You describe the p67 as 'better' for overclocking. From what i have read, in line with your experience, the h67 offers *no* overclocking options for the cpu.

Can you confirm it was impossible to underclock at all??? Also, how about voltages; how low can the 2500K operate and remain stable? and how does this affect power consumption??

Here's a short test of undervolting.

Fantastic review so far, Lawrence. Looking forward to the next installments.

The baseline i3 chips used to be 73w (TDP) I believe, so if they've gone down to 65w, that's great news.

Question: What is the max display resolution of that uATX H67 board graphics ? (I didn't see any res specs).

I appreciate the break down ... I'm running a Q6600 2.4Ghz system, I will upgrade when 5Ghz systems come out. I don't move until a doubling of tech has been made available.

The maximum resolution is 2560x1600 according to this slide.

Arguably the 2600K is there now, especially with applications that can take advantage of 8 threads of processing, like video encoding, 3D rendering:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/53?vs=287

If you mean doubling, I think sandy bridge at 4ghz is probably going to be at least double the speed of a Q6600. GHZ doesn't matter so much now and I highly doubt sandy bridge will ever hit 5ghz even in turbo unless overclocked. Maybe Ivy Bridge will, but the jury is out.
Either way I'd consider a doubling of speed to be based on actual performance, similar to how core 2 was much faster than pentium 4, while losing mhz.

Driver support for acceleration of H264 streams in Flash can be checked by downloading the DXVA checker tool.

If the driver exposes DXVA acceleration for H264 in Flash, the following should be visible (example from my ATI Radeon HD3650 AGP):
ModeH264_VLD_NoFGT_Flash: DXVA2, NV12, 720x480 / 1280x720 / 1920x1080

This could explain the discrepancy in cpu utilisation when playing back H264 in flash on Sandy Bridge and on the older platform.

Page 4, the 2500K idles at an impressively low 3.4W. Add a graphics card and the on die GPU gets power gated so should drop power consumption even more but instead it goes up to 4.0W. Why is that?

I am quite sure though this is only if using DisplayPort (and maybe VGA) since the TMDS links for DVI/HDMI are single link only.

It really disappoints me that you can’t over-clock at all with the H67 boards. It seems idiotic although they are addressing that with another chipset that is a hybrid of the P67 & H67 but it won’t be released for months.



I looked at the specs for an Asus board and it was 1920x1200 max for DVI/HDMI and 2560x1600 for DP: http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=C ... templete=2

I thought only the i3 chipsets were locked? Oh, I see, you mean OC'ing the graphics chipsets.





Thanks for that. So, one should be able to run dual monitors on the integrated graphics, one with 1920x1200 (DVI) and another 1260x1600 (DP) and watch Blu-Ray? If so, I think I just found my next board. Since I don't game, the H67 should be enough without a discrete video card for my HTPC.

When doing math calculations I'm afraid the GHz does matter. Like I said, I'll buy into 5Hz when it gets here. Having 8cores might do the trick, but hyper threading is not a full chip so I think that it would only add 50% extra maybe, I don't know. I prefer to run stock since I have these machines for a while.

You might want to take a look at some more reviews...while more GHz is handy, much of the processing efficiency gained is from improving the instruction set, memory handling, etc.
The Tech Report
Anandtech

Looks like the stock Sandy Bridge can be 100% faster in math operations than the Q6600 to me.

Plus effortless overclocking to 4.4GHz or more and it will easily be more than twice as good as a Q6600.

Nope. Everything but a K can only be overclocked 4 bumps (400mhz) above its turbo frequency. AFAICT this 'overclocking' is just use and extension of the turbo mode, and the default clock remains. i3's, AFAIK, don't have turbo, so don't have this. xxxxK's have unlocked multipliers.
BUT only p67 can use this. AFAIK, h67 can't do the 'turbo' overclocking either, but i'm not sure. I believe the h67 *can* do oc-ing of the graphics, memory and voltages.

This, combined with the fact that only the K cpus have the faster GPU, is a huge mess up IMO. I am due an upgrade after selling my Wolfdale setup. Before Sandy Bridge I was planning on an i3. This would allow me to run a semi passive system, with cpu graphics, which could also be OCed into the 4.4ghz range when desired.

