Intel's Mobile Sandy Bridge Tested

Intel has been, in a word, dependable in terms of promising and delivering new mobile chips at the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) for the last couple of years. But every year has only brought a variation of the same theme: Processor (CPU) performance gets a huge lift, either from the addition of physical cores or some nifty-sounding Intel technology (i.e Hyper-Threading, Turbo Boost). Battery performance is barely impacted, for better or worse, while tradition dictates that integrated graphics performance is usually the butt of all jokes.

Not this year, though. Intel's new processors (codenamed "Sandy Bridge") are the next generation of Core processors, ushering in a new era where the focus isn't solely on the CPU. This time, the graphics component has been moved onto the same die as the CPU. By placing them that much closer to each other, not only do graphics and CPU performance hit unprecedented highs, but their margins of increase are very compelling. And battery efficiency remains dominant to other solutions out there, despite the major increase in horsepower. So how significant is CPU performance? Can all of your latest 3D gaming titles run on this new integrated graphics chipset? We put Intel's Sandy Bridge through its paces.

How We Tested
We received a 17-inch "whitebook" from Intel, an early test laptop devoid of any kind of branding. Internally, however, this laptop is production-ready, loaded with some of the newest, fastest mobile parts known to man. Our test laptop runs on a 2.3-GHz Intel Core i7-2820QM CPU, which is based on the new Sandy Bridge platform. It's a quad-core processor, joined by 4GB of DDR3 memory and the Intel HD Graphics 3000, otherwise known as the on-die integrated graphics chip. Remember, the previous-generation quad-core processors didn't have integrated graphics, so they were always paired with some discrete graphics chip from either Nvidia or ATI. Every Intel quad-core CPU-equipped laptop going forward will have the option of running on just integrated graphics. Rounding out the rest of the laptop is a 128GB Intel SSD, a Blu-ray drive, and an eight-cell 71WH hp compaq business notebook nx5000 battery.

For comparison purposes, we gathered a nice mix of laptops from this past year. In one corner, there's the Dell XPS 17, which runs on a 1.7-GHz Intel Core i7-740QM, 6GB of DDR3 memory, and an Nvidia GeForce GT 445M discrete graphics chip. We also grabbed a Samsung RF710-S02US, a 17-inch laptop equipped with a Core i7-720QM (1.6GHz), 4GB of DDR3 memory, and the Nvidia GeForce GT 330M. We needed a laptop that ran on integrated graphics only, in order to better gauge just how far the new Intel HD Graphics 3000 series has come in terms of 3D gaming performance. For this task, we grabbed the Dell Inspiron 17R-2950MRB, which runs on a 2.53-GHz dual-core Intel Core i5-460M, 4GB of DDR3 memory, and the Intel GMA HD (on the Core i5).

Huge Performance Gains
Just to give you an idea of how powerful Sandy Bridge is, no laptop, even the most powerful one, has ever scored over 10,000 points in PCMark Vantage—a benchmark test that stresses all the major components of a laptop (CPU, memory, graphics, etc). Our Sandy Bridge test unit scored 16,680 points, which is roughly 2.5 times better than the Dell XPS 17 (6,367) and Samsung RF710-S02US (6,000). Its score is so one-sided that several of us had to do a double-take, which is saying a lot.
Transcoding an AVI video file to MPEG-4 using an application like Handbrake is what you call a CPU-intensive test. While the Dell XPS 17 (2 minutes 51 seconds), Samsung RF710 (3:03), and Dell Inspiron 17R (2:52) finished near the 3-minute mark, the Sandy Bridge system finished the same test in 1 minute 47 seconds—a minimum 61-percent increase. New technology also impacts memory performance, as indicated by our Adobe Photoshop CS5 scripts—a memory-intensive test. The Sandy Bridge unit finished our scripts in 3 minutes 19 seconds, while its competitors finished closer to 5 minutes—a minimum 42 percent increase in memory performance, even though the 4GB DDR3 memory capacity is consistent with the other systems in this group. Cinebench R11.5 is a terrific multithreaded benchmark, utilizing all four cores over the course of the test. The highest score on a laptop until now had been the Dell XPS 17's 3.2; the Sandy Bridge unit shattered this record with a score of 5.71—a 78-percent increase.

