Does 11.04 support Sandy Bridge?

Out of the box, Natty does have issues with the Sandy Bridge architecture as discussed here on Phoronix.

In summary, performance is not great - as compared against Windows 7. In terms of general Natty support - no real issues are reported.

Fedora 15 is using the latest Mesa development code. If you use this together with the latest kernel, Phoronix are reporting that Sandy Bridge (and similar recent variants) are on a par - or even exceed Windows 7.

Thus, if you want to experiment - try installing the latest Kernel from here together with the latest bleeding edge drivers from this PPA.

Otherwise, stick with the standard Natty - things will get better in 11.10.

I have a

Acer Aspire 7750Gn, Core i5-Sandybridge 2410m 2,3 GHz, 4GB, 120Gb SSD + 500GB HD, Ati 6650 1024MB, DVD-RW, 17,3 TFT, USB 3.0.

and not a single problem with Ubuntu.

Hibernate/suspend work. USB 3.0 works. And the SSD is a true monster. Display works flawlessly (with the recommended driver).

Even the overclocking/turbo boost works after fiddling with some software See also Is Turbo Boost Working?

Kernel 2.6.38 and higher work flawlessly for me.

According to Phoronix support is still lacking in stock version of 11.04 but apparently can be achieved by upgrading to newest kernel, mesa and intel drivers. Atleast Phoronix has run some interesting tests successfully.