Anyone else sat out the i-cores?

My major reason for sitting out the i-cores and to an extent more powerful AMD quad core processors and sticking with my dual core intel chip on my 2 year old laptop is simply that there just aren't games out there that I play (let me emphasize that) that require a quad core processor.

I know there are games out there that can really crank a system hard, but they just aren't games I play, so I saw no value in upgrading. It's looking like 2011 and to an extent from what we know, 2012 will be some truly great years of PC gaming with some more relevant to me titles that I'll be interested in, especially the new Elder Scrolls game.

When Oblivion came out I upgraded, it's only fitting that at some point in 2011 or early 2012 depending on what's going on in the hardware world at that point in time, that I see fit to finally make the leap.

Anyway, the larger point in what I'm saying is that if you sat out for reasons like mine, you simply saw no value in upgrading untill you felt like you absolutely had to or wanted to.

It might turn out that those of you who like me, still use dual cores will end up having skipped quad cores completely and moved on to six core processors in the next year or 2.

Sometimes the decision about whether to upgrade or not boils down not to whether or not you can afford it or whether you can just blow a nice chunk of change on it or not, but to whether it really represents a true upgrade in the sense that you will see a dramatic difference in your everyday computing environment and that tends to tilt towards how you feel about gaming and what particular games you play.
 
Q9550 @ 3.6GHz watercooled rock solid here for the past 2 years now. However, I am upgrading to a i5 2500k which I'll hopefully be able to overclock to 5GHz+ that will hold me out for another 2-3 years.
 
exlink said:
Q9550 @ 3.6GHz watercooled rock solid here for the past 2 years now. However, I am upgrading to a i5 2500k which I'll hopefully be able to overclock to 5GHz+ that will hold me out for another 2-3 years.
Click to expand...

Did your Q9550 last 2 - 3 years for you...and if not, why would you think sandy bridge will? If so, cudo's.
 
Fail said:
Sometimes the decision about whether to upgrade or not boils down not to whether or not you can afford it or whether you can just blow a nice chunk of change on it or not, but to whether it really represents a true upgrade in the sense that you will see a dramatic difference in your everyday computing environment and that tends to tilt towards how you feel about gaming and what particular games you play.
Click to expand...

QFT. :)
 
nissanztt90 said:
CPU intensive games = RTS for the most part, as evidenced in one of your previous posts...SC2 and Civ5...and blops, but your not surprised by that from a console port. Double from 30 to 60FPS in an RTS means essentially nothing.



But dont you understand that people dont need to upgrade every single product cycle because there is an X% performance increase...? You see some people just dont need more performance from a CPU at the moment...most gamers included. More like its silly to bury your head in the sand thinking SB is nessecary because time marched on.

And yes, im "defending" my 2 year old "outdated" C2Q that does just fine for everything i do.
Click to expand...

amen ;). benchmark score freaks
 
exlink said:
Q9550 @ 3.6GHz watercooled rock solid here for the past 2 years now. However, I am upgrading to a i5 2500k which I'll hopefully be able to overclock to 5GHz+ that will hold me out for another 2-3 years.
Click to expand...

WOW My thoughts exactly.
 
I sat out the Core2 & i-series. I'm still rocking a P4 and some how I haven't slit my wrists yet.

My mobo despite being LGA 775 wasn't able to support a Pentium D let alone a Core2 chip. And I just couldn't afford to upgrade my CPU, mobo, & memory all at once.

When I finally had the money to upgrade the i-series were coming out. Then my mother had to go into the hospital and my car decided it needed a whole new suspension.

So now after buying parts here & there I'll be upgrading next week. Depending on prices & deals I'll be doing either 2500k or 2600k.

I have a Killer 2100 that I received as a gift running in a 6 year old P4 box.
 
I looked at a couple of the SB motherboards and was surprised to see the features I need. Does a SB system use much less power than mine ([email protected], HD4770, 8GB, Vertex2.)
 
SB will use less idle power and definitely less full load power if the core2quad is overclocked without a voltage drop. The SB will certainly provide more performance per watt.
 
E3110 and 8800GTS. It's much easier to sit out generations of video cards than CPUs, but I'm looking forward to going to Sandy Bridge and a Radeon in the next few months.

Not that I need it at all... just because.
 
