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How is Sandy Bridge useful for gamers?

gazzab

gazzab

gazzab

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I'm a bit confused about Sandy Bridge. I'm upgrading to i7 in April and as soon as I heard about the release I pretty much wrote it off as I don't need a GPU built into my processor because I've already got a powerful one in the machine.

Looks like a lot of you are making the jump though, I know there are loads of threads on the CPU performance, but I was wondering what it is about the GPU on the chip that's useful for us? How can it help with performance when there's a huge dedicated GPU in the system already, and should I consider Sandy Bridge over an i7 950? (around £250 price point)
 
gazzab said:
I'm a bit confused about Sandy Bridge. I'm upgrading to i7 in April and as soon as I heard about the release I pretty much wrote it off as I don't need a GPU built into my processor because I've already got a powerful one in the machine.

Looks like a lot of you are making the jump though, I know there are loads of threads on the CPU performance, but I was wondering what it is about the GPU on the chip that's useful for us? How can it help with performance when there's a huge dedicated GPU in the system already, and should I consider Sandy Bridge over an i7 950? (around £250 price point)
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The GPU is meant for those with the H67 chipset where it blows away previous onboard chipset graphics. It does not make any difference to those who buy a dedicated graphics card primarily for gaming.

Anything except gaming would run well with the H67 chipset and onchip GPU. Of course the H67 chipset means no overclocking (currently) so you cannot have the best of both worlds at the moment.

EDIT: Oh and gaming is not bad with the on chip GPU its just not as good as a decent dedicated graphics card say GTX 460 and above.
 
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Not seen any GPU Benchies; how does the 2600k built in GPU compare with a dedicated card?

What card would it be similiar to?

ATI / NVIDIA
 
flopper said:
4ghz i7 vs a 5ghz 2500k
the main reason I made that shift as I game primarily
oh at 5760x1080
and BC2 never been so smooth
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I guess you are running at around 1.4v? If I did that I could hit 4.7ghz but I am sticking to 1.35v max

EDIT: I see you have posted elsewhere that you are running 1.436v for 5ghz, I can run 4.8ghz at 1.42 but I do not like the voltages and want to keep my temp at 70C, I see you are using watercooling so I suppose your temps are alright but is 1.436v advisable?
 
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So the GPU part of Sandybridge is basically useless for anyone with a decent GPU? Is the processor itself better than the original i7s (equivalent)?
 
gazzab said:
So the GPU part of Sandybridge is basically useless for anyone with a decent GPU? Is the processor itself better than the original i7s (equivalent)?
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Not entirely useless; The GPU on the Sandybridge is ridiculously fast at video encoding. It smashes everything and anything out there.

Which makes for an interesting processor if video encoding is your thing.

Depending how things pan out in the future with new chipsets I may be swapping my current motherboard with one that is able to overclock well and be able to use a dedicated card while also able to tap into the power of the on die GPU of the Sandy Bridge for super fast video encoding.

Edit: Reads the thread title again :o.. but yes useless for gamers :)
 
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hey gazzab - sandybridge doesn't make that much differrence (or any that you'll notice anyway!) for gaming. Just people getting sucked into the intel hype that they NEEED to upgrade they're CPU for like a 5% gain.

They'd honestly be better off upgrading graphics tbh - for gaming GPU is always king. For games like BFBC2 - more cpu cores help slightly as its properly multi-threaded (unlike the poorly coded games of today) but it still boils down to the graphics cards for the ultimate gain.

And no matter how much anyone insists - on board graphics are crap for games - full stop ;)
 
gazzab said:
I'm a bit confused about Sandy Bridge. I'm upgrading to i7 in April and as soon as I heard about the release I pretty much wrote it off as I don't need a GPU built into my processor because I've already got a powerful one in the machine.

Looks like a lot of you are making the jump though, I know there are loads of threads on the CPU performance, but I was wondering what it is about the GPU on the chip that's useful for us? How can it help with performance when there's a huge dedicated GPU in the system already, and should I consider Sandy Bridge over an i7 950? (around £250 price point)
Click to expand...
In all honesty, for gaming, the i5 2500k will serve you better than an i7 950, that's before you even think of overclocking.

I have a Radeon HD5870, and the jump from a Q9400 @ 3.6Ghz to an i5 2500k at 4.5Ghz currently has resulted in quite a few games reacting very, very well to the upgrade. While owners of current i series processors will not see enough of an upgrade to justify switching, people on any generation before that, or pretty much any AMD processor aside from the Hexacores will benefit greatly from SB, especially at the budget you're aiming for.

Edit, ignore the GPU in SB, if you have a dedicated GPU, or buy a P67 board, the GPU is disabled.
 
Stop It Rawr said:
I have a Radeon HD5870, and the jump from a Q9400 @ 3.6Ghz to an i5 2500k at 4.5Ghz currently has resulted in quite a few games reacting very, very well to the upgrade.
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This has been my experience also, upgrading from a Q6600 @ 3.5Ghz. Minimum and average frame rates have been given a substantial boost, resulting in a much smoother and enjoyable gaming experience. :)
 
I've gone from an e6750 at 3.4 to an i7 2600K at 4.5 and the difference is vast. I can now play Crysis with everything cranked and not have it as a slideshow. Still better to turn down one or two settings but between the i7 and my 5850 it's eminently playable.

