Intel Core i7 and Gaming @ [H]

Hahaha 3dmark 01 E8600 vs Nehalem ->Nehalem got owned

3dmark 01 E8600 vs Sandy Bridge->Sandy Bridge stuck at 5.7 : result ->Sandy Bridge got owned

Conclusion Different coded software have different influence on different cpu architectures.
 
Impressive! Still glad I upgraded from my X3360 @ 4.0 to 2600k @ 5.0 though :D Big boost all around, as I like to do other things while gaming
 
Jesus, so am I behind the curve if I'm still rocking a 920 OC'd to 4.4???? or should I be looking at upgrading to a Sandy Bridge???
 
Catsonar said:
Jesus, so am I behind the curve if I'm still rocking a 920 OC'd to 4.4???? or should I be looking at upgrading to a Sandy Bridge???
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YES

You must upgrade to the latest and greatest because its SO MUCH BETTER.
 
Spooony said:
Hahaha 3dmark 01 E8600 vs Nehalem ->Nehalem got owned

3dmark 01 E8600 vs Sandy Bridge->Sandy Bridge stuck at 5.7 : result ->Sandy Bridge got owned

Conclusion Different coded software have different influence on different cpu architectures.
Click to expand...

True, that is always the case, but how is a 10 year old benchmark relevant today?

This gets back to the old "my system is better cause I get 325fps in Q3A and you only get 315fps". 10 year old games are going to play pretty well on ANY system today, even a cheapo laptop with integrated intel HD graphics.

Running a benchmark like 3Dmark2001 is completely and totally irrelevant to performance on anything today.
 
moshpit said:
I've seen several games that don't seem to benefit from Core i7 over my old Core 2 Quad [email protected]. The Ci7 and the C2Q are both at exact same clock speeds, which really helps eliminate any variables. FPS games mostly don't benefit that much. A few do though. Mostly, it's RTS and flight sim games that really stand to show the most benefit.

I have to question the general attitude most hardware web site's seem to have gotten into about FPS gaming = ALL gaming. It's quite irritating coming from people who should know better. It's plainly a rut they're stuck in and need to break out of quickly. It's making me loose faith in ALL hardware website's gaming opinions. How can you trust in a site that makes bold proclamations about general performance from a single app and/or a single genre being tested?

It almost feels intentional when site's that pioneer new testing methods like the [H] fall into the same rut as everybody else. This site went out of it's way to provide a much more reliable method of testing hardware that shows real world usage. But then they limit the tests themselves to all of one catagory and everything else is ignored. That's not a complete picture.
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I have a Q9550 at 3.61 gighertz , and a gtx 570.. Core I7 is overrated.
i will wait another 6 months until i upgrade.
 
I've got a Q6600 and was thinking of upgrading to an i7. I am using an Asus Maximus Formula MB and an ATI 5870 graphics.

After playing BF3 beta on high settings with no problem at all ....I am thinking I'm not in
a rush. But I'm still looking. Any thoughts?

This is what I have:
Asus Maximus Formula-MB
Q6600 intel processor
Asus eyefinity ATI 5870 graphics
22 in LCD
Creative X-fi extreme music- sc
CORSAIR Professional Series HX750
OCZ Fatal1ty Edition 4GBx2
 
UnrealCpu said:
I have a Q9550 at 3.61 gighertz , and a gtx 570.. Core I7 is overrated.
i will wait another 6 months until i upgrade.
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I enjoyed reading the perspectives in this thread.
I have a Q9450 w/8GB and an ATI 5850. I think I'll just make the convert with my new SSD's and my new chassis and call this a firm decision. I'll wait another 1-2 years before jumping away from this solid setup.
 
Went from a q9550 @ 4.4 to an i7 870 @ 4.4 and it was a major noticeable difference to me. Not only was my rig overall much faster (Windows, applications, etc), my minimum FPS was decently higher for a 4850 cf. Games like bc2 at the time strongly benefited from having more raw power. I jumped on the i7 bandwagon about a year and a half ago, and IB is just around the corner, so a 2 year upgrade cycle isn't bad. There is no sense in going to 1st or 2nd gen core i series right now when IB is coming soon.
 
sli ftw? Lol honestly I get about 40%+ increase from running two gtx 480 vs 1 on bf3. Seems to be worth wild in my case. I can't wait for the new nvidia cards to debut. Maybe sli will sale even better? 80-100% would be fantastic
 
I am about to refresh my current system and upgrade CPU and GFX (I use my system mostly for gaming 1920x1200 resolution). I currently have i7 920 and GTX 295. I will purchase GTX 680 once it is out (hopefully in a couple of weeks) and with that I also wanted to upgrade my CPU (to ensure that my current CPU will not be a bottleneck in the near future). To that end, given that I currently have LGA 1366 socket, I was thinking about picking up i7-980 which should serve me well up until 2014 or so when the Intel releases whatever is coming after “Haswell” at which point I will build a completely new system on whatever new socket comes out. Given that this forum has plenty of people that are way smarter than me when it comes to this stuff, does this CPU upgrade make sense to you guys?
 