Still rockin the Q9650. Not even OC'd. I might OC it once my 6970 I ordered arrives. I might upgrade CPU this year, All depends on cash flow.
 
Q9550 @ 4ghz.

Skipping this gen of i7 and hopefully holding out until we see ivy bridge and some 8/16 love.

And no i dont feel like im behind... I dont do anything crazy in terms of encoding/rendering so the extra cores are just for basic multitasking and gaming... I never max this thing out.
 
I wish I got my i7 sooner. I like to have an uber PC, and i7 has been king of the hill a loooooong time. Has to be at least 3 years or so. I got it probably a year and a half ago. The biggest savings from waiting a bit was DDR3, so yeah, should have got it sooner. I still like the system. A 4GHz i7, it screams, kicks ass and takes names.
 
strikerP4 said:
Still rockin the Q9650. Not even OC'd. I might OC it once my 6970 I ordered arrives. I might upgrade CPU this year, All depends on cash flow.
Click to expand...


HaHa...me too. Though I "can" overclock it pretty far (4275MHz) I leave it stock at 3GHz most of the time.

I just bought a pair of 6970s so that should tide me over for a year or so as far as games are concerned.
 
QX9650 @ 4ghz upgraded from a Q6600, installed an SSD over black friday, got rid of my old 680i and got a Gigabyte P45 with Sata6 and USB3, a GTX470 Superclocked. It plays any game great! I'm all set to wait it out, see how much I can get saved up for when the next intel series comes out.

When does the BIOS go away? I can't remember...
 
I not only sat out i7, but quad core entirely. First bought a e6400 when they first came out and ran that @ 3.2ghz until last year when i got a e7500 for cheap and have been running that @ 4ghz since. And it ran every game i played just fine, i just made sure i had nothing running in the background, not even anti virus if the game was pretty CPU intense. Well that was until a couple of months ago when i started playing Bad Company 2 and man it absolutley rapes my poor old Dual Core. 100% load almost non stop, i havent been able to enjoy my 6870s in crossfire coz my CPU is holding me back so much i cant even crank the eye candy.

So im really looking forward to SB so i can use my 6870s at their full potential.
 
My Q9550 box is gathering dust in the corner since I fired up the X58 system. I suppose I ought to get some hard drives for it and put it to use.
I liked the Q9550 when it was my primary system. Solid processor.
 
didn't skip the i series, went from a Q6600 to i860 right after launch but am planning to skip early SB though.
 
kazak said:
I'm still on my trusty Q6600 @ 3.4 and also running OS on an SSD. It definitely fits my wants and needs and will probably do so for a long while.
Click to expand...

same minus the SSD part.

Q6600 with quad cores is just awesome, and with more programs and games starting to use more than 1 or 2 cores, it just keeps making the cpu seem to get a little more life.

I think ill upgrade maybe next year or 2 years more.
 
DogsofJune said:
My Q9550 box is gathering dust in the corner since I fired up the X58 system. I suppose I ought to get some hard drives for it and put it to use.
I liked the Q9550 when it was my primary system. Solid processor.
Click to expand...

Or you could sell it. Q9550's are going for a pretty penny these days.
 
Running a Q8300 @ 3.1 and I have no intention of upgrading soon. Got this chip for $140 new and it has chewed through every app / game i've thrown at it. Most of my current favorite games utilize multiple cores nicely(BC2,GTA4, CoDBO, TF2, L4D etc.), so performance is very optimal. In my opinion of course :p


A graphics card upgrade will come before I get rid of this CPU.
 
got everything ordered except mobo and CPU for sandy bridge build... not that there's anything wrong with the q6600, I'm just tired of it after all these years.
 
I'm still using a dual-core e6750 on my primary rig.

My current motherboard doesn't support AHCI/RAID, usb3, esata, sata3, ddr3(which is cheaper than ddr2 now), and only has a single pciex16 slot.

This'll be a easy upgrade for me since not only am I looking forward to upgrading my cpu, but I've also been wanting to get a SSD, hot-swap and mirror my drives, upgrade my ram, and get a usb3.0 external drive.
 
JamesL said:
-snip-... and get a usb3.0 external drive.
Click to expand...

