Choice of Sandy and Ivy Bridge laptops

Ivy Bridge mainly upgraded the graphics processing capabilities of integrated chips, 22 nm manufacturing technology while keeping the Sandy Bridge architecture.

If compared to the time of yearly appearance, Ivy Bridge is slower than its " brother" Sandy Bridge. 2nd generation Core i chips were present at CES January 2011, while 3rd generation chips must arrive in April 2012 and sold after more than 2 months

Currently the integrated laptop models Intel Core i processor has started " docking" Vietnam market from about mid-June last but not so that the Sandy Bridge chip immediately disappeared. This is still a reasonable choice in some segments as well as consumer demand. In order to make the right decisions, users need to understand the upgrade as well as change between computers using two new chips.

Here are some noteworthy points when choosing between these two models.

Ivy Bridge is "tick", Sandy Bridge is "tock".

Intel always refers to the phrase " tick-tock " in the process of upgrading its processor every year continuously. It can be understood simply as " tick " for only one year with the normal upgrade while "tock " refers to a larger and more comprehensive upgrade. In this case, the "tick " attached to Ivy Bridge and "tock" are for Sandy Bridge.

Ivy Bridge is not a major upgrade compared to the previous generation like Sandy Bridge.

Basically, Ivy Bridge upgraded the processing process but still retains the architecture compared to the previous generation. However, the improvements in graphics processing capabilities have made Intel call this a tick + step to emphasize change. The 3rd generation Core i chips also use Sandy Bridge's production process of 22 nm compared to 32 nm to consume less power in theory.

Ivy Bridge handles faster, but only slightly.

Actual tests have shown that the performance improvement between these two chips in terms of processing speed is not much. According to PCMag, testing CineBench R11.5 renderings with Ivy Bridge Intel Core i7-3770K chip is 1.65 while Core i7-2700K (Sandy Bridge is the fastest) is 1.58 points. PCMark7's processor component score was 3,679 and 3,867 and the time in Photoshop CS5 was 2 minutes 47 seconds compared to 2 minutes 50 seconds.

Earlier announcements by Intel also showed that the new chip line is 4 to 6% faster than the previous generation.

Ivy Bridge chips consume less power.

With production precursors of 22 nm, smaller than 32 nm, Ivy Bridge is expected to consume less power than its predecessor. This is true for PCMag's tests. With two models of Core i7-2700K and the Core i7-3770K, use the Extech Datalogger program to measure power consumption. When the system is mostly in " off" with a consumption of about 71 watts, the Core i7-2700K (Sandy Bridge) processor consumes 166.5 watts of power and the Core i7-3700K is 136.3. wattt. Less levels are quite significant.

However, this does not seem to really show up on the shared laptop usage time. In some tests with the recent Ivy Bridge laptop (from 14 to 20 million VND), the battery life is still over 3 hours, equivalent to models using older chips.

Ivy Bridge supports better graphics but still not enough to play 'terrible' games .

Ivy Bridge much improved on integrated graphics chip.

The most significant change on Ivy Bridge is the graphics processing capabilities of the integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000 chip. The same is built on 22 nm process and supports 4K maximum resolution as well as 3 support. screen instead of just 2 screens as before. Overall, Ivy Bridge's GPU is up to 60% faster than Sandy's, while incorporating the actual test shadow effect, the new system can be up to 30 times stronger.

However, the fact also shows that if you want to play powerful 3D graphics games like Max Payne 3, Batman: Arkham City, The Elder Scrolls V : Skyrim, users will still need a discrete graphics card from AMD and Nvidia. Therefore, if you are a gamer, you really should consider in a range of money to choose a stronger graphics card because at this time strong configurations with Ivy chips are usually quite expensive.

Need a minimum of VND 14 million to think about the current Ivy Bridge laptop.

The current Ivy Bridge laptop has a minimum price of VND 14 million.

In the first series of laptops launched in June and maybe 2-3 months away, there will be no appearance of the Ivy Bridge Core i3 platform and all new laptops coming to Vietnam market at the moment. cost over VND 14 million (using Core i5 or Core i7 chips). Therefore, for high-end users who don't really have high demand or who use student students, Ivy Bridge laptop models aren't really suitable.

Ivy Bridge new out not too expensive, Sandy Bridge has much cheaper.

Many Vietnamese users are psychologically worried when a new product will be expensive and waiting for it to be cheaper to decide to buy. This is not really true with the new Ivy Bridge chip. The product price reduction roadmap is always in the manufacturer's dictionary but if you pay attention to the average price of about 14 to 16 million dong, it is not high compared to Sandy Bridge's equivalent of Core i5 or i7 chips only about half a year. Therefore, if there is really a need, a passion for technology or a payment for buying a big laptop, choosing Ivy Bridge is very reasonable.

Meanwhile, Sandy Bridge laptop began to gradually retreat to the cheap segment. Models using this chip even include a pretty strong discrete graphics card, which is only in the range of 11 to 12 million.