SB unfair in comparison reviews

[Chinoman]

Because Sandy Bridge is a new processor architecture. If there's anything I've learned about processors over the years is that you cannot compare two processor architectures clock for clock due to the different ways they operate.

Besides, it's already been demonstrated that the 2500K overclocks very well. Its overhead for overclocking is much higher than that of the i5-750.

 

[Makaveli]

Hah, luck of the draw indeed. I got a bum Opteron 165 back when everyone was raving about them. Stock 1.8Ghz, most people were getting at LEAST 2.4-2.6ghz with them. I bought the exact same board as a buddy (DFI Lanparty NF4-SLI), and couldn't get it over 2ghz for ANYTHING. Buddy was all like 'you don't know what you're doing', so I let him try, and he couldn't make it work either. So he dropped it in his mobo, replacing the exact same chip @ 2.6ghz, and it wouldn't boot windows or even show the splash screen, he ended up getting 2050mhz or so out of it with unwisely high voltage. I later replaced it with an Opteron 185, and hit 3ghz with the same mobo/ram/psu/gpu, go figure

Overclocking is never a guarantee, although some things are more consistent than others. I'd say for example that pretty much any PhII X4 BE will hit 3.6ghz with no trouble, and 3.4ghz for sure with stock voltage.

You had one shitty Opteron 165 there. I never met an opteron I couldn't push to 2.6 even single core ones.

 

[nyker96]

I think they compared 2600k vs i7 8xx at same speed it's about 15-20% faster, sometimes just 10%. so I'd guess 15% 2500k vs i7 7xx would be reasonable as well. But keep in mind you can do maybe 4,4-4,8 with 2500k vs 4 or so for i5 7xx. In effect for overclockers the difference between these two chips could be like 25-30% taking into account max overclocking potential for each.

 

[Castiel]

I'm looking to go with a 2500K over my 760 because it's not very stable over 4.2ghz whereas the 2500K can do 4.8 and consume less power

 

[Arkaign]

You had one shitty Opteron 165 there. I never met an opteron I couldn't push to 2.6 even single core ones.

Hah, you aren't kidding. The other worst OC'ing chips I ever had were a K5-90 that wouldn't do 100, and a Celeron 300A that wouldn't do 450. The Opty 165 takes the cake though, pretty much all of those things would do 2.4 to 2.6 easy, I helped several friends build them back in the day. I loved them due to the 1MB per core cache, which was really good back in the day. The 185 was a home run though

 

[coffeejunkee]

I've looked at some more benchmark results and I kinda changed my mind. There does seem to be a quite definitive clock-for-clock increase compared to Lynnfield. The i5 2300 at 2.8-3.1 turbo beats the i5 750 (2.66-3.2) every time, often by a large margin. I'd say that's more than fast enough for the intended buyer, no overclocking needed.

With the 4 extra turbo multipliers on P67 it'll probably come close to an i5 750 at 4GHz, only much much lower power draw. On H67 it can use the igp, making it very interesting as it's basically a 40-50 euro gpu combined with a very fast and energy efficient 120 euro quadcore.

Prices on i5 2500K have come down a bit already, just can't complain about that chip at 200. Even i7 2600K at 285 is a sweet deal. So yeah, at the real ultra-bottom budget AMD is still the choice. But anything a little higher and Sandy Bridge offers good value even without overclocking. Maybe it's just time to say goodbye to the budget chip overclocking days.