Sandy Bridge and Cougar Point

Intel released its second-generation Core CPUs back in January. Unfortunately, the excitement generated by the release of the fastest mainstream desktop processors was quickly dampened by the Cougar Point chipset recall. To be clear, this issue affected only the earliest Sandy Bridge-compatible motherboards, and not the Sandy Bridge CPUs themselves. This issue is now fixed—there are no defective motherboards available through reputable North American retailers like Newegg and Amazon. In the almost half-year since the initial Sandy Bridge CPU release, the platform has matured, with CPU variants available for almost every budget and a number of niches, as well as motherboard chipsets with a variety of feature sets and in form factors from mini-ITX to extended-ATX. Succinctly, the second-gen Core CPUs are astonishingly powerful and sip electricity. As Anand aptly described them, “architecturally it’s the biggest change we’ve seen since Conroe.” I agree with Anand—not since I upgraded from an AMD Athlon X2 3800+ to an Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 at the end of 2006 have I been so impressed by a new CPU as I have by the Core i7-2600K.

This is the first guide I’ve written for AnandTech that will not be ‘fair and balanced’ for both AMD and Intel. I hoped this month’s guide would detail higher-end builds featuring and comparing AMD’s Bulldozer CPUs and Intel’s Core i5 and i7 chips, but unfortunately, AMD’s release of its high-end desktop Bulldozer SKUs is now delayed until September. The midrange Llano desktop APUs are scheduled for retail availability in early July, and Llano-based laptops are already showing up here and there online (though as of the time of writing, they are not available for actual sale). Thus, AMD’s entire product line will be refreshed within the next few months. With the imminent release of radically new APUs and no currently available AMD CPUs that can compete with Intel’s higher-end CPUs, this month’s guide focuses on the second-generation Intel Core processors. I simply don’t think it makes much sense to build an AMD system at least until Llano’s desktop release—unless you need a budget rig and you need it right now. And lest I be accused of favoritism, next month’s guide will likely focus on Llano-based desktop computers.

It’s also a great time to build an Intel-based computer. The successor to LGA 1155 (the Sandy Bridge socket), LGA 2011, is not due out until late this year, and looks to supersede LGA 1366 at Intel’s highest-end of the desktop CPU spectrum. Other than supporting Sandy Bridge-E CPUs, LGA 2011 will offer PCIe 3 (which current GPUs can’t take advantage of) and native USB 3.0 (even though third-party USB 3.0 controllers are already shipping on many Intel and AMD motherboards). Considering how capable the Core i5-2500K and Core i7-2600K are today, it’s unlikely Sandy Bridge-E will field any model that’s astonishingly faster than what’s already available. Thus, if you buy a Core i7-2600K now, you’ll be at the near pinnacle of desktop computing for at least 5-6 months. I think there are times to buy and times to wait. It’s a bad idea to buy right before a lineup refresh (as is the case with AMD today), but it’s also unwise to delay building a system to hold out for the next big thing when that’s half a year away and unlikely to be that much better!

The Processors: Pentium, Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7

The least expensive Sandy Bridge processors continue to be the venerable Pentium line. These are the newest Sandy Bridge CPUs and are currently available at clock speeds of 2.6GHz (the Pentium G620), 2.8GHz (Pentium G840), and 2.9GHz (Pentium G850), as well as a low-power (35W TDP) 2.2GHz variant (Pentium G620T). The Sandy Bridge Pentiums are very similar to the Core i3 CPUs: they’re all dual-core chips fabricated on Intel’s 32nm process. They come with 3MB of L3 cache, lack Turbo Boost, and have Intel HD integrated graphics. While the i3s have “Intel HD 2000” graphics and the Pentiums have “Intel HD” graphics, both IGPs feature 6 EUs (Execution Units) that can turbo up to 1100MHz and thus perform very similarly, including support for dual displays. Unlike the Core i3 models, however, the Sandy Bridge Pentiums do not support Intel’s Quick Sync Video technology or DDR3-1333 RAM; perhaps most importantly, the Pentiums do not feature Hyper-Threading.  Outside of the low-power G620T, they come with a 65W TDP (35W on the G620T). Subjective performance of the G620 for general office productivity tasks and web browsing is, in my estimation, broadly similar to the older Core 2 Duo E8400 CPU and current AMD Athlon II X2 260.

