Sandybridge processors and associated hardware

Luke_Uk_Baggy

In Runtime
Messages
320
Hi all,

The new Intel Sandybridge processors are now out. Just wandering wether anyone has had a chance to play with them yet, or has immersed themselves in enough research to give educated responses!

Building a new high ish end rig, and am looking at the new i5-2500k 3.3GHZ processor. (cost to me £180) the i7-2600k 3.4GHZ is £80 at £260. Wandering if its worth the extra 80 for the additional 4 threads.

Also, Motherboard wise, are the new Intel P67 chipsets the only way to go really? the H67 boards dont overclock the Sandybridges as well do they? (I only ask this because I know the sandybridge CPU runs off the same BUS / clock, so overclocking that way makes it very difficult to see much of a benefit)
Furthermore, I have heard a lot of good things about the Sandybridge, and just wandering if anyone can make assumptions as to how futureproof an i5-2500k with a P67 Pro motherboard would be? Guessing this setup would be better than say an AMD 6core setup.
The new rig should be able to handle Crysis sort of games on medium / high settings with decent / good avg fps rate. Not too fussed with media editting side of things, although dont want to discount light editing.


Im opting for the i5 over the i7 because from benches etc I think you get a fair bit more bang for your buck, and I want a fairly high end rig, without too much cost (I.e Intels i7 extremes etc)

Any pros and cons? Thoughts? etc.
 
By the way, at high resolutions, you can get great frame rates in Crysis/2 without buying a Sandy Bridge.

The P67 boards are geared more for the enthusiasts, and since they don't support the integrated GPU of the SB CPUs, you'd have to buy a seperate video card which doesn't sound like a problem for you.

H67 boards are more for people who want the integrated features, don't want to deal with overclocking, etc. The Sandy Bridge CPUs are only a marginal step up from the old i3/i5/i7's, but if you have the money for it, go for it.
 
By the way, at high resolutions, you can get great frame rates in Crysis/2 without buying a Sandy Bridge.

Agreed.. You could overclock the crap out of something with a watercooling setup, I'd just like something more future proof I suppose (I know you cant really future proof pc's much generally speaking though)

Yeah would be buying a seperate video card for gaming - would be far better performance from what I can gather. Hoping to see a bit more than a marginal boost from a normal i5, but regardless only got an overclocked dual core 2.9ghz cpu atm @ 3.3ghz, so ill see an improvement.

Anyone else with anything to add, dont like to go into it blind :)
 
Back
Top Bottom