# Intel Sandy Bridge - working configurations?



## idownes (Apr 1, 2011)

Hi everyone,

I'd like to build a new Intel based system using one of the sandy bridge cpus (i5 2500k) and P67 motherboard. Can anyone comment on some working configurations that they have? in particular, I'm interested in precisely which motherboard and what works and what doesn't (network, sound,...).

thanks


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## idownes (Apr 10, 2011)

If any one is interested...

I went ahead and built a system. So far everything seems to  be working great, it's super fast compared to my old Q6600 system.

Gigabyte P67A-UD3-B3 motherboard with an Intel 2500K and 16 GB ram - network, audio and sata3 all working great.


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## ahavatar (Apr 10, 2011)

idownes said:
			
		

> If any one is interested...
> 
> I went ahead and built a system. So far everything seems to  be working great, it's super fast compared to my old Q6600 system.
> 
> Gigabyte P67A-UD3-B3 motherboard with an Intel 2500K and 16 GB ram - network, audio and sata3 all working great.



Which graphics card did you choose? Don't you have any X11 compatibility issues?


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## aragon (Apr 10, 2011)

idownes said:
			
		

> If any one is interested...
> 
> I went ahead and built a system. So far everything seems to  be working great, it's super fast compared to my old Q6600 system.
> 
> Gigabyte P67A-UD3-B3 motherboard with an Intel 2500K and 16 GB ram - network, audio and sata3 all working great.


Thanks for your report.  Any chance you could cat your /var/run/dmesg.boot into pastebin pls?


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## idownes (Apr 11, 2011)

@ahavatar:
The Gigabyte P67A-UD3-B3 uses the P67 chipset (as opposed to the H67) which disables the onboard graphics and requires a graphics card. I threw in an old, passively cooled nVidia 8600 GT which is plenty fast if you're not gaming.

@aragon:
Sure, dmesg is posted at http://pastebin.com/tc93CPbh I'm happy to answer other questions about the build if people have them.


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## danbi (Apr 11, 2011)

Is there any support for the Sandy Bridge video in X11?


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## adamk (Apr 11, 2011)

danbi said:
			
		

> Is there any support for the Sandy Bridge video in X11?



Yes, just not on FreeBSD.

Adam


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## Zare (Apr 11, 2011)

@idownes, I also have a Q6600, can you tell me where exactly do you notice significant speed difference? I thought of getting i5 myself and reconfigure Q6600 (with 8GB RAM) as ZFS fileserver.


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## idownes (Apr 12, 2011)

@Zare, honestly it's pretty difficult to say precisely because I changed so many things. Mainly I noticed that building everything from ports was subjectively quicker. This was with the Q6600 ram based tmpfs + early ssd for the port work directory versus currently building solely on a new ssd. I'd imagine the new system would build somewhat faster when I shift to ram. 

Sorry I can't be more precise. But, I have both systems running for now so if you have a particular benchmark (available in ports) then I'm happy to run it.


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