Gtx 1080 ti & old i7 920 @ 3.6ghz bench

Jalseng

Limp Gawd
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Dec 10, 2012
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Unigine heaven scores for my i7 920 with an asus strix gtx 1080 ti. Show how well an old i7 can do. Will add more benchmarks when time is free for me. Let me know if anyone wants to see a video of the test run as this is just a picture from a cellphone.
 

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It is my opinion that the I7 920 DO and x58 chipset is the longest lasting/usable lifespan CPU/chipset Intel ever made.

That combo was launched in 2008, and it still relevant today when overclocked. Put that baby under an all in one water cooler like the h80 and you should easily hit 4.0GHz or better.

Kudos for making use of the chip so long!
 
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I used my Core i7 975EE up until my evga x58 motherboard died. It performed so well that if the motherboard hadn't died I would still be using it. Although I do like the boot times of a UEFI bios.
 
I would still be using my 920 build if I didn't have a friend with more money than sense sometimes whom upgraded and sold me most of my current rig for practically nothing. Even after I upgraded, I kept my 920 around on working duty as a Plex/file server until I found a suitable low power i3 mobo/cpu to replace it with. It worked great, I just didn't like its power consumption for something that sat idle most of the time and never really got stressed.
 
It is my opinion that the I7 920 DO and x58 chipset is the longest lasting/usable lifespan CPU/chipset Intel ever made.

That combo was launched in 2008, and it still relevant today when overclocked. Put that baby under an all in one water cooler like the h80 and you should easily hit 4.0GHz or better.

Kudos for making use of the chip so long!
I'd say it's past it's prime now. I ran my i7950 for a long time but a cpu upgrade showed me what I've been missing.
 
Its pretty darn silly to put a $700+ video card with that old cpu. Even at 2560x1600 you will see no playable difference in most cases over a 1080 or even 1070.
 
That is a benchmark not an actual game.
Are you actually crazy enough to think a 920 at 3.6 would not hold a 1080 ti back by over 35% in many cases compared to oced 7700k? Hell I do not even get full gpu usage in some games at 1440p and my 4770k at 4.3 would blow his cpu away.
Of course it is going to be held back. The performance of the 1080ti is monstrous, but to keep an older system alive is pretty impressive. A full system upgrade is due one can't complain about squeaking more performance until a full system upgrade can be performed.
 
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Of course it is going to be held back. The performance of the 1080ti is monstrous, but to keep an older system alive is pretty impressive. Of course a full system upgrade is due one can't complain about squeaking more performance until a full system upgrade can be performed.
Yes but again a much cheaper card would give the same exact playable performance.

Only review I can find is one showing a 930 oced to 4.0 with a plain 1080 and in one game an oced 7700k was literally over twice as fast as the 930 at 4.0. In most other games the 7700k was at least 35-40% faster. His cpu is only at 3.6 and with a 1080 ti the amount of performance left on the table would be laughable in some games.
 
If one compared pound for pound at same clock speed the performance jump isn't as much. Of course adding overclock is a big deal. I haven't upgraded my CPU, MOBO and Memory due to the fact that spending 500-600 on the upgrade for 20-25% is not worthy enough of an upgrade. I went from 980ti to 1080ti and saw in some cases an 80% improvement, justifying just a GPU upgrade. This can be spun in so many different ways, the dude upgraded to a badass graphics card and that alone is worthy of a congratulations! I'm sure the rest of the system will come next to catch up and feed the need the 1080ti. Until then no need to smash ones party due to a disagreement. [H] is [H] and different strokes for different folks.
 
That is a benchmark not an actual game.
Are you actually crazy enough to think a 920 at 3.6 would not hold a 1080 ti back by over 35% in many cases compared to oced 7700k? Hell I do not even get full gpu usage in some games at 1440p and my 4770k at 4.3 would blow his cpu away.

I'm saying your making a lot of noise with nothing to back it up -- yet.

tenor.gif


Let's use 1440p benchmarks.

I don't care about 640x480 extreme CPU ladden comparisons -- that's not real world. Both benchmarks in this very thread are 2560x1440 or 2560x1600. 1440p is pretty standard these days.
 
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Here - I went to Future Mark and grabbed a couple scores that have a 1080TI at the same clock speed. The scores look very different because of the physics scores - but look at the actual FPS difference. It's less than 3% ---- and that 7700k is at 4.8ghz, while the I7-920 is only at 3.8ghz. I'm sure you can find the stray game here or there that belly flops - but for the most part - his CPU isn't as much a drag as you are stating.

And lest you think I have something to prove. I don't. I had a i7-920 DO back in the day. A friend has it now, and he still brings it to LAN parties and it does excellent. With it's 4.0 O/C, and an SSD in place, and a modern graphics card - it's still a beast and acts and feels plenty snappy! After that i7 920, I moved to a 4770k for a few years, and now I have a 6850k. I've had a few other CPU's for a short period of a time that I built to sell - that 7700k in the benchmark that follows is one of my systems I built to sell. That alternate i7-920 system with the 1080TI is just a random one I found on futuremark's site with the same exact Mhz on the 1080TI in my 7700k system for a fair GPU comparison.

The thing is - the GPU is still the bottleneck for probably like 95% + of games -- EVEN on something as old as a I7-920. (unless you are running something stupid like 640x480 or 800x600), then the CPU is not typically the bottleneck.



https://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/12899512/fs/13625168#

proof.JPG
 
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Lol another very gpu dependent benchmark? You do understand the whole POINT of that Firestrike benchmark is for comparing graphics cards. Actual games can vary wildly in their dependence on cpu power.

AGAIN I see games right now where even my 4770k at 4.3 can not fully push the 1080 ti and a 920 at 3.6 is easily up to 40-50% slower in certain circumstances.

You can see here that an oced 7700k is over twice as fast in one game than the 930 oced to 4.0. Overall an oced 7700k is typically about 40-45% faster than the 930 at 4.0 here just in the few games they tested. Yes that is only at 1080p but they are also only using a plain 1080 not a 1080 ti and the OP's cpu is at just 3.6 not 4.0. So AGAIN I stand by what I said which is that a plain 1080 and even in many cases a 1070 would deliver the same "playable" performance as running that 1080 ti with a 920 at 3.6.

https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/2980-intel-i7-930-revisit-nehalem-benchmarks-2017/page-3
 
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All while Jalseng is probably like "WTF" that someone is trying to piss on his party. To put it to rest YES the CPU is dated and is NOT a 7700k overclocked. It shows that even at -35% performance the i7 920 still has life in it regardless of it being less capable than an overclocked latest generation processor. The horse has been beat and the OP should still be a proud owner of a 1080ti!
 
I'm happy about my 1080ti and very proud with the i7 920. I know it's not 7700k, but I'm playing my games fine and I brought new life into my outdated system. I don't think there is a cpu that everyone talks about or remember more than the i7 920.
 
I have a 1080 I ran on both a 5.0 7700K and a 4.0 920.

From a gaming perspective; performance is very close, a lot of games do not stress the CPU as much as the GPU.
 
Bobby, maybe he will upgrade the rest of the rig later. Maybe not. There's nothing wrong with upgrading a piece at a time. Let him be happy.
 
Those x58's are amazing value. If you bought into that platform when it came out you may have saved a bunch on upgrades by just upgrading the storage and gpu regularly.

I sold my Asus x58 and x5670 + 930 a few months ago. I still have my SR-2 with x5690's mounted on the wall in the office and use it for CPU heavy tasks.

When the 980 ti's were king my x58 and SR2 systems would run at the top end with the latest and greatest clocked around 4.2GHz. With the 1080 ti the SR-2 is neck and neck with the new 6850k and x99 @ 4.2GHz. Had I not scored the Rampage V Extreme and 6850k for as little as I did I'd still be running the SR-2 for gaming.

Unless you are trying to play the benchmark game and/or need platform upgrades (I admit an NVMe SSD is sweet) the older i7's are perfectly suited for most users.

Here's my comparison.

https://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/12802299/fs/13634436
upload_2017-9-19_20-40-19.png
 
I can attest that the x58 platform is still extremely viable.

While a [email protected] is somewhat of a low overclock (I ran my DO at 4.4Ghz for years), my [email protected] was faster than a stock 5930k and was neck and neck with a 6800k. I actually used it as my primary gaming rig for a while despite having a [email protected] and a [email protected].

The only reason I ended up going back to Haswell was that the lack of native USB 3 and Sata 6 on the x58.
 
You can probably still find a good 6-core 1366 model for really cheap. I scored one for $100 like 4? years ago on a random craigslist, back when most were still selling for several hundred. Went from original 3x2 and crammed 48GB of 1600 ddr3 in my original msi uatx board (at $60 per pair, good olde days) and turned it into a fire and forget remote server.
 
Love the x58 platform. Wife still uses an i7 [email protected] and I'd still be running my [email protected] if I hadn't scored such a deal on my 3970X and Rampage IV setup.

I can attest to changing CPUs still using my R9 Fury and many games were still GPU bound even at 1080P. I know a Fury is no 1080Ti, but I think we can all agree the X58 platform is just legendary for how long it remains relevant in the gaming world of today.
 
Those x58's are amazing value. If you bought into that platform when it came out you may have saved a bunch on upgrades by just upgrading the storage and gpu regularly.

I sold my Asus x58 and x5670 + 930 a few months ago. I still have my SR-2 with x5690's mounted on the wall in the office and use it for CPU heavy tasks.

When the 980 ti's were king my x58 and SR2 systems would run at the top end with the latest and greatest clocked around 4.2GHz. With the 1080 ti the SR-2 is neck and neck with the new 6850k and x99 @ 4.2GHz. Had I not scored the Rampage V Extreme and 6850k for as little as I did I'd still be running the SR-2 for gaming.

Unless you are trying to play the benchmark game and/or need platform upgrades (I admit an NVMe SSD is sweet) the older i7's are perfectly suited for most users.

Here's my comparison.

https://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/12802299/fs/13634436
View attachment 37039

lol, you didn't notice this huh? The one rig is running a SR-2, a 2P setup not 1P.

Processor
Intel Xeon Processor X5690
Intel Core i7-6850K
Reported stock core clock
4,200 MHz
3,600 MHz
Maximum turbo core clock
4,202 MHz
4,200 MHz
Physical / logical processors
2 / 24
1 / 12
 
lol, you didn't notice this huh? The one rig is running a SR-2, a 2P setup not 1P.

Processor
Intel Xeon Processor X5690
Intel Core i7-6850K
Reported stock core clock
4,200 MHz
3,600 MHz
Maximum turbo core clock
4,202 MHz
4,200 MHz
Physical / logical processors
2 / 24
1 / 12

What do you mean he didn't notice?? He OWNS the SR-2
 
That is a benchmark not an actual game.
Are you actually crazy enough to think a 920 at 3.6 would not hold a 1080 ti back by over 35% in many cases compared to oced 7700k? Hell I do not even get full gpu usage in some games at 1440p and my 4770k at 4.3 would blow his cpu away.

I generally agree with you. I can understand this move in a case where you need a GPU upgrade far more than a CPU upgrade and plan on moving that 1080Ti to a new build in a relatively short period of time.

The minimum FPS between the 920 and 7700k is pretty large.
 
The 2p, 12/24 core/thread SR2 doesn't do much for GPU dependent games. It helps with the physics score in 3DMark, but that's about it. The graphics scores are within a frame of each other at that resolution.

The point is when you are pushing high resolutions you only need a cpu/system that is "good enough" to keep your card fed as your gpu is your bottleneck. "Good enough" fits a wide range of systems, at that point. So, the OP's i7 at 3.6GHz and 1080ti is going to give him plenty of system horsepower and he'll be able to see the increased graphics horsepower he paid for as opposed to going with a 1070 or 1080, especially in GPU dependent games. He'll be happy knowing he's got the graphics chops to push the frames when needed.

I tested this theory myself with the 2p x5690, i7-3770k and an i3-2120 using a 980ti. All cpu's at stock settings. The i3 was a couple hundred MHz slower than the other two at stock and the GPU either didn't boost or 3DMark didn't grab the right readings, which is possible. So, had I sorted that out instead of just testing it before selling it the gap may have narrowed some. Regardless, the lowly i3 is about 12-13 percent shy of the big bad xeons and i7 at stock settings.

https://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/12730061/fs/12724322/fs/9359385#
 
A great game to test on this system would be BF1 since the frostbite engine scales with hardware so well.
 
Part of the reason the i7 920 lasted so long is because of how weak the Xbox One/PS4 CPUs are, they are barely faster than the previous console gen and this causes multi-platform games to be very lean floating point wise.

But AAA games developed for PC only clearly favor faster CPUs these days. I think you can say Sandy Bridge is still a great CPU, but Nehalem really isn't anymore.
 
Age doesn't define greatness. It actually validates it. And that's exactly what we've discussed here. Nearly a decade since release and Nehalem is still capable of not only providing a capable PC for typical use, but a delivering a respectable gaming experience as well.
 
Oh I just watched a pretty good video on bottlenecking from Jayztwocents, How bad is bottlenecking in 2017?

