Why Sandy Bridge?

[Schadenfreude]

So I've been-a-lurkin' around and of course, the new hotness in CPU builds is Sandy Bridge; and I have to ask -

Why is everyone suggesting Sandy Bridge as the CPU for their builds? Isn't recommending Sandy Bridge at this point overkill for moderate-to-budget builds?

Of course, I know the majority of the answer is "because it's new" . . . but even for the "moderate/budget" gaming builds I'm seeing it being recommended; why is that? I was under the impression that if you're going for the most "bang for your buck", you'd get more of it from AMD CPUs than Intel, generally speaking. I mean, you can get a hexacore AMD cpu for cheaper than you can with the cheapest Sandy Bridge chipset, and I'm assuming AMD will lower it's prices (which are reasonable enough) to keep competitive (nevermind that you can get an AM3+ board for bulldozer)?

For gaming purposes, I know that the bottleneck's really in the GPU - a core i3-530 will do for most games, if I understand right. But for heavily threaded programs, like video encoding, rendering, etc. Aren't physical cores more important than CPU speed? Or is Sandy Bridge just that much better overall?

I'm rather new to reading up on technical specs, so please enlighten me, and of course I may be wrong, please enlighten a n00b! 😀

 

[Patmage]

The major reason is that the i5 2500k is at the same price point as the 6 core amd chips and in most if not all cases out performs them. So basically at the moment you are only spending about 50 more in the final build because of higher average prices on the 1155 motherboards. Nearly all of which come with the added perk of USB 3.0 and 6Gbps sata.

Also for the long term people, a sandy bridge will make an excellent mediabox chip down the road. I honestly can't wait to replace it in my main rig so i can upgrade my mythtv backend and have a hardware transcoder. Hopefully by then it's supported.

 

[LoneNinja]

I agree on budget builds it's pointless to recommend sandy, AMD has some great options too, but only for budget. Once you get into Phenom II X6 pricing, AMD is garbage for competition. The I5 2500K can beat the Phenom II X6 1100T in any single threaded task, by nearly 50% in some synthetics, and I would say easily by 30% in general. Then even tasks that will push all 6 cores on the Phenom, the 2500 K can still match or even beat it in most situations. Then take the fact the Phenom II X6 costs more, could probably get it on a cheaper board, but the chip itself costs more. Add in power consumption numbers where the I5 2500K is just flat our impressive compared to almost all other processors on the market. Oh, and then overclocking, both processors start 3.3Ghz plus whatever their respected turbo modes are. The Phenom II will clock to 3.8(bad sample)-4.2(good sample), all the while I5 2500 seems to do 4.4 with ease, and some are reaching close to 5.0Ghz.

I've been planning on building a Thuban set up for some time, absolutely won't happen now without a major drop in prices. I'll consider it when the 1090T/1100T or any other BE chip is priced under $180, and thats only if I can still also save a good amount on the board too.

And don't go thinking I'm an Intel fanboi, I've currently got 4 AMD quads and 0 Intel processors. Sure could change depending on how BD does later this year.

 

[Blain]

So I've been-a-lurkin' around and of course, the new hotness in CPU builds is Sandy Bridge; and I have to ask -

Why is everyone suggesting Sandy Bridge as the CPU for their builds? Isn't recommending Sandy Bridge at this point overkill for moderate-to-budget builds?

please enlighten a n00b! 😀

If someone did avocate anything other than Sandy Bridge, they'd be recommending a build based on a dying platform.

Think about how that would play out. 😵
:'( They'd be ostracized from the community.

 

[IgoByte]

Seems like a no-brainer unless you want an ultra low-budget machine. The new i5 2500K, which is the multiplier unlocked version of the cpu, sells for $300 with a good motherboard. It's kinda hard to beat that for a new-generation platform that has great overclocking potential, even with just air cooling.

 

[mfenn]

I agree on budget builds it's pointless to recommend sandy, AMD has some great options too, but only for budget. Once you get into Phenom II X6 pricing, AMD is garbage for competition. The I5 2500K can beat the Phenom II X6 1100T in any single threaded task, by nearly 50% in some synthetics, and I would say easily by 30% in general. Then even tasks that will push all 6 cores on the Phenom, the 2500 K can still match or even beat it in most situations. Then take the fact the Phenom II X6 costs more, could probably get it on a cheaper board, but the chip itself costs more. Add in power consumption numbers where the I5 2500K is just flat our impressive compared to almost all other processors on the market. Oh, and then overclocking, both processors start 3.3Ghz plus whatever their respected turbo modes are. The Phenom II will clock to 3.8(bad sample)-4.2(good sample), all the while I5 2500 seems to do 4.4 with ease, and some are reaching close to 5.0Ghz.

I've been planning on building a Thuban set up for some time, absolutely won't happen now without a major drop in prices. I'll consider it when the 1090T/1100T or any other BE chip is priced under $180, and thats only if I can still also save a good amount on the board too.

And don't go thinking I'm an Intel fanboi, I've currently got 4 AMD quads and 0 Intel processors. Sure could change depending on how BD does later this year.

:thumbsup::thumbsup:

Sandy Bridge is simply the best bang for the buck for anything other than the true budget builds. The fact that AMD gives you 6 cores for $X doesn't really matter when Intel's $X quad is faster.

Oh, and WRT to gaming, lots of new games will be pretty severely bottlenecked by a dual.

 

[Davidh373]

Sandy Bridge is simply the best bang for the buck for anything other than the true budget builds. The fact that AMD gives you 6 cores for $X doesn't really matter when Intel's $X quad is faster.

Oh, and WRT to gaming, lots of new games will be pretty severely bottlenecked by a dual.

yup!