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Waiting for Intel to launch Sandy Bridge-E before overhauling your system? According to the latest online chatter, you'll have to hang tight until November as Intel works ferociously to tweak its Waimea Bay platform at least one more time. It appears Intel is a bit concerned about AMD's FX processor refresh coming in early 2012, VR-Zone says, but at the same time will make cuts to its X79 chipset in order to get a shipping product out the door in 2011.
VR-Zone says Intel isn't so much concerned with hitting the holiday shopping season with Sandy Bridge-E as it is in shipping to system integrators preparing for next year's system specs. Combined with the concerns over AMD's FX-refresh, it's a safe bet Intel will ship Sandy Bridge-E on time, albeit with a stripped X79 chipset. SAS support is reportedly being taken out, and it will end up very similar to the current P67 chipset with just two SATA 6Gbps ports and four SATA 3Gbps ports.
It gets worse. VR-Zone claims to have the skinny on Intel's mainstream 22nm Ivy Bridge (socket 1155) platform shipping in 2012, and it's not good news for overclockers. Apparently Intel has decided to implement just a single base clock option for Ivy Bridge above the 100MHz of Sandy Bridge, and that's 133MHz. Rumor has it Intel doesn't want Ivy Bridge to compete with its Sandy Bridge-E (socket 2011) platform, which is what would happen if Intel gave users more base clock options to play around with.
On the bright side, enthusiasts will be more likely to build around the more flexible Sandy Bridge-E platform to begin with, but for overclockers on a budget, it appears you'll only be able to take Ivy Bridge so far.
Comments are closed on this article
EthicSlave
November 21, 2011 at 1:07am
how does sandy bridge compete with ivy bridge to begin with
pci-e 3.0 nope more total max lanes nope
quad channel memory nope with higher clock support nope
IM almost sure there will be a unlocked K version of ivy bridge imho
avenger48
August 01, 2011 at 7:51pm
I really don't see this as a problem. You can really only OC sandy bridge by multiplier as it is, so further crippling bclock overclocking doesn't really effect people much. Besides, why would you need to OC beyond what, like 6.5 GHz on the K series?
Also, will it still have multiple PCIe x16 lanes and quad channel RAM? That's all I really care about. I'm taking a long, hard look at the 6-core mid tier K-series LGA2011 i7.
