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Intel Sandy Bridge CPU In-Depth Look at Overclocking, Memory Timings and More

CPU by leeghoofd @ 2011-02-01

First introduced at the CES, Intel’s new Sandy Bridge CPU architecture is here to flood the mainstream market with over 25 CPUs. Don't panic, most are foreseen for the mobile market and only 9 new models will be introduced for the desktop segment. Coinciding with this new release is also a new socket design. 1155 pins will be the new standard for Intel’s mainstream lineup. Yes you guessed it, Sandy bridge is here to replace socket 1156. Slowly but steadily Clarkdale and Lynnfield will become End Of Life and will be phased out. At the Sandy Bridge Tech conference the representatives of Intel said that the current S1366 i7 lineup (Bloomfield and Gulftown) will remain their high end platform. Time to explore Sandy Bridge...

We got more, 1600Mhz incoming

1600Mhz, it's your turn ! Show us what you got please

SuperPi 1M and Wprime 32 benefit very little from tighter timings, but every hundreds of a second counts for a bencher. For a daily user or abuser this test is pretty pointless...

Now things start to take off, quick comparison with the 1333Mhz ram results. SuperPi 32M is over 10 secs faster. The architecture clearly benefits form more ram bandwidth. How much it requires will become clear in the following pages. Even Wprime1024 is gaining a few secs. Even though this benchmark is not really timing, nor ram related.

Write performance is close to the previous 1333Mhz tests, though Copy and Read are getting mind blowingly fast. Almost 2500Mb/s gain, by just using 1600Mhz rams. Maybe a golden tip already for future buyers : stay away from 1333Mhz rams, it slightly bottlenecks your brand new CPU.

Cinebench seems less ram bandwidth dependant as some of the previous tests. The final scores are a tiny bit better than the lower speed divider, but only very little when the timings are tightened.

Once we are at 1600Mhz ram speed, the tight timings only give a little boost in Cinebench or PCMark05.

Same story for 3dmark 01 and 06, tiny gains with lowering the timings. Score increase is far less than with the 1333Mhz tests. Indicating the bandwidth is pretty optimal for this particular tests, being it at loose or tight timings.

Far Cry 2 getting a few FPS more with the 1600mhz ram kit over the 1333Mhz results. Mafia II is being run at almost max speed. The GTX 480 is pumping out some ridicilous FPS. I reran the tests as with the GTX 285, I was struggling to breach 85FPS... with the extra GPU power differences are easier to spot.

Comment from Teemto @ 2011/02/02

52x102 here with flares at 2176-6/9/6/24
SuperPi and Pifast stable.

Comment from leeghoofd @ 2011/02/02

So use these clocks too then for 3D Pascal

Comment from Teemto @ 2011/02/02

Yes my master.

Comment from thorgal @ 2011/02/03

So which settings did you use for 5Ghz

It's those "just a few settings" that interest me

I always want to learn from a master

Comment from Stefan Mileschin @ 2011/02/04

Quote:

Originally Posted by Teemto

Yes my master.

Is the system stable in 3DMark 2005 CPU test too at those frequencies?

Comment from Teemto @ 2011/02/04

Nope. That's realy the max I could go.
Haven't played around with the other voltages though.
Maybe Albrecht can shed some light if this could improve stability/OC'ability?

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