What is Sandy Bridge and why is LGA1156 obsolete?

[Krusty]

Bit of a blurb from Tom's Hardware on "best gaming CPU for the buck"

Found here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-cpu-overclock,2772-2.html


"For folks considering a full upgrade, the Socket AM3 and LGA 1156 platforms are probably better choices. Just bear in mind that LGA 1156's days are numbered. The launch of Sandy Bridge early next year sees Intel pulling a hack-job with yet another interface, leaving mainstream buyers with Core i3, Core i5, and Core i7 CPUs stranded without a viable upgrade path."

What does this mean? How does this affect LGA1366? Is that also going to be replaced, or do they mean this will replace the lesser 1156?

The wording isn't clear, and they already have Core i7s on this format so folks wouldn't be stranded as suggested in the comment. It conjures up images of a yet newer socket interface.


Thoughts?

[Easyscor]

From a thread awhile back:

http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,296726.msg3788076.html#msg3788076

[cattb]

AMD is changing their architecture in the CPU also. Suppose to be out in 2011, well so they say. It is possible that AMD will change their socket also.

[Krusty]

From a thread awhile back:

http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,296726.msg3788076.html#msg3788076

I remember that thread, but these chips are NO threat to i7 and i9s.... [EDIT: That's a mistake on my part, I was thinking i7-900 as the cores, got my numbers mixed up] They're low end business chips with integrated intel graphics (probably the worst in the industry for integrated graphics).

Why that would be a threat to the highest end, fastest clocked, CPUs in the world today, I don't see the link.

So Tom's Hardware was just barking up the wrong tree with that comment?

[Easyscor]

Two different sources. The link I posted in the other thread was to AnandTech iirc. I will only comment that I don't think anyone reading this forum is going to drop two or three hundred dollars on a brand new state of the art chip, and then skimp on the best video card he can afford. Even if there is an onboard GPU, it would be the first thing I'd disable.

[Krusty]

Disabled or not still leads to issues I'd think. Anybody semi-serious (Intel's major market involves gamers) will avoid this chip like the plague.

[skribetm]

quad core with 400 shaders of dx11 capable cores(equivalent to radeon 5670 discrete gpu).
32nm + soi + hi-k metal gate + low-k for the interconnects. ~500GFlops compute power.
should be capable of playing AH2 at up to 1440x900 w/o the need for a discrete GPU.
going to be a perfect solution for AH2's budget crowd.

AMD Llano. out Q2 2011.

oh, almost forgot about SB. it isnt even DX11 capable. but here's the meat: