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2600K or i7 970

Noetic

Noetic

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Apr 11, 2001
Messages
1,299
I am looking into a build in the very near future. Assuredly, the hex core will be pricier, however if it gives a noticeable boost, it will be worth it since I will be living with this box for a couple of years.

Hoping for a 5GHz on the 2600K vs. maybe 4GHz on the 970, which would be the better choice?

Thank you folk,
d
 
2600K.. mine did 5ghz pretty easy but I decided to go 4.8ghz to keep the heat and noise down. I am really impressed with these chips. Keep in mind like a CPU Lottery when you get one that hits 5ghz.
 
I understand the crapshoot that is getting an overclockable chip.
Either way, it should be a substantial jump from my present q6700.

I will take this moment to go off off topic and say, itunes is a wretched program. Thank you.
 
Noetic said:
I understand the crapshoot that is getting an overclockable chip.
Either way, it should be a substantial jump from my present q6700.

I will take this moment to go off off topic and say, itunes is a wretched program. Thank you.
Click to expand...

haha.. I agree completely with that statement. I tell my buddy the same thing and he says "Well that's odd... 13 year old girls can figure it out." I hate him.....
 
Spooony said:
What are you going to use the pc for?
Click to expand...

From video transcoding, PhotoShop, a number of music programs, gaming and some folding. That would be what would most challenge any CPU. all the rest is light weight (Internet and programming).
 
Noetic said:
From video transcoding, PhotoShop, a number of music programs, gaming and some folding. That would be what would most challenge any CPU. all the rest is light weight (Internet and programming).
Click to expand...

For those uses the 970 with 12 threads will be better. The 2600K is a nice chip, I have one, but for what you are looking to do the 970 will be better.
 
DooKey said:
For those uses the 970 with 12 threads will be better. The 2600K is a nice chip, I have one, but for what you are looking to do the 970 will be better.
Click to expand...

For 2 times the price it wont be anywhere near twice as fast, nor will it clock as high, all while the 2600k has higher IPC. A 970 is definitely not worth it.
 
DooKey said:
For those uses the 970 with 12 threads will be better. The 2600K is a nice chip, I have one, but for what you are looking to do the 970 will be better.
Click to expand...

Actually, both CPUs would perform about equal (stock to stock), even in CPU-intensive video editing programs like Adobe Premiere Pro CS5. But the 970 costs twice as much money as the i7-2600(K) - and that's not to mention that the least-expensive worthwhile mobo for the 970 costs about $50 to $70 more than the least-expensive worthwhile mobo for the i7-2600(K).
 
The 970 might be a tad faster for what your doing but it's definitely not worth the extra cost.

I would go with the Core i7-2600k in your position.
 
2600K. Go for the golden one, but most likely you'll walk away with about 4.5 to 4.7 ghz. I'm at 5 ghz myself, working on stabilizing 5.1 on air.
 
Noetic said:
From video transcoding, PhotoShop, a number of music programs, gaming and some folding. That would be what would most challenge any CPU. all the rest is light weight (Internet and programming).
Click to expand...

Get the 2600k if its just casual. Balance you pc. Photoshop requires a balance setup to perform better not just a fast cpu.
 
E4g1e said:
Actually, both CPUs would perform about equal (stock to stock), even in CPU-intensive video editing programs like Adobe Premiere Pro CS5. But the 970 costs twice as much money as the i7-2600(K) - and that's not to mention that the least-expensive worthwhile mobo for the 970 costs about $50 to $70 more than the least-expensive worthwhile mobo for the i7-2600(K).
Click to expand...

Lets have a look shall we
http://ppbm5.com/Benchmark5.html
 
Spooony said:
Lets have a look shall we
http://ppbm5.com/Benchmark5.html
Click to expand...