Why? USB 3.0 is stupid, ESATA is faster and has been supported for quite a while. Why USB 3.0 even exists is beyond me. The only thing the added bandwidth is good for is external storage... and ESATA is better and was around first. USB 2.0 is more than enough for everything else apart from external storage.
 
ESATA is better and was around first.
Click to expand...
Depends on your definition of "better" I guess.

eSATA can hook up to current drives without a converter chip which probablly means better performance in practice than USB3 (especially as on many boards USB3 is stuck behind PCIe 1.0 x1). Also while afaict it is not standardised yet eSATA can in principle run at sata 6G speeds which are considerablly faster than USB3.

eSATA only supports a single port multiplier on each port and many hosts don't even support that.
I've never seen anyone sell a port multiplier with eSATA on both sides, only ones designed for use inside drive enclosures.
eSATA only supports 2m of cable if everything is true eSATA and 1m if using passive adaptors to internal SATA. USB3 doesn't officially define a cable length only a set of requirements for the cable but 3-5m seems to be about the limit.
Many systems disable the eSATA ports if the SATA controller is in legacy mode (which is a pain for us XP users who use legacy mode to make image deployment easier) and even if they don't do that there will still be no hotplugging in that mode.
While in theory eSATA can support any type of device that SCSI can in practice only hard drives and optical drives are made for it.

In summary eSATA is nice if you just want to hook up one or two drives to your main computer (where you control the software load and can make sure it's running in AHCI mode) with each drive hooked up directly to a port on the computer but for anything beyond that it's a mess.
 
silent-circuit said:
Why? USB 3.0 is stupid, ESATA is faster and has been supported for quite a while. Why USB 3.0 even exists is beyond me. The only thing the added bandwidth is good for is external storage... and ESATA is better and was around first. USB 2.0 is more than enough for everything else apart from external storage.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the overview plugwash, though I'm looking at it from a more practical standpoint..

1. USB 3.0 is backwards compatible.. I can access it from anybody's computer... (I don't know of esata ports on ANY of my friend or family's computers)
2. hot-plug support...
3. usb3.0 portable drives are infinitely more abundant in choice than esata ones.
 
Hell I'm still using my trusty P4 3.2 lol Still does everything I need it to do. I do have to build a new computer up for work though but I've been out of the loop for years on all the tech, should be fun.
 
Yup, sat that generation out. Very happy with my trusty and fairly old Q9550 system. Will wait until late 2012 or early 2013 to upgrade pretty much everything.
 
Elledan said:
SATA and eSATA by extension are hot-pluggable.
Click to expand...
You're right.. I figured my motherboard doesn't support hot-swapping but any motherboard with esata probably also supports AHCI.

In any case.. I'm hoping not to spend too much money on the upgrade..
Realistically, I don't need the extra speed except on rare occasions like when I'm processing huge amounts of data for my data-mining class or when I have to re-encode a dvd on a hurry..


Maybe I should hold off for another year and buy a tv instead.
 
to me usb3 seems superior, I have never seen a board with more than 1 e-sata port. But of course e-sata wont require some kind of external usb to sata convertor. However if I use a hdd long term it goes in the case anyway.
 
I have a Q9450 which I've been rocking with 4Gb of RAM @ 1800MHz for a long time now, it's going to be comparable to a stock i7, at this point I will obviously be waiting for the next intel CPU range, I don't even know a lot about it, which is why I am here.

There are a few games starting to stress this system however, BFBC2 takes the CPU to town for a good workover, especially if you're targeting high frame rates.
 
chrcoluk said:
to me usb3 seems superior, I have never seen a board with more than 1 e-sata port. But of course e-sata wont require some kind of external usb to sata convertor. However if I use a hdd long term it goes in the case anyway.
Click to expand...

My abit ip35 pro has 2 esata ports in the back and it's quite old. You can turn every sata port on your motherboard to esata if you really wanted to.
 
Was planning to go Sandy Bridge, but couldn't resist the Intel RetailEdge Promotion..

So I will be skipping Sandy bridge and going for Ivy Bridge on Socket 2011.. when that rolls around.
 
As much as I want to pull for the green team, I've been sitting on my Q6600 for long enough and am totally CPU-locked in games right now. Add to that I'm on a cheap P5QL mobo that I can't make it stable over 3GHz, and I'm itching for SB.

CPU/Mobo/RAM/SSD upgrade? Can't wait!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top