Help me choose-- Upgrade time

[Rogue_Apprentice]

Well its time. Time to say goodbye to my socket 775 set up and move on. Move on to what is the question. 1366 or 1156. To help make the suggestions easier allow me to provide some info on my system use and/or needs, wants.

My sig contains everything I am currently running. All of which is for sale except the GTX 260's. (I haven't reached enough posts to put in the "for sale" section). Anyway, I am going to stick with my current GPU sli set up of 2 GTX 260's. Its too early on to adopt a new GPU for me and I am happy with the performance of these in most games. I use my system to game mostly, Crysis, BFBC2, COD-all of em, Grid, NFS Shift. I do some folding and video editing as well. I am leaning towards a 1366 x58 set up with this board and an i7 930 from my somewhat close Micro Center. Detroit.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813188049


But lately I have been tempted to get into a cheaper 1156 set up. They have a few open box boards at MC right now and an i7 860 for a little less money and memory would be cheaper this way as well. I have read that X58 setups scale better with sli and I plan on eventually doing 2 470's or 480's. but in the meantime I want to squeeze every last bit of performance I can out of the 260's I have.

Thoughts? i7 930 vs i7 860? X58 vs P55, H55 H57, etc etc....

Oh I will have about $550 to $650 to work with.

 

[jmbgator]

I am actually building a new rig with the same questions...

See this thread... http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1518185

It seems like the 1156 is more mainstream, while the 1366 is for enthusiasts

Since your running SLI, you might be better off going with the 1366...Do you overclock?

I am most likely just going to stick with the 1156 and the i7-860 primarilly because I am not going to be doing dual video cards and I am not planning to overclock

 

[defaultluser]

First off, if you have the Q9550 running reliably at 3.4 GHz, you're going to be disappointed with an upgrade to Core i7 for gaming. Even if you overclock the hell out of it, it won't really do anything amazing for you. EDIT: since the 3.4 is a disappointment, then an upgrade to an 8-thread high-speed Core i7 would be a good thing. People have nothing but good things to say about their P55 and X58 platform experiences.

Dual-card scaling on P55 is only %5 slower than X58. In my mind, five percent is not enough to justify the premium going 1366. If you don't intend to install more than two video cards, and if you don't want to use high-bandwidth RAID controllers, I see no reason to spend extra to get the full 32 PCIe lanes of the X58.

 

[Rogue_Apprentice]

Actually I have been completely underwhelmed with the performance of the Q9550 and the striker II has been nothing short of a nightmare. That is my main reason for upgrading.

Thanks for your suggestions.

 

[defaultluser]

Actually I have been completely underwhelmed with the performance of the Q9550 and the striker II has been nothing short of a nightmare. That is my main reason for upgrading.

Thanks for your suggestions.

Okay, that would have been helpful. This is why people normally fill-out the sticky.

I'll go erase my snarky remarks.

If you don't like your platform, then an upgrade is in-order.

 

[Rogue_Apprentice]

Okay, that would have been helpful. This is why people normally fill-out the sticky.

I'll go erase my snarky remarks.

If you don't like your platform, then an upgrade is in-order.

I thought I covered everything but yes that would've been helpful. I guess I am mostly disappointed with that motherboard and feel its holding the system back. I got an awesome deal on it when I got it but knowing what I know now I would've chose something different.

 

[engiNURD]

While dual card scaling is rather close between P55 and X58 in terms of avg fps, I believe (but cant find the links right now) the minimum fps difference is higher, and even moreso when going multi-card (>2).

For better gaming performance, I'd still suggest selling those GTX260's and upgrading your vidcard config.

For eVGA mobos, I'd highly suggest the -AR models, since they have a lifetime warranty. Dan_D ([H] mobo editor) loves the high end eVGA and Asus boards, btw, and he highly recommends them. Personally, I prefer the Gigabyte boards, but I also buy Asus, MSI, and eVGA -- I mainly get whichever board has the features I need, along with enough cooling and quality parts for my OC'ing goals.

BTW, the sticky format makes it easier for people to find answers to the questions they may have when trying to help you.