There are now four Sandy Bridge Core i3 CPUs ready for purchase in North American retail channels. These are all dual-core CPUs that feature Hyper-Threading, support for Intel Quick Sync technology, and Intel HD 2000 graphics (save the Core i3-2105). The chips are the Core i3-2100 (3.1GHz), i3-2100T (2.5GHz and featuring a 35W TDP), i3-2105 (3.1GHz but featuring Intel HD 3000 graphics), and i3-2120 (3.3GHz). The i3s do not support Turbo Boost, nor are there any ‘-K’ models for easy overclocking (though an unlocked i3 is rumored to be available eventually).

The 2nd Generation Core i5 processors (with one exception) are all quad-core CPUs that feature Turbo Boost but without Hyper-Threading, and they come with 6MB of L3 cache. All support Intel Quick Sync, and most have a TDP of 95W and feature Intel HD 2000 graphics. The 2500K model is fully unlocked, facilitating extremely easy overclocking, and it comes with HD 3000 graphics. The ‘-S’ models are lower-powered chips featuring a 65W TDP, and the Core i5-2405S includes Intel HD 3000 graphics. The exception to the above is the i5-2390T, which is a dual-core 2.7GHz part with Turbo Boost up to 3.5GHz, a 35W TDP, and 3MB L3 cache—basically a souped up, low-power i3. The entire line of Core i5s fit within about a $50 range—from about $175 to $225.

The Core i7 Sandy Bridges currently comes in only three variants: the i7-2600, its unlocked counterpart the i7-2600K, and the low-power i7-2600S. The 2600K enables all the bells and whistles: 3.4GHz base with up to 3.8GHz Turbo Boost, Hyper-Threading, HD 3000 graphics, 8MB of L3 cache, 95W TDP, and an unlocked multiplier. The Core i7-2600 is the same, except without the fully unlocked multiplier and with HD 2000 graphics. The 2600S is clocked at 2.8GHz with up to 3.8GHz Turbo Boost, HD 2000 graphics, and it has a 65W TDP. The 2600K is the fastest mainstream desktop CPU currently available at retail. We provided a very thorough, comprehensive review of the Core i3, i5, and i7 CPUs back in January; if you are considering building a second-gen Core system, it’s an invaluable resource.

The Chipsets: H61, H67, P67, and Z68

Simply put, in order from least to most expensive (in general), as well as least to most feature-rich, the Cougar Point hierarchy is: H61, H67, P67, and Z68. (We’ll go ahead and skip over the business-centric B65, Q65, and Q67.) While there are far more differences than those discussed here, a few variations are worth noting for the purposes of this guide. You can read more about the chipsets on AnandTech in our ASRock P67 review, H67 motherboard roundup, and ASUS Z68 review.

The H61 chipset does not support CPU multiplier overclocking, has no SATA 6.0Gbps ports, and features the fewest USB 2.0 ports (‘only’ 10). Intel’s Sandy Bridge CPUs feature on-die graphics processors, and the H61 does not support overclocking the GPU. The H67 chipset is similar in that it doesn’t support CPU multiplier overclocking, but it does support GPU overclocking. It also has two SATA 6.0Gbps ports. These chipsets also let you use Intel’s Quick Sync technology, since they provide access to the IGP block. The P67 chipset is the reverse of the H67 and targets the enthusiast segment, with support for CPU multiplier overclocking and two SATA 6.0Gbps ports. However, P67 does not utilize the on-die graphics and thus requires a discrete GPU. That means you also lose out on support for Quick Sync.

