Sandy Bridge's effect on Gaming

Will the new Sandy Bridge platform significantly enhance laptop gaming? I'm asking this because the 6870 is coming out quite soon and I don't know whether I should buy a laptop with a 6870 or if I should wait for Sandy Bridge. Is Sandy Bridge mainly aimed at mainstream systems or will it impact computers/laptops on all different platforms?

What I have mainly been hearing is that Sandy Bridge will reduce power consumption.

 

Unless games change very drastically very soon, the performance gain will be minimal in gaming. The vast majority of games are still limited by GPU performance.

In othe words, I'd be more excited, from a gaming standpoint, over AMD 6870s than the new Intel CPUs.

 

+1 to Forge's response.
Better GPUs are generally what to look forward to in terms of games. CPUs help with things like physics and AI calculations, so games heavy in that (GTA4 and Supreme Commander come to mind) will see more of a performance bump than say a typical FPS or racing game.

However you're right about power consumption. Core 2 Duos were still a bit ahead of the Core i series in terms of heat given off, but Intel's latest 32nm die shrink helped that and Sandy Bridge's new architecture will likely aid that even further.

 

Um, considering that sandy bridge has been shown to have as much as twice the performance of arrandale's integrated graphics, I would say it could make an impact on gaming.

The Sandy Bridge Preview - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

The Sandy Bridge Preview - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

 

Maybe for casual gamers, but for those that like a little more power, a discrete card wipes the floor against any low end or integrated GPU, especially at higher resolution and detail.

 

So? Discrete cards will always perform better, that's a given. The OP simply asked

and I simply answered his question. However what forge said

is simply not accurate. While discrete graphics will always bring higher performance, integrated graphics are closing the gap, and for budget conscious people or those who casually play games, integrated graphics are becoming more and more adequate enough.

 

He was referring to the effect of the CPU on gaming.

 

My mistake.

 

Actually RPG's (single player) and Wow both are examples of games that are very CPU dependent. Given SB will have a 20% performance boost in this area making the 2720 the same speed as the 9xx series now and the 2920 @ 2.5ghz, you could say an entire genre of games will benefit from the faster cores. We focus on GPU ability around here but some of the lifetime of a machine is just how fast the CPU is as well.

 

Roger, any idea how the Sandy Bridge integrated graphics will compare to its contemporaries? I play old games (5+ years old) with the Intel MHD 4500 and it still can't even do them that well.

 

2X better than current HD Graphics, so 4x greater than GMA 4500. And what problems do you have? I had an EEE 901 with the GMA 950 and that could run Sim City 4 well...

 

Will these new processors always have integrated graphics or will they allow discrete cards as well. For example, a laptop with Core i7-2720QM and a radeon 6870m. If this is not the case, meaning the i7 2720QM has its own integrated card, then would a Sandy Bridge i7 variant be able to perform (based on speculation) on par with a high-end discrete card such as a 5870m or 6870m?

Enlighten me

 

What I'm saying is that even really old games can bring the MHD 4500 to its knees. BF1942 Desert Combat can, and BF1942 came out in 2002... The Intel MHD 4500 gets blown away by the radeon 9800 pro, of 2003 vintage. Intel's integrated graphics flat out suck for gaming.

 

No they don't. I can play BF2/2142 on medium settings and they play great. I can play BF1942 on high settings and it's perfectly smooth as well. Older games than those play very good as well.

 

Sandy Bridge will have pci-e 3.0 ports, so will expresscards will have double the bandwidth. People wanting to connect external desktop video cards are waiting for SB. See DIY ViDock.

 

sb will reduce power consumption, the most significant effect of which is an increase in clock speeds for core i mobile quads.

intels demo also showed sb's integrated graphics module running mass effect 2 in 720p with all settings on high. thatll give a good boost to the low/medium end market especailly if your not willing to pay extra for a discrete card.
but for pure gaming performance just wait for the 6xxx mobile gpus from ati and nvidia new card lineup

 

The new processors will always have the integrated graphics (although they may or may not be usable), because it's built into the entire chip. The question at that point will be, as it is now with Arrandale (which also has an integrated GPU, even if it's only on the same CPU unit, instead of built into the same die), how the manufacturer builds in the connections to the LCD. They can choose to use only the integrated graphics, or to bypass the integrated graphics and use only an external dedicated card, or allow the option for switching between the integrated GPU and a dedicated external card.

Not at all. Current tests show that it will probably be as good as low to medium level discrete cards (See Anandtech's review here, although note that that is a desktop part he's testing), but it still won't match high end cards such as a 5870 or 6870.

 

There are reports that it's on the level of current entry level dedicated graphics cards, such as the GeForce 310M.

