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USMCGrunt

2[H]4U
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I know that Intel has the superior processors but also that their high end is much more expensive then AMDs. When I bought the 965, it was the best AMD had to offer. I keep reading about how much better Intel's stuff is at gaming then AMD, but really...how much better are they? 2-5fps?? 30fps??

Assuming I kept everything relatively the same as whats in my sig and changed over to an Intel E8400 (going off Newegg prices, 965=$159, E8400=$169), how much of a performance boost would I expect to see? What about going i5 680??
 
I wouldn't normally suggest upgrading from a 965 just for gaming, but if your signature has CrossFire HD 6970 cards, you may want to look at the just released i5 2500/2500K for better gaming performance.

It's hard to say exactly how much better real world performance you'd get, but a faster CPU would likely give some noticeable benefits in demanding games and be less of a bottleneck on your video cards.
 
You're talking way old tech with the E8400. Heck, even the i5680 is obsolete now.

For a few dollars more, you can move up to the brand new Sandy Bridge (2500K=$224). There really won't be any comparison.

For example, if you're playing FFXIV at 1280x1024, you'll see an astounding 1571 more FPS!
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/01/03/intel_sandy_bridge_2600k_2500k_processors_review/4

Seriously though, it's hard to find a direct comparison, but it appears you can expect 30-45% better gaming performance, assuming you're not GPU limited.

Here's another decent review http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2011/01/03/intel-sandy-bridge-review/1
 
Upgrading from what you have to a quad core sandy bridge would be significant for gaming. Upgrading from a Q6600 that's overclocked to higher then 3.2GHZ, strictly for gaming, is not really necessary. I did it anyways, but I didn't have to. Having it at 3.6, it wasn't really necessary. I would not take an E8400. No way. Dual core for gaming is dead. Smart money with Q6600s running at 3.6 will wait and upgrade in 12 months at the ivy bridge refresh and get a 6 or 8 core processor at that time for prices that will probably be down to mainstream levels. I just couldn't wait. :) The only thing for me to upgrade at the ivy bridge refresh will be processor/motherboard anyways, no biggie.

Assuming you have ram that runs at 1.5 volts, you could upgrade to a 2500k for 225, and a new motherboard for 190. Those look to be the only items you would have to purchase, and they'd improve performance significantly more. There's a middle ground where you get the best bang for the buck, and right now I'd say 2500K with asus p67 pro motherboard is it, along with GSKILL ripjaws 2X4GB 1.5 volt RAM or other 100 dollar range 2x4 modules running at 1.5 volts or less.
 
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If you're not GPU limited you'll see gigantic boosts with a Sandy Bridge CPU vs. even an i7 quad, let alone an older Core 2 Duo. Get the 2500K if you're just gaming, or 2600K if doing productivity and gaming.

Here's an example of the i7's vs. the older cpu's... sandy bridge in a non-GPU limited situation is a big jump as well:

Starcraft II

Civilization 5

Mafia II

Arma II

Black Ops

That's with just a GTX 480/580 which will run into bottlenecks, now take a look at Sandy Bridge with GPU bottlenecks and imagine with those lifted what the CPU will unleash ;) with your dual 6970's:

http://www.techspot.com/review/353-intel-sandy-bridge-corei5-2500k-corei7-2600k/page13.html
 
Why have 2 6970s and even consider buying an 8400? I could understand if the 2600k was $1,000, but why bottleneck the couple grand you spent on video cards and monitors worrying about a $300 chip?

There are some great articles around the net about building balance into a pc. Check 'em out if you get a chance.
 
zukihara said:
Why have 2 6970s and even consider buying an 8400? I could understand if the 2600k was $1,000, but why bottleneck the couple grand you spent on video cards and monitors worrying about a $300 chip?

There are some great articles around the net about building balance into a pc. Check 'em out if you get a chance.
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Yep... a slow dual core may not have bottlenecked GPU's of 5 years ago, but nowadays... they certainly do. Even a decent quad can. In multi-card configurations, you're choking the cards using a slow dual core instead of a quick quad (even vs. a fast dual, really).
 
