a few questions

[thomoya]

Hey im looking to pair my asus p7p55d deluxe with either a 750 or 860. For the past 5 years ive had a 4200+ x2 and it has served me well... the theory being a top intel i7 will serve me well for the next 4-5 years too. Would you go with the 750 or 860? Is hyperthreading performance essentially like extra cores? Do you think future applications will have hyperthreading in mind, or do all multithreaded apps automatically use it? this cpu will be for gaming and some video encoding, but of course in the future gaming CPU requirements will increase so keeping that in mind too.

I'm leaning towards the 860. Would you guys advise me to go with HT?

Thanks

 

[sfsilicon]

Hey im looking to pair my asus p7p55d deluxe with either a 750 or 860. For the past 5 years ive had a 4200+ x2 and it has served me well... the theory being a top intel i7 will serve me well for the next 4-5 years too. Would you go with the 750 or 860? Is hyperthreading performance essentially like extra cores? Do you think future applications will have hyperthreading in mind, or do all multithreaded apps automatically use it? this cpu will be for gaming and some video encoding, but of course in the future gaming CPU requirements will increase so keeping that in mind too.

I'm leaning towards the 860. Would you guys advise me to go with HT?

Thanks

If your on a budget or plan to use only 1 GPU you should be ok with a 750 or 860. See what's the best deal you can get for the MB/CPU combo. Fry's has a i5-750 and a Gigabyte motherboard for $210 after MIR.

If your looking for something more future ready that you can slowly upgrade or if dual GPU is a must for you, save yourself the trouble and get a i7-930/920 + X58 combo. You get the following upgrade options: SLI or Xfire, dual channel or tripple channel, 6 dimm slots, 2 x16 PCIe slots, hexa-core ready). The best deal I've seen and bought for myself was $350 after MIR for a i7 920 + MSI X58 Pro-E (deal is over but they normally come back to Fry's every few weeks).

I was in a similar boat, had a Q6600 but the $200-350 combo deals started the upgrade itch. I'm always on a budget so I OC and get only what brings be good value for the money vs. bragging rights. I looked at i5-750/860 first. Liked the $200 combo price and that I didn't have to buy triple channel DDR3. I started looking at X58 when I found out that you can do 2 DIMMs in dual channel config and had full x16 lanes for SLI/Xfire. The $350 combo + i7 support for HT (virtual 8 cores) + hexacore support sealed it for me.

 

[thomoya]

i'm in NZ so those prices you listed don't apply to me, sorry should have mentioned. I've already got a p55 board, the asus deluxe one, for $230 (NZD) (sells new for 400 here so)

I think i'll bite the bullet and get a 860, it'll be better for the long term. The board has xfire/SLI, but it might be a while before i use that

I think i saw that intel are still going to support lga 1156 in their future products? (even if it's not top line)

Basically i reckon currently the 860 is comparable to the 4200+ x2 for their respective eras, so assuming multicore cpu design doesn't accelerate faster than the past 5 years, i think the 860 would be a good bet for long term. It's a beast!