Sandy Bridge - Just how sandy are they?

Frugus

I ordered an XPS 17 (XPS 1701X) no later than Thursday and then I heard about how a newer model (XPS 1702X) was just around the corner. In fact, maybe even tomorrow.

One of the bigger changes is that it will use Sandy Bridge Processors which are claimed to be 17% faster clock for clock. At least that's what WiKi said, and of course, the internet has been known to lie. Whatever the case is I obviously don't know what I'm talking about.

My purchase was made with considerable instant savings and I'm not entirely sure they will apply once the new model is released. The question is, is it worth the wait? Is it worth the extra money? Etc...

At the very least I'll go to bed knowing a little more. Google has not provided much 'insight' if you know what I mean, but then again this looks like it's a very recent development and has only been (barely) available to the public, so I'm forced to ask around on forums.

noobert

In reality, I doubt most people would even notice the performance difference.

What kind of things are you using this laptop for? 17% may matter if you are doing a whole load of encoding/decoding, but for gaming/general use, I wouldn't worry about it.

electricitylikesme

Also doesn't Sandy Bridge have some DRM bullshit built right into the chipset?

TychoCelchuuu

They're fairly sandy. They are comprised largely of silicon (sand), in fact.

Spudge

Sandy Bridge is pretty f'n awesome

Trust me on this

Frugus

Spudge wrote: »

Sandy Bridge is pretty f'n awesome

Trust me on this

What would make it that awesome exactly?

noobert wrote:

In reality, I doubt most people would even notice the performance difference.

What kind of things are you using this laptop for? 17% may matter if you are doing a whole load of encoding/decoding, but for gaming/general use, I wouldn't worry about it.

I'll be gaming a lot, unless I happen to end up further in my programing class (going back to college thing).

Spudge

Frugus wrote: »

Spudge wrote: »

Sandy Bridge is pretty f'n awesome

Trust me on this

What would make it that awesome exactly?

Other than the fact that apparently a design flaw has stopped production, there's a lot of things that make SB a lot better than Nehalem. Better architecture, support for more cores and threads, stronger voting algorithms, etc. It's evolutionary more than revolutionary, but still the chip is pretty awesome

As far as SATA degradation, I've been testing some of these chips for [REDACTED] hours on [REDACTED] and haven't noticed any issues with SAS/SATA

amnesiasoft

It's the chipset, not the CPU itself causing these problems.

Monster Robert!

Lets put it this way. Do you notice any differences between a 2.1ghz Mac vs a 2.4ghz model that you paid $400 more for?


Get the one that saves you the most money. The extra "bump" in performance isn't worth the extra money.

SyphonBlue

Not so Sandy afterall.

Muriden

SyphonBlue wrote: »

Not so Sandy afterall.

Given the timeline of discovery, Intel didn’t delay getting around to actually letting its partners know about the problem. On the bright side that means Intel and its partners weren’t plotting against its end users to sweep this under the rug. On the down side, OEMs and motherboard manufacturers can’t be happy about this - they woke up to news of the recall at the same time you and I did.

That has to be a hell of a way to wake up. "Wait we shipped defects on our boards and we didn't even do anything?

November Fifth

I just canceled an order with Cyberpower. Kinda surprised since Intel has been sitting on Sandy Bridge for a while.

Oh well, at least I can bump up to a gtx 560 once the new boards are ready in March.

doczero

After reading up on the bug I think i would have bought one as is. How many people would really be affected if 3% of the 3GB sata ports failed within 3 years? (no laptops, very few desktop users.) The problem only cropped up in B stepping chipset silicon and only under high temperature, high voltage testing designed to simulate an aged transistor in an extreme environment. Of course that is if it is being represented factually. (most likely).

So they pulled it all off market. Durn it, just sell me the "bad" motherboard for 20 bucks of so I can get folding on a 2600!

Dark Shroud

I'm loving my new Core i7 2600k. If you already have an i7 the new Sandy Bridge CPUs aren't worth it. If you can wait until Ivy Bridge I would recommend that or at least until z68 chipset is out.

electricitylikesme

doczero wrote: »

After reading up on the bug I think i would have bought one as is. How many people would really be affected if 3% of the 3GB sata ports failed within 3 years? (no laptops, very few desktop users.) The problem only cropped up in B stepping chipset silicon and only under high temperature, high voltage testing designed to simulate an aged transistor in an extreme environment. Of course that is if it is being represented factually. (most likely).

So they pulled it all off market. Durn it, just sell me the "bad" motherboard for 20 bucks of so I can get folding on a 2600!

Businesses don't like buying hardware with a definite failure rate. 3% of system hard drives losing all performance is going to fuck with failure rates of a lot of RAID systems.

Frei

My system using sandy bridge only uses the 6gb ports so I am completely unaffected and extremely satisfied with the CPU. SHRUG.

noobert

Frugus wrote: »

noobert wrote:

In reality, I doubt most people would even notice the performance difference.

What kind of things are you using this laptop for? 17% may matter if you are doing a whole load of encoding/decoding, but for gaming/general use, I wouldn't worry about it.

I'll be gaming a lot, unless I happen to end up further in my programing class (going back to college thing).

I wouldn't worry about it then. The current chip will be more than enough for any college level programming, and I doubt it will be bottle-necking your graphics card when it comes to gaming.