Posted January 23, 2011 by Raj Agrawal in Technology

Intel’s Next Generation Of Core Processors: With An Integrated GPU

Following the Moore’s law and keeping it consistant with time, Intel is ready to ship the next generation of processors on the Mobile, Desktop and Notebook platforms. Code named Sandy bridge, this processor is packed with fully integrated GPU(Graphic Processing Unit), LLC(last level cache), media controllers and processor cores onto one silicon chip.

Paul Otellini, the CEO at Intel holding a wafer of Sandy bridge chips

Sandy Bridge is not to be considered as an innovation in the x86 family, it’s rather an extension of the first generation of core processors “Nehalem“, includes a graphics core on the same silicon piece of the i3/5/7 CPUs. Sandy bridge is based on the 32nm manufacturing process and built to squeeze out more energy and performance improvements over the current range of Intel chipsets. Sandy Bridge is more about it’s architecture and the integration of GPU. With integrating the GPU onto the processor, it’s a significant improvement to Intel’s current line of processor architecture boosting performance and better energy consumption habits. Intel also plans to target the mainstream market first before catering the other market niches.

Image Credit: Hexus

MaximumPC provided a table of benchmarks comparing the application load time on Sandy Bridge’s variants with the AMD’s Phenom processor. (As tested on 64-bit Windows 7 Professional, 4GB of RAM DDR3/1333 (for the dual-core chips) or 6GB of DDR3/1333 (for the tri-channel chips), a Western Digital Raptor 150 10,000rpm hard drive, a GeForce GTX 285, and the same graphics driver for all of the test configurations):

	3.4GHz Core i7-2600K	2.66GHz Core i5-750	2.8GHz Core i7-860	2.93GHz Core i7-870	3.33GHz Core i7-975 Extreme Edition	3.33GHz Core i7-980X	3.2GHz Phenom II X6 1090T
Premiere Pro CS3 (sec)	453	615	581	539	504	453	749
Sony Vegas Pro 9.0c (sec)	3,007	4,899	3,863	3,531	3,244	2,675	5,010
HandBrake DVD to iPhone (sec)	1,298	1,702	1,360	1,247	1,170	941	1,580
MainConcept 1.6 (sec)	2,134	3,092	2,735	2,486	2,308	1,827	2,816
Cinebench 10 64-bit	23,259	14,455	17,516	19,197	20,147	27,479	17,892
Cinebench 11.5 64-bit	6.87	3.83	5.15	5.54	5.99	8.92	5.67
POV Ray 3.7	4,979	2,810	3,883	4,497	4,236	6,557	4,656.5
Photoshop CS3 (sec)	89	118	123	100	91	89	130
Adobe Lightroom 2.6 (sec)	394	603	469	422	418	419	426
ProShow Producer 4 (sec)	1,007	1,425	1,382	1,290	1,208	1,092	1,669
Bibble 5.02 (sec)	121	186	142	122	120	97.2	145
PCMark Vantage 64-bit Overall	11,250	8,504	8,903	9,120	9,260	10,470	7,481
Fritz Chess Benchmark (KiloNodes/s)	13,017	8,407	10,997	11,995	12,738	12,733	11,219
Valve Map Compilation (sec)	76	110	116	106	100	99	132
Everest Ultimate MEM Copy (MB/s)	16,994	15,445	15,372	14,693	17,712	13,086	11,043
Everest Ultimate MEM Latency (ns)	36	54.3	49.5	52.5	59.8	61.3	51.6
SiSoft Sandra RAM Bandwidth (GB/s)	16	17	17	17	23	20	13
3DMark Vantage CPU	53,599	44,594	46,064	48,816	51,321	62,893	44,587
Valve Particle test (fps)	180	111	148	159	174	259	120
Resident Evil 5 / low-res (fps)	132	110.3	115.9	126.6	130.7	134.1	100.3
World in Conflict / low-res (fps)	306	256	253	253	317	358	162
Dirt 2 / low-res (fps)	162	155	94	153.3	157	155.7	121
Far Cry 2 / low-res (fps)	165	146.53	150.2	153.3	158.2	158.6	99

Clearly, the benchmarks announce Intel Cores as winners.

Here is the catch. When the gaming side of Sandy Bridge is considered, Intel has cleverly setup the processor architecture to not abuse the over-clocking entsusiasts on a tight budget. Intel has split the Sandy Bridge variants into two categories, the K series and the non-K series. Processors that fall into the K series which are also relatively expensive, have the potential to be over-clocked to a 6GHz limit which is better than on non-k series and the cheaper have more cover-clocking limitations t.us rendering the full fledged over-clocking phenomenon on Intel’s platform a thing of the past.

Intel is yet to go full fledged with the sales of Sandy bridge powered computers. It’s fair to consider “Sandy Bridge” as the next obvious move by Intel in it’s chipset development timeline. Something not to be considered very impressive. It offers outstanding performance and better energy efficiency with lesser number of hardware dependencies as compared to it’s previous generation. A quirky move by Intel to its second generation of core processors will definitely have a unpleasant effect on the Intel worshipping-over-clocker community.