I sold my i7-920 and will place it with an i5-2500K. The latter had hyper-threading, and uses gobs more power than the i5, clock for clock. Unless you use games that take advantage of hyper-threading (the i5-2500k is not a hyper-threading cpu) it's been said the 2500k is the best bang for the buck for gaming purposes. Plus it has much lower power draw, as I said. Check the main page here under CPUs to see where it falls. Why spend more for not much gain (in games)? Now if you're doing string theory testing, maybe the i980. But for gaming...? Tom's hardware recently considered the i5-2500k as the best-bang-for-your-buck cpu. where i live, the i5 sells for $179.00. MIght be able to find a good motherboard for the difference in price. See here: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-cpu-review-overclock,3106-4.html Just my opinion, of course.
 
Thank you for your insightful response, I agree with you, based on everything I have seen i7 980 may not be the most cost efficient CPU for gaming (at $580) and 2500K / 2600k is the way to go for gaming. Given that I do not want to deal with the hassle of switching the motherboard, I may just end up paying couple of hundreds more and go for 980 as few hundred is not that big of a deal compared to extra time involved in replacing the motherboard. Besides, I may eventually (if I ever get some free time) go back to one of my hobbies - 3D rendering / ray tracing – and there I should be able to use extra power :)
 
imsirovic5 said:
I am about to refresh my current system and upgrade CPU and GFX (I use my system mostly for gaming 1920x1200 resolution). I currently have i7 920 and GTX 295. I will purchase GTX 680 once it is out (hopefully in a couple of weeks) and with that I also wanted to upgrade my CPU (to ensure that my current CPU will not be a bottleneck in the near future). To that end, given that I currently have LGA 1366 socket, I was thinking about picking up i7-980 which should serve me well up until 2014 or so when the Intel releases whatever is coming after “Haswell” at which point I will build a completely new system on whatever new socket comes out. Given that this forum has plenty of people that are way smarter than me when it comes to this stuff, does this CPU upgrade make sense to you guys?
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Slow to reply, but for future reference.

Upgrading a 920/930 to anything is a huge w.aste of money for gaming. They overclock to 4.0Ghz+ very easily (at least 3.8) and there are no games that will benefit by going SB or IB. Control the mobo voltages manually and it will keep down heat and power usage to very respectable levels.

Actually there is only one game that will benefit slightly form a upgrade, Supreme commander Forged Alliance with 2 or more original AIX comps on huge maps after about 20 minutes of play when the sim speed starts taking a hit.

Beyond that huge waste of money 
 
jonneymendoza said:
So no game is bottlenecking the i7 920? also none of the new graphics cards?
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At "stock" clocks there are games where the 920 will bottleneck Multi GPU's at modest resolutions, however with a very easy overclock to around 3.5GHz the GPU's become the bottleneck. There have been articles showing this.

Not an exact science but unless you are doing huge amounts of encoding or VM's etc, or synthetic benchmarks are important to you, your probably wasting your time and money going SB or IB if you are running Bloomfield/Lynnfield over 3.5 Ghz.

I can't see this situation changing in the next few years.
 
Battleneter2 said:
At "stock" clocks there are games where the 920 will bottleneck Multi GPU's at modest resolutions, however with a very easy overclock to around 3.5GHz the GPU's become the bottleneck. There have been articles showing this.

Not an exact science but unless you are doing huge amounts of encoding or VM's etc, or synthetic benchmarks are important to you, your probably wasting your time and money going SB or IB if you are running Bloomfield/Lynnfield over 3.5 Ghz.

I can't see this situation changing in the next few years.
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i run mine a 3.8ghz mate but only get like 30-40fps on bf3 in ultra with a overclocked 480gtx.

at 1200p res
 
looks like the best bet is to stick with my i7 920 @ 3.5GHz for a while even though my 4870x2 is starting to show its age!
 
My 920 at 4.2ghz easily pushes my OC'd 580 to the 100% gpu usage in BF3, all ultra settings.
 
I can pretty much run BF3 on ultra settings on an all stock GTX570. However, when I overclocked it a bit, and OCd my 2500k to 4.2, and ran a XML profile on my Ripjaws, I saw a noticeable difference in FPS, and saw a lot less FPS spiking in crazy situations.
 