That was my 2600K at stock that got the 220-second overall time. The stock-speed 970 got 216 seconds overall, even with that system's relatively slow disk subsystem and lack of a RAID. (And the disk AVI score of that stock 970 system was relatively fast for a single HDD: I suspect that the 2TB 7200-rpm HDD used as the project/media/export/output disk is a WD Black WD2001FASS. A two-disk RAID 0 array like the one in my system would have reduced the AVI time by only a few seconds or so on that system.) Also, the graphics cards in both of those systems are not identical: I managed this score with only a GTX 470 at stock speeds while the stock 970 system used an expensive GTX 580. And the GTX 580 will always beat a GTX 470 by a sizable margin in this application. Big deal. The truth is that the 970 is not worth anywhere near double the price of the 2600(K).
 
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Thank you all for your assistance.
My thoughts were either a used 58 mobo and a 970, or a new board and the 2600K. I have to buy new ram and a new video card (the crossfire 4870 might be a bit long in the tooth). Hard drives are not a problem, SSD boot and raid 5 with backup.
I am a hardware hobbyist and somewhat of a power user (my wife is the one balks the most at itunes slowness) , though no longer the expert like many of you gentlemen (and ladies, if any present). If it is diminishing returns (let us say only a 10% bonus in speed for 300 dollars), then the pocket will speak louder than the desire for additional speed. If the 6 core is substantially faster, well it becomes food for thought.
 
nissanztt90 said:
For 2 times the price it wont be anywhere near twice as fast, nor will it clock as high, all while the 2600k has higher IPC. A 970 is definitely not worth it.
Click to expand...

The bottom line is the 970 with a good HSF will most likely clock to 4.2ghz or more, the 2600K will most likely clock to 4.5ghz or more. Lets say the 2600K has an IPC of +20% over the 970, the 970 will still do more work. Is it worth the price premium.....only the OP can determine that. Regardless the 970 will perform better in his case.
 
Noetic said:
Thank you all for your assistance.
My thoughts were either a used 58 mobo and a 970, or a new board and the 2600K. I have to buy new ram and a new video card (the crossfire 4870 might be a bit long in the tooth). Hard drives are not a problem, SSD boot and raid 5 with backup.
I am a hardware hobbyist and somewhat of a power user (my wife is the one balks the most at itunes slowness) , though no longer the expert like many of you gentlemen (and ladies, if any present). If it is diminishing returns (let us say only a 10% bonus in speed for 300 dollars), then the pocket will speak louder than the desire for additional speed. If the 6 core is substantially faster, well it becomes food for thought.
Click to expand...

Actually, I would not recommend a RAID 5 on that onboard Intel SATA RAID controller: I tested it using real-world apps, and found it to be excruciatingly slow -- much, much slower than even a single slow HDD. The performance is not at all commensurate with the sequential transfer performance. And though the CPU utilization is a modest 10% or so, the controller really needed a far higher CPU utilization (much closer to 100% than to 10%) just to perform anywhere near the potential in RAID 5.

So in other words, the onboard Intel SATA chipset RAID is only good for RAID 0, 1 or 10.
 
E4g1e said:
That was my 2600K at stock that got the 220-second overall time. The stock-speed 970 got 216 seconds overall, even with that system's relatively slow disk subsystem and lack of a RAID. (And the disk AVI score of that stock 970 system was relatively fast for a single HDD: I suspect that the 2TB 7200-rpm HDD used as the project/media/export/output disk is a WD Black WD2001FASS. A two-disk RAID 0 array like the one in my system would have reduced the AVI time by only a few seconds or so on that system.) Also, the graphics cards in both of those systems are not identical: I managed this score with only a GTX 470 at stock speeds while the stock 970 system used an expensive GTX 580. And the GTX 580 will always beat a GTX 470 by a sizable margin in this application. Big deal. The truth is that the 970 is not worth anywhere near double the price of the 2600(K).
Click to expand...

Exactly thats the point of the test price vs performance.
Lets have a look.

I7 950 @4.3Ghz Gtx 480
I7 920 @3.7Ghz Gtx 480
I7 2600k @ 4.7Ghz Gtx 580

Now call it what you want call it faster disk setup but I call it a limitation that the 1155 carries which enable the 920 and the 950 To beat it. And they were lower clocked as well.

