anyone upgrading to core i7?

polishpaddy

Just wondering has anyone upgraded to i7 yet? Or have you chosen the cheaper amd route?

leninbenjamin

I'm posting this from an i7 machine. It's only been up and running about a week now, so i haven't really had much of an opportunity to evaluate whether it was worth the extra few bob, but so far I'm happy.

polishpaddy

Thats pretty cool. How much did it all cost you and have you overclocked it at all yet?I'm thinking of doing the same as you.If i do i won't have to upgrade for a good while.

requiem1

I'm gonna hold out till year end to consider the change to either i7 or i5. The benefits of triple channel memory haven't really had any real performance boost on systems so I'm thinking my system if fine for gaming.

Realistically I don't need the upgrade and i might conserve the funds and buy a couple of SSD's for RAID. I think the only reason I'd upgrade to i7 is if a large performance gap emerges in gaming from having a i7 and other than that if i wanted to go SLI and at that I'm thinking I'd just buy a new board.

Hell if i wanted an gaming boost I might just buy a new graphics card. Crap this is starting to circle and has become a serious rant.

leninbenjamin

polishpaddy wrote: »

Thats pretty cool. How much did it all cost you and have you overclocked it at all yet?I'm thinking of doing the same as you.If i do i won't have to upgrade for a good while.

Nah, haven't overclocked yet. I wont bother til i'm finished college in September, don't want to create hassle for myself by making a noobie error.

cost me about 1300 overall, though i spent a bit more than i needed really.

spec:

Coolermaster HAF932
Asus p6t
i7 920 (D0)
Noctua NH-U12P SE1366
6GB OCZ 1600MHZ RAM
GTX285
2x Samsung F1 750GB



Should last me a good while hopefully.

uberpixie

I have:

Q6600 B3 stepping @ stock
4 gig PC6400
4870 512mb
x1 raptor 150gig and 2 other samsung harddrives for storage.

Will stick with what I have for a while. Will prob oc the cpu up to 3ghz and change the gfx card when the pc gets a little long in the tooth. I want to drag out at least another year or year +1/2 before upgrading.

If I had an older pc I would be going iCore7, but I know I won't see a huge increase going from a croe2quad to a icore7 920 for games atm especially as I only game on a 22" and the rig at present does let me play at dacent high settings in games.

@requiem1
I am skipping SSDs for a while: there just seems to be too many nigglie issues with fragmenting to be solved first and a good price reduction before I would consider one.

requiem1

Yeah you're right I heard theirs firmware issues with them as well. the price thing is killing me but seeing them in action actually makes me upset using two raptors in RAID

MysticalRain

I've been running an i7 920 @ 3.7 GHz with a Noctua cooler for the last three months and I'm pretty happy with it so far. It's certainly a great chip for overclocking aside from anything else. I'm probably one of the few people that has gone straight from a P4 system to a quad core one. So it has been a bit of a leap forward for me to say the least.

I opted for an i7 because I tend to do a lot of multitasking with my dual monitor machine, and I run VM's as well. Plus voice dictation software. I also do a lot of video encoding, so it's nice to see all four cores tearing through a video file.

The obvious bottleneck on my system is of course IO. Whether or not I could have spent the money on an extra HD for a raid setup or gone down the SSD route is certainly debatable. In the end I just opted for a single 10,000 RPM velociraptor with the funds I had. This PC may also end up lasting me a long time (2-3 years), so at some point I would expect I will end up playing enough games which utilize all four cores to make the investment worthwhile.

Solitaire

requiem1 wrote:

the price thing is killing me but seeing them in action actually makes me upset using two raptors in RAID

Try 4-6 Raptors in RAID5 Not that I've the money for either solution...

And I'm not going to be upgrading to i7 in the forseeable future. I might be upgrading to AM3 in the autumn though (most likely in the process of a casemodding exercise)

polishpaddy

I'm currently running an e2160 in an abit ip35-e board at 3ghz but i feel thats holding me back alot in some games.
You all have posted some lovely systems and i doubt your getting held back in many games.I think my main problem is, I always go for the budget route.
And I end up doing an upgrade twice, instead of once had i opted for the more expensive route. Does this happen you lads?
And at what res do you play at?