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Graphics Milestone
Graphics performance has always been Intel's Achilles' heel, as seasoned gamers tend to shop for discrete GPUs (from either Nvidia or ATI) to go with their laptops. With Sandy Bridge, the on-die graphics can easily replace an entry-level to midrange discrete GPU, making graphics one less thing to shop for in a laptop. So how well did the new integrated graphics do, now that it's sitting on the same die as the processor? On our 3DMark06 tests, its 5,731 score is comparable to a midrange discrete graphics chip, like the ATI Mobility Radeon 5470 or the Nvidia GeForce 320M (think Apple MacBook Air 13-inch). It scored about 2.5 times better than the Dell Inspiron 17R (2,023), which is based on the previous-generation integrated graphics—the Intel GMA HD (Core i5). Against the Dell XPS 17 (11,345) and Samsung RF710-S02US (8,004), however, Sandy Bridge's integrated graphics still has a long way to go.
At the medium setting (1,024-by-768 resolution), Sandy Bridge scored respectably in two of the most 3D-intensive games in the world—Crysis (21.2 frames per second) and Lost Planet 2 (22.3 fps). Over 20 fps means that these games are playable, but only at these settings. Cranking up the eye candy and resolution (to 1,600 by 900) almost grinded game play to halt. By comparison, the Dell Inspiron 17R couldn't even run these two games at their lowest settings. We also tried Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. 2, a jet-fighter combat game with flight-sim elements, which Sandy Bridge handled quite well: The planes, environment, and most of the visuals looked pretty good. The only thing it couldn't take advantage of is a DirectX 11 feature called Terrain Tessellation (Sandy Bridge doesn't support DirectX 11). StarCraft II and World of Warcraft, popular strategy games with moderate levels of 3D intensity, delivered smooth game play at medium settings.

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Does this mean hard-core gamers shouldn't shop for a discrete GPU and let Sandy Bridge do all the graphics dirty work? Of course not. If you want high frame rates and greater detail, or if you want to compete on a serious level, a discrete GPU is still the way to go. And Sandy Bridge wasn't compatible with all the games that we tried. For instance, Take-Two's Mafia II wouldn't launch at all. For novice and part-time gamers, Sandy Bridge's integrated graphics is a great platform to start on, and it's more battery efficient than running a discrete chipset.

Battery Performance
The good news is that despite cranking up CPU and GPU horsepower, Intel managed to keep thermals in check. In other words, battery life didn't suffer. If this was last year, a quad-core laptop would have had no choice but to pair itself with a battery-guzzling discrete GPU. Quad-core systems like the Dell XPS 17 (3:01) and Samsung RF710-S02US (3:07) barely made it past 3 hours in MobileMark 2007, and much of the blame can be directed at their frame rate–crushing Nvidia GPUs.
The Dell Inspiron 17R-2950MRB, running on just integrated graphics, squeezed 4 hours 9 minutes out of its 47WH battery (6-cell), setting the stage for Sandy Bridge. Our test system, equipped with a 71WH battery (almost a third bigger than that of the 17R), finished the MobileMark 2007 test in 6:24. This sounds about right, as battery performance is still dictated by how big the battery is. Yet, you come to the realization that a quad-core laptop just delivered over 6 hours of battery life. As compelling as the extra graphics power is, it's hard not to be impressed by this kind of toshiba PA3593U-1BAS battery life on such a big and powerful laptop.

Final Word
Keep in mind that this is the quad-core version of Sandy Bridge, meaning Intel likes to launch its meanest and most ferocious processors first. The dual-core versions (Core i3 and i5) aren't likely to see such dramatic gains, but they'll be impressive nonetheless, especially in the graphics area.
Those who will benefit most from Intel's new Sandy Bridge architecture are hard-core content creators, such as professions and hobbies pertaining to video and photography. These tasks will be that much quicker to edit and produce. For media consumption, like watching a Blu-Ray movie, taking in a Hulu or YouTube video, or landing on the most JavaScript-intense Web site, these performance gains won't affect you, as previous generation laptops were doing them with ease. The people that Sandy Bridge will affect the most are aspiring gamers who were intending to spend an extra $50 on a midrange discrete graphics chip, which they can now apply to something else.

Article comes from:http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2374911,00.asp