Sandy Bridge

[sobek]

Such a shame that quick sync is deactivated when you put a dedicated gfx card in your system

[Druid_]

Such a shame that quick sync is deactivated when you put a dedicated gfx card in your system

From what I read it might be more of a current software issue than a hardware one. I'm sure the clever boffins will come up with a solution.

 

"Quick Sync—a blanket marketing name for Sandy Bridge’s ability to accelerate decoding and encoding/transcoding."

[matcat]

i read somewhere that the sandy bridge cpus are faster than the older i7s for single threaded applications so if black shark and a-10 only use 1-2 cores and are cpu limited makes sense that youd get a performance boost at the same clock even without involving any other factors.

[EtherealN]

matcat, while it is generally true that Sandy Bridge is faster than i7's "for single threaded applications", this actually has nothing at all to do with whether the application is single-threaded or multi-threaded. It all depends on how which instruction sets the application uses and how the application is coded.

 

Sandy Bridge is generally faster, but this applies equally to single, dual or billion-threaded applications.

[Madman777]

I'm dying to upgrade my poor Q6600. It's really weak with DCS A-10. I'm absolutely going to be getting the SB CPU as soon as it's available.

[JaseGill]

Guys,

Well, as you can see from my Signature I'm now Sandybridged up.

Went for the i5 2500K so that I can overclock at some point if I want and a P8P67 ASUS Motherboard as the reviews were great.

Must say I'm very impressed so far. I haven't had a decent test of the machine yet as I re-installed Windows 7 64 Bit and everything else, which has taken most of the evening (I know priorities - should be battering A10C).

So, a few screen shots of CPU-Z to come and then I'll do some flying on Beta 4 and let you know.

Something up here by tomorrow evening I hope.

In case anyone wonders how I got the CPU before the 9th, well as per my previous post, I was lucky to get an order in with Overclockers UK on the 5th when Intel sent out the wrong email and they released the sales NDA rather than the Reviews NDA. I guess Intel gave them permission to release CPU's to those who got orders in. Lucky me :)

J.

[JaseGill]

All,

I can truthfully say that Sandy Bridge is one hell of an improvement.

With my rig, as per my sig I get 60+ FPS at the airport, same over cities and around 45 in combat environments (tested using the CAS Mission). No pauses with firing the GAU8 either which I was surprised about.

I'd recommend it to anyone looking for an upgrade soon. I'm very pleased.

J.

[Midwestboi]

I was just reading that the Sandy Bridge has incorporated a type of 'DRM' into the processor called "Intel Insider"... even tho Intel claims it isn't a 'DRM'- from the way it is described- it appears Intel is working towards limiting what can and cannot run on your system.

http://www.toptechnews.com/story.xhtml?story_id=020001J9GPXC&full_skip=1

[EtherealN]

That's a creative interpretation of what the article says, to says the least...

 

It doesn't "limit what you can and cannot run" on your system.

 

For example, let's say I'm sitting in the same apartment complex as where you are living, and you forgot to secure your wireless network. So just for giggles I log into your network while you are getting set to do watch your streamed rental movie. I hook up on that network traffic (it's wireless, I can listen to all traffic that is being sent to you) and watch the movie too. From how they describe it in there it would seem that the stream could be keyed to your actual processor, such that any processor that isn't the exact processor that was used for ordering the rental cannot be used for watching it.

 

Don't make mountains our of molehills, it's just silly.

[Midwestboi]

It always starts somewhere right? Throughout history, you see examples of freedoms being taken away as people just accepted it, because it was slow and methodical. Once gone, it is almost impossible to get the freedom back. This Intel "Insider" may seem innocent enough, but project this kind of 'technology' forward a few years- and suddenly outside interests can control what you can and cannot access, what you can and cannot use your own equipment for.

 

As for making mountains out of molehills... I doubt many people have heard of this, and I think they have a right to know. If you read the 'comments' on this article- you will see I'm not the only one concerned about this revelation.

[Sticky]

All,

I can truthfully say that Sandy Bridge is one hell of an improvement.

 

But what did you have before? You upgraded from what? Thx

[EtherealN]

Ah, your freedoms being taken away... Which ones? The freedom to stream rented movies in HD? Well... right now you don't have that "freedom" in a lot of cases (I don't in my territory) because the content producers don't want to take the risks involved (it's too easy for an equivalent to the analog hole to be deployed).

 

With this system integrated in the new Sandy Bridge processors... you still haven't lost any freedoms. You've gained the ability to use a new service, and if you don't like it you don't have to purchase their product. Are they evilly restricting your freedoms through disabling HT in the 2500's? That's a WAY more drastic intervention. What about the locked multipliers on the non-K SKU's? That's intentional locking of functionality that is right there in the silicon. Yet you choose to be upset about a system that allows secure delivery of streamed HD content, which will allow content producers the confidence of introducing such services. It's about as much out of proportion as it is possible to get. :P

 

And actually, argumentum ad populii doesn't work. "Many other people think the same" isn't an argument, it's an attempt at not having to make an argument through referring to someone else. (Similar to argumentum ad verecundiam - where the "argument" is to refer to some authority, for example "that guy with a PhD says" or "that article in the prestigeous magazine says" and so on.)

