i7 950, When should I upgrade?

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Krieger91

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When will it be in my best interest to upgrade to a newer chip? Is Ivy bridge really that much faster? Or should I wait for the next generation of chips?
 
Depends on what you are doing. If you are playing games you can keep your i950 for another couple of years easily.
 
The Lurker said:
Depends on what you are doing. If you are playing games you can keep your i950 for another couple of years easily.
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Yeah, thats pretty much all I do with my pc. Crysis 3 seems to really be the only thing to tax it.
 
That's a personal decision. You could start on a new build of Ivy right now or you could wait what people assume is 5-6 months for the release of Haswell or even a little longer for IB-E.



Haswell-IVB.jpg
 
Krieger91 said:
When will it be in my best interest to upgrade to a newer chip? Is Ivy bridge really that much faster? Or should I wait for the next generation of chips?
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Eh if you can wait a bit longer for haswell. Just overclock that I7 950. They were known to hit 4.2-4.3ghz on a regular basis, and thats no slouch when it comes to gaming. I mean 3.3ghz...up that puppy first, then try out Crysis 3
 
DASHlT said:
Eh if you can wait a bit longer for haswell. Just overclock that I7 950. They were known to hit 4.2-4.3ghz on a regular basis, and thats no slouch when it comes to gaming. I mean 3.3ghz...up that puppy first, then try out Crysis 3
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I recently put it at 3.7, and it handles pretty well.
 
Krieger91 said:
I recently put it at 3.7, and it handles pretty well.
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thats pretty good :). Try 4, then 4.1 etc etc, Just make sure those temps stay below 80ish (84c is my personal limit).

P.S. Turn off HT, wont help in gaming, and will help you overclock better bye using less voltage for higher clocks.
 
DASHlT said:
thats pretty good :). Try 4, then 4.1 etc etc, Just make sure those temps stay below 80ish (84c is my personal limit).

P.S. Turn off HT, wont help in gaming, and will help you overclock better bye using less voltage for higher clocks.
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I recently asked a similar question about my 920 and decided to stay with it.
I am OCed to 4.1Ghz so it was an even easier decision.

Turning off HT is not a sure thing to give you higher OC or at least not really enough to make a difference for other things but is worth checking I guess.
I say, OC it and wait for bigger improvements before upgrading.
Regards!
 
For me I believe in the 3 year rule if you are looking at a performance system. So maybe look at upgrading later this year.
 
I'm still gaming on my i7 920. I'll probably upgrade my main rig to Haswell when it releases just because I'm [finally] getting board of tweaking 1366 and getting the itch to upgrade.

Performance-wise, once you have a certain amount of CPU power, 90% of the importance is on the GPU.
 
I would wait till Broadwell or Skylake depending on which one of these are the first to support DDR4.
 
Upgrade when you have a ton of money to burn.

Meaning, you have enough money to buy Intel's latest $1000 EE chip, $500 motherboard, etc :p

In all seriousness, it really depends on what you do and how future programs change. Typically with computer upgrades, it's best to upgrade when you need it.
 
i7 920 has lasted me soooooo long. I've only recently upgraded to an i7 970 (awesome price...) for video encoding that'll tide me over until Broadwell comes out, or a cheap upgrade with a used 2011 3960x.

Like everyone else said, overclock it and enjoy the performance until a worthy successor comes your way.
 
I'm on i7 870 personally and I'm thinking about holding out for Haswell or later. Don't really have issues w/ my 870 @ 3.7GHz. I see you run your 950 @ 3.3GHz. May want to OC that to help a lil bit.
 
I would wait for Haswell at least if you got a big itch to upgrade but otherwise, wait for Broadwell/Skylake.

I upgraded to Ivy Bridge only because I ran a Q6600 prior to the upgrade. I also had a i7-920 at one point and it's a great performer so no reason to upgrade today.
 
how about we just wait and wait till, you know you cant wait anymore. By then we will have chips with 20 cores, and 12nm process, and deca gate chips. I mean you can wait as much as you want, if your computer does you fine. You have haswell, broadwell, and skylake. On the road map, Ivy bridge E is the extreme performance chip. That should hold you well long enough, as the others are probably like going the ivy, haswell route. Lower TDP, better effiency, and not really a power house, but a good chip nevertheless. People have been waiting or waiting, but in reality, the core 2 duo chips are a beast in itself. I am still on my core 2 quad, and I dont have to upgrade, cuz everything is fast enough, I am because I found someone who wants to buy my system.
 
