Worth upgrading original i7 920 to a Sandy Bridge 2600K?

Z

Zorn

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 22, 2005
Messages
452
Micro Center is running a pretty good deal for the 2600K, right now I have the original Core i7 920 on a X58 board. Would I notice a big jump in performance going to a Z68 board and the 2600K? Trying to decide if it's worthwhile or if I would never notice.
 
In my opinion NO. It think it be wise to wait another 20 or so days and see what Bulldozer has to offer. And shortly after there is a whole lotta new intel stuff about to hit too.

Might want to hang in there and stay tuned and the 920 is not a shabby processor by any means. As far as gaming etc... I say you are fine with the 920 for now.

The Z68 and P67 wont matter much unless you want to use HD3000 graphics on the 2600K and overclock and use SSD caching.
 
What do you use the computer for?
Just how good is this deal?
Is your 920 overclocked and if so how high?
do you plan to overclock the 2600K?

With both CPUs at stock there is a significant but not earth shattering improvement from the 920 to the 2600K. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/47?vs=287

As to whether you will notice that depends a lot on what you use the computer for.

Personally i'd say wait for LGA2011 which is the true successor to LGA1366.
 
Being a fellow 920 owner, I say that your 920 is fine. You'd have to change your motherboard to support the 2600K anyway, so why bother? Better things are on the way if you're really itching for more performance, I'd say wait it out.
 
Being a fellow 920 owner as well, i would advise you stick with it for a few more months and upgrade to the next platform as i intend to do. You will not see a significant difference at all going to sandy bridge from a 920 (depending on what you're using it for and of course what overclock).
 
Wait for socket 2011 ( yes those who say to always wait will always wait for the next thing ya ya but in this case it makes sense you aren't on a very old underperforming socket). Your CPU is more than still fantastic for gaming and whatever else you throw at it. I'm also waiting for socket 2011 or if by some chance socket 2011 (ivy bridge I believe they are calling it) isn't all that much better than a current socker 1366 EE hex then I might just pick up one of those and upgrade to nvidia's next gen in quarter 1 2012. For now everything runs with blazing fps maxed out. I'm not concerned. Quarter 1 2012 I'll make an assesment and worry then. For now your fine, just chill and don't let the money burn a hole in your pocket.
 
IMHO, there is only one reason to ditch that "original" i7-920: If it runs too hot at even stock speed (which means that the CPU had to be severely underclocked just to keep the temperatures within spec) - and then, even with incredible CPU cooling. In that particular case, either the CPU is defective or the ambient temperature is too high for safe operation.

Otherwise, the total cost of such an upgrade exceeds the performance benefit.
 
Rossi~ said:
Being a fellow 920 owner as well, i would advise you stick with it for a few more months and upgrade to the next platform as i intend to do. You will not see a significant difference at all going to sandy bridge from a 920 (depending on what you're using it for and of course what overclock).
Click to expand...


And you, being stuck on a 2+ year old platform, know this how? You havent benched shit because you have an I7 920 / 1366 plattform. Sandy Bridge is a whole nother level. A Sandy at 5 ghz+ will destroy an I7 920 even an oc'ed one.
 
If you are like me.....

upgrade

I went from an EVGA 760 with a 920 to my current setup and I am very happy. I even had extra cash left when i upgraded. :)
 
ShuttleLuv said:
And you, being stuck on a 2+ year old platform, know this how? You havent benched shit because you have an I7 920 / 1366 plattform. Sandy Bridge is a whole nother level. A Sandy at 5 ghz+ will destroy an I7 920 even an oc'ed one.
Click to expand...

Because the only thing anyone ever does all day is bench.
 
Emission said:
Because the only thing anyone ever does all day is bench.
Click to expand...

yeah this makes me wonder: A long time ago people said that you needed to break something like 3.3-3.6ghz to remove any GPU bottleneck and anything past that point was nice but didn't provide much performance boost. Now I am wondering with SBs going to 5ghz how much of that is really needed? Could people run their SBs at stock settings and notice no performance loss?
 
Better off waiting for something better. Also right now it seems like video cards are behind cpus. I'd also wait to see how the next generation of video cards are. I think I will upgrade my video card before I upgrade to a new motherboard.
 
Last edited:
ShuttleLuv said:
And you, being stuck on a 2+ year old platform, know this how? You havent benched shit because you have an I7 920 / 1366 plattform. Sandy Bridge is a whole nother level. A Sandy at 5 ghz+ will destroy an I7 920 even an oc'ed one.
Click to expand...

Lol you on roids or something? Calm down lad.