Intel Core i7-920 Box 8192Kb, LGA1366
6GB-KIT G-Skill DDR3 PC1333, CL 7
Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R, Intel X58, ATX, PCI-Express

€492,48

or

AMD Phenom II X4 810 AM3 BOX
Gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4P, ATX, Sockel AM3
6GB-KIT G-Skill DDR3 PC1333, CL 7

€315,52

or

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 boxed, 6MB, LGA775, 64bit
XFX RADEON HD 4890 1GB DDR5 PCI-E 2.0

€343

leninbenjamin

polishpaddy wrote: »

I always go for the budget route.
And I end up doing an upgrade twice, instead of once had i opted for the more expensive route. Does this happen you lads?

I never built before my i7 rig, but the last comp i bought was a laptop, and like you i went the budget route. It was grand for a year, and then just couldn't handle anything new and i was forced to buy new hardware for college work. On the back of this, i decided I'd spend the money on the high end hardware from now on, but we'll see how long this lasts .

edit: I play at 1920 * 1080 btw

uberpixie

polishpaddy wrote: »

I'm currently running an e2160 in an abit ip35-e board at 3ghz but i feel thats holding me back alot in some games.
You all have posted some lovely systems and i doubt your getting held back in many games.I think my main problem is, I always go for the budget route.
And I end up doing an upgrade twice, instead of once had i opted for the more expensive route. Does this happen you lads?
And at what res do you play at?

What could be holding you back in some games is that your cpu has a pathetic amount of cache which can have a major effect on some games performance.

I am still kicking it on a p35 chipset motherboard and it's perfect, it would only be a bottleneck if I wanted to go crossfire. Your p35 board will not hold you back at all regarding performance.

If you upgrade to a E8400 3ghz with 6mb cache and throw in a faster gfx card you will notice a nice jump in performance.

Now you will prob want a quad for future proofing: quads are all over the place atm in pircing and I personally wouldn't buy a quadcore wih less than 8mb cache... which puts you in the i7 price bracket. True extra cache usually means sod all difference in most games but when low cache bites you it really bites you.

Still a q9300 with 6mb cache would prob tie you over nicely for a very long time and cover you for the badly coded games such a GTA4 that run like a dog on dualcores.

iCore7 will realisticaly cost you aleast 700 euro as you will prob be getting a new gfx card on top? (because upping the cpu will make a diference but nowhere near as much as cpu ++ with gfx card ++)

Also there is nothing wrong with going the budget route as long as you plan your upgrades ahead of time and keep an eye on prices, new tech etc..

tbh a q6600 or e8400 2nd hand would prob suit you pretty well: I know my 1st gen b3 stepping q6600 has done me well @ stock in all games so far bar crysis where I had to oc for about 20 mins to finish the last section! (there has to be one somewhere for sale on adverts!)

I am stuck in that any cpu better in core2quad costs the same as a icore7 920 pretty much....

kaimera

went from a p4 desktop to a p4 laptop to a c2d laptop to my i7-920 before christmas.

~1500 cos it was my first build and I needed everything. (there about it here in this forum)

msi mobo (ended up rma-ing it about 8 weeks ago after a bad bios flash )
got 6gb ddr3 initially. have 12gb of faster ddr2 now.
1.5tb of hdd space.
bought a noctua hsf afterwards for ~80e
4870

love it to bits. compared to what I came from it's **** hot. with the new hsf i'm gonna try push the cpu a bit more. use it mostly for gaming but i do rip quite a lot of dvds as well and transcode hd mkv files. tears thru them.

imo well worth the cash.

Solitaire

uberpixie wrote:

I am stuck in that any cpu better in core2quad costs the same as a icore7 920 pretty much....

