At least almost all the reviews tout it as better than almost all of i7-9xx series with perhaps stock i7-97x extreme being better. Considering my present MB X58 and i7 920, perhaps it may be now better to replace it with LGA1155 MB/CPU later in the year. My i7-920 CPU when bought in June 2009 was at the top, went to the middle in 2010, with overclocking to 3.2-3.3 Ghz has been better, but i7-2600K stock seems to leave even a moderately OC-ed i7-920 in the dust. Do you think we might see faster processors in the X58/LGA1366 type. That would at least save me the cost of the motherboard. Of course, buying a i7 980 for my present X58 may keep it competitive with sandybridge, but then what is the rationale for investing huge amount on i7 980x/X58 when a new architecture has been launched.
Desktop Sandy Bridge CPUs will come in 2 flavors. The first will be for the socket LGA1155 motherboards. The 2nd will be the replacement for the LGA1366 socket in the X58 motherboards. SB-E has 40 PCI-E 3.0 lanes on chip (enough for two GPUs x16 and a raid card x8). The Sandy Bridge-E will have socket LGA2011 According to sources the E platform will have no less than four DDR3 memory channels. It may arrive with the long awaited X68 chipset and ICH 11
Even if Sandy Bridge does come with option to replace existing i7 in X58 motherboards, it might be better to just bite the bullet on a new MB considering some new, simulatenous transitions to UEFI, USB 3.0, SATA 6Gbp/s. With conventional HDDs and eSATA, these features might not be much additional benefit, but going with these would be cool and current. I paid around Rs. 27,000 (US$600) for a i7 920 and MSI X58m motherboard in June 2009. Expect to pay roughly the same by end-2011 on a new MB+CPU+perhaps a SSD.
So... in other words, it's kind of hardware version of DRM with a new name? Naturally, Intel representative would try the old naming trick... The key words are "access control technologies". I do NOT need any of such "control"!
Yeah, I heard about that. I don't think I'm going to bother with stripping down my system and getting the motherboard replaced. I'll just get a SATA card for the extra drives.
Sandy Bridge is not being recalled or have a problem. Please post correct information and not try to sensationalize.There's plenty of that going around the Internet today with bloggers talking through their butts trying to rake in the intellectually challenged. Sandy Bridge is a CPU family. Cougar Point is the codename of a PCH in the Intel Series 6 chipsets . The P67 is a chipset for desktop motherboards in the Cougar Point series 6. The reported erratum is a design issue in its P67 (Cougar Point) chipset that, over time(maybe 3 or more years), could cause SATA II performance to degrade and possibly fail . The problem only affects older 3GB/S SATA II port and not Intel's 6GB/S SATA III implementation which is unaffected. Your product warranty will probably have expired by the time the erratum would possibly affect a P67 motherboard you might own. If you have one of the P67 boards that will most likely be recalled,keep using it till the maker has a replacement board to offer. Best not to drink the Kool Aid;instead wait for more factual information directly from the horse's mouth(Intel and your MB maker) than the bloggers reporting the fall of Troy.