JL6speed said:
I'm on i7 870 personally and I'm thinking about holding out for Haswell or later. Don't really have issues w/ my 870 @ 3.7GHz. I see you run your 950 @ 3.3GHz. May want to OC that to help a lil bit.
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I'm on an i7-870 as well (able to clock it to 4GHz fine), but I'm having an issue with my motherboard (I think). The first SATA channel on the board seems to be having issues "losing" my harddrive. At first I thought it was my Vertex SSD, but it still does it occasionally with my Crucial m4 (and I've had no issues with the Vertex on another SATA channel). So it's either a motherboard or a processor thing (I can't remember if any SATA channels are provided by the actual CPU on P55 mobos), so it would be nice for Haswell to go ahead and release so I can move on and stop having this issue, haha.
 
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dandragonrage said:
When you find that your current chip isn't fast enough... Depends on what you do and what your performance expectations are.
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Either this.

Or just buying when you want...no matter what you do, you'll have obsolete hardware in your hands. Life is too short to be perpetually stuck waiting for the latest thing to come and try in vain to "future proof".
 
I moved from an i7 920@3.6 to a 3770K@4.5/ Z77 Sabertooth. Truthfully, no huge change in games, and overall not a real noticeable difference in overall performance (both builds had the same M4 SSD).

If I had not had a use for the old components, then I would have regretted spending money on the new build.
 
teiresias said:
I'm on an i7-870 as well (able to clock it to 4GHz fine), but I'm having an issue with my motherboard (I think). The first SATA channel on the board seems to be having issues "losing" my harddrive. At first I thought it was my Vertex SSD, but it still does it occasionally with my Crucial m4 (and I've had no issues with the Vertex on another SATA channel). So it's either a motherboard or a processor thing (I can't remember if any SATA channels are provided by the actual CPU on P55 mobos), so it would be nice for Haswell to go ahead and release so I can move on and stop having this issue, haha.
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Haha I'd like to hit 4GHz with mine, but I think having 4 sticks of ram is really limiting my OC. I'm stuck at 3.72GHz but I like how cool my CPU is (idle ~80-90F) vs pumping more voltage. Them SB/IB ppl have OC on easymode.
 
4.2 i7 920 here. Will upgrade to Haswell for no other reason than to finally scratch my upgrade itch. Mostly game and I am not expecting any noticeable gain in gaming performance.

As many have said, wait until you can't wait anymore and have the funds to support an upgrade.
 
JL6speed said:
Haha I'd like to hit 4GHz with mine, but I think having 4 sticks of ram is really limiting my OC. I'm stuck at 3.72GHz but I like how cool my CPU is (idle ~80-90F) vs pumping more voltage. Them SB/IB ppl have OC on easymode.
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What are you current cpu vcore, vtt, and other voltage settings? 4 sticks of ram does place more of a strain on the IMC, so you might need some more juice then..Always remember to keep your QPI voltage (aka VTT) with .5V of the current DIMM voltage, or you will kill your chip pretty quickly..That was the main issue with early i7s dying early..

I would try a Vcore of up to 1.45V, which should get you to 4Ghz, if not a tad bit more..Just keep an eye on your temps..As long as you aren't breaking 85C fully loaded, then you will have nothing to worry about..The TJMax is ~100C, but you want to leave yourself some thermal headroom so your chip doesn't start to throttle..
 
I think I'm running my VCore @ 1.25 and I peak @ like 156F under stress test, which is < 70C. Then again I'm fine w/ the performance my comp is at, it's just more cool saying it runs @ 4GHz; but this is cake walk for SB/IB so I may as well just hold out for a later build.
 
JL6speed said:
Haha I'd like to hit 4GHz with mine, but I think having 4 sticks of ram is really limiting my OC. I'm stuck at 3.72GHz but I like how cool my CPU is (idle ~80-90F) vs pumping more voltage. Them SB/IB ppl have OC on easymode.
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This might be a total noob question, but what advantages are you gaining by using four sticks of ram on an X58 platform? All LGA 1366 sockets can only access up to 3 channels of memory with the cpu's imc unless I'm missing something.
 
If I had an I7-950 I wouldnt even consider an upgrade until the motherboard fails outside of warranty. At my place of employment we are still happily using between 1000-1500 dells equipped with pentium fours. realistically i dont think the I7-950 will be obsolete when its 10 years old. Manufactures have already changed their focus from processing power to efficiency.
 
Rdzona said:
This might be a total noob question, but what advantages are you gaining by using four sticks of ram on an X58 platform? All LGA 1366 sockets can only access up to 3 channels of memory with the cpu's imc unless I'm missing something.
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He has an i7-870. That is socket 1156 not 1366. They run dual-channel.
 
Like most here i'm still rocking a 1366 and see no reason to upgrade. My last 3 upgrades have been.

Dual SLOT PIII coppermine600mhz>>3.2Ghz P4 >>i7-920
I dont upgrade platforms until I have a NEED to.
 