Ignore the 45nm quads; they just ain't worth it. If you don't have the need nor money for i7 yet really feel that two cores ain't enough, play it safe and go AM3 with a fast tri-core, or try your luck and see if you can get an older 65nm C2Q cheap somewhere. Even new an OEM Q6700 should beat the living daylights out of any 45nm C2Q in the same price range (most likely an anemic Q8200 or something! :P) And the 65nm quads OC much better than the newer ones too (less sync issues for some reason!). All of these have the same performance-per-clock-cycle as i7 when it comes to gaming, and the E6700 and the AM3 chips have good cache to boot.

polishpaddy

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 tray, 8192Kb, LGA775, 64bit, Kentsfield
MSI R4870-MD1G, 1024MB, PCI-Express

€283,48

uberpixie you made me pick the above. What do you think? I want to overclock it and i play at 1680/1050. I can even buy another 4870 later on for crossfire.

AlmightyCushion

My 4870 1GB lets me play everything maxed out (maybe not aa/af as I never really bother with that much) at 1920x1200. It's a savage card, you'll be fine.

polishpaddy

I can't wait to order it.
Mind if I ask you whats a good coller for the cpu? I want to overclock it to 3.4 - 3.6. I've no idea.

AlmightyCushion

The thermalright ultra extreme is great cooler. It's pretty big so make sure it'll fit in your case before you buy it.

polishpaddy

Alright i'll have a look at that one. I have a SilverStone Temjin TJ02 case should be big enough i hope. Thanks for the advice.

uberpixie

polishpaddy wrote: »

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 tray, 8192Kb, LGA775, 64bit, Kentsfield
MSI R4870-MD1G, 1024MB, PCI-Express

€283,48

uberpixie you made me pick the above. What do you think? I want to overclock it and i play at 1680/1050. I can even buy another 4870 later on for crossfire.

Fantastic price and a great upgrade for your gaming performance.
Consider that you would only get an icore7 920 and not much else for the same money... €240 for a 920 on it's own. (which wouldn't gave the same boost in games on it's own)

With the above upgrade you can sit pretty for the next year and a half or so.

I wouldn't be too worried about crossfire: it's not much good to most unless they are on a 24" monitor and the game being played supports crossfire.
I would always go for a single gfx card that performs better than x2 slower gfx cards in SLI/Crossfire: less hassle all round and uniform performance in games.

Also a big +1 on what AlmightyCushion suggested about the thermalright ultra extreme 120mm. Have it myself and it is a good cooler.
Bear in mind if you decide to get one you will need to remove your motherboard to fit a backing plate the the back of the motherboard to support the weight of the cooler. So pretty much stripping down the whole PC again:pac:.

It was well worth it in my case as the arctic cooling freezer7pro I had before just couldn't hack it.

Seifer

I built what's in my sig about 3 weeks ago for €1080.
Fantastically happy with it so far but read this today which made me a bit of a sad panda. I'm gonna treat it as a grass is always greener thing...

pubelicious15

Here's my i7 rig
Motherboard: MSI Eclipse PLUS (I'm impressed with this motherboard, not only does it look great but it's bios is amazing +1 to MSI)
CPU: Intel Core i7 975EE @ 4.5Ghz (will be upgrading to Core i9 as soon as it comes out)
Ram: 6GB Corsair Dominator 1866mhz (The memory fan on the CoolerMaster V10 works better than the Dominator fan)
Graphics Cards: 3 XFX 8800GTX's XXX Edition Sli (waiting for GT300)
Power Supply: Enermax Revolution 1050w (Peak power of 1250w)
Case: CoolerMaster HAF932 (all fans replaced with CoolerMaster 90Cfm 120mm Red Led Fans, 7 in total €15 each)
CPU Cooler: CoolerMaster V10 (Beast, keeps my CPU below 50c on load with my high overclock)
HDD's: 4 WD Caviar Black 500GB in RAID 1
SSD's: 2 OCZ Vertex 30GB in RAID 0
About €3100 all together so far,you will see that price jump when Core i9 and GT300 come out.

StopNotWorking

I really doubt I need an i7. See my sig for what I have and aside from the GPU being a bit of a let down I am really happy with it. I was thinking of going AMD, the only thing holding me back is how much I love my P5Q-Pro board. It's so nice

pubelicious15

If I were you and I was upgrading I'd go for a Phenom II, I have Phenom II X4 955BE in my server and they are great, coupled with 4GB DDR3 and they Overclock very well. I never liked AMD but they've impressed me with the Phenom II series.

