Fantastic deal on the new cpu released today from Intel. Most reviews say this is the new sweet spot model at 2.80GHz and meets or beats the Core i7 920 at 95W power!
uricmu said: Damn it. I wish I hadn't built an AMD based computer last month.
dont feel too bad. You won't be able to tell the difference between the two in most real application. These don't overclock as well as the i7 according to anand. For stock voltage and speed, i5 is a good one to get as well.
Pun said: uricmu said: Damn it. I wish I hadn't built an AMD based computer last month.
dont feel too bad. You won't be able to tell the difference between the two in most real application. These don't overclock as well as the i7 according to anand. For stock voltage and speed, i5 is a good one to get as well.
I have an Athlon X4 940 which I bought for about $160. First gaming rig I built in 10 years (I use an old mac for day-to-day work). Most of the benchmarks that I've seen show impressive differences even from the high-end AMD, and about 80% improvement for the i7 860 compared to the Athlon 945.
Also, the i7 is supposed to have the option of shutting down cores so power consumption at idle should be much lower.
Besides, I used to work for Intel (really great place to work) so there's a part of me that still feels I should stick to that brand...
I went from Q6600 to i7 920 @ 4Ghz. No noticeable difference at all. All my games (COD4/5, Demigod, L4D, etc) run the same. It's more GPU/HD limited than CPU. If you rip/decode/encode DVDs, then you may want to jump on the i5/i7 wagon. Otherwise, keep your current "recent" setup.
Babur237
Member
posted: Sep. 8, 2009 @ 4:36p
Pun said: I went from Q6600 to i7 920 @ 4Ghz. No noticeable difference at all. All my games (COD4/5, Demigod, L4D, etc) run the same. It's more GPU/HD limited than CPU. If you rip/decode/encode DVDs, then you may want to jump on the i5/i7 wagon. Otherwise, keep your current "recent" setup.
Couldn't agree more. Spend that money on an SSD and you will see noticeable difference.
Babur237 said: Pun said: I went from Q6600 to i7 920 @ 4Ghz. No noticeable difference at all. All my games (COD4/5, Demigod, L4D, etc) run the same. It's more GPU/HD limited than CPU. If you rip/decode/encode DVDs, then you may want to jump on the i5/i7 wagon. Otherwise, keep your current "recent" setup.
Couldn't agree more. Spend that money on an SSD and you will see noticeable difference.
the core2 has been around for quite a while (july 2006) which means that some people might see a difference. for example my current computer is a c2d on a ich7, and as soon as Newegg/zzf get their sites working this box will go in the closet as a headless server. a new computer will be better in many areas, memory, on die memory controller, PCH, and hopefully some of the MB/driver issues have been delt with. if i was really smart, and frugal, i would wait for usb3 and 6GB sata, but i guess i've been waiting for an upgrade (still using a 4x500 array also).
that said, if you browse the internet, do casual gaming, write some papers, and have a core2 PLEASE do not upgrade yet.
bruins01
New Member
posted: Sep. 8, 2009 @ 7:08p
namlook said: i7 920 still looks like the sweet spot for me costing 14.5% less and overclocking past 4 Ghz.
The cost advantage is negated by the fact that the 860 motherboards (P55 vs. X58) are cheaper (and will probably be much cheaper soon) and you only have to purchase 2/3rds the RAM you'd need to purchase for a 920 by virtue of the fact that it's dual-channel and not triple-channel--that is, you only need two 2GB DIMMs for the 860 rather than three for the 920. And the 1156 socket will probably offer more options for future processor upgrades without having to buy a new motherboard (speculating, though). Not to mention, the 860 uses significantly less power, and the processor officially supports faster DIMMs.
If you want to run 6GB of ram you still need to buy 6GB of ram whether it's dual or triple channel. It's not like you can run 6GB on socket 1156 by buying 2/3rds of the ram that you buy for socket 1366.
i7 920 is running 1600 ram with no problem. What matters is real world use, not whether a certain type of ram is officially supported.
Also the 1366 socket will be where you want to be if you want to move to i9 since the i7 920 and the i9 will both share the same socket. You will need to buy a new motherboard if you want to move from i7 860 (socket 1156) to i9.
bruins01 said: Not to mention, the 860 uses significantly less power, and the processor officially supports faster DIMMs.
" Officially " is the key word.