Well I don't know the first thing about intel processors so I just chose one of a similar price as the 965. Really, 30-40% improvement?? I'm also running at 5760x1200 so low res gaming isn't where to look, I'm gpu limited but I didn't know if it's cause the processor could be holding it back any.
 
hey guys when you say bottleneck a gpu did you guys mean that while playing games your gpu is at 100% usage and your processor is only working at say 50% usage. as for me ive noticed that when playing bfbc2 my gpu is at most of the time 99% usage and cpu ranges from 30 to about 80% usage. now the oppisite will occur if your cpu bottleneck. while gpu usage will be below 70 to 50% usage and cpu is maxed out at 100% usage then your cpu limited. did i get that right? correct me if im wrong.

my specs are
q6600 oc to 3.2
8gigs of ram
pn5n-d mb
2by 500gig on raid 0
8800gtx sli
monitor res on 1920by1080
 
If the processor is holding you back (it is) you're CPU limited, not GPU limited. Therefore, any increase in CPU performance will result in a benefit in game performance.

CPU limited would be like running a Phenom II 965 with dual $400 video cards...
GPU limited would be like running an i7 980x with an 8800GT

You're very CPU bottlenecked right now, a Sandy Bridge part would be a huge upgrade.

To reply to the above poster: Your CPU and GPU are fairly well balanced, the game you're playing will likely determine which is being taxed more, but I'd venture a guess and say in 75% or more of games your CPU will be the limiter.
 
Where you really see the difference is at really high resolutions where multiple graphics cards are used. Other than that, while you tend to see higher benchmarks on Intel based systems, I would bet most people wouldn't ever know taking a "Pepsi challenge" between machines.
 
I just took a second look at the sandy bridge reviews done here on HardOCP and im impressed at how much faster all of Intel's offerings seem to be compared to AMD's latest and greatest...makes me mad that I bought the 965....though now I can get a 2600k and have one of the fastest processors on the market that competes pretty well with Intel's top dog that is WAY more expensive.

Also didnt realize that Intel's boards are SLI AND CF capable...unlike most of AMDs boards...
 
USMCGrunt said:
I just took a second look at the sandy bridge reviews done here on HardOCP and im impressed at how much faster all of Intel's offerings seem to be compared to AMD's latest and greatest...makes me mad that I bought the 965....though now I can get a 2600k and have one of the fastest processors on the market that competes pretty well with Intel's top dog that is WAY more expensive.

Also didnt realize that Intel's boards are SLI AND CF capable...unlike most of AMDs boards...
Click to expand...

Well the problem is that NVIDIA's chipset business is pretty much dead. They stopped innovating and developing on the AMD side and AMD is reluctant to license SLI because NVIDIA is their direct competitor.
 
you say intel is way ahead of amd's latest and greatest yet AMD's hexocre line is theier latest not your 965. and i would not say intel is way ahead but they are better
 
Considering 4 mid range Intel cores can meet or exceed 6 high end AMD cores in just about every performance metric you throw at them, I'd say that qualifies as "way ahead" indeed.
 
USMCGrunt said:
Also didnt realize that Intel's boards are SLI AND CF capable...unlike most of AMDs boards...
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nvidia charges the motherboard maker a license fee to enable SLI support. There's no technical limitation that prevents AMD boards from using SLI. SLI support does not require hardware changes to the motherboard.

If you're adventurous, you can even patch a BIOS to support SLI. But that's not a topic for a legit message board like this. ;)
 
Modder man said:
you say intel is way ahead of amd's latest and greatest yet AMD's hexocre line is theier latest not your 965. and i would not say intel is way ahead but they are better
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1294495858g8.png


Intel isn't way ahead Intel is in completly diffrent galaxy when it comes to performance.

i5 2400 is usually faster in most test than X6@4,0
 
Don't worry, BD will have up to 12% better performance per core (speed bump + hoping that 33% more cores are occupied*) than the X6. That 23fps will become a blazing 26fps (yes, that's assuming BD is 400MHz faster than the x6 1100t). :p

*Best case. Not likely in any desktop software besides encoding or rendering if the CPU does not become bandwidth starved off dual channel DDR3.
 
