Hello,
I am building a new system and looking to find out if the sandybridge 2011 socket or the ivybridge 1155 socket is the best. They are roughly the same price. The problem is the old socket 1155 has the newer technology with the ivy bridge, but the sandybridge being the older chipset has the newer socket type?
Intel Core i7 3770K 3.5GHz Socket 1155 8MB Cache or Intel Core i7 3820 3.6GHz Socket 2011 10MB L3 Ca
Who else looked at the title and was about to tattle to the mods? To the OP, I found SandyBridge mote reliable.
The main difference between Sandybridge-E and Ivybridge is that Ivy is a die shrink. It’s part of Intel’s ‘tick-tock’ roll out strategy. First they roll out changes to the architecture on the current lithographic node such as 32nm, then once they’re satisfied that the kinks are worked out, they do the die shrink down to the next node - in this case, 22nm.
I think there are in fact some other differences but that’s the main one IIRC. Of course you’ll notice that as a result of the smaller silicon package, the TDP (thermal design power) on the SB-e is 130W while for Ivy it’s only a little more than half of that at 77W
The main benefit to using the LGA 2011 platform is it has 40 PCIexpress lanes, so you can run a full SLI set up (remember that video cards will use the full 16 lanes if they’re available). LGA 1155 will generally only have 24 lanes, so an SLI setup on one of these systems will have one of the video cards be constrained by an 8x link.
So if you’re planning to do an SLI setup, get an LGA 2011 motherboard with associated CPU (or wait until Ivy Bridge-E comes out, which should be Q2). If you’re not planning on doing SLI, there is no point in spending the extra money.
Sorry for the double post, but I want to clarify one thing.
The extra money in this case comes not from the CPU, as OP said that the i7 3770K and i7 3820 are comparable in price, which sounds right. The extra money comes in when you’re looking at motherboards. You can get a decent LGA 1155 motherboard from around eighty bucks, but you’re looking at $200 or more for an LGA 2011 'board.
Additionally, LGA 1155 affords you the ability to select a lesser CPU, like the i5 3570K which would be my personal choice were I building a new system today. The i7 3820 appears to be the cheapest LGA 2011 CPU on offer, however, at around $300. And as deltasigma said, there are TDP differences, too, which might allow you to shave a few watts off (and thus a few dollars) off your PSU. All in all, integer calculation-wise the two CPUs should be roughly comparable. But the i7 3820 comes with two significant drawbacks (price and power consumption/heat) and only one big advantage (the platform’s ability to run two video cards at 16x).
In addition to what others have said,
Ivy bridge processors will come with a superior integrated video to sandy bridge. It’s roughly 1.5-2x faster IIRC. This matters if you don’t plan on having a discrete video card.
Additionally, the ivy bridge integrated video card is capable of powering 3 monitors while the sandy bridge is only capable of powering 2. (dependent of course on the actual ports on our motherboard). Ivy bridge also has the capability to run both the integrated video card AND a discrete video card simultaneously. This allows you to connect upwards to 7 monitors (if your discrete vid card powers 4). I am unsure if sandy bridge has this simultaneous integrated + discrete video card capability.
The above doesn’t matter to most people, but I run 4 monitors and it sure matters to me!