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Intel Announces 'Sandy Bridge' Core Processors

I for one am deeply surprised that this IGP is faster than the current card. But honestly ... how fast is the current card? It seems like that the whole "its 2011 thing" would mean there are or will be dedicated cards out there faster than what is the one in the MB/Air.

I mean.. didn't the 300 serious turn a year old last October? Or am I getting mixed up with some other GPU.
 
No USB3 support from Intel, and all the quad cores are 45W parts. Unless Apple redesign the 15/17" MacBook Pros, it looks like we're going to be stuck with dual core systems again. (the current design uses 35W chips)

I really hope that we either get Light Peak (seems like we would have heard something about it by now though…) or that Apple uses a separate USB controller to get USB3 support.

Considering that Steve said they don't plan on supporting USB3 at the end of October, it looks like we might be stuck with USB2. It was bad enough with last year's upgrade not supporting USB3.

Looks like the 13" MBP will have 2.1/2.3GHz low voltage options. (I think the 13" is limited to 25W TDP chips) At least they should finally be moving away from Core2.


The boost in performance and efficiency seems great, but it looks like the next MBP refresh is probably going to disappoint a lot of people. (myself included)
 
Yebubbleman said:
REVIEWS, not PREVIEWS. I won't believe the performance difference until I read the review of it IN AN ACTUAL SHIPPING MACINTOSH.
Click to expand...

That's a review of final Sandy Bridge performance. :rolleyes:

How it performs in Mac OS X or not is irrelevant as the OS X drivers can fluctuate at any given time.
 
So... because the IGP is not in an actual Macintosh ... the rating of the IGP sucks? Sounds flawed. If anything, it would be Apple/Intel's falt for cruddy support on the driver (or whatever is need for a processor die IGP) and reflect nothing of the IGP's true performance.

I believe it is faster than the 320M. But really, the 320M is pretty old now I think as of Jan 2 2011.
 
The only thing holding these back is OpenCL support, which may or may not happen depending on if Intel can come up with a way to support either a CPU/GPU hybrid driver or if their new AVX instructions can speed up perf enough to make the GPU-based OpenCL unnecessary.

The GPU perf is enough, though just barely. It beat the 320M in low detail/quality settings, and lost barely in medium settings, HOWEVER those were with a quad core CPU backing it up. If the performance degrades enough with a dual core CPU, then the Intel 3000 graphics may come out slower than the 320M. We wont know until February and the DC SNB chips start to show up.

That said, we're definitely going to get an iMac upgrade - the new QC desktop S-series CPUs support 65W TDP - the current lower power QCs in the iMac are 75W or so. This will hopefully allow the lower end iMacs (22-23") to get real Core i-whatever QC CPUs instead of still running C2Ds. Now for pricing reasons the lower end iMacs could still get dual core chips, but even the DC SNB chips are 35W TDP rated so they will be put in there, and those same chips will likely end up in the Mac Mini as well.

The only thing we'll have to wait a while for are the Macbook Air-compatible CPUs. (by compatible I mean in terms of voltage, heat, etc)

Finally, the end of the Core 2-series of chips!
 
"Intel" and "graphics" have never belonged in the same sentence, and I don't expect that to change anytime soon. :D Oh well, that's what NVIDIA is for (I hope you're listening, Apple.)
 
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The 2014 MacBooks are gonna be awesome when they get these chips :)
 
andrewfee said:
The boost in performance and efficiency seems great, but it looks like the next MBP refresh is probably going to disappoint a lot of people. (myself included)
Click to expand...

What makes you sense dissapointment? I'm holding off on buying a MBP 13 in hopes of a solid update in performance.
 
Terminal.app said:
...yes? Current CPUs do and Sandy Bridge is no exception.

Personally I'll be upgrading to the i7-2600K here in a month or so, can't wait. :D 5 GHz on air anyone?
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http://www.engadget.com/photos/intel-core-2011-processor-details/

No, the Intel SB chipsets do not support USB 3.0. This doesn't mean you can't use USB 3.0 with a SB processor, it just means computer manufacturers will need to use a third party controller. Will Apple do so? I don't know. One would hope so.
 
Yebubbleman said:
Not in actual shipping (Apple) computers they aren't.
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Do you care to explain why it matters if the benchmarks are performed on "(Apple) computers"?

Benchmarks show the performance of particular CPUs and GPUs __relative__ to other CPUs and GPUS. Hence, why most people aren't clamoring for Linux or Windows XP or Windows Vista or OS X 10.5 or OS X 10.6 benchmarks; it's superfluous...

Unless you think Apple is going to under-clock the CPU/GPU then your concerns aren't warranted.
 
Sandy Bridge would be a welcome addition to an Apple notebook. Remember that Apple can package a non-integrated chip on the motherboard as well as the Sandy Bridge CPU+IGP.

