i7-870 vs i7-920/930

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kinein

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 10, 2010
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If you had to choose between an i7-870 vs an i7-930 or 920. Would there be other concerns besides.

Overlocking on the 9xx's and also SLI?

I've read the 870 was just as good at stock? as the 9xx series.

Other then that I'm thinking of a 28" Hannsg monitor to go with this if that matters?
 
Clock for clock, the CPUs will perform equally. The 870 has a higher clock speed than the 930 or 920, so at stock it will be the fastest. However, the 920 and 930 will most likely overclock more easily.

As far as other differences go, the 870 is an LGA1156 CPU and the others are LGA1366. The 920 and 930 have more PCI-E lanes available (they can run 16x/16x Crossfire and SLI whereas LGA1156 can only do 8x/8x), and they use triple-channel RAM instead of dual-channel.
 
krameriffic said:
Which is more expensive. As is an x58 motherboard.
Click to expand...

And IMHO only worth it if you're going to be using a prosumer ($600 to $2,000) video editing software regularly. Otherwise, if you're going to be doing nothimg more than gaming, whichever of these three that has the highest clock speed would suffice; however, the LGA 1366 platforms (though pricier) have the edge in overclockability.
 
prepare for people to bombard you with 3 points

1 is you should go with socket 1366 because in case you SLI you'll get better performance. What they wont tell you is that the performance increase with 1366 is about 1 - 5% over 1156

2 is that 1366 is worth it because you can upgrade to a hexcore later on. Now this is true but IMO the only hexcores you're going to be able to get for 1366 are going to cost $600+. Cheap hexcores will only be on the next socket but again this is only my opinion.

3 is you can go triple channel DDR 3 but in actual tests DDR3 performs about 2 - 3% faster than DDR2

you gotta ask yourself if all that extra money is worth the negligible performance increase
 
1. I7 930 is better
2. if you like memory bandwith LGA 1156 is a blistering fast system on fast tight ram at dual ram channels on a p55
3. both completely equal in crossfire and sli
 
The i7 - 860 / 870 have 95 W TDP which runs very cool ( as opposed to 130+ W ).
 
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