i7 920 upgrade

[TheAmorphous]

I've been running this trusty i7 920 for over seven years now, by far the longest I've ever gone without updating an entire system. It's been an absolute workhorse OCed to 4.0 from day one. But it's getting (more than a little) long in the tooth and it's finally time to upgrade.

The trouble is the Boardwell-Es seem really disappointing. Practically no overclockability from what I'm reading, disappointing performance compared to previous generations, etc. But I could go pick one up at Microcenter today and have a new PC built this evening.

On the other hand Skylake-E is coming... when exactly? I don't think that information is available yet. Is the Skylake platform considered a large enough step up from Broadwell that I should wait? I've found very few comparisons of the two for the non-E series chips, surprisingly.

Suggestions? Should I wait it out and see what Zen has to offer? I haven't run an AMD CPU since the Athlon days, but am certainly open to the idea if it's competitive.

This machine is used both for work and gaming. I've been using VMs more and more lately, hence the need for >4 cores.

 

[legcramp]

Throw something like a X5650 Xeon in there and overclock it if your motherboard supports them IMO.

 

[NeoGohan]

I'm kind of in the same boat as OP except I'm on an i5 750. It scares me that I've had this build for so long... only upgrading memory/gpu/disk. Waiting for something "good" to come out but it's hard when this thing still runs everything fine.

 

[caltech31]

Throw something like a X5650 Xeon in there and overclock it if your motherboard supports them IMO.

Seconded.

The 6 Core LGA1366 Xeons are such a great bargain. Mine overclocked to 4.6Ghz beats my 4960x StOCK, and is roughly equivalent to a 5820k. Best $100 I ever spent.

Pick one up on ebay to tide you over until we see what AMD brings to the table with Zen. After that, you can make a more informed decision.

 

[josephnunn]

I ebayed 2 ep-2670 v1 Xeons for $55 each. I got 128gb of ECC ddr3 for $288 from Natex.us. For a motherboard I got a new EP2C602-4L/D16 from Superbiiz for $307, still waiting on it.

To get an idea of what performance this type of system would give in comparison to Broadwell E check out:

Intel Core i7-6950X Broadwell-E Review - The First 10-core Desktop CPU

The summary, will require more electricity to run. Will beat a 6950X in many multithreaded benchmarks. In gaming the 6950X is faster but IMO its not that much of a difference, some may disagree. No overclocking the Xeons, but since I'm buying used I consider that a bonus. Cheaper than Broadwell E, far cheaper than a 6950X. However I think integer AVX optimized code will give significant speedups to Broadwell E, but I suspect it will be a few years before thats really important.

I already have a case that can fit the motherboard, a PSU with 2 CPU cables, and drives, so I don't have to spend on that.

Personally though, I wouldn't upgrade at all except my 920 recently died. So I need something for the next couple years and this setup will do, I will look again at Skylake E, and of course EP v2 Xeons if they become cheap.

I run both Linux and Windows, do a lot of programming and gaming, YMMV.

Joseph

 

[Eric1285]

I recently upgraded to a X5670 from an i7-930. It's a great bump in performance for minimal costs. Of course that upgrade sucked me into doing a whole bunch of other upgrades, but oh well.

 

[TheAmorphous]

Best cost effective and price/performance solution. Most X58 motherboards (aside from EVGA which require newer revisions) can support X58 LGA1366 Xeons natively. The processor is about $60-70 as an upgrade and highly overclockable with a low TDP (which gives better headroom).

I'm actually running an old EVGA board. I'll have to do some digging to see if my model would have a problem with that. Thanks for the recommendations, all.

 

[CrankyX]

Same boat, except my 920 could not reach that high of an OC

I actually just gave in and sent my mobo to EVGA for the mod yesterday. Snagged a x5670 off eBay shortly after. I have heard such good things about this upgrade I couldn't justify an entire new build for near the same performance.

If this buys me some time until the next die shrink/ major upgrade then it's a few $ well spent.

 

[heatlesssun]

I'm sporting an i7-980x that's been running at 4Ghz 24x7 for the last six years. It's been a great run but I'm moving to an i7-6950x system. With enough RAM, decent speed storage, and modern GPU, such an x58 system I feel could run until it just dies. Just putting in a GTX 1080 FE has made my old i7-980x more than capable gaming machine. Which is pretty amazing to be able to pair such and old platform with a new GPU and get much of the benefit of that GPU.

 

[MongGrel]

The X5650's OC well for the low cost, probably the best thing you'll run into if priced right is a X5675.

I put the X5650 I have in the HTPC, have a X5680 in the main I paid about $130 for awhile back, but they run hotter and a bit harder to push to a decent OC.

 

[Napoleon]

The 6 Core LGA1366 Xeons are such a great bargain. Mine overclocked to 4.6Ghz beats my 4960x StOCK, and is roughly equivalent to a 5820k. Best $100 I ever spent.