I have built 2 Sandy Bridge rigs for friends and i have benchmarked and read a heap of reviews, i know the facts.

Yes a Sandy Bridge at 5Ghz (if you can get it there, lets say 4.8 for now shall we?) would beat an i7 920 in everything that shows numbers, though not really noticeable unless you're doing stuff like encoding/number crunching.. Playing games i will not see a difference from a 4Ghz i7 920 to a 4.8Ghz Sandy Bridge at all, unless i had triple or quad SLI that was being held back and if i did then i may as well throw my money away on Sandy Bridge. At no point does Sandy Bridge "Destroy" 1366..

If you want to have the slightly bigger number at the end of a benchmark and a bigger epeen for this community then by all means spend your money.
If you would rather save for an absolute mammoth LGA2011 rig that will be the proper replacement for 1366 and have some money aside to go out on the piss etc then stick with what you have.

But that all said, i suppose this is [H]..

Stay off the drugs dude.
 
If you do upgrade, the main area in which you would see noticable gains is power consumption. Memory bandwidth would be about the same. The CPU itself is faster (920 v 2600k), both in per clock efficiency and any other metric. It's just not fast enough to justify a substantial purchase of a new mobo and the 2600k. You'd lose much of the PCIe lanes of your current platform. You'd either have to lose one stick of memory or get one more.

I'd say it's definitely an upgrade in many ways, but at best lateral in other areas. I upgraded to a 2500k, but I was using a Phenom II AMD platform. The difference was intense. I say that unless you won't even miss the 460$ - 500$, wait for the 2011s. Possibly AMDs high end offerings as well.
 
Rossi~ said:
Lol you on roids or something? Calm down lad.

I have built 2 Sandy Bridge rigs for friends and i have benchmarked and read a heap of reviews, i know the facts.

Yes a Sandy Bridge at 5Ghz (if you can get it there, lets say 4.8 for now shall we?) would beat an i7 920 in everything that shows numbers, though not really noticeable unless you're doing stuff like encoding/number crunching.. Playing games i will not see a difference from a 4Ghz i7 920 to a 4.8Ghz Sandy Bridge at all, unless i had triple or quad SLI that was being held back and if i did then i may as well throw my money away on Sandy Bridge. At no point does Sandy Bridge "Destroy" 1366..

If you want to have the slightly bigger number at the end of a benchmark and a bigger epeen for this community then by all means spend your money.
If you would rather save for an absolute mammoth LGA2011 rig that will be the proper replacement for 1366 and have some money aside to go out on the piss etc then stick with what you have.

But that all said, i suppose this is [H]..

Stay off the drugs dude.
Click to expand...

lol I totally agree that guy needs to stay off the cheap drugs or start posting when he is 18.

15% increase in ipc does not equal destroy, if you want to see something destroy 1366 it will be its replacement not the current midrange SB.

Its funny cause i've seen alot of post from people like this that gets these major hardons as soon as anyone says the move from 1366 is not a big one if you have a highly overclocked Nehalem.
 
Zorn said:
Micro Center is running a pretty good deal for the 2600K, right now I have the original Core i7 920 on a X58 board. Would I notice a big jump in performance going to a Z68 board and the 2600K? Trying to decide if it's worthwhile or if I would never notice.
Click to expand...
Well SB chips are 10-15% clock for clock faster than Nehalem. The 2600k w/TB will hit 3.8Ghz most of the time. So out of the box, 2600k @ stock is equivalent to a 920 @ 4.1Ghz-ish.

The other issue is that there is something to be said about how games react to quad-core OCing. Unless you're running in 3d Surround or Eyefinity with multiple GPU's, you probably won't notice a difference.
 
bigdogchris said:
Well SB chips are 10-15% clock for clock faster than Nehalem. The 2600k w/TB will hit 3.8Ghz most of the time. So out of the box, 2600k @ stock is equivalent to a 920 @ 4.1Ghz-ish.

The other issue is that there is something to be said about how games react to quad-core OCing. Unless you're running in 3d Surround or Eyefinity with multiple GPU's, you probably won't notice a difference.
Click to expand...

This ^^^

Tho I think you can raise the 3.8 to say 4.4 which i've seen all 2600k cpu's hit.

But what that other guy doesn't seem to understand is yes SB at 4.8 will be faster than Nelly at 4ghz but the 800 mhz difference itsn't worth a whole platform exchange and most people will not be able to see the difference at all in real world uses outside of benchmarks.

Were not talking Phenom II vs Nehalem.
 
Rossi~ said:
Lol you on roids or something? Calm down lad.

I have built 2 Sandy Bridge rigs for friends and i have benchmarked and read a heap of reviews, i know the facts.

