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Intel 'Sandy Bridge' mobile platform

Second-gen Core i7 CPU leaves its tyre marks

Performance indicators

I tested the Sandy Bridge laptop using the same methods employed in my group test of 15.6in laptops during the summer. General system performance was absolutely stonking, as you would expect from a quad core CPU with HT and 4GB of fast DDR3, and the Intel HD 3000 graphics match the performance of the Radeon HD 5470 that we saw in a Dell Inspiron 15R. That's good enough for The Sims or Facebook games such as Farmville, but a long way short of Crysis levels.

Benchmark Tests

PCMark Vantage Results

Compal Sandy Bridge Whitebook

Longer Bars are better

Compal Sandy Bridge Whitebook

Longer bars are better

3DMark06 Results

Compal Sandy Bridge Whitebook

Longer bars are better

The PC Mark Vantage scores were skewed by the 160GB Intel X25-M Gen.2 SSD as the laptops in the group test all used hard drives, so I swapped in a Toshiba MK6465GSX 2.5in HDD and re-ran the benchmarks. This gave performance figures that are directly comparable with the previous generation Core i5 laptops and they show that Sandy Bridge is incredibly powerful. Indeed the performance eclipses a great many desktop PCs.

Next page: Brain drain?

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