I just picked up a 2500K + Asus P67 mATX setup. I'm gonna do some direct comparisons with my 1090T at equal clocks as well as my X2 560 @ X4 at equal clocks. I may end up selling the 890gx + X2 setup before I'm ready for testing but as a worst case I'll have a 1090t + 890FX to compare it to and I can always disable 2 cores.
 
After reading a bunch of benchmarks, I don't think I would get much benefit at all replacing my 920 D0 @ 4.55Ghz with a 2600k. Both at similar over clock speeds they perform pretty much the same. If I got a 2600k up to 5Ghz that would yield me a 5-10% performance boost at the most.
 
Michaelius said:
Intel isn't way ahead Intel is in completly diffrent galaxy when it comes to performance.

i5 2400 is usually faster in most test than X6@4,0
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Intel has a pretty good lead at comparable clocks. Though, I wonder what the cpu-nb settings are for those phenom's. If they could push it to 2.8-3.2ghz that could probably take that 1100T into the 30+ FPS region. w00t~
 
Modder man said:
you say intel is way ahead of amd's latest and greatest yet AMD's hexocre line is theier latest not your 965. and i would not say intel is way ahead but they are better
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I didn't say I have the latest and greatest, reading more carefully you would see that I said "When I bought the 965, it was the best AMD had to offer." Since I never specificed when I bought the chip, one would assume that I have had it for some time since, as you said, the 965 is not the flagship for AMD any longer.

Thanks for the information everyone, ill have to take a closer look at my rig to see if I truly am bottlenecked or not and, at least, if I do have to upgrade its only a new mobo and CPU since the memory is still compatible. $550 for a new mobo and processor isnt bad.
 
Vega said:
After reading a bunch of benchmarks, I don't think I would get much benefit at all replacing my 920 D0 @ 4.55Ghz with a 2600k. Both at similar over clock speeds they perform pretty much the same. If I got a 2600k up to 5Ghz that would yield me a 5-10% performance boost at the most.
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No you wouldn't. Your thinking is on the right track. Additionally the X58 platform has more PCI-Express lanes than Sandy Bridge / P67 does. May not be an issue but if you are a multi-GPU user, it matters.
 
Dan_D said:
No you wouldn't. Your thinking is on the right track. Additionally the X58 platform has more PCI-Express lanes than Sandy Bridge / P67 does. May not be an issue but if you are a multi-GPU user, it matters.
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Really? I was looking an an article hardocp did a while back testing 8x\8x and 16x\16x and the 8x\8x was only a few fps behind at high resolutions. :confused:
 
Chris_B said:
Really? I was looking an an article hardocp did a while back testing 8x\8x and 16x\16x and the 8x\8x was only a few fps behind at high resolutions. :confused:
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for 2 cards sandy is fine for now, for 3 of the highest end cards it pushes the chipset beyond it's limits with only 16 lanes of pci express 2.0 available. I'd still suck it up and get the current gen stuff rather then building a 1366 system though, but I don't NEED tri-sli either. Some people have needs others don't. I don't spend 1000 bucks on processors either.
 
stockwiz said:
for 2 cards sandy is fine for now, for 3 of the highest end cards it pushes the chipset beyond it's limits with only 16 lanes of pci express 2.0 available. I'd still suck it up and get the current gen stuff rather then building a 1366 system though, but I don't NEED tri-sli either. Some people have needs others don't. I don't spend 1000 bucks on processors either.
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This is precisely what I meant. X58 has enough lanes for 3-Way SLI and Tri-Quad CrossfireX. P67 doesn't. But for standard SLI and Crossfire you should be fine.
 
3 cards complicate things. How many here even use 3 cards? I see very, very few.

I'd still recommend LGA 1155 over 1366 when upgrading from a slower computer for the vast majority of people looking for a performance upgrade. The small price premium for the k processors has really changed things on the Intel platform.
 
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