Today on my video blog, we're going to be demystifying the new Intel
Sandybridge processors and the chipsets that go with them a little bit, or at
least we're going to be attempting to do so. Now, there's a few new features on
these chips, or a few important features, let's say. So, let's start
with Intel Turbo. So turbo, as we're
familiar with already from the Core i7 original processor, allows the chip to
overclock itself if you have enough cooling and you're not uh overstepping
the thermal design power. So turbo
processors such as the Core i5 2400 are allowed to turbo themselves up up to
four speed grades above their stock frequency if you're using only one core.
They also Okay, so here let's uh let's let's start sort of working our way
along here. So they are also allowed to
turn up the multiplier and OC up to four
speed bins above that four speed bins.
So up to eight speed bins
or multiplier levels on the P67 chipset.
This is also the same as over here. Okay. On the H67, it can only use turbo
mode. That's it. No additional overclocking. So, four speed bins,
turbo there. So, that is a regular turbo
processor. Then there are completely non-turbo processors. In terms of
overclocking, we have no support on H67,
no support on P67, and no support on
Z68. Nothing. You can overclock probably about 5% if you turn up the base clock,
but it's really not recommended because you can do all kinds of nasty stuff like
corrupt your hard drive and just don't do it. Okay, so then we've got unlock.
So yeah, example would be like a low-end Core i3. All right, unlocked. So these
ones have turbo because all the unlocked chips are already reasonably high-end
chips and they also have a suffix K. So the example we're using is the Core i7
2600 K. All right. So, you cannot
increase Oh, well, okay. I guess you got support
for the four-speed regular turbo.
Okay. You have completely up to whatever
the heck you want in terms of overclocking on P67, and you have up to
whatever you want on Z68, which isn't
out yet. So, these guys, you can overclock as much as you could possibly
want. Well, until the chip reaches its limit.
So, okay. Right. So, if Z68 is exactly
the same as P67, then what's going on here? So, let's
talk about the other important feature of these new Core i processors, and that
is their onboard graphics. So, there are a few different kinds of onboard
graphics built into these chips. The K series chips actually have the highest
end onboard graphics, which is pretty funny because uh no
onboard graphics on P67. So on the
platform where you can actually overclock these K series chips, you have
no support for onboard video. Uh here we
have onboard video enabled, but we
actually can overclock the chip. So you have the best possible graphics core on
the one that is only supported on the one where you can't overclock it and it
has the overclock. So here we have onboard graphics enabled. That is the
difference between Z68 and P67. It has
sort of the best of both worlds, but it isn't out yet. So these ones don't have
quite as powerful an onboard graphics card. So same thing here. No onboard
graphics supported. Here it's supported. Here it's supported. And same thing
here. These ones have the lowest end onboard graphics and here is no and here
is okay. So that is the difference between all these different chips and
all these different chipsets. So in summary, if you are not using onboard
graphics and you are overclocking, then your choice is going to be a K series
processor and a P67 motherboard. If you
want to use onboard graphics and you don't really care quite as much about
performance, you do not need a K series processor, you can get either one of
these and an H67 motherboard. If you want the best of both worlds, I guess
you'll just have to wait until Z68
launches at some point in the future.
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