The “Real” Mobile Sandy Bridge

Author

Oik Yusuf Araya

Reading time:

Notebook / Laptop

February 18, 2011

readmode

Conclusions

Bugged or not, the Intel series 6 chipset embedded on our Axioo notebook sample proves to be a remarkable platform for the Sandy Bridge processor. However, it’s worth bearing in mind that, as Intel had announced a while ago, the bug will only kick in after prolonged usage. We have only been using this notebook for barely two weeks, so it’s too early to conclude if it’s going to have a real effect on its performance or not.

As for the performance itself, the mobile Sandy Bridge clearly performs better than the Arrandale. This is especially apparent in our Sysmark 2007 test, where it managed to lead ahead by an impressive 20%. In other CPU tests, we can also see that the mobile Sandy Bridge is only a tad slower compared to its desktop counterparts.

What is most interesting from the mobile Sandy Bridge is perhaps its on-board graphics processor, which performs up to twice as fast as the integrated graphics on Arrandale CPUs. We are fairly impressed by the results shown by our 3D tests. In addition, QuickSync acceleration further improves the mobile Sandy Bridge’s performance in certain areas such as video encoding. You will need to update the chipset driver to allow it to work, though.

The integrated graphics processor on the Sandy Bridge, in fact, is faster than some (if not most) lower-end, discrete graphics cards. Therefore, it almost seems pointless to provide low-end discrete graphic solution on a Sandy Bridge system. Aside from increasing power consumption and the overall price tag, there is nothing else a low-end discrete graphics could do to a Sandy Bridge notebook.

Even as they are not currently available at the moment, from the performance standpoint, Sandy Bridge notebooks are very promising indeed. It’s might be a good idea to consider waiting for the revised versions of these notebooks to hit the market. By then, you can enjoy all the power a Sandy Bridge notebook has to offer without worrying about some inherent defect that could potentially give rise to problems after some time.