i7 970 vs i7 980x

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bufodr_T

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Sold my iphone 4 to partially cover the upgrade from my i7 960. Is the i7 980x worth the extra $100 premium over the i7 970 for folding?
 
depends on your overclock. At stock speed, probably. My 970 is solid at 4.3 GHz, which is about as good as you are going to get with a 980x. I can't see it being worth the premium if you plan on overclocking. Just my opinion, though.

You may want to consider an L5640 though...there are a couple of threads on them recently. You won't be as fast as a 970 or 980, but you also save a few hundred dollars.
 
For the money the L5640 blows either of those away. I'm seeing lots of 4gz L5640s out there and I think I could hit it myself if I had a more powerful PSU and better HSF.
 
L5640 is more expensive then the 980x on Amazon, not sure where I should look...
 
The ebay ES models aren't. If you have to have a retail chip, then yes, the 970 or 980x will be cheaper.
 
Agree with musky. If you have to have retail then the 970 is the way to go. If you don't mind buying an ES chip off of ebay then the L5640 is the way to go.
 
Just to give the counter-argument, I bought a 980X instead of the 970 because I thought the higher & unlocked multiplier was worth it considering the amount of money it cost.
 
SazanEyes said:
Just to give the counter-argument, I bought a 980X instead of the 970 because I thought the higher & unlocked multiplier was worth it considering the amount of money it cost.
Click to expand...

I have to agree with this. This is especially true if you are only a mild or casual overclocker like me and wish to simplify things. All you really have to worry about is adjusting the multiplier and vcore accordingly. Mine will hit 4.1ghz, but the temps were a bit too high for my taste so I run at 3.6ghz on stock voltage.
 
SazanEyes said:
Just to give the counter-argument, I bought a 980X instead of the 970 because I thought the higher & unlocked multiplier was worth it considering the amount of money it cost.
Click to expand...

And to counter your counter, I went with the 970 because at 200 MHz bclk, you aren't going to need a multiplier over 22 anyway. It is probably easier to get a better result with the 980x, but if you like to crank up the bclk, you are paying a premium for something you don't really need.

That being said, you really won't go wrong with either of them.
 
I have a 970 @ 4.0Ghz and a 980x @ 4.05Ghz and both are solid and super easy to overclock.

Take the cheaper one. L5640s are also great but you have more to worry about in terms of BIOS support with a regular x58 motherboard.
 
I'm running my 980X at 160 x 25 for 4GHz. I'm limited a bit by my stupid DFI mobo, but I'm able to run my RAM at 1600.

I agree that the L5640 ES is probably the best option right now.
 
Higher Bclock makes a difference to folding performance. You're not going to want a high multiplier, so save some bucks and get the 970.
 
What's the practical difference between 160 x 25 and 200 x 20 for folding perfomance, given the CPU and memory are running at the same speed?
 
Bclk adjusts the qpi,uncore compoents and memory speed. It is like adjusting the fsb on the core2 systems. You increase the bclk to improve overall system perormance. With faster qpi things communicate faster and total performance is improved.

The best performce will come from using a higher bclk and a lower multiplier.
 
thanks for the input...ill just pick up an i7 970 and oc it and save a few $$$
 
itsrickjames said:
Bclk adjusts the qpi,uncore compoents and memory speed. It is like adjusting the fsb on the core2 systems. You increase the bclk to improve overall system perormance. With faster qpi things communicate faster and total performance is improved.

The best performce will come from using a higher bclk and a lower multiplier.
Click to expand...
But the differences are so small that you will not even notice. The speed of the QPI bus is ridiculously fast. At the default 133 BCLK it's twice as fast as a 1600Mhz FSB. In adition, the internal memory controller is so much more efficient at communicating with RAM than the northbridge memory controller was.
 
Amuro said:
But the differences are so small that you will not even notice. The speed of the QPI bus is ridiculously fast. At the default 133 BCLK it's twice as fast as a 1600Mhz FSB. In adition, the internal memory controller is so much more efficient at communicating with RAM than the northbridge memory controller was.
Click to expand...
Base clock overclocking can actually provide noticeable performance increases compared to pure multiplier overclocking in certain situations. There aren't a lot of things that benefit from it, but there is definitely a difference.
 
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