Since H67 and P67 both have desirable elements—Quick Sync on the one hand and overclocking on the other—there was clearly a gap in the chipset lineup. The Z68 chipset fills that gap, supporting both CPU multiplier overclocking and IGP overclocking, Quick Sync, and SATA 6.0Gbps. It also supports Intel Virtu Technology, which uses the on-die GPU for less demanding tasks and the discrete GPU for more intensive applications, which potentially saves energy but more importantly allows the use of a dGPU while still providing Quick Sync support. Finally, Intel introduced their Smart Response Technology (SSD caching) with Z68; it’s just software that could work with other chipsets, but right now it remains a Z68 exclusive. At the risk of sounding flippant, Z68 is what P67 should have been, and aside from the fact that Z68 boards are typically a bit more expensive than P67 boards, there aren’t many (any?) compelling reasons to buy a P67 motherboard now that Z68 is out.

With the overview of the CPUs and chipsets out of the way, this guide outlines a budget (<$500) Core i3-based computer, a $1000 Core i5 midrange system, and a $2000 Core i7 gaming monster. Keep in mind that prices on components frequently fluctuate and that these guides might be a bit over or under budget when you read them. It’s always a good idea to shop around and watch for particularly low prices (AnandTech’s Hot Deals forum is full of useful information). Now let’s get to the system builds.

Sandy Bridge on a <$500 Budget

Benchmarks for the newer Sandy Bridge-based Pentium CPUs are not widely available; however, in my experience the Pentium G620 is broadly equivalent to the older Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 and current AMD Athlon II X2 260 CPUs—at least in terms of web browsing, office productivity, moderate multitasking, and light gaming (e.g. Left 4 Dead, StarCraft 2). Though the Intel Pentium CPUs’ HD 2000 graphics are often superior to the Radeon HD 4250 IGP found on most AM3 motherboards, both are capable of handling HD video but neither are gaming-grade. The Pentium G620 is inferior to the AMD Athlon II X3 line—and since it is either about the same price or even more expensive, I do not recommend the Sandy Bridge Pentiums right now unless you are interested in upgrading the CPU itself later to a more powerful Core i5 or i7 model. The Core i3-2100, on the other hand, performs about the same as the AMD Phenom II X4 940, so that’s what we’ve used. Here are the full specs.

I recently had an AMD Phenom II X4 945 (C3 revision) system side by side with an Intel Core i3-2100 system; in my experience, the two systems performed so similarly I could not tell them apart for daily computing tasks. (Both rigs had an 80GB Intel G2 SSD, ATI Radeon HD 5550 GPUs, and 4GB DDR3-1333 in them.) The Core i3-2100 rig was slightly faster (<10%) in some DNA analysis tasks that are computationally demanding, but even then you’d need to run a specific benchmark to notice the difference. Something else worth noting is that the Core i3 system used less power than the Phenom II X4 system. Admittedly, I was taken aback by the Core i3’s performance—it really is powerful enough to take on a current, midrange AMD quad-core CPU. Given that, the Core i3-2100 is almost overkill for most desktop users. (Enthusiasts who read AnandTech sometimes lose sight of the average user’s truly modest needs!) The on-die HD 2000 graphics processor is not a gaming GPU, but it is fine for 1080p HD video playback, Windows 7’s Aero interface, web browsing, and office productivity. It really is remarkable that such a powerful computer can be assembled for less than $500.

The remaining parts are standard budget fare. The MSI motherboard uses the H61 chipset, as that's the least expensive way to get into an SNB setup. There’s a vanilla 500GB hard drive that remains inexpensive and has enough storage and performance for the majority of desktop users. (Note that they regularly go on sale for $35 or less if you’re willing to shop around/wait.) 4GB of DDR3 is plenty for Windows 7 and allows for multitasking and most other needs. The Antec Three Hundred remains a favorite of mine, with its muted aesthetics, excellent airflow, good build quality, and capacious, easy to work with interior. It’s not the quietest case on the market, but it’s not terrible either. Similarly, the Antec Earthwatts 380W provides ample power for this system, and can easily accommodate both a CPU upgrade to a 95W quad-core Sandy Bridge and a more powerful GPU in the future. Stock case fans and the stock Intel CPU cooler are also sufficient, though spending maybe $25-50 on aftermarket fans will reduce system noise noticeably.