I'm running an i7 920 c0 as well; as everyone else said, don't upgrade unless you absolutely need to / find the processor insufficient for the tasks you're doing. Although, I admit, I'm always tempted to downsize to mITX or mATX lol, but don't want to spend the money for the motherboard change. I'm going to hold out as long as possible, short of a mobo failure or something.

i7 920 c0 @ 3.7ghz, 1.26 Vcore
 
I'm on a 950 @ 4.2GHz that I think I've been on for over 2 years now; I'll at least wait for DDR4 to come out so I'll give myself another year probably. Gonna upgrade my video card this spring, though, then likely carry it over to the new system.
 
i7-930 @ 4.0Ghz here. My previous system was an Athlon 64 3200+. I also don't upgrade until there's a massive gain to be had. :D

What's the word on Ivy Bridge-E? Is it supposed to be faster than Haswell clock for clock? I'm kinda thinking of just waiting for DDR4 platforms to be mainstream. I'm sure I could get another 2 years from my i7-930 if I absolutely have to.
 
Is it supposed to be faster than Haswell clock for clock?
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I would say no. It's an Ivy Bridge with more cores and quad channel ram on the lga2011 platform.
 
I upgraded my i7 950 setup to the ivy bridge stuff. To make a long story short I sold that ivy bridge stuff for my OC'd 950 setup (4.0 ghz) since I could not tell any difference. Until I feel the processor is slowing me down, I wouldn't worry about upgrading!
 
I'm in a similar place, with an i7-920 OCed to 3.8ghz or so on air. I too have been looking for my upgrade path ever since SB-E showed up 1) Late and 2) Expensive compared to Nahalem. I'm especially feeling the pinch over the lack of SATA III, USB 3.0 natively and to a lesser extent PCI-E 3.0. I have a Samsung 840 Pro that isn't going to be able to run at full speed without SATA III, and I'm told that any add-in card cheaper than a good motherboard (ie I have a RocketRAID 640, which is PCI-E x4 and supports SATA III, but reports suggest that it will pale in comparison to a native Intel chipset SATAIII and that its actually better if I stay with my Rampage II Extreme's SATAII onboard Intel ), isn't worthwhile. Lacking USB 3.0 speed is kind of a PITA, but manageable - I have a PCI-E x1 2-port USB3.0 card I've yet to install; hope it will be able to provide comparable speed to native PCI-E 3, but its less of an issue. Finally, I am on my 6970 that serves me well, but I figure the next upgrade I make may end up being limited without a PCI-E 3.0 link. I considered shelling out the considerable amount of money it would take to upgrade to a Rampage III Extreme, but from what I hear the SATAIII isn't Intel, I would get USB 3.0, but PCI-E 3.0 would still elude me.

Thus, I've been waiting around hoping for something better and/or cheaper than SB-E, with enough performance to make the investment worthwhile. I have no idea why Intel doesn't do as they did for 1366/X58 and release the "enthusiast/workstation" chips close to (or even before!) the mainstream stuff, spec them right, and launch them relatively cheaply. I really wish AMD was a real threat to Intel Socket 2011 to light a fire under them perhaps and get them to stop figuring they can just jack prices on even the mainstream line.

Unless AMD can pull out something pretty awesome ASAP, it looks like Haswell (or Haswell-E? Why even bother with Ivy Bridge-E at all! Stop selling old technology these days for premium prices! Even worse, if I recall Haswell-E is supposed to be a new socket, so IB-E is going to be EOL at launch just about. I'd even understand this if SB-E launched during the SB days and IB-E when Ivy was on top, but come on. Bloody hell.) is going to be my next platform, out of necessity. Hell, if AMD could even provide a comparable overclock vs overclocked answer to the 3770K in terms of real world performance, I'd rather go over there at this point. Wish they'd just hurry up, bring out Haswell so we can see...
 
I'm running my 965 extreme @ 4Ghz and plan to keep running this system as long as I can. I'll upgrade the video card as soon as the 660's drop to below $250 (my personal sweet spot), but see no reason to upgrade the processor for quite a while.
 
The decision to upgrade depends on a few things; are you unhappy with the performance of the 950? Have you overclocked it as far as it'll go and still want more? How much are you going to be willing to spend on an upgrade in the first place? Haswell will be much faster in synthetics and such, but the 950 is still a very strong quad core that will be, should you be willing, able to carry you for a few years longer.
 
early adopters of X58 have been very richly rewarded

sure, there is faster stuff out, but price performance wise it is a long way from beating the 920 or 950 tons of folks already have

I suspect I will be waiting some time, at least till DDR4
 
My i7-920 can encode (with Handbrake) a DVD at about 45 FPS, while my i7-3770 can do about 90 FPS. Blueray is about 8 FPS vs 20 FPS. Since I do alot of ripping it was a good upgrade for me, but outside of that not much difference...other then my Ivy Bridge idles about 10C cooler then my i7-920,but gets about 10C hotter and full tilt.
 
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