GRRR Squad Forum

[quote="Dragonne "]
The bigger question in my mind is whether it's worth shelling out the cash required to go i7, because you neeed DDR3 and a new mobo, which is generally quite expensive.
[/quote]

That's the reason I am still riding LGA775. I did shell out the money for a new GFX and the Quad which I got from my boss, but that was where I drew the line. I had only bought a new mobo half a year ago and wasn't in the mood to do that again and reinstall my system and everything again. I've got a very stable setup now, with the Q6600, a Radeon 5770 and 8GB of RAM, which currently provides sufficient gaming performance and should do so for at least another year.

Geth and Murgs - I agree with all of what you have said, in fact I did say the same in my inital post. In gaming, CPU doesn't make that much of a difference. Most games are currently GPU bound, so increased CPU horsepower doesn't give it much. I guess it might be different if one was running with two or three high end GPU's in SLI/CrossFire - where they need the CPU power to deliver the goods.

Glad that you're running happily at 4GHz now Geth, that's a nice step up.

[quote="Dragonne "]
Not sure how Geth is getting on with his overclock, but he's certainly been at it for a couple of days, struggling to get it stable at 4GHz. Is this right, Geth?
[/quote]

I got to 4Ghz very quickly but ran hot on air as Murgs also said. Got it stable now to just over Thermal spec (2 degrees over on 1 core when punishing max heat on Prime95 for several hours.) I have one or 2 simple things to try to get it down, fan settings, case air flow etc.
On water I rate I could get between 4.5 and 5ghz, again as Murgs said.

i7 runs better than socket 775 for sure but as you pointed out, theres not that big a difference in games and thats primarily what I need the extra juice for anyways. Most of what I am saying has been covered by Murgs but I like to think I did it with more class.

Jarrod you compared lower end CPUs, one thing I have maintained is that over the 3ghz mark the brand of CPU matters very little for gaming.
Look at the bottom benchmarks related to FPS in games, and the i7 has a slight clock advantage...
[url=http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/100?vs=49]http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/100?vs=49[/url]

[quote="Dragonne "]
I have to disagree with you there Duck. Check out [url=http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/47?vs=76]this anandtech bench[/url] which compares a i7-920 against a Q9400. Both are running at stockl speed, which is the same, 2.66GHz.

The differences are quite significant between the two, in benchmarks that are CPU dependant. Clearly games that are GPU limited won't notice a significant difference, but that's kinda obvious (and wouldn't matter what CPU architecture was used). The onboard memory controller of i7 makes a real difference.
[/quote]

From a pure non gaming application perspective, the i7's do rule, but when it comes to gaming, if you get 20% more fps (when you are cpu bound, i.e. have a 480 or 5970) then you are styling. More likely you'll get 10% fps improvement with an i7 over a 775. I've seen many gaming benchmarks show this.

[quote="Dragonne "]
Also, how do they overclock? An i7-920 has absolutely no problem hitting 4GHz (if you have a D0 stepping). Mine is running easily at 4.2, without me putting any real effort into the overclock (left most settings as 'auto' and haven't voltage tested to drop my vcore down as low as it could be). Not sure how Geth is getting on with his overclock, but he's certainly been at it for a couple of days, struggling to get it stable at 4GHz. Is this right, Geth?
[/quote]

My 9400 is happy doing 3.92ghz on air. I could go more but then temps under load would start to worry me. If I had H20... I'd be at 4.2Ghz at least with my board, maybe up to 4.5Ghz and if very lucky, close to 5Ghz can be obtained if you have a nice chip and water cooling and the same motherboard as I have (can do fsb 600mhz plus stable).

i7 upgrades are not worth it over good 775 setups if you are cash constrained. The performance improvement for having to replace cpu, motherboard and ram is not worth it for many of us if you are a gamer, as i7 doesn't bring much to gaming performance as it does to general application performance, a lot of which has to do with hyperthreading, which is pretty useless in most games.

[quote="SlipperyDuck "]
I still rate LGA775 quaddy machines are as good as teh i3/i5/i7 of late - hard pressed to find a good strong tangable difference between the performance - from what I've seen it's only slight.[/quote]

I have to disagree with you there Duck. Check out [url=http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/47?vs=76]this anandtech bench[/url] which compares a i7-920 against a Q9400. Both are running at stockl speed, which is the same, 2.66GHz.

The differences are quite significant between the two, in benchmarks that are CPU dependant. Clearly games that are GPU limited won't notice a significant difference, but that's kinda obvious (and wouldn't matter what CPU architecture was used). The onboard memory controller of i7 makes a real difference.

Also, how do they overclock? An i7-920 has absolutely no problem hitting 4GHz (if you have a D0 stepping). Mine is running easily at 4.2, without me putting any real effort into the overclock (left most settings as 'auto' and haven't voltage tested to drop my vcore down as low as it could be). Not sure how Geth is getting on with his overclock, but he's certainly been at it for a couple of days, struggling to get it stable at 4GHz. Is this right, Geth?

The bigger question in my mind is whether it's worth shelling out the cash required to go i7, because you neeed DDR3 and a new mobo, which is generally quite expensive. For gaming only purposes, probably not. Most games are GPU limited right now, so a CPU upgrade will only give limited returns in this area, unless you are into serious overclocking. However, if you do more general CPU work like video encoding, then the value is there.

[quote="SlipperyDuck "]
just waiting to see what happens with "Sandy Bridge" I've read some good things, but they all theory, and guess what, A NEW SOCKET AGAIN and possibly QUAD channel DDR - WTF
[/quote]

I've read some REEEEEAAAAAALLLLLLYYYYY bad things about Sandy Bridge. Like the fsb is tied to everything... usb ports, sata drives.... and so on. So a 5% fsb overclock will break your machine. Seems intel are going to bring out processors which are cheap and multiplier locked, medium priced with limited multiplier options and expensive with unlocked multipliers to satisfy those of us who like to overclock.

I still rate LGA775 quaddy machines are as good as teh i3/i5/i7 of late - hard pressed to find a good strong tangable difference between the performance - from what I've seen it's only slight.

just waiting to see what happens with "Sandy Bridge" I've read some good things, but they all theory, and guess what, A NEW SOCKET AGAIN and possibly QUAD channel DDR - WTF

Dang, I have that exact same CPU. Otherwise I would have considered as I am stuck with LGA775 for at least another year.

lol

Aluminium foils is good enough.
I'd rather use super glue tho!!!