Intel Sandy Bridge Core i5-2500K & Core i7-2600K

Firstly we should know about all of it processors. Overall, both the 2600K and 2500K showed a great amount of potential and really did impress more often than not. In most situations, both chips ran circles around similarly-priced solutions from both Intel’s and AMD’s stables. However, does great performance on paper really make much of a difference for people already using Bloomfield, Lynnfield or higher-end Clarkdale chips? Probably not, unless you've been bit by the upgrade bug, but the newest K-series chips do act as a perfect replacement for consumers still using late model Core 2 products. 

Here is the specification of Intel Sandy Bridge Core i5-2500K

Here is the specification of Intel Sandy Bridge Core i7-2600K

When overall performance was extremely good, Sandy Bridge efficiency is what really stood out for us. Both the power consumption and thermals really allowed the 2600K and 2500K to stand out from literally every other CPU out there from a performance per watt standpoint.

And the most important thing here is about overclocking. Those two processors give great performance in overclocking. It can reach up to 4.4 GHz and 4.7 GHz. Talking about overclocking naturally brings up the Achilles’ Heel Intel has now saddled themselves with. Two CPUs were sent to us: both of which are K-series chips with the unlocked multipliers necessary for any type of meaningful clock speed increases. All of the other “standard” processors have fairly limited overclocking abilities while the P67-based motherboards are the only ones which can actually use the abilities found in the 2600K and 2500K. This basically backs would-be enthusiasts into a corner: choose a P67 motherboard and a premium priced K-series processor or forget about seriously tweaking performance. It seems the days of true budget friendly overclocking are officially dead on the Intel platform and believe us, it will be sorely missed. Now that isn't to say that you can't get a tremendous amount of value out of these new i5-2500K and i7-2600K processors. With a bit of overclocking, you can achieve performance levels that are vastly superior to either of Intel's two six-core 'Gulftown' models, which retail for $900 and over.

Intel will also launch their new LGA in 2011 enthusiast processor rearing their heads in Q4 along with increased competition from AMD side. For the time being through, Sandy Bridge shows a step in terms of performance per watt, integrated GPU performance and feature sets because of the new architecture.