http://www.anandtech.com/show/3871/the-sandy-bridge-preview-three-wins-in-a-row

- 32nm quad-core, new architecture compared to the current Nehalem Core i7s
- About 15% faster per-clock compared to Nehalem
- Launches January 8th 2011 with prices from $140 to $562, 2 or 4 cores and clockspeeds up to 3.4GHz with 3.8GHz Turbo.
- Integrated graphics is better than an HD 5450, i.e. it can play new games at 30fps on the lowest settings. That's very impressive.

Solid performance. AMD's competition will be a little later in the form of Llano and Bulldozer

So do they all have integrated GPU's?

Well that sucks. 15% faster than a Core i7 per-clock.

AMD has nothing on that, because from what I've learned the Bulldozer will only be on par with Core i7 clock-for-clock, and will probably struggle to get the same high clock speeds of Sandy Bridge. Also, the Bulldozer is coming out 6 months later than Sandy Bridge.

We don't know anything about the performance of Bulldozer except that the 16-core Interlagos will be 50% faster than the current 12-core Magny-Cours. That tells us almost nothing about single-threaded performance or low-thread (desktop) performance. However on the server Intel doesn't have a Sandy Bridge part until mid-year (8 cores) and the top SKU will be Westmere-EX (10 cores) throughout 2011, not SB. So Bulldozer will match that.

Bulldozer will be out around the same time as the 6- and 8-core SB desktop parts, mid-year to Q3. What's up against these parts is Llano, about March, which will obviously lose on the CPU front but graphics performance will be much better.

Bulldozer, on paper, looks as advanced as SB in many areas and makes up a lot of ground on prefetching, branch prediction and power consumption. It is also a high-frequency design; clockspeeds will be ahead of Sandy Bridge if the design translates to reality. Especially on mobile parts - expect Llano to outclock SB by a great deal in the same thermals.

And they should make some marketshare gains Q1 and Q2 with Llano/Bobcat despite SB because Bobcat will destroy Atom on netbooks and AMD's mobile share is so low that Llano has to improve its standing no matter what happens.

tl;dr: The SB parts reviewed here aren't up against BD - they're against Llano. BD's fight is with the much laterlaunching 6/8 core SBs. BD will do great on the ultra-high-end servers because Intel won't have SB parts there until 2012.

Thank you for posting this. I thought Nehalem was going to last a bit longer, probably a lot due to the fact that I don't pay much attention.

Good to know!

I was just going by that Anandtech preview, "In many ways the architecture [Bulldozer] looks to be on-par with what Intel has done with Nehalem/Westmere.".

This module design with 2 fake cores (or whatever it is), advanced branch prediction and stuff, it sounds like a typical AMD "hit or miss" architectural design gamble. I don't wanna get disappointed again like with Phenom so I'm gonna predict it's gonna be "miss" lol.

But I am glad you are optimistic! There is hope.

I was reading up on this on gaf.  The benchmarks posted over there imply just about every PC available from late 2011 onward will be able to play modern PC games at medium settings and 720p thanks to their new integrated graphics solutions.

It's crazy.  This could give PC gaming a huge push, given that literally even the cheapest PCs from that point onward would be able to decently run PC games.

I'm sure Valve is loving this, given they're becoming the premier PC gaming distribution and networking platform, raking in a lion share of the profit.  They must be extremely glad Intel is finally taking integrated graphics processing seriously.

Bobcat should be an excellent contender.

The funny thing is that with the recent changes to the AMD/Intel agreements, we might see up to two of the console manufacturers going X86 next generation.

How come?

They can license X86 without a fee paid directly to Intel. In addition to this, they have more flexibility as to whom can fab the X86 style of CPU. Now both of the major contract fabricators, TSMC and Global Foundries have a license to fab the chips the console makers have a lot more choices.

In terms of console design, its a lot easier to qualify and produce a console based of pre-existing technology. They would not have to send out development kits early on because any software which was designed to run on X86 could run on their consoles. This speeds up time to market and enables the console maker to keep the existance of a new console that much closer to their chests. So just because we haven't heard about it, doesn't mean it isn't coming. The only people who would need to know would be the executives, they can tell their staff to build a game for PC and target X specification.

Who is the best bet for Nintendo at the moment for low power, higher performance designs? Arm is too weak, Power PC just doesn't have the low power options and with X86 they can go AMD and get high performance graphics on the chip and from just the one vendor with built in power management options.

I also expect Microsoft would be seriously considering a return to X86 as well. Given the time-frames, Bulldozer/Llano would be quite a good match for their console, especially if they target late 2012 with a quick shrink to 22nm in 2013/2014 close at hand. A system on a chip makes a lot of sense given the form factor and cost requirements for a console. They more than anyone understand how much easier it is to manage one thermal spot rather than two.