Gonzovision

I upgraded from an Abit Ab9 quad gt and a q6600 to an Asus P6t deluxe and an i7-920 with 6gb ddr3 16000.

Found it a huge improvement over my previous system. I splashed out on a 15k Sas drive which is great.

All I need now is a new graphics card. I only have a 20" monitor which does me fine. I was looking at the 4890 on pixmania for 169. Is there much improvement over a 4870? I currently have an 8800gtx

z0oT

I put a machine together last summer based on a Q9450, and with the HD4870 1GB that I have in it now all my games are fine at 1600X1200, so no need to upgrade at all IMO.
The only time I'm going to consider an upgrade is when the 32nm revision of the i7's comes out.

youcancallmeal

Could anyone tell me what the story is with the i5 release coming up in Q3 of this year, is it an improved version of the i7 or a budget version with a few features cut down?

z0oT

youcancallme>al wrote: »

Could anyone tell me what the story is with the i5 release coming up in Q3 of this year, is it an improved version of the i7 or a budget version with a few features cut down?

To my knowledge the i5 is an alternative to the mainstream Core 2's that are around at the moment, Core i7 is to remain the high end platform.

requiem1

Core i5 is Lynnfield, its based on a 45nm structure with an integrated dual memory controller for DDR3. It has the same specs as current i7s except the lowest i5 doesn't have HT. Also it'll have a different socket type 1156 and integrated PCI-Express graphics controller and Direct Media Interface controller for communication with Intel P55 and improved turbo boost (Ibexpeak) chipset.

I think core i9 is the next family of i7s and they'll have a built in gpu core me thinks

requiem1

On that last point there will be a core i5 with IGP not an i9 here's the chart. Also they say that the architecture is westmere but i've read it lynnfield

Gerb68

It seems alot of people went with the Noctua cpu cooler is that because of the dual fan?

Can I ask AlmightyCushion did you buy a thermalright and if so where?

AlmightyCushion

requiem1 wrote: »

On that last point there will be a core i5 with IGP not an i9 here's the chart. Also they say that the architecture is westmere but i've read it lynnfield

That's a lot of new sockets by the looks of things. Bit of a pain in the ass.

Gerb68 wrote: »

It seems alot of people went with the Noctua cpu cooler is that because of the dual fan?

Can I ask AlmightyCushion did you buy a thermalright and if so where?

Yup I got one. I bought it from www.hpm-computer.de

towel401

well then i'm waiting for core i9 or i10. still using a e6300 and 7800gt feel no need to upgrade. of course i'll have to wait for micro-itx boards, there is one i7 but its a bit pricey

Solitaire

That table looks wonky...

Penryn is available in 2 or 4 cores and sure ain't LGA775 :P

Pretty sure Arrandale is mobile i5, not mobile C2D.

Lynnfield typo: should be LGA1156, not 1155. Pretty sure it won't have 8MB L3 either! And why does it have a seperate column under i7 as well?

Finally those dates are well off. With no competition from AMD at the high-end and performance issues i5 ain't gonna be out in May... seeing as it's already July :P I doubt we'll be seeing them anytime soon in fact. And 32nm processes are miles off (TSMC can't even get reliable volume production from 40nm) I doubt we'll see any 32nm chips this year.

uberpixie

towel401 wrote: »

well then i'm waiting for core i9 or i10. still using a e6300 and 7800gt feel no need to upgrade. of course i'll have to wait for micro-itx boards, there is one i7 but its a bit pricey

there are x3 motherboards in m-atx on komplett atm...


http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=461441 €160 cheapest msi m-atx
the most expensive is over €220 for the rampage.

