i7 860

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I've been out of the loop since I built my i7 860 rig a couple of years ago. I'm just wondering how it holds up against present offerings. Should I be looking to upgrade or wait?
 
Keep it and see if Bulldozer is better, as I don't think switching to a 2600k is gonna give you any more performance then you'd get by just overclocking your 860 a bit. It's not a huge hassle to upgrade a motherboard and chip (I upgraded my AMD machine from a 790x board to a 970x board(for Bulldozer...hopefully the socket doesn't change if AMD decides to delay it another 6 years) and, other then switching out the motherboard (which to me is fun and part of why I like this hobby) it was pretty painless. Is it worth going from an i7 860 to an i7 2600k? Well, the 860 is kinda sorta (cept in some games at ultra low resolutions) comparable to my old overclocked 1090t. Now, while I'm happy with the 2600k (no need to OC, this screams at stock) when I play games at max settings on both machines with the same card with vsync their is no perceptible difference in performance. The numbers would argue otherwise, but in the end I kinda regret upgrading to the 2600k, but it's lower power usage and not need to overclock (but it's nice to have it there when I need it) definitively make a case for it. I'd say hold on to the i7 860 and see if Bulldozer is not just full of Bull, but has plenty of Dozer to back it up. Otherwise hold out for Ivy Bridge or the SandyBridge-E chips due out around December. The 860 is a fine chip, and if I got one instead of the 1090t, it may still be in my main machine to this day because I've seen some wicked overclocks on those (compared to the paltry 4.1Ghz I get outa my 1090t) which absolutely gives those CPUs some legs.
 
I'd say wait till Ivy or even Haswell; after all, its not like you're going to be CPU-bound in anything (unless the rest of your machine is BEASTLY!).
 
I've got an i7 860 and it's still kickin'. Might upgrade to Haswell-E when it hits shelves, though.
 
Okay, thanks guys! The consensus seems to be that I should hold on to this build for the time being. I've been running my 860 at a decent 3.8Ghz overclock since I first put it together, and I've not felt a personal need to upgrade; it's just that whole not-wanting-to-far-too-far-behind-so-I-can-maintain-my-geek-cred thing . . . lol.

It does seem that higher end components are maintaining their viability for a good deal longer these days.
 
Smashing Young Man said:
Okay, thanks guys! The consensus seems to be that I should hold on to this build for the time being. I've been running my 860 at a decent 3.8Ghz overclock since I first put it together, and I've not felt a personal need to upgrade; it's just that whole not-wanting-to-far-too-far-behind-so-I-can-maintain-my-geek-cred thing . . . lol.

It does seem that higher end components are maintaining their viability for a good deal longer these days.
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Part of the Reason I went from my 1090t to the 2600k, lol. Yeah, a Lynnfield at that speeds gonna last you a good while. Good planning ahead there!
 
CPU holds up really well since so many other components make more significant bottlenecks for most users. Clocked at 3.8 GHz, that'll hold you for a good, long time. That said, I''ll probably swap mine out for Ivy Bridge. :)
 
I traded out the 860's little brother the i5-750 for a sandy bridge rig purely to use quicksync. Other than that I notice zero difference between the two. I might have gained 2fps or something in games but nothing noticeable.

Keep your 860. It's good for another generation.

If you don't have an SSD that should be your next upgrade.
 
bigddybn said:
I traded out the 860's little brother the i5-750 for a sandy bridge rig purely to use quicksync. Other than that I notice zero difference between the two. I might have gained 2fps or something in games but nothing noticeable.

Keep your 860. It's good for another generation.

If you don't have an SSD that should be your next upgrade.
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I have been going back and forth on getting a SSD or two. The thing is, I'm limited to SATA II. I thought I might wait until my next system build with SATA III. Right now I'm running two WD Blacks in RAID 0, so things are fairly snappy on the hard drive front.
 
Sata II won't make a difference. Everyone shits themselves over big sustained transfer numbers but it's the access times that make an SSD really shine.

Get the SSD. Your "black" hard drives ain't got shit on any modern SSD. :)
 
I have the same chip and was considering an upgrade to an i7 950. Looked at the specs and decided against it. I am NOT having a bottle neck of any kind with my 5870's so untill the next generation of cards can prove it can outpace. It may be the 7xxx or even the 8xxx series of AMD GPU's because I have not even overclocked it yet. Also most games seem to be console ports so the requirements are not that high right now.
 
bigddybn said:
Sata II won't make a difference. Everyone shits themselves over big sustained transfer numbers but it's the access times that make an SSD really shine.

Get the SSD. Your "black" hard drives ain't got shit on any modern SSD. :)
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Exactly. I recommend an Intel 320 SSD, 80 or 120 gig. Reliability > sequential performance.
 
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