But that's for people taking video editing seriously. Casual 2600k
 
2600K looks like the best value. Also if you plan on running a video card your video editing program may benefit from GPU power if the program is able to use the gpu for video editing processing.

If you can wait awhile the AMD Bulldozer or Intel X79 chip set may be worth the wait.
 
Spooony said:
Exactly thats the point of the test price vs performance.
Lets have a look.

I7 950 @4.3Ghz Gtx 480
I7 920 @3.7Ghz Gtx 480
I7 2600k @ 4.7Ghz Gtx 580
Click to expand...

Actually, both the 950 and the 920 systems referenced above used a discrete PCI-e RAID card that currently costs $900 by itself (though it is likely that the owners of those two systems had paid the full $1,200 price for the card alone) plus a whopping 12 1TB SATA hard drives (which currently go for about $800 in total). That results in the drive subsystem costing at least $1,700, not including the OS drive (although once again it is highly likely that each of them had paid close to $4,000 on the drive subsystem alone at the time they made the original purchases). In other words, the drives plus controller cost more than the CPU, motherboard, memory and graphics card combined. Plus, for all I know the OS drive is running in IDE mode (since even the AHCI drivers for the Intel SATA controller use some CPU power, reducing the power available to the rest of the system).

By contrast, the i7-2600K system does not have a discrete RAID controller card, but instead uses multiple "256GB" SSDs (two of which are in a RAID 0 on the onboard Intel controller).

A better comparison would be between two of my stock-speed systems with 16GB of RAM that are farther down the list: With the exact same graphics and drive components, the i7-2600K (3.4GHz) scored 220 seconds versus the i7-950's (3.06GHz) result of 247 seconds (look for those entries beginning with "Randall's" on the list). Not shown on the list is an i7-950 overclocked to 4GHz with 16GB or an i7-2600K overclocked to 3.8GHz with the same 16GB of RAM: The 950 @ 4.0 took 209 seconds versus 202 seconds for the 2600K @ 3.8.
 
The 2600K kicked it's butt. in a recent edition of Maximum PC head to head performance benchmarks.
 
E4g1e said:
Actually, I would not recommend a RAID 5 on that onboard Intel SATA RAID controller: I tested it using real-world apps, and found it to be excruciatingly slow -- much, much slower than even a single slow HDD. The performance is not at all commensurate with the sequential transfer performance. And though the CPU utilization is a modest 10% or so, the controller really needed a far higher CPU utilization (much closer to 100% than to 10%) just to perform anywhere near the potential in RAID 5.

So in other words, the onboard Intel SATA chipset RAID is only good for RAID 0, 1 or 10.
Click to expand...

My original plan was to use a discrete pci-e RAID controller. However, I may switch to a pair of 3TBs in RAID0 (or individually, headache vs speed potentials :)) with my e-SATA box to back it up and sell use the controller on another project.

Again, thank you al for the suggestions!
 
I recently had to make this same decision between the 2600K and the 970 (couple weeks back).

I ended up going with the 2600K, however, I am still wishing I had more power which makes me wonder if anyone knows when the 2600K successor will be out? I haven't seen any leaked roadmaps for the CPU's yet. Are they not out yet? I've seen the new chipset maps but don't have any idea on the CPU's.

Anyone know what will follow the 2600K? Will it be a 2700K or what? Just curious.

I am happy with my 2600K, I just want to know what is next. I really wanted to double the 2600K in one system, but that won't be possible unfortunately.
 
What would be the favored board of overclocking the 2600K (I do use firewire)?
 
Spooony said:
Exactly thats the point of the test price vs performance.
Lets have a look.

I7 950 @4.3Ghz Gtx 480
I7 920 @3.7Ghz Gtx 480
I7 2600k @ 4.7Ghz Gtx 580

Now call it what you want call it faster disk setup but I call it a limitation that the 1155 carries which enable the 920 and the 950 To beat it. And they were lower clocked as well.

But that's for people taking video editing seriously. Casual 2600k
Click to expand...

That's a horrible comparison.