The above system is more than able to handle just about any task; the one area where it would fall short is in gaming. For that, you really need a discrete GPU, so to go with our budget recommendations we’re including the AMD Radeon HD 6570 as an optional extra. It’s often available for around $70, especially if you’re willing to play the mail-in rebate game. If you’re interested in something faster, the next step up that would be worth taking is the Radeon HD 5770 (note that the 6770 is literally the same GPU with a new name and a $10 premium, so don’t bother). If you’d prefer an NVIDIA GPU, there’s the GTS 450, but the 5770 generally offers equivalent or better performance. Idle power is in NVIDIA’s favor by a few watts, but we’d really be splitting hairs to complain about an extra 6W of power draw. If you need other GPU alternatives, turn the page….

The $1000 Midrange Sandy Bridge Build

Our midrange build doubles the price; if that seems like a hefty price to pay we should note that it can also more than double performance. If all you’re doing is surfing the web, writing emails, and working with spreadsheets, no, you probably don’t need quad-core Sandy Bridge. If you happen to run more processor intensive workloads—or if you’d like to get an SSD into the mix—by all means go for it. Here are the specs of our midrange build.

Though the Intel Core i5-2500K is not Intel’s most powerful desktop CPU, it does best AMD’s flagship desktop processor, the Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition. The Intel chip is not only more capable, but it also uses less power. To be blunt, the Core i5-2500K is mind-bogglingly fast for its cost. In my experience, the Core i5-2500K cuts through genomic datasets like a hot knife through butter, and it noticeably reduced the time it takes me to get answers to my research questions compared to the Phenom II X4 945 (C3) I was using previously. Video encoders and gamers alike will see remarkably improved results versus even the first-gen Core i5-750. Oh, and rare is the Core i5-2500K that can’t overclock to 4.4GHz on air, with the stock cooler.

So why go with the Core i5-2500K instead of the other Core i5 quads? Simple: you aren’t paying much more for the top of the line i5 part. The Core i5-2500K is only $40 more than the least expensive Core i5-2300, and that $40 gives you 300MHz more at stock (500MHz with Turbo Boost) as well as the ability to overclock with the unlocked multiplier. The other Core i5 chips are niche products, like the i5-2405S with its lower TDP and Intel HD 3000 graphics (vs. the Intel HD 2000 graphics on all of the other i5s sans the 2500K), or the i5-2400S, also with a lower 65W TDP. That said, if you have no intention of ever multiplier overclocking, the i5-2500 is essentially the same as the i5-2500K in its specifications (though the non-‘K’ version has Intel HD 2000 graphics instead of the HD 3000 graphics).

As noted earlier, we recommend the Z68 chipset over P67-based motherboards now. The Biostar TZ68A+ offers tremendous value—it has all of the features expected from a Z68 board at a low price. I’ve had excellent first-hand experiences with Biostar’s T-series motherboards going back as far as the AMD Socket 939 days. Compared to other value Z68 boards, it has a three-year warranty (compared to, say, the ASRock Z68 PRO3’s one-year warranty). It also has fewer than normal rear USB 2.0 ports, but I don’t consider this too much of a negative. If two rear USB 2.0, two front USB 2.0, and two rear USB 3.0 ports (which are backward compatible with USB 2.0 devices) are not sufficient for your needs, you might consider spending more money on a more feature-rich board or buying a powered external USB hub.

We’ve upped the RAM to 8GB of DDR3. This is overkill for most users, but during intensive multitasking with demanding applications, the extra RAM can be useful. It might just be unpleasant memories of paying exorbitant sums for a mere 1GB of DDR back in the price fixing days coloring my judgment, but it’s hard to resist buying 8GB of DDR3 for less than $100!