My i7 is "unofficially" running 1600 DDR3 Ram just fine.
shreknguyen
New Member
posted: Sep. 8, 2009 @ 7:47p
Read this article b4 you decide to buy this: http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2009/05/28/intel-to-discontinue-core-i7-920-940-cpus/1
wwwmaniac
Member
posted: Sep. 8, 2009 @ 8:10p
I went from Q6600 to i7 920 @ 4Ghz. No noticeable difference at all. All my games (COD4/5, Demigod, L4D, etc) run the same. It's more GPU/HD limited than CPU. If you rip/decode/encode DVDs, then you may want to jump on the i5/i7 wagon. Otherwise, keep your current "recent" setup.[/quote] Video encoding all the time, 3D rendering, any high-performance computing or if you have something comparable to a 2 or more GTX295s in a SLI then you'd likely benefit from the i7. Otherwise, not so much, imo. If you like the hottest stuff i7 920 is pretty nice given it overclocks well. I am still considering upgrading now, but given that I currently have a Phenom with 16gigs or pretty fast DDR2. For me it would cost quite a bit to replace that (mobo+CPU+memory) and quite frankly I doubt that I will see a huge performance boost in most of my daily activities. I think I can last another year with this config and once Intel sets their mind on what they wanna do with the chipset so that we all don't have to buy new mobo's all the time I will see about upgrading, maybe AMD will come up with something decent by then, you never know
bruins01
New Member
posted: Sep. 8, 2009 @ 8:24p
namlook said: If you want to run 6GB of ram you still need to buy 6GB of ram whether it's dual or triple channel. It's not like you can run 6GB on socket 1156 by buying 2/3rds of the ram that you buy for socket 1366.
i7 920 is running 1600 ram with no problem. What matters is real world use, not whether a certain type of ram is officially supported.
Also the 1366 socket will be where you want to be if you want to move to i9 since the i7 920 and the i9 will both share the same socket. You will need to buy a new motherboard if you want to move from i7 860 (socket 1156) to i9.
I should have been clearer. Maximum performance with a 920 will be when it is paired with three DIMMs. Maximum performance with an 860 will be with two DIMMs. "Maximum performance" is, of course, assuming you don't need the extra two GB of RAM, which most people don't at the moment.
If I were buying a computer today, I would go with the socket 1156 and the i7 860 for its better turbo mode, lower power consumption, and cheaper parts--but this is dependent on my understanding that intel is going to keep supporting socket 1156 for another few years. I think intel's six-core future processors are going to be socket 1366 though, right?
wwwmaniac
Member
posted: Sep. 8, 2009 @ 8:45p
If I were buying a computer today, I would go with the socket 1156 and the i7 860 for its better turbo mode, lower power consumption, and cheaper parts--but this is dependent on my understanding that intel is going to keep supporting socket 1156 for another few years. I think intel's six-core future processors are going to be socket 1366 though, right? Frankly I don't even know anymore what they are going to "support". The hex (6-core ones) are going to be 1366. 1156 will get some inexpensive 2-core models in the near future. That's about as far as the news go I think.
I upgraded to the i7 920 back in July. RAM was so cheap that I put in 12GB. Way overkill but the RAM only cost me about $140 after rebates, bing, Newegg discounts, etc. And I've actually had about 8 gigs used at once when using photoshop.
The i7 920 is probably going to be quietly discontinued. But you'll never see a 920 for $100 during this discountinuation. $200 (what I paid from microcenter) is a hot price. And the Asus P6T SE I got for $175 or so. Overall I got a great deal on an incredible upgrade. I use Nero Recode/DVD Shrink to reencode dvds for the kids so they don't scratch up the originals and remove the menus and previews. That took 7-8 minutes on my old AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+. The last dvd I did on the i7 took 3 minutes flat. Not bad. And the CPU never got to 100%.
Whatever you build, whatever you decide, the iX platform is a major upgrade to any previous platform. AMD is light years behind Intel which makes me sad. Intel had previously slowed down development and release of new chips because they wanted to milk everything out of the old platform first and AMD had nothing to compete with it. AMD recently released a processor that is on par with the Core 2 which is 3 years old. Come on AMD, bring on some heat.
Babur237 said: Pun said: I went from Q6600 to i7 920 @ 4Ghz. No noticeable difference at all. All my games (COD4/5, Demigod, L4D, etc) run the same. It's more GPU/HD limited than CPU. If you rip/decode/encode DVDs, then you may want to jump on the i5/i7 wagon. Otherwise, keep your current "recent" setup.