My friend's stock i7 980X outscored my CPU in every benchmark, even with my 2600K clocked at 4.7GHz.
 
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Dylan80 said:
I would go for the Gigabyte UD4, or identically similar board from Asus or EVGA...
http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.h...rds=B004PGAMG2&url=search-alias%3Delectronics

I recommend the UD4 though as the best if not, one of the best, for sure for the newer intel i7 CPUs right now. Just read the reviews on it, and you will see :)
Click to expand...

I was thinking of the sabretooth, since it has firewire.

From my research and all the valuable [H]ard advice, it would seem that the 970 hex might be quicker but the 300 dollar difference does not justify the expense.

Again thank you folks for your advice.
 
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Sabertooth is overpriced because it has an ugly heatsink on it...
I'd recommend the UD4 or the WS Revolution over that.
 
Undead46 said:
Sabertooth is overpriced because it has an ugly heatsink on it...
I'd recommend the UD4 or the WS Revolution over that.
Click to expand...

The UD4 does not have firewire and the WS Revolution is 40 dollars more than the sabretooth (according to Newegg).
 
Undead46 said:
That's a horrible comparison.

My friend's stock i7 980X outscored my CPU in every benchmark, even with my 2600K clocked at 4.7GHz.
Click to expand...

WTF are you on about
Does the price your paid for the 980x equals the price in performance difference you got?
That shows the price price = performance part not which one was the fastest. Paying 600usd more for 9sec faster don't fall into money well spend if your doing video editing for a pass time.
Disk setup also got a huge influence on the performance as well. DMI vs Qpi
 
Don't go with sandy bridge wait for ivy or get the 970, not to mention I just really don't like the name sandy bridge lol
 
E4g1e said:
Actually, both the 950 and the 920 systems referenced above used a discrete PCI-e RAID card that currently costs $900 by itself (though it is likely that the owners of those two systems had paid the full $1,200 price for the card alone) plus a whopping 12 1TB SATA hard drives (which currently go for about $800 in total). That results in the drive subsystem costing at least $1,700, not including the OS drive (although once again it is highly likely that each of them had paid close to $4,000 on the drive subsystem alone at the time they made the original purchases). In other words, the drives plus controller cost more than the CPU, motherboard, memory and graphics card combined. Plus, for all I know the OS drive is running in IDE mode (since even the AHCI drivers for the Intel SATA controller use some CPU power, reducing the power available to the rest of the system).

By contrast, the i7-2600K system does not have a discrete RAID controller card, but instead uses multiple "256GB" SSDs (two of which are in a RAID 0 on the onboard Intel controller).

A better comparison would be between two of my stock-speed systems with 16GB of RAM that are farther down the list: With the exact same graphics and drive components, the i7-2600K (3.4GHz) scored 220 seconds versus the i7-950's (3.06GHz) result of 247 seconds (look for those entries beginning with "Randall's" on the list). Not shown on the list is an i7-950 overclocked to 4GHz with 16GB or an i7-2600K overclocked to 3.8GHz with the same 16GB of RAM: The 950 @ 4.0 took 209 seconds versus 202 seconds for the 2600K @ 3.8.
Click to expand...

Only a idiot would use ssds as scratch disks.
Exactly video editing is more than a fast cpu. Its a balance system. The 2600k is the better cpu but it was beaten due to a better balance system with a better disk setup. Coz it shows you can have a cpu running 200mph but in peak trafficking it can be reduced to 20mph. People forget the stuff gets written constantly to disk. That poor DMI of the 1155 platform will never keep up. And those cards cost 600usd. Then add 2 ssd is what price + 2600k + Gtx 580 =
2 mechanical hdd + 699 raid card + 950. + Gtx 480 =
 
Mike_Dee said:
The 2600K kicked it's butt. in a recent edition of Maximum PC head to head performance benchmarks.
Click to expand...

