Forget Arrandale, SB Huron River Platform on the Way

Seals the deal.

 

Excellent! My brother's new college laptop will be hot!

 

I hope it won't be hot temp wise

 

LOL me too. His current Sony Vaio SR with a P8400 and ATI 3470 gets extremely hot on the bottom, plus has 2.5 hour battery life and for some reason is slower than my former Acer 3810T with an SU9400 and my current Acer 1830T with the Core i5-430UM. And I have upgraded his SR to 4GB DDR2 from 2GB, put in a 500GB HDD from one of my Acer's, and upgraded from Vista to 7. But anyway, his new laptop will have:

13.3" LED Display
Intel Core i5-2520M
500GB HDD
Windows 7 Home Premium
4GB DDR3 Ram
Intel Wifi
ATI 6000 Series (he loves Flight Sim X) with Intel HD2 (?) Switchable Graphics

 

There is news and they are delayed.

 

USB 3 support is great news.

 

Quad-Core Sandy Bridge Consume As Much as Dual-Core Calpella

 

Seems too good to be true but we'll see when it's out. Sandy Bridge + ATI mobile 6000 = winning combination !

 

seems real to true... just like all the extraordinary claims of high battery life which the i series were released especially in CULV versions. The battery life was worse than the core 2 duo CULVS...

 

They probably exaggerate a bit, but I would not be surprised if it was pretty close. Nehalem (and Westmere) were really power hungry and thus so were Clarksfield and Arrandale. Sandy Bridge is a very different animal -- note that the top desktop model is only 95W and there exists a desktop quad core (at 2.8 GHz) running at 65W and a 2.3 GHz version at 45W. The desktop dual cores are rated at 35W which is a TDP I have not seen for decent desktop processors for a while.

A bit of trivia: Intel has two major development teams, one in Israel and one in Oregon. Nehalem was made by the Oregon team who previously created the NetBurst architecture and will work on Haswell. Sandy Bridge was made by the Israeli team who also developed the Pentium M and the Core 2 architectures. Based on its heritage, I expect Sandy Bridge to be power efficient.

 

Do you guys think it's possible to get a sandy bridge notebook with g3 ssd and usb 3.0 by march '11? Also will these include sata III?

 

That is what i am aiming for too. Hopefully on one of Asus Gaming series
Its gonna be one epic machine

 

In your hands by then? No. Besides, I don't think the next chipset will have SATA/600 nor will the G3 support that.

 

It's possible, but it will be tight. Sandy Bridge looks like it will launch at CES again (i.e. early January) so there should be a decent selection by March, but the G3 SSDs are rumored to only come out in February. If the demand is as high as for previous Intel SSDs, you will have to be pretty lucky to grab one early on.

The desktop Sandy Bridge motherboard previewed by AnandTech had a pair of 6Gbps SATA ports, but it is not clear whether this will come standard with Huron River or whether the G3s will be optimized for it.

 

If it doesn't have Sata 600 that will suck. Would April be more reasonable?

 

Sata 3 is standard into the Cougar River chipsets (on the Huron River platform), so if the notebook has a SB cpu, it will come with Sata 3.

 

Great! SB, Sata 3, USB 3.0, and G3 SSD (even if they don't use Sata III).

I just have to decide if I want dual or quad core. Probably dual for sweet battery life. Should be nice!

 

I have been comparing Sandy Bridge CPUs now and a lot of them seems interesting, but what is the best to buy?
We have:

Core i7 2620M 2.7GHz - 3.4GHz, 4MB L3 cache, 2 cores and 4 threads, TDP 35W

Core i7 2720QM 2.2GHz - 3.3GHz, 6MB L3 cache, 4 cores and 8 threads, TDP 45 W.

I think its very important to have a cool system, and 2620M have 10W less. The 2620M have 500 MHz higher base speed, and 100 MHz higher topspeed. The 2720 have 2MB more L3 cache, which both the IGP and CPU use, so that must count for something? And is Quadcore ofc.

So which CPU is the best? Is Quadcore really needed?

 

What exactly will you be doing with your computer that has you thinking you need a quad core?