I just watched a bunch of that video (disclaimer: I did skip around a bit) and thought it was terrible. Two thirds of the video - and the only graphs he showed - was covering only synthetic benchmarks (Unigine) and only one real game (Tomb Raider). His highlighted comparison point was the Pentium G4560 vs the i5-7600k and his conclusion in the end was CPU bottlenecking isn't an issue until you reach 1080/1080Ti levels of GPU power, and that's just *not* the case. You can look up any review of the G4560 and while essentially all of them conclude the G4560 is a very good value for the money, *none* of them contend the CPU is an equal to the i5-7600k unless you spend $600 on a GPU; the lower end CPU *definitely* holds the system back. Here are a couple references.
 
Why not pick up a cheap xeon to put in the board? It will make your system run even faster. X5650 can be had for under $20.
 
I built mine in 2008 and its still my main gaming rig.

My just after release day 920 system died about 2 years ago. The 930 I built a year and a half later is still running strong crunching Einstein@Home. The former's failure was the impetus for my upgrading to a 4790k as my main gaming system though.
 
Of course it is going to be held back. The performance of the 1080ti is monstrous, but to keep an older system alive is pretty impressive. A full system upgrade is due one can't complain about squeaking more performance until a full system upgrade can be performed.
Unigine heaven scores for my i7 920 with an asus strix gtx 1080 ti. Show how well an old i7 can do. Will add more benchmarks when time is free for me. Let me know if anyone wants to see a video of the test run as this is just a picture from a cellphone.
Lol another very gpu dependent benchmark? You do understand the whole POINT of that Firestrike benchmark is for comparing graphics cards. Actual games can vary wildly in their dependence on cpu power.

AGAIN I see games right now where even my 4770k at 4.3 can not fully push the 1080 ti and a 920 at 3.6 is easily up to 40-50% slower in certain circumstances.

You can see here that an oced 7700k is over twice as fast in one game than the 930 oced to 4.0. Overall an oced 7700k is typically about 40-45% faster than the 930 at 4.0 here just in the few games they tested. Yes that is only at 1080p but they are also only using a plain 1080 not a 1080 ti and the OP's cpu is at just 3.6 not 4.0. So AGAIN I stand by what I said which is that a plain 1080 and even in many cases a 1070 would deliver the same "playable" performance as running that 1080 ti with a 920 at 3.6.

https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/2980-intel-i7-930-revisit-nehalem-benchmarks-2017/page-3

Holy necro Batman

Both people are right. As you can see in my sig, i have an i7 930 and just got a 1080 Ti becaues I can't afford to overhaul my system rn. But I can afford a 500 buck upgrade to be able to play in 4K. Even at 4K, games like Arkham Knight and Assasins Creed origins do push the CPU so I know there is a bottleneck.

For most of my other games though like Witcher 3, games run very smooth. GTA V actually runs well on it too. Don't think I'll even bother getting a 6 core XEON. Not sure if there are enough performance boots to merit it.

Overall heres to another 1 or 2 years of having my X58 since 2010. Lucky enough, my ASrock extreme 3 mobo has 2 USB 3.0 ports that work so i just use a hub for it and 2 SATA 6 ports that kinda work fast.

I stumbled on this thread becaues I was googling who else had an X58 paired up with the 1080 Ti. I will be upgrading from 6GB to 12GB though.
 
Holy necro Batman

Both people are right. As you can see in my sig, i have an i7 930 and just got a 1080 Ti becaues I can't afford to overhaul my system rn. But I can afford a 500 buck upgrade to be able to play in 4K. Even at 4K, games like Arkham Knight and Assasins Creed origins do push the CPU so I know there is a bottleneck.

For most of my other games though like Witcher 3, games run very smooth. GTA V actually runs well on it too. Don't think I'll even bother getting a 6 core XEON. Not sure if there are enough performance boots to merit it.

Overall heres to another 1 or 2 years of having my X58 since 2010. Lucky enough, my ASrock extreme 3 mobo has 2 USB 3.0 ports that work so i just use a hub for it and 2 SATA 6 ports that kinda work fast.

I stumbled on this thread becaues I was googling who else had an X58 paired up with the 1080 Ti. I will be upgrading from 6GB to 12GB though.
if you can upgrade to xeon ,the extra 2 cores will help you a lot in gaming,cost is less than 35 for a x5670 and for x5650-60 less than 20$ ,you will hit 4ghz easy.
 
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