Please tell me what version of Photoshop is used and please don't say CS4. Then I suggest you go google the different between CS4 AND CS5
 
Spooony said:
Only a idiot would use ssds as scratch disks.
Exactly video editing is more than a fast cpu. Its a balance system. The 2600k is the better cpu but it was beaten due to a better balance system with a better disk setup. Coz it shows you can have a cpu running 200mph but in peak trafficking it can be reduced to 20mph. People forget the stuff gets written constantly to disk. That poor DMI of the 1155 platform will never keep up. And those cards cost 600usd. Then add 2 ssd is what price + 2600k + Gtx 580 =
2 mechanical hdd + 699 raid card + 950. + Gtx 480 =
Click to expand...

The DMI interconnect on the P67 is good for 20Gb/s - is that really a limiting factor in this scenario?
 
Spooony said:
Only a idiot would use ssds as scratch disks.
Exactly video editing is more than a fast cpu. Its a balance system. The 2600k is the better cpu but it was beaten due to a better balance system with a better disk setup. Coz it shows you can have a cpu running 200mph but in peak trafficking it can be reduced to 20mph. People forget the stuff gets written constantly to disk. That poor DMI of the 1155 platform will never keep up. And those cards cost 600usd. Then add 2 ssd is what price + 2600k + Gtx 580 =
2 mechanical hdd + 699 raid card + 950. + Gtx 480 =
Click to expand...

Actually, you are not comparing comparable storage subsystems between the systems. The truth is, the 950 and 920 systems that beat the fastest 2600K on the list have mechanical disk subsystems that cost three times more money (put together for the controller and all disks combined) than three SSDs. Those systems actually have 10 or more 1TB hard disks in addition to an expensive RAID card. And I have already submitted results for both the 950 and the 2600K with the exact same mechanical hard disk subsystem - and those particular results already showed that the 950 could not keep up with the 2600K unless the 950 was massively overclocked. And to prove a further point, my 2600K at stock speed with only 8GB of RAM (288 seconds) already stomped on the stock 950 with 12GB of RAM (297 seconds) in every measure except for the MPEG-2 DVD encoding performance (if only because the 950 had 4GB more RAM; otherwise, the 950 would have also trailed the 2600K in MPEG-2 DVD encoding performance). So quit comparing systems that have disk subsystems that cost many, many times more expensive than the CPU, RAM and GPU combined against systems that have comparatively inexpensive disk susbystems. And note that I spent less than $150 combined for the actual work disk subsystem benched in PPBM5 while each of the owners of the top-scoring 920 and 950 systems spent nearly $2,000 for the work storage susbystems that were actually used in the tests.
 
Last edited:
E4g1e said:
Actually, you are not comparing comparable storage subsystems between the systems. The truth is, the 950 and 920 systems that beat the fastest 2600K on the list have mechanical disk subsystems that cost three times more money (put together for the controller and all disks combined) than three SSDs. Those systems actually have 10 or more 1TB hard disks in addition to an expensive RAID card. And I have already submitted results for both the 950 and the 2600K with the exact same mechanical hard disk subsystem - and those particular results already showed that the 950 could not keep up with the 2600K without massive overclocking. And to prove a further point, my 2600K at stock speed with only 8GB of RAM already stomped upon the stock 950 with 12GB of RAM in every measure except for the MPEG-2 DVD encoding performance (if only because the 950 has 4GB more RAM). So quit comparing systems that have disk subsystems that cost many, many times more expensive than the CPU, RAM and GPU combined against systems that have comparatively inexpensive disk susbystems. And note that I spent less than $150 combined for the actual work disk subsystem benched in PPBM5 while each of the owners of the top-scoring 920 and 950 systems spent nearly $2,000 for the work storage susbystems that were actually used in the tests.
Click to expand...

Coz you had too much traffick that's why. The raid controller with a pair of samsung hdd that's cheap can even give you a huge boost as the traffick is not over the qpi like you would do with a onboard that's a bottleneck plus more traffick over the qpi or DMI. Again it shows you the importance of a disk setup and balance pc in video editing coz the better cpu got beaten by a lower clocked cpu with a better disk setup and due to its bigger bandwidth. The reason why the 2600k don't have that card coz of its limitation it carried over.
 
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