We’ve included a SandForce-based 60GB OCZ Vertex 2 SSD for the OS and a few software titles as well as a fast 1TB mechanical hard drive for mass storage and extensive game libraries. 60GB isn’t particularly spacious, but at this system price point pairing a small SSD with a larger HDD provides a good balance of speed and storage space. (In other words, it’s hard to have both a larger, more expensive SSD and a large HDD without compromising, for example, the GPU.) We discussed which SSD would be best here, and we also eyed the Corsair Force F40 40GB and Kingston V100 64GB. Ultimately, we felt 40GB just wasn’t enough for our purposes, and $20 more could still fit into our budget. The Kingston V100 on the other hand provides an interesting option; it’s the same price initially, but there’s currently a $45 mail-in rebate. Yes, the SF-1200 controllers are faster overall (even with 25nm MLC NAND), but any decent SSD is still a big jump up from the best HDD.

For the video card, we had a bit of a debate on what would be best once again. This time, we decided to go with the green team, as the price difference (after rebate) is a pretty sizeable $30; however, it's such a close call that we're listing the Radeon HD 6850 as an alternative to the NVIDIA GTX 460 1GB, and both lines are packing some serious mail-in rebates right now. The two GPUs perform similarly, and while the Radeon HD 6850 has markedly lower power usage under load, they’re tied for idle power consumption. If you’re looking to buy DiRT 3, it’s probably the better card since you can get a free copy with the 6850 if you act fast. Ultimately, the GTX 460 1GB cards wins out with lower pricing, but note that if you go with the 400W PSU we list below you'll need to buy a Molex-to-PCIe power adapter. (You could save another $10 by going with the GTX 460 1GB SE; we initially had the EVGA card but ultimately felt the extra 17% compute power was worth $10.)

To power everything, the Antec HCG-400 PSU is a very solidly constructed, less powerful version of the 520W we recently reviewed and praised. A 400W PSU is more than sufficient for this system, though I would not plan on adding a second GTX 460 later without a larger PSU! (If that’s your intention, we’d suggest starting with a 620W PSU instead.) If you feel 400W is too small for such a system, one of our editors (Jarred) is running an HD 5870 Toxic with an overclocked Bloomfield CPU and 24GB RAM off of a 450W PSU, and peaking at around 350W power draw from the wall (e.g. well under 300W load at the PSU), with idle power draw of only 170W (<150W from the PSU). This setup will certainly use less power than his system, making the HCG-400 more than sufficient, provided you're not going to add a second GPU or run half a dozen HDDs.

Housing everything is a Cooler Master HAF 912 case. It’s broadly similar to the Antec Three Hundred in that it has mounts for two front 120mm intake fans (and comes with one installed), a rear 120mm exhaust fan (installed), and mounts for a side as well as top fan. Airflow/cooling is excellent, though again like the Antec Three Hundred, it’s not the quietest case. It’s also designed with water-cooling in mind, so if you ever want to water-cool your i5-2500K for aggressive overclocking, that will be straightforward.

All assembled, just under $1000 buys you a very solid all-around desktop computer that’s also able to handle current games at high resolutions and settings without risking a brownout while your air conditioning is on this summer. And if you’re diligent about sending in all those mail-in rebates, you’re looking at $907 for a new PC—including shipping (but not taxes).

What Can You Build for $2000?

There’s certainly a case of diminishing returns as you go up the price ladder. Our budget system checks in at under $500, our midrange build goes for less than $1000, and now we’re moving all the way up to $2000. There are areas where this system will be close to twice as fast as the midrange build, but that’s mostly in games and comes courtesy of the graphics card(s). If you’re looking for all that gaming performance without dropping two grand, take the midrange build and add the GPU(s) and power supply from the list below—you’ll get 85% of the CPU performance and 99% of the gaming performance for under $1400. But there are other benefits to be had; here’s the full list of parts.