 

A lot depends on the pricing, but the 2720QM doesn't look that good of an idea to me. It has more cache, yes, but less cache per core (1.5MB rather than 2MB). It also runs hotter and is marginally slower at tasks with a low number of threads. If you want to deal with the higher TDP, the 2820QM is a much better idea: it matches the 2620M in both the low threaded clock speeds and the cache per core. Of course, knowing Intel, they're going to charge an arm and a leg for it...

 

How does the 2720qm run slower than a 2620m ? With turbo boost it should be not far behind in frequencies. See current quad cores that reach 2,8ghz or so on 2 cores. 2820qm is better, but not "much", as you noticed it's gonna cost an arm, and the difference between the two should be even lower than between i7-720 and i7-820, which is already not much. The 2720qm looks Great capital G, unless more battery life is a real concern to you, otherwise unlike in current gen where there are solid arguments in favor of dual cores it sounds to me as a no brainer. Mainly because it addresses all downsides from current i7s ; power consumption (lower because it now includes integrated gpu, which can be disabled), heat, surprisingly low frequencies... Few people already choose i7-620m over i7-720qm, and even fewer should choose i7-2620m over i7-2720qm

 

I really dont know, hence why i asked "Is Quadcore really needed?". Maybe worth investing in if applications and games will be utilizing the 4 cores in the future?

 

Yes the 2820QM did seem interesting indeed, because of same TDP as 2720QM and 100MHz higher clock frequency. But if these SB models follow the same pricing as this generation of Quadcores, it is going to be cost too much for a little boost. If you upgrade from I7 740QM to 840QM it will cost you around $600. I expect the upgrade from 2720 to 2820 to be the same. 2720 will probably be the base for SB quadcore laptops when they are released.

I think it all depends on if quadcore will be used more in the future and it is a little shame to not go for quadcores if dual cores cost the same. Also i dont know if Xotic or Gentech will be having the gaming laptops from Asus with Dual core though

 

Yes i agree. And what is better from Clarksfield which i have now, is that you now get power boost in all 4 cores with Sandy Bridge. Not to mention that IGP also use the same powerboost.

 

But a little question here:
Do frequency count temperature wise?
The 2720QM Quad will idle at 2.2 GHz while the 2620 will idle at 2.7 Ghz.

 

It's marginally (100 MHz) slower when you only need 1 or 2 threads.

Oh, I agree -- unlike Clarksfield vs. Arrandale (where unless somebody is absolutely certain they need a quad-core, Arrandale is the better option), there is no question that the 2720qm will be the superior CPU. However, I don't think it's a no-brainer for the same reason that the 2820QM is not a no-brainer: Intel knows this and will price accordingly.

 

Clarksfield as well as Arrandale can all boost every core on the chip. The only new thing with Sandy Bridge is that the GPU can also turbo boost.

CPUs don't idle at the specified frequency -- even as far back as the Pentium III, they had the ability to downclock to save power. With the Pentium M and then Core2 architectures, this was refined to the point where it simply doesn't matter anymore.

 

You cannot get full speed with ALL 4 cores with Clarksfield or Arrandale. You can only get the highest frequency with 1 core active, while 2 cores active get less, and 4 cores you only get a small boost in speed.
Example: I7 920XM. Base speed 2.0 GHz and top speed 3.20 GHz. 4 cores active with turbo boost, 2.26 GHz. 2 cores active, 3.06 GHz. 1 core active, 3.20 GHz.
From what i understand you get much more speed on all 4 cores with Turbo Boost on a Sandy Bridge. It can even upclock itself more than the TDP because it is very dynamic and use some sort of "pool" where the CPU see the bigger picture.

Should have known this, since i remember i went angry to a pc forum and complained about my P8400 had waaaay less than 2.2 GHz when idling... Thanks for pointing out
But what i meant was if the 2720QM at 2.2 GHz would be colder than a 2620 on 2.7 GHz. If Hertz means heat?

 

No, the current generation and next generation CPUs both can Turbo Boost with all 4 cores. The speeds won't be much different compared to the current generation as the top speed is still for a single core. More cores also means more heat, not just clock speed.

 

Higher frequencies produce higher amounts of heat.