 

This is a mountain made out of a molehill, and if it's a lot of people doing it, then it's a lot of mountains made out of that molehill.

[RSharpe]

All,

I can truthfully say that Sandy Bridge is one hell of an improvement.

With my rig, as per my sig I get 60+ FPS at the airport, same over cities and around 45 in combat environments (tested using the CAS Mission). No pauses with firing the GAU8 either which I was surprised about.

I'd recommend it to anyone looking for an upgrade soon. I'm very pleased.

J.

 

This statement can only be qualified by telling us what your old rig was.

[Henchman14]

It always starts somewhere right? Throughout history, you see examples of freedoms being taken away as people just accepted it, because it was slow and methodical. Once gone, it is almost impossible to get the freedom back. This Intel "Insider" may seem innocent enough, but project this kind of 'technology' forward a few years- and suddenly outside interests can control what you can and cannot access, what you can and cannot use your own equipment for.

 

As for making mountains out of molehills... I doubt many people have heard of this, and I think they have a right to know. If you read the 'comments' on this article- you will see I'm not the only one concerned about this revelation.

 

Meh, the hackers will tear it to shreds.

[Kuky]

This statement can only be qualified by telling us what your old rig was.

 

damn right... also I would like proof from him that firing GAU8 does not give any slow downs... FRAPS numbers anyone, if he does it and there is les FPS when firing guns I will so gladly give negative REP as I just hate false claims :music_whistling:

[JaseGill]

damn right... also I would like proof from him that firing GAU8 does not give any slow downs... FRAPS numbers anyone, if he does it and there is les FPS when firing guns I will so gladly give negative REP as I just hate false claims :music_whistling:

 

Kuky,

Very true, though your reply does seem a bit confrontational. Negative rep for being honest and saying that I didn't notice any slowdown in firing the GAU8, a bit severe don't you think? If you read my comment back again you will see I said that I experienced no noticeable pauses as previously reported, not no loss of frame rate. Does your rig actually pause or just slow down when you fire the cannon? I haven't flown Beta 4 before this as my machine was in bits waiting for the Sandy Bridge gear to arrive. From what I have read around here people have a noticeable pause when firing the cannon, something I didn't notice myself. Should I give you negative rep for not reading my post properly I wonder?

Yes I should qualify it with the previous rig, which was a e6750 again water-cooled but overclocked to 3.2GHz. Obviously it was a different motherboard (Gigabyte) and only DDR2 memory (but still at 4GB). SO I guess the noticeable difference in performance shouldn't have been such a shock.

I have just downloaded FRAPS so that I can do the same mission (CAS Mission that comes with the standard install) and show everyone the results, I don't have a you tube account yet but I suppose I can get one. Dont expect anything tonight though as I dont have the time or a massive desire to take time out of my plans to prove anything to you ;)

J.

[Kuky]

JaseGill, please give me negative rep if you feel I deserved it, no problem about that, like I said, I don't like false claims so if you say that you firing the gun has no decrease in FPS please prove it, it's very simple to do and you don't need youtube account... simply run quick mission with FRAPS recording FPS and fire gunns for a 2 seconds. SandyBridge or any other CPU should not make any difference as if everyone here has FPS decrease with firing guns (including me) then for you to say you don't get that is questionable... so I'll be waiting for your FPS numbers.

[JaseGill]

Kuky,

Fair enough.

I haven't run it yet so cant comment on whether there is an FPS drop.

What I can say, and did say initially is that I didn't notice the pause that others have reported. What I said in the original post is that I had no noticeable pause, and I stand by that statement. I had pauses before which were noticeable in other situations which in one case ended in it continuing with my aircraft burning having flown into the ground whilst frozen. It may have impacted FPS but given that I was used before to 20 to 30 FPS the pause would have been noticeable should it drop to 10 - 15. Now that its been in high 50's (according to the in built FPS counter) I guess I would notice it less if it dropped to 20 or 30 FPS from the high 50's? What I said is that I had no noticeable pause, and I stand by that statement.

I'll run it when I get back this evening and post something up. Either way its a hell of a lot smoother than it was before and I'm very surprised by that even with the optimised Beta 4 code and the machine upgrade. I had read before that even i7 over-clocks were seeing slow downs so I didn't expect even a Sandy Bridge i5 to be that much better.

As an aside I'm guessing FRAPS only running for 30 seconds is plenty? I'm not paying 37 USD just to prove a point.

J.

Edited January 10, 2011 by JaseGill

[Kuky]

yeah,30 second run is fine, just start in air... go into a dive and fire guns into ground... FPS will be recorded (tick that option to log the FPS numbers).

[JaseGill]

Cool, will do.

J.

[Succellus]

JaseGill no wonder you show and improvement, your rig was so old..

