Check out the long list of other reviews. They even get into overclocking. They show the new i5 can outperform the 980x (in gaming) but only when overclocked and with the 980x at stock speeds. I don't know if it was a methodology issue, but most of the other reviews show the 980x still ruler and champ. In fact, all that I browsed through did.
Here was the list posted earlier in the thread:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1574006
Anandtech seems very generous in their praise.
I looked at five of them and Anandtech isn't giving any more praise than the others. Only Tom's Hardware that I read was semi-reserved with praise and even Tom's gave it an award, supposedly only the second CPU award they've given in 2.5 years. His main complaint was the lack of overclocking... which is strange because its very easy to overclock, just not in the way people have been used to of late. It also doesn't respond as well to the little OC "tricks" like over-volting and extreme cooling. IMO this isn't a legit knock on this CPU. Only the 0.01% of the market that are overclocking hobbiests care about this, yet Tom's is reacting like most of his readership thinks this is a major concern. Yet still gave it an award.
The consensus of all the reviews I read seems to be: Unless you have the absolute top-of-the-line Intel CPU, the Sandy Bridge is an upgrade... although maybe not worth the money to upgrade unless you're running something over one year old (or are a hobbiest with plenty of money). And the fact that it is a small fraction of the price of the previous high-end CPUs is icing on the cake (or a reason to kick yourself if you just paid big money for the old CPUs).
No one should buy anything other than a Sandy Bridge CPU now, unless you have a definite need for 6 CPUs / 12 threads, which applies to hardly anyone, or you are still constrained to the low end enough to not need one of the i5 Sandy Bridge CPUs, which would apply to many more people, but not anyone planning a computer for Aces High.
