Intel rounded off 2011 with the Waimea Bay platform and the new performance noster Sandy Bridge-E that brings up to six cores and 15 MB L3 cache. The quad-core version would take a bit longer though, and it has now been revealed that it will come February 13th.
To our great surprise Sandy Bridge-E arrived without any quad-core models, but now a launch date has been set. Core i7-3820 should cost around the same as Core i7-2600K and cheaper than Core i7-2700K. Although the LGA2011 socket and is bundled motherboards are more expensive, and with four memories the platform as a whole will be more expensive than the cheaper version with LGA1155.
If you need quad-channel memory and 40 PCI Express 3.0 lanes to a lower price for using the next generation graphics cards in CrossFire/SLI the new Sandy Bridge-E is for you. It comes as a bit of a surprise that the new processor will be a monolithic quad-core processor, and not a cut-down version of Sandy Bridge-EP we first thought it would be.
| Processor | Sandy Bridge-E | Sandy Bridge-E(EP) | Sandy Bridge |
| Model | Core i7-3820 | Core i7-3960X | Core i7-2700K |
| Node | 32nm | 32nm | 32nm |
| Cores | 4 | 6(8) | 4 |
| HyperThreading | Ja | Ja | Ja |
| Memory channels |
4 | 4 | 2 |
| L3 cache | 10 MB | 15(20) MB | 8 MB |
| PCI Express 2.0 | 40 | 40 | – |
| PCI Express 3.0 | 40 | 40 | 16 |
| Integrated graphics |
– | – | HD 3000 |
| Transistors | 1 270 milj. | 2.27 milj. | 995 milj. |
| Size | 294 mm² | 435 mm² | 216 mm² |
Tom’s Hardware and Anandtech har redan fått upp sina recensioner på den nya processorn och resultaten ser faktiskt bättre ut än väntat på en punkt. Prestandan ligger inte oväntat strax över ordinarie Sandy Bridge tack vare de högre klockfrekvenserna, och trots sina låsta multipliers ska Core i7-3820 vara lätt att överklocka tack vare Intels implementering av BCLK-multiplikatorn.
Sandy Bridge-E; då i form av Core i7-3960X visade sig vara en av de mest strömhungriga processorerna på marknaden men samma sak gäller inte den mindre nykomlingen. Trots sina 130W TDP så har Core i7-3820 ungefär samma strömförbrukning som Core i7-2600K både i vila och vid belastning. Vad tycker ni, är Core i7-3820 värt den mycket dyrare plattformen, ska man köra Sandy Bridge eller rentutav vänta tre månader på Ivy Bridge?
Source: Fudzilla
