 5450，但和hd5550有差距

似乎在转码上，intel的集成显卡有比较大的优势，不过总体上看，还是无法代替独立显卡。

最关键的一点，在于只有k系列集成了3000，而舍得买k系列cpu的，谁还用集成卡？

另外，值得一提的是，在所有测试中，Phenom 2 x4 9系列，与core i5的性能差距，并没有想像中大