OpenCL runs on heterogenous resources. It could run on the CPU and GPU or exclusively one. It's not really "support" they need to add, simply the drivers

OpenCL + DX11 on Sandy Bridge

Just because this CPU isn't on a Mac running OS X doesn't mean it's unquantifiable.

Macs run on the x86 platform, so it's not unreasonable to extrapolate information based on the reviews. It's not like this will for some reason be a terrible Hindenburg when OS X is ran on it. That's just outlandish.

Also, for the IGP haters out there: just because _you_ need a super-powered discrete GDDR4 fizz-bobbing whizz-banger does not mean that everyone and their mother does. The Intel IGPs do not suck. They do a job. Let me see you write one?

The AVX extensions themselves would be well worth it, if Lion gets support. I mean come on, doubled data path, increased operand limit and better SSE execution.

Also, the improved branch-predictors and higher CPU caches are impressive.

What may be more exciting though, is the Intel tock cycle with the 22nm Ivy Bridge. Entry-level quad core, &c.

As for USB3, it's not in H67/P67/P61 chipsets (though SATA3 is) but I really wouldn't worry about that right now.

In the end of the day, a notebook computer with an IGP+Discrete combination is enough for most, and can still run games decently. As of yet, there's still no way to exact that much power from a notebook. However, it seems that the new architecture and subsystem including the OOE cycle and more, should be revolutionary enough.

And finally: the CPU itself is a low priority bottleneck at the moment. SSDs can make your machine feel brand new, even with an older Core CPU.

Relax! This processor isn't the end of the world.
 
Yebubbleman said:
REVIEWS, not PREVIEWS. I won't believe the performance difference until I read the review of it IN AN ACTUAL SHIPPING MACINTOSH.
Click to expand...

The performance won't be any different

Terminal.app said:
...yes? Current CPUs do and Sandy Bridge is no exception.

Personally I'll be upgrading to the i7-2600K here in a month or so, can't wait. :D 5 GHz on air anyone?
Click to expand...

But they require a discrete chip for USB 3. The chipset does not support USB 3 natively
 
kresh said:
What MacBooks in 2014? By 2014 Apple will be selling 300 Million iOS devices per year and will have dropped the Mac. :(
Click to expand...

The Mac devices and iOS devices aren't mutually exclusive; they build-up and support one another. Macs are more popular then every, so I don't see any evidence that Apple is going to abandon the Mac. If anything, Apple has been increasing the Mac product line with the introduction of the MacBook Airs and 13" MacBook Pro.
 
Fatdog said:
The Mac devices and iOS devices aren't mutually exclusive; they build-up and support one another. Macs are more popular then every, so I don't see any evidence that Apple is going to abandon the Mac. If anything, Apple has been increasing the Mac product line with the introduction of the MacBook Airs and 13" MacBook Pro.
Click to expand...

That could very well be true but Steve revealed Apple's thinking with the PC's/Macs are trucks and that people only buy them because there was nothing else to use comment.

I see in the future a very pared down offering of Macs, something like 2 desktops and 1 notebook, as Apple builds more light weight and nimble cars (iOS) and considerably less of the lumbering and over powered trucks (OSX). We shall see. Three years is practically an eternity in technology nowadays.
 
Fatdog said:
The Mac devices and iOS devices aren't mutually exclusive; they build-up and support one another. Macs are more popular then every, so I don't see any evidence that Apple is going to abandon the Mac. If anything, Apple has been increasing the Mac product line with the introduction of the MacBook Airs and 13" MacBook Pro.
Click to expand...

Umm, I'm pretty sure it was mostly just an attempt of humour.
 
Flaki said:
HD3000 is only leading by small margrin due to its CPU, which is better than MBP 13's c2d, which is bottlenecking 320m at lower res and settings.

So in essence, the 320m is faster.
Click to expand...

The overall performance is what matters. You cannot use 320M with Sandy Bridge or other iX CPUs so we don't know how fast 320M would be with better CPU.
 
Shifty88 said:
What makes you sense dissapointment? I'm holding off on buying a MBP 13 in hopes of a solid update in performance.
Click to expand...
The 13" is going to be a big upgrade, but only because the 2010 model was already out of date when it was released.

Without native support for USB3, I would be very surprised if Apple add in support, especially after the comments that Steve made about it a couple of months ago.

There are still no quad cores suitable for the 15/17" MacBook Pros unless Apple redesign them to support 45W chips which seems unlikely.


While nothing is set in stone until Apple actually announces the new machines, you can usually predict what they're going to do with this information from Intel.

If they ship without USB3 or quad cores—which seems likely based on this information—that will put them even further behind the rest of the PC market than they already are. It's getting harder and harder to justify buying Apple hardware these days. They just don't seem to care about performance any more.
 
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