If the Core i5-2500K is so amazingly capable, then why spend almost $100 more on the Core i7-2600K? On the surface, it’s only clocked 100MHz higher at stock, can only turbo 100MHz higher, has only 2MB more L3 cache, and doesn’t have more cores. However, it does have Hyper-Threading, so if you use multithreaded applications—like many video encoding, rendering, and compression applications—you’ll definitely benefit from going from the Core i5-2500K to the Core i7-2600K. For the more typical office and Internet applications, though, the performance difference is negligible. One other thing to note is power consumption—the Core i7 pulls ever so slightly more electricity than the Core i5. That is, even though the i7 is much more capable at certain tasks than the i5, it doesn’t use more juice. You can get a good idea of how the two chips compare, and whether what you do benefits from Hyper-Threading, by looking at our Bench results.

We’ve paired the Core i7-2600K with the ASUS P8Z68-V PRO that we recently reviewed. It sports a plethora of ports along with headers for case front USB 3.0 ports—in addition to the usual front USB 2.0 and Firewire ports. , Like many other high-end Z68 motherboards, the P8Z68 also supports SLI and CrossFire, so whether you choose the AMD or NVIDIA graphics route, the board has you covered for dual-GPUs. However, that doesn’t mean we have to start with two graphics cards, which brings us to the graphics configuration.

In speaking with our resident graphics expert, we came to the agreement that the best overall experience will be had by sticking with a single GPU—at least until you max out that component. You won’t have to deal with CrossFire or SLI headaches, driver updates (and game profiles) become less of a hassle, and everything just works as expected. As such, we’re recommending NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 580 for our high-end setup, currently available with rebates starting at $440. Just to be clear, for a similar price you can actually get better performance by going with dual GPUs, but CF/SLI scaling is never perfect and occasionally has issues with new releases that might take a couple months to get worked out.

If you’d still rather go with CF/SLI, you can pick up a pair of Radeon HD 6950 2GB cards for $460 (after $40 MIR), or you can cut costs even further by grabbing a pair of GTX 560 Ti cards in SLI for $400 (after $60 MIR). You can see how the single GPUs compare in our GTX 560 Ti review, and CF/SLI scaling is generally similar as you can see in our HD 6990 review. The performance edge tends to be in favor of 6950CF, and the 2GB 6950 cards will also have an edge at 2560x1440/2560x1600 and higher resolutions—and really you should have at least a 27” WQHD panel if you’re looking at this sort of graphics setup. But going back to our primary recommendation, the GTX 580 performs nearly as well in current games, it won’t have any CF/SLI idiosyncrasies, and if you’re really looking for a high-powered gaming setup you can always add a second 580 later.

For storage, we’ve gone the SSD+HDD route once more, only with a higher capacity, higher performance, and higher quality Intel 510 SSD this time. We’ve kept the same 1TB HDD for mass storage, but you can always go with a 2TB drive (or additional HDDs) if you need more capacity. We discussed the SSD particulars with Anand before settling on the Intel 510, and again there are some viable alternatives. If you’re after the absolute fastest 120GB SSD, OCZ’s Vertex 3 IOPS MAX is what you’ll want, but retail pricing currently starts at $310 shipped. For $30 less, Intel’s 510 120GB may not be quite as fast, but Intel’s reliability track record is definitely better than SandForce based SSDs. Realistically, outside of extremely taxing storage workloads—workloads most home users will never actually run—any of the latest generation of SSDs will be plenty fast. If the IOPS MAX is the most expensive 120GB, the OCZ Agility 3 120GB is on the other end of the spectrum and comes with a downright affordable price of $200 (after $30 MIR) by comparison. Worst-case performance (i.e. reading uncompressible data) takes a pretty big hit, but otherwise the Agility 3 and Vertex 3 120GB SSDs are very comparable and you save $60 compared to the Vertex 3. You’re still taking more of a risk with SF controllers, but as far as performance goes the SF-2200 drives are the current performance king.