Solitaire

Kinda annoyed at the lack of mATX and mITX AM3 mobos. AMD and their board partners aren't doing themselves any favours by locking themselves out of the lucrative LANparty market... :mad:

towel401

yea they need to start making more small boards. especially as people these days are going for laptops because desktop computers take up too much space.

will there be i9 and the like m-itx boards? i thought those yokes were mostly for low-spec things with soldered in low-power processors

Solitaire

Not really as a more general mITX market is just starting to take off, seeing as liquid cooling solves a lot of problems with CPU cooler form factor so long as you can mount or mod a single 120mm fan on a given SFF case (with SFF more often mod than mount ). There are already a ton of mATX X58 boards for LAN rigs so the lack of AM3 ones is a real bone of contention (AM2 not only forces you to use DDR2 but even with a SB750 and ACC P2s just don't want to OC well on them )

In any case we may well see an i5 mITX and the existance of high-end AM2+ mITX boards suggests an AM3 update is more than possible but I doubt we'll see i7/i9 mITX boards. Then again, in that niche market a little demand goes a long way and we've already seen Zotac and J&W push the form factor into the mainstream...

Gonzales24

there are not much games out there wich are actually using quad power.. that sayed..
so when u wanna a game rig, there is no need for UBER everything, but a smart chose of something. :P
the difference in games between intel 2 Quad or an i7 wouldnt be as much as the difference between a older graphics card compared to a new one... or a weak model to a high-end!!!
my way would be, go for a really good LGA775 MB (good OC) with good pair of ram and core 2 Quad. really good OC potencial even with air-cooling!!!! and invest the money saved in the latest on graphics card and in a SSD as a boot disk.. .

Solitaire

Yeah, except that most places are finally starting to run low on Q6600/6700 stock, which is a big prob as the 45nm C2Qs kinda suck. They're not bad, just overpriced and OC-unfriendly (any headroom you could exploit would come at the price of upping the mobo spend from ~€100 to ~€200 ) Its kinda sucky when you drop €300 on a C2Q and mobo and have a hard time scraping 3.4GHz on heavy OC when some chancer with a €80 X2-550BE and an ASRock mobo goes and unlocks the other cores and gets it running stable at 3.4GHz at lower voltage and heat for just over half the price. Not that the P2s are particularly predictable in temperment but they're such good competition against those lacklustre 45nm C2Qs Intel must be feeling a bit green right now... just bad timing to show weakness in that end of the market with AMD on the rampage again thanks to the wacky world of Phenom2 [/nitpick]

The big issue is that more and more new game releases seem to be thread-aware so its a bad time to lack a defensive tri-core option which is both fast but not too off the pace for overall power compared to a slower quad. With the easy-OC X3-720BE selling for peanuts its a good time to go for more than two cores... just in case...

Gonzales24

there are planty on ebay.ie or ebay.de try there

somakasvh

Solitaire wrote: »

Yeah, except that most places are finally starting to run low on Q6600/6700 stock, which is a big prob as the 45nm C2Qs kinda suck. They're not bad, just overpriced and OC-unfriendly (any headroom you could exploit would come at the price of upping the mobo spend from ~€100 to ~€200 ) Its kinda sucky when you drop €300 on a C2Q and mobo and have a hard time scraping 3.4GHz on heavy OC when some chancer with a €80 X2-550BE and an ASRock mobo goes and unlocks the other cores and gets it running stable at 3.4GHz at lower voltage and heat for just over half the price. Not that the P2s are particularly predictable in temperment but they're such good competition against those lacklustre 45nm C2Qs Intel must be feeling a bit green right now... just bad timing to show weakness in that end of the market with AMD on the rampage again thanks to the wacky world of Phenom2 [/nitpick]

The E0 stepping 45nm C2Qs overclock really well (I can vouch for the Q9650 at least). I have mine 24/7 OC to 4GHz on air at moderate voltage on an Asus X38

Solitaire

I really meant the cheapie Q8X00 and the Q9300, Q9450 and up are good kit, but sometimes too close to i7-920 in price. Actually the price cuts have dropped the Q9550 out of stark-raving-loony land and its now a sweet buy given its now well under €190!

Gonzales24

somakasvh is right, q9650 is one of the better 45nm core 2 quads. it sopouse to be the new Q6600, Q9650 overclocked to 4Ghz on air outruns a i7-940, specially combined with DDR3. that sayed, when u dont wanna burn a hole in ure wallet and still get great performance, go for the q9650 with a great cooler such us MUGEN-2 or Titan fenrir u schold get 4Ghz out of it, combined with DDR3 memory u will have a i7-940 competetor. respect