Maximum PC

I for one and disappointed in the GPU side of things, at least for HTPC side of things.

Intel dropped the ball allowing the 23.976/24 issue to continue.

Then there is the i5-2(5/6)00K issue. To be able to overclock you have to give up VT-d. While this won't be an issue for most people looking to get the most bang for their buck, it will suck for someone like me. I want a well rounded system; that includes running guest systems in a virtual environment.

It makes me question the necessity of VT-d being disable to allow for the overclocking headroom.

I would like to see some numbers on the non-K and K parts showing the difference at the same clock speed with turbo cores disabled and VT-d enabled on the non-K part.

n0b0dykn0ws

There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of interest in SB around here. You might try hardforum.com. There seems to be some interest in SB over there.

IMO the only ones that care about Sandy Bridge are the enthusiast. Regular Joe and Jane won't care too much as if you give them a
outdated socket 775, performs to their needs, they'll be extremely happy.
Another is most of them already own a socket 1366 or 1156 system to upgrade to SB doesn't make any sense.
I'm still running on socket 775 and have no plans of getting SB, when Ivy Bridge arrives I might do a complete upgrade or
stick to my 775 until my board dies and see what's the best I can get during that time. Hopefully it will be 8 cores by default.

I just placed an order today for an i5-2500K to replace my E8500 (which will go into our MPC). Not exactly a vital upgrade, but I miss having a quad core after giving my old Q6600 to my nephew. I'll post some build notes after I get it up and running.

I would just talk about the laptop side of things, not that you would be interested in it.

The integrated GPU (off an i7) now benches to that near a lowly 9600m(mobile). That's a pretty good start. Along with Nvidia Optimus, you get power savings and power when you need it. Sandy Bridge is going to be a great thing in laptops.

My order for an i5 2500K Sandy Bridge and an Intel H67 motherboard will probably arrive tomorrow. Parts are for a computer for my Brother. He wanted onboard video thus the H67 chipset MoBo that runs the Sandy Bridge GPU on CPU graphics.
We'll see how his Sandy Bridge compares to the system that I'm assembling: i7 950, ASUS Sabertooth X58 MoBo, 6 GB memory.
I'm hoping his Sandy Bridge on-chip video will at least work OK for Blu-ray movie playback and his other not terribly demanding video needs.

For my system the only thing I'm missing the the video card. Hoping for the Nvidia Geforce 580 GTX but as you know, those are a little bit scarce right now.

Oh, it will do fine for Blu-Ray playback. Just as long as it's 60 Hz playback.

Since the CPU is more than fast enough he shouldn't have any problems with other video playback either.

n0b0dykn0ws

Okay, the 2500K system is up and running. It was a remarkably painless build. No tweaking yet, just burning the system in at stock clock speeds. While in the BIOS, the CPU temp was showing 20C at idle.

Components (some old, some new*):
* Intel Core i5 2500K
* GSkill F3-12800CL9D-8GBRL (4Gx2)
* Gigabyte GA-P67A-UD3
* Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus HSF
ASUS Radeon HD5850
HTO Omega Claro+
OCZ Vertex2 SSD 120GB

Windows Experience Index (Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit)
7.5 Processor
7.6 Memory (RAM)
7.7 Graphics
7.7 Gaming graphics
7.7 Primary hard disk