Intel's Sandy Bridge Tested

[zedman3d]

New sockets aren't uncommon for new architectures, heck AMD even had 3 sockets for K8 alone.

LGA775 had a massive lifespan compared to these sockets.

 

[Poizen22]

ya the integrated gpu on a high end chip might not be a problem but usualy a high end chip is going into a high end system. sure a server chip wouldnt be bad that way you can atleast navigate your os with out a gpu and so on, but in a system that will either be used for things like cad, gaming and so on this is really useless imo and more of an excuse to suck a lil more cash out of us imo. usualy a high end chip will go into a system with atleast a midrange gpu, that will most certainly outperform the crapptacular gpu on the cpu. also quick question what ever happened to larabe lol???

 

[Apokalipse]

New sockets aren't uncommon for new architectures, heck AMD even had 3 sockets for K8 alone. As for the integrated gpu it's merely a sign of things to come as AMD will be going that route in the near future as well.

The use of a GPU is understandable for a new socket. Though what about the high-end chips without one (the chips that people with 1366 would have wanted)? is there something about Sandy Bridge that makes it not work with 1366?

In AMD's case, there was socket 754, 939 and AM2. 754 was getting them out the door, 939 was for dual channel, AM2 was for DDR2. Then they just upgraded AM2 while retaining compatibility - which didn't work out that well for AM2+ due to motherboard manufacturers refusing to write new AM2 BIOS's.

Like it or not this is the only option for high end hardware until 2011 or later, you either have to get Sandy bridge and live with the integrated gpu or go with a much slower AM3 based system.

If it isn't faster than an i7, then Thuban will still be competitive against it.
I was just looking around, and the 3Dmark06 CPU scores of equally clocked i7's is quite close with the same number of cores/threads (maybe slightly less).
Memory bandwidth is much higher, but I don't think that will help CPU performance in anything more than synthetic benchmarks and a few select programs (triple channel has already proven to hardly provide any advantage over dual channel on 1366) - I would guess the increase is mainly to feed the GPU as well as the CPU.
So I'm guessing CPU performance increases are pretty much down to AVX and more cores/threads.

Also, Bulldozer chips will be made in AM3, so the socket still has more potential in it.