Yes a Sandy Bridge at 5Ghz (if you can get it there, lets say 4.8 for now shall we?) would beat an i7 920 in everything that shows numbers, though not really noticeable unless you're doing stuff like encoding/number crunching.. Playing games i will not see a difference from a 4Ghz i7 920 to a 4.8Ghz Sandy Bridge at all, unless i had triple or quad SLI that was being held back and if i did then i may as well throw my money away on Sandy Bridge. At no point does Sandy Bridge "Destroy" 1366..

If you want to have the slightly bigger number at the end of a benchmark and a bigger epeen for this community then by all means spend your money.
If you would rather save for an absolute mammoth LGA2011 rig that will be the proper replacement for 1366 and have some money aside to go out on the piss etc then stick with what you have.

But that all said, i suppose this is [H]..

Stay off the drugs dude.
Click to expand...

Uh rossi make sure you're benching that sandy at 5.0 with more than one gpu because it's going to saturate one card for sure.
 
bigdogchris said:
Well SB chips are 10-15% clock for clock faster than Nehalem. The 2600k w/TB will hit 3.8Ghz most of the time. So out of the box, 2600k @ stock is equivalent to a 920 @ 4.1Ghz-ish.

The other issue is that there is something to be said about how games react to quad-core OCing. Unless you're running in 3d Surround or Eyefinity with multiple GPU's, you probably won't notice a difference.
Click to expand...


Yes and if these nimrods would understand, if a stock 2600k is equal to a 4 ghz I7, a 5 ghz 2600k is going to destroy it.
 
I think they are talking about games where the processor isn't the bottleneck meaning even if the processor was 10 times as fast it would not make the game any faster because the other components (GPU ...) would still limit the performance.
 
ShuttleLuv said:
Yes and if these nimrods would understand, if a stock 2600k is equal to a 4 ghz I7, a 5 ghz 2600k is going to destroy it.
Click to expand...

That depends on whether the additional CPU power translates to additional performance, which is true in encoding and rendering, but less certain in gaming.
 
ShuttleLuv said:
Yes and if these nimrods would understand, if a stock 2600k is equal to a 4 ghz I7, a 5 ghz 2600k is going to destroy it.
Click to expand...


I would like to see these benchmarks of a 2600k at stock destroying a 4 Ghz Nehalem chip.

Or whatever your definition is of "destroying".

This is a 2600k vs a i7 975 so 3.4ghz vs 3.33ghz

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/99?vs=287

If that is your definition of destroying then i'm gonna sell my rig and do this wonderful sidegrade!
 
Last edited:
ShuttleLuv, I like your Charlie Sheen rhetoric. You are like a Sandy Bridge Warlock, melting the faces of the i7 920 with extreme love and extreme violence.

To the OP, I have started using 2600-based systems at work, but mostly a i7 920 at home. I am not noticing a significant difference in day to day use. The 2600 is a great chip and the 920 is a couple of years old now. But the i7 920 might well go down as one of the top two or three processors of the last 25 years in terms of longevity and relevance. It's like owning one of the first 386DXs, or one of the first PPros... its shelf life continues to astound me.
 
There is nothing at all wrong with a regular I7, nothing. Great chips, but Sandy imo is definitely a better architecture and more newer and it's been alot of fun to play with. Plus, being at 5.1 on air and beating the regular I7's isn't a bad thing. Don't twist my words. I have nothing against regular I7 users, and a I7 at 4 ghz or more is still a great cpu.
 
ShuttleLuv said:
There is nothing at all wrong with a regular I7, nothing. Great chips, but Sandy imo is definitely a better architecture and more newer and it's been alot of fun to play with. Plus, being at 5.1 on air and beating the regular I7's isn't a bad thing. Don't twist my words. I have nothing against regular I7 users, and a I7 at 4 ghz or more is still a great cpu.
Click to expand...

No one has to twist your words you did that enough. I don't believe the OP ever asked which was the better architecture he just wants to know if it was worth switching and the answer is still no.

5Ghz is not an average overclock for SB its lower more in the 4.4 to 4.8 range.

All you have to do is look at the users in this forum with 2600k how many are at 5Ghz or over!

To the OP wait too see what bulldozer and SB-E has to offer you will probably be glad you waited.
 
to the OP; I would have to say it really depends on what your computer uses are and if you are willing to spend the additional dough.
Also do you plan to sell your x58/920 setup to help recoupe some of the costs?

as most have said, regular day to day use; you will not see any difference. Do you use your cpu for distributed computing at all?