FSX is slick like nothing else now as well. Really happy with my upgrade.
 
Doppleganger said:
This has been my experience also, upgrading from a Q6600 @ 3.5Ghz.
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After an [email protected] my move to a [email protected] was initially underwhelming. Ok, the Win7 install felt very snappy, but that's a fresh install for you. :-)

However once I'd got over the initial "was this worth £400?" I realised I was indeed getting a much smoother gaming experience. At 1680x1050, with a GTX260, gaming benchmarks were pretty stagnant. But with my 5870 in place, Arma II went from 36fps at Very High settings to 59/60, and there's a chance vsync was capping that; I forgot to check. The difference is very obvious and fluid though, where it isn't on your average benchmark.

Overall this isn't as revolutionary as the last major move I had, from x2 3800 to E6600 (which was a real revolution in architecture and speed) and I certainly wouldn't have bothered if I'd got an "old" i5/7, but this is turning into a very welcome upgrade... Mainly because it means my E8400 will be replacing my x2 3800 box as my quiet/underclocked daily use machine. So far that has been more exciting and revolutionary than the 2500k because the 3800 choked on my the massive Minecraft Empire which I have been building when I'm suppose to be working.

As ever, upgrading is different things to different people. Few upgrades are ever really necessary, it's just a case of whether we can personally justify the improvement. For most people buying an SSD would probably be a much more revolutionary use of their cash.

Andrew McP
 
zoomee said:
hey gazzab - sandybridge doesn't make that much differrence (or any that you'll notice anyway!) for gaming. Just people getting sucked into the intel hype that they NEEED to upgrade they're CPU for like a 5% gain.

And no matter how much anyone insists - on board graphics are crap for games - full stop ;)
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Stop It Rawr said:
In all honesty, for gaming, the i5 2500k will serve you better than an i7 950, that's before you even think of overclocking.

While owners of current i series processors will not see enough of an upgrade to justify switching, people on any generation before that, or pretty much any AMD processor aside from the Hexacores will benefit greatly from SB, especially at the budget you're aiming for.

Edit, ignore the GPU in SB, if you have a dedicated GPU, or buy a P67 board, the GPU is disabled.
Click to expand...

OK now I'm properly confused :D

I was gonna get an x58 board & i7 950, are you saying I should ignore SB and go for the previous gen i5? Does SB offer any substantial performance increase over i5 on the processor side of things?

Andrew_McP said:
As ever, upgrading is different things to different people. Few upgrades are ever really necessary, it's just a case of whether we can personally justify the improvement. For most people buying an SSD would probably be a much more revolutionary use of their cash.
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I think this upgrade's necessary... I'm running an E6400 with a GTX570 and it seems the bottleneck's destroying performance in certain games.

Like I said though I'm not looking to upgrade until April so I guess a lot could happen with the prices by then. I was just confused about how GPU on a chip would be of benefit to gamers
 
The 2500K/2600K are far from useless - they are i5/i7 processors that seem to blow pretty much everything else out of the water once overclocked.

Overclocking is a huge part of their appeal, as they are hitting 4.4-5GHz on air easily.

I'd say look at the cost between the two, and decide from there whether the extra performance is worth that extra cost (Although I cannot see the price difference being all that significant).
 
gazzab said:
I think this upgrade's necessary... I'm running an E6400 with a GTX570 and it seems the bottleneck's destroying performance in certain games.
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I recently went from E6600 GTX470 to QX9650 GTX 470 and felt my money spent on the GPU was for the most part wasted up to that point as the GTX was clearly getting nowhere near the support from the rest of the system to live to full potential.

I have now gone from QX9650 to i7 2600K and my minimum FPS has increased significantly yet again, I again think what a waste of money the 470 was until I had a CPU to let it breath free...

for example even with a QX9650 @ 3.6ghz Crysis was mostly CPU bottlenecked at 1920x1080 at least where minimum fps is concerned. Under Crysis bench I now get approx 30fps at 1920x1080 4xaa ultra high whereas previously I would get just about 30fps at 1368x720 no aa but ultra high. just from changing CPU? That must mean theres CPU bottleneck in there somewhere... dual to quad is a must if you ask me, and if you're going to do that - price/performance - Sandy Bridge all day long.
 
That GTX570 will turn into a completely (and very noticeably) different beast with a decent CPU behind it, I know from experiance, and comments about 5% gains are complete rubbish given you're currently running E6400. Its almost worth the CPU investment just to realize the rather sizable investment you've already made in the GPU...

MaxP779 said:
The gap is pretty small for games.
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Yeah between an i7 950 and i7 2600k, but a HUGE one from C2D E6400 and SandyBridge. But you're obviously not talking from experiance.
 
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