Battleneter2 said:
Slow to reply, but for future reference.

Upgrading a 920/930 to anything is a huge w.aste of money for gaming. They overclock to 4.0Ghz+ very easily (at least 3.8) and there are no games that will benefit by going SB or IB. Control the mobo voltages manually and it will keep down heat and power usage to very respectable levels.

Actually there is only one game that will benefit slightly form a upgrade, Supreme commander Forged Alliance with 2 or more original AIX comps on huge maps after about 20 minutes of play when the sim speed starts taking a hit.

Beyond that huge waste of money 
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I'm having this same problem too. I have an i7 920 and was trying to find upgrades, especially with the most recent MicroCenter sales on the new Ivy Bridge stuff. I keep hearing it would be a total waste of money for me. I'm on WC @ 4.0 and still not finding any games that push a 580 with that processor combo. Thanks for reassuring me that the 920 was probably the best purchase I've made in years! :)
 
Just purchased a GTX670 and a SB i7, and I'm stunned at the performance boost from my previous GTX570 & SB2500k. I'm seriously considering going with the IB after seeing all good reviews it's received.
 
That's all 670 basically. 2500k -> sb i7 is a wash for most games.
 
I upgraded my GPU from GTX 285 to GTX 660
The cpu is still Intel I7 920
Do you think is worth to overclock the cpu ? Would that increase the performance on gaming ?
Thank you
 
white_dove said:
I upgraded my GPU from GTX 285 to GTX 660
The cpu is still Intel I7 920
Do you think is worth to overclock the cpu ? Would that increase the performance on gaming ?
Thank you
Click to expand...

Overclocking will help quite a bit, at least up to 3.5ghz.
 
white_dove said:
I upgraded my GPU from GTX 285 to GTX 660
The cpu is still Intel I7 920
Do you think is worth to overclock the cpu ? Would that increase the performance on gaming ?
Thank you
Click to expand...

Omg yes! Overclock it! I also have a 920 D0 and am running at 3.8ghz easy and stable. Though its water cooled. It's performance according to Vantage CPU score is just shy of my 2600K not over clocked. You should be able to get 3.2ghz out of it with a good cooler easy. I mean the CPU is past it's prime so what are you waiting for?? Just do it!
 
Someone told me that if i OC the CPU i will see a very small increase on gaming.
About 5-6-7 fps. Is that really worth ?
Another question : how far could i go with the OC, with the stock cooler ? 3 GHz ? 3.2 GHz ?
Thank you.
 
white_dove said:
Someone told me that if i OC the CPU i will see a very small increase on gaming.
About 5-6-7 fps. Is that really worth ?
Another question : how far could i go with the OC, with the stock cooler ? 3 GHz ? 3.2 GHz ?
Thank you.
Click to expand...

It depends on a lot of factors. What monitor resolution are you using?
 
white_dove said:
Someone told me that if i OC the CPU i will see a very small increase on gaming.
About 5-6-7 fps. Is that really worth ?
Another question : how far could i go with the OC, with the stock cooler ? 3 GHz ? 3.2 GHz ?
Thank you.
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I found it to help a lot, but I tend to play games that are more CPU dependent; Starcrat 2 and WOW. I bought a Thermaltake Frio cooler and had it at 3.8 ghz stable that evening. I ve now bumped it to 4.0ghz with no issue and think 4.2 would be very doable. One of the largest things is that my house is always at 68 F degrees or less. Underload she rarely gets to the 60 C.
 
white_dove said:
Someone told me that if i OC the CPU i will see a very small increase on gaming.
About 5-6-7 fps. Is that really worth ?
Another question : how far could i go with the OC, with the stock cooler ? 3 GHz ? 3.2 GHz ?
Thank you.
Click to expand...

I went from an x58 w/ 920 @ 3.8 to an x79 with a 3829 @ 4.25 and heaven went from 30fps during the opening sweep over the stone road area to about 42 - 45fps range.. with same settings in heaven, same video cards, same drivers, same 5760x1080 res... I was shocked I saw that much increase... but this isn't a "game" per say... and I did switch a whole platform, not just the cpu...

anyways... just thought I would mention it..

with the stock intel cooler you're not going to have a lot of OC headroom due to heat.. so if you're serious about ocing that chip get a better cooler.. a hyper 212 evo is cheap and works very well in push - pull config.
 
I always found that OC'ing my older 920 provided more of a bump thank OC'ing my current 3770K. That one seems to have diminishing returns beyond 4.2 ghz, while my old 920 would see pretty decent gains with almost every 0.x increase.
 
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