 

Still havent seen any information on how the Sandy Bridge will be on 4 cores, 2 cores etc. Dont think Intel have released any information about that either, so we might just wait to see how different it will be compared to this generation
Anyhow, that the SB can go past the TDP is a bonus for me although its only for a half minute or something

 

And both higher frequencies and more cores produce heat makes the choice between 2 cores or 4 cores harder... hmmmmmmm

 

There are some optimizations but they haven't changed the architecture, so it will behave similarly.

 

Instead of worrying about the heat, decide what your going to be using your laptop for and pick a CPU to match according to those needs.

There will be plenty of laptops that will handle the high end CPU's heat.

 

I think I'll stick with the top end dual-core for better battery life and less heat.

 

Not much difference in performance compared to the lower end dual cores, except a whole lot more expensive...

 

Do you think SB dual-core will be that much different than our current core i's? I've heard about huge battery life increases while some speed boost, do you think it really will last much longer on battery?

 

Claims by who? I'd wait for some reviews, of course Intel wants you to think that you'll get huge gains. Nobody here can do anything other than speculate, the only performance data that exists on SB has been gathered from desktop parts. Arrandale was supposed to bring huge battery life gains and came up short, so I'm not taking Intel's claims to the bank just yet.

 

You know ... despite the fact that SB brings a new architecture to the table, it's still a 'revision' of existing i series when it comes down to it.

But yeah, if you're in the market of buying a new laptop, then holding off until SB arrives would be preferable because there's no point buying last gen tech that will be replaced in few months time.

 

what do you mean by it's a revision? then current i series is a revision of pentium 1?

 

heat shouldnt be an issue, even for the quad cores rated at 45w, since i believe this tdp includes the IGP and other components (northbridge?) since it's all integrated with the cpu now, my current p8700 is rated at 45w in my 13 inch ultraportable, who knows what that number would be if it included the IGP and other components, and it still runs cool and quiet

please correct me if i'm wrong

 

Every architecture is based on the ones that came before it, but I don't think it's accurate to characterize Sandy Bridge as a revision of Nehalem or Westmere. The differences are quite substantial -- it's been called a synthesis of of the Pentium Pro (P6) and Pentium 4 lines. You can read a good article about it here.

 

i agree, the SB architecture is probably the most significant update since the core architecture was introduced, everything's integrated into the cpu now and an intel ceo mentioned that he hasnt been this excited about a product launch since core was launched (i believe it was core)

in fact, SB and Core were actually developed by intel's israel development team, while Core i, and i believe netburst, were developed by intel's american development team

 

Now it comes down to wait for Ivy Bridge or go forward with Sandy Bridge.

I guess for my next laptop it'd be nice to have SATA 3 and USB 3.0. With these new chips coming up wonder what the best performing bang for buck GPU would come along when these CPU's launch?

It seems odd that they would release Ivy Bridge so close to Sandy Bridge. I'm tempted to wait until Ivy bridge if my laptop will last that long.

 

Why is it odd? Sandy Bridge is coming in Q1 2011 while Ivy Bridge is coming in Q1 2012. This has been more or less their schedule for the past few years -- a new architecture, then a year later a die shrink, then another year later another new architecture.

 

From what I've read Sandy Bridge March 2011, Ivy Bridge as "second-half" 2011. So more or less six months apart, could even be sooner.

 

i believe they start mass production of ivy bridge in second half 2011 and release in Q1 2012

if it was reported to be released in second half 2011, it was probably a misinterpretation by the reporter

why would intel bother producing and releasing a chip that has a lifespan of 6 months

edit: found the quote in this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...3-forget-huron-river-22nm-ivy-bridge-way.html

the intel rep says that the chips are on schedule to ship in second half 2011, meaning that intel will ship the chips in second half 2011 to laptop makers, who will then start producing the laptops for release in Q1 2012 (and have until then to sell off their current stock)

 

More Sandy Bridge details leak

Should say 2620 M, not QM.

 

Thanks +1 for details. I can get through another six months or so with this laptop, but not another 18 months! So Sandy Bridge it is then.

 

Interesting how the lowest end 2520M has the highest GPU clock.