I was considering spending more on a K, which i could justify in that it would allow me to play games without an extra card, just about acceptably, perhaps with a gpu OC. But without the ability to UC on h67, it would offer me no cooling advantage, or cost saving, over an i3+ real graphics card. fail.

Another failure, still no 24p support (an important fact missing in the review here). So its no good as an HTPC.
Another, where the graphics isn't used (read: p67), there will be no support for the fast encoding. So piss off those who will use a dedicated graphics card too.
Dissapointing not to see many higher OCs yet too.

I appreciate the fact that SPCR attempted to simulate a dual-core version, but failed to highlight the significant fact that no dual core will have the better onboard graphics. Which leaves a CPU which uses about the same power, and has about the same graphics power.

This really leaves us with a lamed solution until the z68 comes out. I guess it really depends on how much the motherboards cost, I have a suspicion intel may milk the z68 a little. It is also a shame to see nothing with the good gpu/ unlocked for dual core. The H61 looked a little interesting for a moment as a cheap option until discovering in has no sata 6gb/s, the main reason preventing me from jumping on clarkdale in the first place.

Now, this leaves me considering not which sandy bridge, but whether it is worth spending extra money on and potentially sticking with a dead platform (1156) or getting another wolfdale/Yorkfield to tide me over to z68 or ivy bridge!

That sounds really nice ... all I'm saying is that for me, to pay for more tech these days, I want a doubling of performance / features. I want to feel it, for it to be life changing. When I went from a single 1Ghz system to a Quad 2.4Ghz system, it cut my work from 3 hours down to 15 minutes! This was mostly from the extra cores and their Ghz improvements. The efficiency of everything else was a small factor for the work I do.

To go from 15 minutes to to 7.5 is going to cost some serious coin. I don't think this latest offering from Intel is the answer for me. I want to see some 5Ghz chips or more cores..

The H67 supports over-clocking the graphics but the memory ratios limit it to a max of 1,333MHz DDR3.
But I was raising the question about over-clocking the CPU which seems to have been completely removed from H67 even with the K series chips. That seems almost perverse and considering how power efficient the CPU is it’s reasonable to stick one in a smaller size case with a mATX (or smaller) board which rarely use the Pxx boards which don’t support graphics anyway.




I see what you are saying now, you want double the performance but on a budget; you’ll just have to wait for another 1 to 3 years then I guess.
SB gives double the performance of your Q6600 according to Anandtech and at stock speeds at least for the i7.

Right, for everything non-work related my Q6600 setup with SSD is nearly instant... For work, I can wait a few minutes here and there 'cause it saves too much coin for the moment. Now if I could get my work down from 15 mintues to say 5 mintues or less, well, I would consider the $ then.

Probably have to wait for 1.5 to 2 years at stock speeds unless you want to go high end which sounds unlikely.

Hi guys, the article has been updated with HD 2000 test results on the last page. Cheers.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1139-page7.html

thanks!

interesting update.

I also noticed that all references you make to 'x264' are invalid. The program you used to encode is called x264, which produces videos in the H.264 / MPEG-4 AVC format (either name is valid). Rename all x264 references to H.264 to fix this.

Totally agree on the IGP issues. Where is the sense in putting the HD3000 only into the overclocker CPUs where they CANNOT BE USED ANYWAY, I mean WTF...even when the Z boards arrive, how many people beside me will buy a K-CPU and not get a gamer graphics card.

i agree, intel missed an opportunity there.

What i'm really interested in is the performance of the S series parts with (I gues) the HD 2000 series... that'd probably be the basis of my new HTPC if all goes well...

also can someone confirm the lack of 24p support?

This is a question I posed to lots of folks at Intel (and mobo partners) at CES. The general answer was, yes, you're right, but the Sandy Bridge line is only just beginning, and we wanted differentiation between chips. As the line fills out, the issue/sense of GPU capability will be sorted out better. FYI, for those who are considering a low end SB chip for HTPC, there is NO performance difference between HD 2000 and 3000 in 2D. It's only in 3D that the 3000 shows its better performance.

does anyone have an why playing video with integrated graphics or 90% of graphics cards via hdmi to a TV doesn't look as good as say... a ps3 or wdtv high def media player? i would love to build one of these intel integrated graphics machines for a htpc, but in my experience they don't even come close to standalone players.