 

You won't see a Mobility HD6000 in a laptop before Sandy Bridge comes out anyway.

Also as a heads-up the top end mobile part may not use the HD6870 model number.

 

That should not be. The MHD 4500 is bad, but it is not that bad. There is something wrong with your setup. In any case, the desktop Sandy Bridge GPU is on par with the desktop HD 5450. This is still with early drivers and early hardware, so it should be quite good.

As to its influence on gaming, I think people are missing the point. The issue is not that it will compete with high end graphics cards, it's that it will give everyone who buys a new laptop a graphics card capable of gaming (low-end in 2011, mid-range in 2012). In the long term, this has the potential to be huge because it will increase the install base for PC games by about a factor of 2.

 

I don`t know where Jayayess gets his numbers from since he can conclude with 2x the performance since Intel havent released any specs on the new IGPs, but it will be significantly better because the new IGP will have 12 EUs in the mobile chips where they now can utilize the same turbo boost that the CPU is using.

 

Sandy Bridge have a big increase in clock frequence, but i think the biggest benefits is saving power now that it have IGP on the same chip. It is much more dynamic than the last generation, it can even go past the TDP. So it is both speed and power consumption

 

Read the AnandTech review -- it has not merely specs, but actual performance in games. The difference is slightly greater than the promised factor of 2.

 

From what I've heard though, i5s won't get much of an improvement, other than the new IGP and a slight increase in clock rates. Is this true? I wouldn't buy a quad-core right now with Sandy Bridge being so promising, but dual-core doesn't seem to benefit from Sandy Bridge all that much.

 

If the new IGP is supposed to be much much better than what we already have, I think I'll have to give it a try. I just wish there was a way to overclock the IGP, because they can go much, much faster than they are rated at.

At 1600x900 in some Desert Combat specific maps, it is very unplayable with maxed, and in some cases even reduced, settings, without even AA and AF. I agree in the basic game it breezes through without AA and AF most of the time, but if I was playing competitively, the frame rates would not be up where I would like them with maxed detail settings. 2004's Rome Total War is one game that absolutely kills the MHD 4500. Graphics settings can't get very high with 2004's Half-Life 2, though it is not as bad as RTW. It does great in Diablo II though....

 

You're right they don't. Clock for clock sandy is faster (much faster in some cases, barely in others) but they won't benefit from an increase in frequency. Maybe they'll be cheaper, leaked specifications showed no dual core lower than i5-2520M (running at 2,5ghz) so who knows, if this is the new low-end mobile CPU it's still vastly better than a i3-350M.

As for Sandy bringing nothing for gaming that's simply not true I guess. You already get a nice boost switching from a i7-720 to i7-920/940. It's not that much (depending on the game) but the difference is here. And in CPU intensive games like MMOs it should do wonders, I remember the early tests at anand showed mid-range sandy doing great on WoW for example and in fact better than a gulftown i7-980.

 

Sandy Bridge is faster clock-for-clock by an average of about 15% (sometimes a lot more, sometimes less) so the dual cores still get a substantial performance improvement, but the big deal about these things is supposed to be the lower power consumption. From the AnandTech review, you can see that the load power consumption decrease is quite substantial.

BTW, the reason the quad cores get a big clock speed jump and the dual cores do not is that the quad cores currently out there are 45nm while Sandy Bridge will be entirely 32nm. Since Arrandale is already 32nm, it doesn't get the benefits of a die shrink.

 

Review? They got their hands on one of the chips?
Link please?

 

Basicly you be smart to wait for the Sandy Bridge if you are looking for a laptop now. It is right around the corner.

 

It's already been linked in this thread...


twice. Once (well, twice, but the same post) on page 1, once on page 2.

 

Thanks. Im too lazy to look around you know

 

Well, just comparing the i5-520M and i5-2520M, the difference in clock rates is only 4-9%, which certainly won't keep me up at night. They're both rated 35W.

Basically, quad-core= wait for Sandy Bridge, dual-core= wait if you want, but it's not really worth it.

 

If it's 15% faster clock-for-clock, then with that clock increase it should be ~20% faster, shouldn't it? That seems like it would be worth it to some people.

 

hee hee, I am exploiting that as hard as I can

 

What?! Where did you get those numbers come from?!?!? Either do the math or explain yourself.

 

There isn't much math. As you said, 4-9% comes purely from clock speed. Another 15% comes from the fact that SB is more efficient clock for clock (so says the AnandTech review). If you multiply 1.15 by 1.04 you get 1.1856. If you multiply it by 1.09, you get 1.2535. Thus, a net increase of about 19% in the former case and about 25% in the latter.

 

Yeah, that's pretty much what I did. Though I do admit that it seems a bit generous.