Rounding things out, Patriot offers a solid 2x4GB kit of DDR3-1600 that overclocks well, is in my experience reliable, and has unobtrusive heatspreaders that go well with the ASUS motherboard’s color scheme. Corsair’s Professional Series AX750 outputs 750W at 80 Plus Gold efficiency and it’s fully modular. It’s about as high-quality as a PSU gets for a reasonable price. This PSU provides clean, stable power to this gaming-oriented beast of a computer, with room to spare for two GPUs and a heavily overclocked CPU. (If you do plan on adding a second GTX 580, though, make note that we’ve hit 850W under load using an SLI 580 setup, so you’ll likely need to move into the kilowatt range.)

Housing all of these impressive components is the Corsair Obsidian Series 650D. This case has ample room for a CrossFire or SLI setup, as well as great air-cooling for the heat generated by the CPU and GPU(s) during marathon gaming sessions. It’s also very water-cooling friendly, if you decide to go that route. While I’m not usually a fan of windowed cases, this system is simply too awesome to hide away the internals. We’re coming in slightly under budget for a change, especially if you factor in rebates, which leave us room for a decent midrange aftermarket CPU cooler. The stalwart Cooler Master Hyper 212+ isn’t the best CPU HSF on the market, but it’s quiet, effective, and reasonably priced—and it should let you approach a 5GHz overclock on the Core i7-2600K.

The final tally comes to just $1850 after rebates, which means if you’re still looking for other ways to waste spend your money, you could opt for a higher capacity SSD, add in Blu-ray support, toss in a larger HDD, or look for better cooling. We’re very impressed for just how much you can get for ‘only’ $1850, though, and no one would be unhappy running such a system right now.

Closing Remarks

As discussed in the introduction, right now is an especially wise time to buy into a Sandy Bridge system given that the platform is mature, offers lots of options for all sorts of users, and is unlikely to get knocked off the top of the performance hill for many months. Sandy Bridge-E will come out around Q4, but the primary target will be workstations and users running highly threaded workloads; for dual-core and quad-core setups (including Hyper-Threading), socket LGA-1155 should last well into next year. As a final recap, here’s where we see the markets heading in the near future.

At the low-end, we have Intel’s Core i3 parts. From the early numbers, including pricing, it’s unlikely that AMD’s Llano CPUs will best the Core i3s in terms of sheer computational prowess; however, it also seems clear that Llano’s graphics will be substantially better than Intel’s integrated offerings. In other words, if you are not going to be using a discrete GPU, it would be wise to wait a few weeks and see how desktop Llano shapes up. Considering that the vast majority of desktop users do not need a discrete graphics card now, most of your family, friends, and customers could use Llano as a do-everything, entry-level gaming setup; if they don’t care about games at all, Core i3 likely wins out.

Moving up to the next tier, those who want more capable CPUs and discrete GPUs can jump to or near the top of the performance pile now and stay there for at least a couple month. Come September, AMD’s Bulldozer will finally show up, hopefully providing an answer to Intel’s higher-end Core i5 and Core i7 processors. We’re still a few months away from Bulldozer, however, so if you’re itching to buy or upgrade now is as good a time as any we’re likely to see.

At the very top of the performance heap, we still don’t know what to expect from Bulldozer, and Intel will have a potential counter with Sandy Bridge-E. Depending on the workload, either or both platforms will likely surpass the current crop of i7-2600K systems. While we’re not quite sure where Bulldozer pricing will fall, it’s a safe bet (judging by where LGA-1366 launched) that LGA-2011 platforms will carry a significant price premium over today’s LGA-1155 offerings. If you’re still hanging on to an early Bloomfield X58 setup, though, you should be able to wait for the SNB-E launch before deciding whether to jump onto the mainstream bandwagon or stick with Intel’s high-end enthusiast platform.