Jealous, my MOBO/chip only let me reach 4.2, but it's still a solid setup

I'm sporting an i7-980x that's been running at 4Ghz 24x7 for the last six years. It's been a great run but I'm moving to an i7-6950x system. With enough RAM, decent speed storage, and modern GPU, such an x58 system I feel could run until it just dies. Just putting in a GTX 1080 FE has made my old i7-980x more than capable gaming machine. Which is pretty amazing to be able to pair such and old platform with a new GPU and get much of the benefit of that GPU.

That's great to hear a success story, I'm hoping to add a new GPU to my X58 and run for a few more years

 

[Saki630]

I have a i7-930 running at 3.4ghz with a 7970 OC but 1440p is killing it.

I'm apprehensive at buying a 1070/1080ti with this old ass build. I've waited this long, I'm not sure if its worth the upgrade into these chips or just pick up a 5820/5830k and move on from there.

I want the 10 core but $1700 for the CPU and $1400 for two 1080ti's is a lot to swallow.

 

[mda]

You'd probably need to upgrade both the CPU and the 7970 for high quality 1440p.

No real need for Broadwell-E if the most you do is game.

A 6600/6600k/6700/6700k will keep the 1070/1080 well fed.

 

[Napoleon]

I have a i7-930 running at 3.4ghz with a 7970 OC but 1440p is killing it.

I'm apprehensive at buying a 1070/1080ti with this old ass build. I've waited this long, I'm not sure if its worth the upgrade into these chips or just pick up a 5820/5830k and move on from there.

I want the 10 core but $1700 for the CPU and $1400 for two 1080ti's is a lot to swallow.

Get a X5650 or X5670 on eBay for <$80 and an aftermarket CPU cooler, you can prob OC to close to 4ghz. You want 10 core, 6 for $100 is pretty awesome. primetime what do you think?

Otherwise you'd still get a lot from a 1070 or 1080(it would be could but no release date at the moment). Personally, I think a 1070 would allow you to get by very well until big pascal drops and you are able to evaluate the CPU market at that time. Not sure why you'd need SLI at 1440

 

[primetime]

Get a X5650 or X5670 on eBay for <$80 and an aftermarket CPU cooler, you can prob OC to close to 4ghz. You want 10 core, 6 for $100 is pretty awesome. primetime what do you think?

Otherwise you'd still get a lot from a 1070 or 1080(it would be could but no release date at the moment). Personally, I think a 1070 would allow you to get by very well until big pascal drops and you are able to evaluate the CPU market at that time. Not sure why you'd need SLI at 1440

definitely.....get a high end cpu cooler (that you can also use after next upgrade) and a cheap xeon is amazing.

 

[-PK-]

I'm really disappointed with Broadwell-E too. I held out last year from upgrading my i7-920 to skylake because I was more interested in broadwell-e, with more cores and pcie lanes. However, I didn't think we'd still be discussing 6600k/6700k vs 5820k (Q3'2014) vs xeon (Q1'2010). I was hoping to upgrade my cpu before Windows 10's upgrade offer expires, to avoid a phone activation and being told to buy a new license. I wouldn't mind the cheap 4Ghz+ xeon route to hold off for another couple years, but I wanted to transition to a nvme or m.2 boot drive within a year which requires a newer motherboard. Although, I'd probably be happy with any kind of ssd for gaming storage with an older motherboard.

 

[Eric1285]

I'm really disappointed with Broadwell-E too. I held out last year from upgrading my i7-920 to skylake because I was more interested in broadwell-e, with more cores and pcie lanes. However, I didn't think we'd still be discussing 6600k/6700k vs 5820k (Q3'2014) vs xeon (Q1'2010). I was hoping to upgrade my cpu before Windows 10's upgrade offer expires, to avoid a phone activation and being told to buy a new license. I wouldn't mind the cheap 4Ghz+ xeon route to hold off for another couple years, but I wanted to transition to a nvme or m.2 boot drive within a year which requires a newer motherboard. Although, I'd probably be happy with any kind of ssd for gaming storage with an older motherboard.

Pretty sure you can boot the Samsung 950 Pro on X58 with an adapter. I plan on trying once I find a good deal on one.

 

[morningreis]

Pretty sure you can boot the Samsung 950 Pro on X58 with an adapter. I plan on trying once I find a good deal on one.

You can: How to install Samsung 950 PRO M.2 SSD in a PCIe slot - tested with Supermicro 5028D-TN4T & Lycom DT-120 M.2 to PCIe adapter | TinkerTry IT @ Home

However the adapter used uses PCIe 3.0 x4, and when x58 only has 2.0. Still, even using PCIe 2.0x4 should give you a maximum of 1600MB/s. Still plenty fast, but also a good bit shy of what it's capable of.

 

[-PK-]

Wow, that is good news. I thought the only way to boot over nvme without a UEFI bios was to use another drive as a boot partition pointing to the drive, or modify the bios to include the nvme system drivers. PCIe 2.0 x4 would be fast enough for me.