Today I’m NOT gonna write the usual report of an overclocking session or write about the latest nerdy thing that I play with.
That’s kinda different, the purpose of this write-up is basicly answer to a simple question: why Intel 1155 stuff sucks that badly?
Many people probably aren’t of the same thinking but I’m quite confortable to say that this latest Intel platform is a HUGE EPIC FAIL.
The last medium range Intel platform that was really worth to play with was P35, socket LGA 775; back in those good days I had some really great board that i still have and still running smoothly.
Those boards had a good price / performance ratio and were really reliable for both daily use and benchmarking – on top of my favourite list there are: GA-P35-DS4 and DFI UT P35-T2R.
After than those p35 boards we have had nothing but CRAP in the mid range or UBER high end stuff with crazy HIGH PRICES and SOMETIME good performance and reliability.
Sometime because unluckily paying a shitload of cash doesn’t assure you to get something good, something that work like stated in the PR slide for press guys, something that works like reviewers say, etc etc.

The situation with Sandy Bridge – Intel socket 1155 – is even worst than what we had before, TODAY we have ONE thing were this crap rocks – performance clock to clock compared with the others x86 based platform – and an ENDLESS list of problems – listed below.
Firstly I’m gonna say why Sandy sucks for daily users that CARE NOT ONLY about FPS in gaming application.
That’s quite simple, just to name a few issues: think about the ridiculous 20Gb/s (Giga bit, not Giga byte) DMI bus (a single SATA 3 port uses 6 Gb/s, so make your math…), the LACK of NATIVE USB 3.0 support, the ONLY 4 native SATA ports, the ONLY 16x PCI-E 2.0 lines, LACK of video output ports on the high end and also high priced Z68 boards.
You are looking for a fast USB 3.0 driver, ok, but you have to use the crappy 2 ports provided by a third part controller because here in 2011 Intel doesn’t think that USB 3.0 deverves native support from their PCH.
For the PCI-E lines, try to use 2 or even better 3 video cards with 16 lines – adding NF200 bridge or Lucid Hydra makes the things even worse – , try to use a single graphic card and a RAID controller…good luck to you Sir.

From the benching side the situation is even worse.
Usually when us bencher buy a CPU we look for Batch, week of production and some other things, well, forget everything about that because here batch and other info count less than none.
You only have to throw away a shitload of cash and buy as much CPUs as you can.
Plus, these CPUs are usual to die REALLY quick, so, if you get a good one better to bench it as fast as possible because it’s going to die real quickly – ok, that’s not properly a problem, I mean, Intel doesn’t assure that their chip will last forever when overclocked and overvolted.
But what really makes me angry as hell are those KINDA BRAINDEAD CORPORATE DUDES that advertise that crap like overclock’s heaven and so on.
Here we have ONLY crappy boards that are advertised like overclocking oriented BUT don’t work with Elpida Hyper – holy moly, overclocking without using Elpida Hyper? are you kidding me, right? – and the worst BIOSes we ever seen.
That stuff can do global WR only in 1 benchmark, the 3dmark 01, but none except Gigabyte and recently EVGA think that this is worth some attention and work.
Try to run a 01 with a Gigabyte board, then swap to an Asus, MSI, etc etc and rerun the benchmark using the same settings and see what happens.
Next time, if you wanna do something for us, better to spend some time figure out what benchers need instead of write bullshit advertisement.
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**Icing on the cake: 1 month after the launch both desktop and mobile boards were replaced with newer version because of a bug in the PCH, after another 2 / 3 months Z68 (basicly a P67 plus video output port on the I/O panel) came out and then some brands tought to quit p67 production.
So, I bought an overpriced P67 board, I waited 2 months for a newer not bugged mobo with crappy BIOS support and a shitload of issues and NOW, after another 2 / 3 months, you are quitting producing and also supporting your 5 months old mobos? what’s that? that’s really UNBELIEVABLE.
I really hope that none will buy Sandy crap, Intel should change his attitude to sell crap like gold and the brands should start to PROPERLY support people that spend some money buying their products.

Honestly, lately I’m not enjoying overclocking like, uhm, saying, 1 year ago; I need to go back to the basic and have fun.
My plan for the next months is get a 990FX board and play with the cheap and funny AMD CPUs.

That’s what I think about today’s situation, give or take.
Have a nice bench !!!