Couldn't agree more. Spend that money on an SSD and you will see noticeable difference. Ditto on both of those comments. I went from a Q9550 to an i7 920 and I didn't notice a difference, and I do a lot of fairly heavy processing tasks. However, I just added an SSD as my new boot drive and now I really notice a difference!
aztecsurf said: Fantastic deal on the new cpu released today from Intel. Most reviews say this is the new sweet spot model at 2.80GHz and meets or beats the Core i7 920 at 95W power!
Linkyi7 860 is better than a 920? If so, then what's up with the naming convention...
Everyone is pretty much spot on with their reviews. Six cores will be 1366, and so will Eight cores down the road (so they claim). The Anandtech review (see what Antimatter85 posted) states that dual channel is enough for up to 4 cores. Once you go past that then you will need the triple channel setup.
I also really like the power savings. They showed the Core i5 at only 80-something watts vs a old Quad core at over 130watts idle! Also of note. The new Core i7 and i5 have an integrated PCI-E controller that can only handle 1 x16 lane. If you want to SLI you get bumped down to 2 x 8x lanes. Anand covers this too, and yes there is a performance hit there that was noticeable to the reviewer.
Oh yea, if it matters to anyone, no HyperThreading on the Core i5. It's just disabled... marketing gimmick since HT isn't affected by bad yields.
Frys stores has a core i5 cpu with gigabyte board for $289 in today's ad, good until tomorrow, in stores only. It's a great deal if you need a motherboard.
I'm sticking with i7 920 because I want hexacore! Still, this is a pretty good deal so green for OP
JWong
Ancient Member
posted: Sep. 9, 2009 @ 11:26a
That Fry's combo works out about $8 more expensive than the regular combo price at Newegg for me, thanks to tax. Of course, if you have to pay tax at Newegg, Fry's is better.
BigRedNole said: I wish i had a Microcenter near me. The etailer prices suck ass right now.
Me too, a month later and this Microcenter price still beats everyone else by $50. Really stinks that the closest thing to a computer B&M we have in our area anymore is a Best Buy
Pun said: I went from Q6600 to i7 920 @ 4Ghz. No noticeable difference at all. All my games (COD4/5, Demigod, L4D, etc) run the same. It's more GPU/HD limited than CPU. If you rip/decode/encode DVDs, then you may want to jump on the i5/i7 wagon. Otherwise, keep your current "recent" setup.
Hence why I went with a core2duo. I do a lot of archiving and stuff but even my pentium 4 handles that fine and yeah I know a core2duo and then the i7 are faster than an old p4 ht. Still works fine for me anyway. Usually people that have i7 processors are people who want to tell people that they have i7's. Not much difference to people who buy emachines (not me, but other people).
kbomb84
Member
posted: Oct. 8, 2009 @ 3:21p
amptor said: Pun said: I went from Q6600 to i7 920 @ 4Ghz. No noticeable difference at all. All my games (COD4/5, Demigod, L4D, etc) run the same. It's more GPU/HD limited than CPU. If you rip/decode/encode DVDs, then you may want to jump on the i5/i7 wagon. Otherwise, keep your current "recent" setup.
Hence why I went with a core2duo. I do a lot of archiving and stuff but even my pentium 4 handles that fine and yeah I know a core2duo and then the i7 are faster than an old p4 ht. Still works fine for me anyway. Usually people that have i7 processors are people who want to tell people that they have i7's. Not much difference to people who buy emachines (not me, but other people).
I'd have to agree with that. The single biggest performance difference for me was a move to SSDs, and then graphics. Games just aren't CPU bound these days. The only reason why someone should get an i5/i7 would be because of the necessity to get a new PC (grab an i5, cheap and has enough longevity for 3-5 years). The price/performance and energy usage would justify getting the newer platforms. But for someone with a quad, or even a decent C2D, it's really not gonna help in any way.
The performance difference you will or will not see vastly depends on the software used. Software capable of taking FULL ADVANTAGE of ALL of a cpu's cpabilities have great performance increases.
For example, running a Rhino 4.0 rendering on an i920 not overclocked with 4 GB ram and on a q6700 overclocked to 3.13ghz with 8GB ram takes 16 minutes on the i920 and 26 minutes on the q6700. That's a very noticeable difference of about 38%, and it is a big deal in deadline situations or with highly complex renderings that may require hours of cpu time. The program sees all 8 threads of the i920 and takes full advantage of them. The q6700 has only 4 threads.
Similar performance differences will be noted on all software designed to take advantage of all cpu capabilities like 3d studio max, etc. The sad fact is that the vast majority of programs do not take advantage of these capabilities, hell, most still run on a single thread.
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