But for me its no game to compare, anyway enjoy it you deserve it.

 

Kuky, as he said no noticeable decrease...doesn t mean no decrease in FPS damn it. If your FPS are at 70 and decrease to 60 would you notice it ?

 

Rant on!

 

As for all the entusiast out there, i am marvelled at how people give thank you for what should be standart. Company project the CPU, restrict it from what it should normally be, make you waste wonders in overclocking gear, for something that is what it should have normally been, and you say thank you ?!!

 

And now some people come crying because they locked some chips ?

 

As for overclokable to 35435 GHZ chips, since your sistem goes as fast as your weakest link, your GPU / BUSS / RAM etc won t hold out so its useless. Anyway we wouldn t have to OC if think where done properly. But since it give more money to the whole industry fooling people, then hell yeah why not ? And lets make sure our MKT dpt make people feel like genius while being bent over.

 

You want to be pissed at something start being pissed at why while 100% of the core are multiples, less than 10% of the software market is multithreaded.

 

So i really hope they lock all the freaking OC features so software market start hauling its ass so that we stop buying unecessary hardware we won t use anyway.

 

Rant off.

Edited January 10, 2011 by Succellus

[Konovalov]

Yes I should qualify it with the previous rig, which was a e6750 again water-cooled but overclocked to 3.2GHz. Obviously it was a different motherboard (Gigabyte) and only DDR2 memory (but still at 4GB). SO I guess the noticeable difference in performance shouldn't have been such a shock.

Making the jump from a old Core 2 Duo E6xxx based rig to your shiny new Sandybridge system is a significant jump up in performance so I'm not surprised that you noticed such a big noticeable gains. Sounds like you have a great build there so congrats to you. :thumbup:

 

For those here that are still holding on to 3 or 4 year old rigs I guess they would really like to see some hard data and more so real world performance figures such as in the DCS series.

Edited January 10, 2011 by Konovalov

[EtherealN]

If your FPS are at 70 and decrease to 60 would you notice it ?

 

70 to 60 is a poor example (since it's over the normal refresh rate of screens), but 60 to 50 - yes, many people actually notice that. Part of the reason why there is an FPS-fetish amongst some people (where they say a game that doesn't run at 60 FPS is "unplayable") is that they notice the change in FPS and attribute the sensation to the actual FPS, which is erroneous. This is the reason why some people choose to edit the maxFPS value in the config files to something like 30 - it ends up giving a smoother sensation than when their computer was jumping between 40 and 60 FPS.

 

Obviously though, a better processor might allow you to set that MaxFPS value to 45 instead of 30, or maybe even 60 (though then you may as well just use vSync unless you are at a higher refresh-rate monitor).

 

I am planning to get a Sandy Bridge and will probably try to set up a re-make of my old benchmark thread when I have that and see to it that there's some comparisons made between old vs new for all the ED products (and perhaps a few more). Then we can get some actual empirical data to rely on as far as the sim performance question goes. Until then though I would suspect that it is better for both peace and blood pressure to stay focused on the Sandy Bridge chip itself. Without actual data we can't say anything for certain anyhow.

[Succellus]

Ho my rant wasnt directed at anyone in particular, and most to any enthusiast out there which doesn t realise what the market is doing, and think uber because they overclockat ubber speed. AFAIK as long as you can read you can do it, but i still prefer "an overclok from factory" if you see my point.

 

Ethereal if you can do what you said it would be great. Since i just upgraded from an q6600 to a 950 system i am curious about real performance gain.

 

Before anyone ask, im not doing it cause i have "no joy" in both senses since my WH have still to land here. If lucky still this week or maybe next week, who knows ?

[EtherealN]

Succellus, regarding the overclocking thing, I am afraid I believe you are simply not informed about the matter. There's no such thing as "wast[ing] wonders in overclocking". You purchase a 40 dollar CPU heatsink/fan assembly (which, in my opinion, you should do no matter whether you overclock or not just through the standard fans being crap. :P ), and then you (in this example) crank up the 300 dollar 2600K such that it beats the 1000 dollar i7 980X in multithreaded applications (and remember - the 980X has 50% more cores...). So total expense is 340 dollars, and 150 dollars for a suitable motherboard (I am very happy about where the price points for good motherboards ended up for the 1155 socket).

 

As for the bottlenecks - show me any test ever made for a DCS product with a good CPU (e6xxx and P4's doesn't count) where it bottlenecked on anything except the CPU. Here's a hint: both DCS:BS (with all high except water) and DCS:A10C (with medium settings) still bottleneck at the CPU when my e8500 is running at 4GHz. Adjusting RAM clock makes zero difference. Overclocking the GPU: zero difference. It's still the CPU.

 

Edit: Oh, and one point you are also missing: overclocking is fun on it's own. It's not necessarily done only for performance gains - for example there are few things you can do with a computer that are as effective at teaching you how a computer works. It's a bit like how configging and compiling your own Linux install from scratch is the best thing a layman can do to learn how an OS really works.

Edited January 10, 2011 by EtherealN