Wow, these processors sound very interesting indeed. I am thinking about waiting for LGA2011 but I am not sure I can wait almost another year. Interesting thing about the overclocking though. I mean the K variants are only 30 bucks or so more, not that big of a deal if your an enthusiast. Also, you can unlock the other multipliers by 4x and turbo boost will give you another 4x so a 2.8Ghz CPU can "overclock" to 3.2Ghz with Turbo Boost going up to 3.6Ghz. Not a total loss if you ask me, I know others will be displeased. Great preview, can't wait to see the full review, keep up the great work!

thanks for an easy to understand article. see you soon on a review!

A good read; thanks!

"Intel even thought of implementing FSAA in their integrated graphics solution!"

lol, that was a good one Ilya!

Great article. A couple of quick questions about oveclocking.

When overclocking a K processor, does raising the multiplier also raise the Turbo frequency by the same amount? For example, the 2500K would go from 3.3/3.7 to 3.6/4.0?

When overclocking a non-K processor, will the turbo frequency also be raised in the same way as with the K processor?

This is the first time I have seen that it will be possible to O/C by four steps on non-K processors.

Thanks for the good article. Just goes to prove the fact that Intel screws its users by leaving them with no possibility to upgrade after they've paid even 300$ for a mainboard and almost 300$ for a CPU.

In this regard .. I won't even say "Go AMD! Don't go intel" ... I'd say just get the hell away from intel platforms. Buy VIA !

Also, the bragging about this transition being a 486-to-pentium -like transition is a load of cr*p. It's obvious that the improvements are only incremental and that in over 50% of the applications the performance gain will be close to ZERO! Only where encodind/deconding is involved would we see an "over 20%" gain. And that's nothing spectacular.

If I'd be a 1156 user .. I'd buy a good cooler and overclock the heck out of my CPU and skip this generation all toghether. its an economic crisis after all.

If I'd be a new user ... I'd never go Intel before seeing what AMD has to offer.

Now ... a beginner computer user can buy an AMD PC with a good mainboard and go from Single Core with good IGP to dual, then quad, then hexa core and one or two discrete video cards with multiple GPUs if necessary. Intel can't offer anything like that.

i am waiting for Amd's Bulldozer and we need both company's stay alive or the price's gonna be rocket high, i am always for bang for buck.BTW GOOD article exellent explanation

This article is one of the best Xbitlabs has produced. Good information, exact scientific style, good English.

I can also relate to you when you diss AMD as trying to make money with trivialities with the Bulldozer, such are overclocking, while not being able to produce performance. AMD's subsidiary ATI is also dissed by you.

Sandy bridge still has not reached Gulftown, AMD will overtake the 1100 T for sure (32 nm ,larger cache),we will see jump in perfomance on AMD side, and therefore prices will play a role

I've read a lot of reviews and benchmarks about Sandy Bridge and as interesting the performance is it still doesn't warren a must have upgrade if you already own a gen 1 Core series or even a highend Dual or Quad Core 2 series for that matter. It's a nice improvement overall over the first gen Core 1 series but not anywhere on the lines of a huge improvement like the Core 2 Duo was over the Pentium 4 and nor was I expecting it to be.If you look at the benchmarks over the gen 1 Core i series vs the gen 2 Core i series of the same model numbering, a lot of the overtaking in performance is based on the higher clock speed that the gen 2 has over the gen 1. The performance gap shortens to around 10 to 12% or so on avg clock for clock in performance when you overclock a gen 1 model to the gen 2 model speed it replaced. With that said, unless your pc is still sporting a Pentium 4 or a low end Core 2 Duo or you're a highend enthusiast, then upgrading to Sandy Bridge isn't really necessary. If you can hold off until the end of 2011 when Intel finally intergrates USB 3.0 and PCI-E 3.0 into their next chipset with Ivy Bridge then you are better off just waiting 10 months.