Reasons to upgrade:
to make use of the newer architechure/ features
more efficient; runs cooler, consumes less energy
to have the latest.
to deal with the new headaches of the unproven platform; while its great and not originally designed for desktop use, there will be many headaches along the way.
to get a slight improvement in performance

In the end its really up to you and what your instinct is telling you. I, myself run WCG and like to upgrade every few months or so. I had 6 systems a while back till the wifey got upset.
Anyway, I currently have a W3520 (920 equiv), SR-2 with dual 5670's and a SB 2600K. They are all great and provide what our family needs. Eventually I will hand down the x58 and upgrade to whats coming later this year, but its still a very fast system.

as far as distributed computing aspect between 920/SB; yes SB will do more computing, but its not by a large margin, but noticeable.

I say hold off a while, but if you have it in your mind that you want a SB system, then I say go for it.
If you already plan to sell of your x58 to recoupe; then definitely go for it.
No matter which way you choose to go; you'll be just fine
 
INFRNL said:
I had 6 systems a while back till the wifey got upset.
Click to expand...

lol question was she mad that you had so many computers in the house that increase your hydro bill and the heat.

Or that you were spending more time on the computer than with her :D
 
Current Intel offerings are consumer, low to mid range products (by their own admission).

Wait for z78 2011 boards and processors for high end stuff that will be a true upgrade to the X58 1366 stuff. Most likely going to be expensive but it will blow the doors off everything else including current Intel gear.
 
ShuttleLuv said:
There is nothing at all wrong with a regular I7, nothing. Great chips, but Sandy imo is definitely a better architecture and more newer and it's been alot of fun to play with. Plus, being at 5.1 on air and beating the regular I7's isn't a bad thing. Don't twist my words. I have nothing against regular I7 users, and a I7 at 4 ghz or more is still a great cpu.
Click to expand...

Best argument ever, you sir win 5 internet awards.
 
What games have significant CPU bottlenecks right now (that aren't tech demos :p)?, and if the OP is considering the 2600k from a 920, he likely isn't going to be running triple sli etc...
 
Keep in mind, it's not just about the CPU, which is freakin' awesome at 4.8GHz BTW, it's also about it's better power draw (or lack of) EIST etc, AND integrated SATA 6G support on the P67/Z68 chipsets.

I'm way happier with this setup than my old i7 920 setup.
 
Not unless you can sell your current parts and come out even or only lose a couple bucks. Even then do you want to mess with building a new system for a slight gain?

I guess we also have to ask what are your intentions with this system? If only playing games and surfing the internets, no it is not worth it. If rendering, encoding, etc then it might be.
 
Last edited:
ill be keeping my 920's for a very long time. it will be a few more years before these chips are a bottleneck to the GPU (single monitor gaming.) look at the s775 chips, still plenty of horsepower for games, and only starting to show their age in the most modern games. 1366 will live long, even after its EOL
 
Silentbob343 said:
Not unless you can sell your current parts and come out even or only lose a couple bucks. Even then do you want to mess with building a new system for a slight gain?

I guess we also have to ask what are your intentions with this system? If only playing games and surfing the internets, no it is not worth it. If rendering, encoding, etc then it might be.
Click to expand...

That right there is the question I ask myself before each hardware upgrade. Sure, the new SSD drives are out, but my current 120GBx4 SSD RAID-0 is more than enough for the next few years. Why spend an extra $300-400 to upgrade to a SSD subsystem I'll never use except for benchmarks?

Exactly the reason I'm probably going to hold off on the 2011 socket for a few months, and the reason I'm not upgrading my current i7 920 system.

I used to upgrade only every 3 years (when I was a teenager and couldn't afford it). The upgrade was amazingly fast. For the past 10 years though I've gotten bit by the upgrade bug every 6-9 months and upgraded here and there for only small performance gains. The only thing worth while was the upgrade to SSD drive.

I say unless you can experience a 50% or more performance increase, its not worth the time nor the expense.

Of course, this is coming from a guy who spent $1200 on a SSD RAID-0 system and $900 on GTX 480 SLI's...and I play MINECRAFT 99% of the time. :D
 
DogChainX said:
Of course, this is coming from a guy who spent $1200 on a SSD RAID-0 system and $900 on GTX 480 SLI's...and I play MINECRAFT 99% of the time. :D
Click to expand...

Haha, right there with you! At least you're probably enjoying minecraft at like 300 fps :D.
 
While there is some performance improvement by going to the Intel® Core™ i7-2600K from an Intel Core i7-920, I would have to say for now to wait. Maybe later in the year you will see something that will make it a bigger improvemnet to go to.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top