Intel I7 920 / upgrade ?

S

sioux

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 26, 2013
Messages
134
I have an Intel I7 920, it's pretty old. Do you think it's worth to upgrade it ? Or maybe, i should OC it ?
My graphic card is GTX 660 Gigabyte / 8 GB DDR3 / PSU Corsair 650 W / full HD
Should i wait a bit more, or should i upgrade the CPU ( mobo as well ) ?
Thank you
 
I would OC it as you can probably get 3.6-4.0Ghz fairly easily. At that speed it should still be fairly decent.
 
Agree with above post, overclock that little beast.. I would only think in a cooler upgrade if you haven't a good one yet, at more than 3.8ghz which its certainly easy, the difference its big on that chip, if you want a real upgrade sell that 660 and buy a new GPU that will show a way better upgrade than a new mobo+cpu.
 
I have my i7 950 at 4.2ghz just on air and it stays plenty cool. I mainly just game so I probably still won't upgrade my CPU for quite some time.

Performance gains are much more apparent with graphics card upgrades.
 
The only reason to change sockets / upgrade are if you get a new SSD like the 840 Evo. My current motherboard (X58 Sabertooth) limits the read speeds to about half of what the SSD is actually capable of, warranting a motherboard upgrade to something like a Z87, which would in turn require a 4770K or 4670K CPU upgrade to be at least on par with my i7-930.

I'm sure there are other bottlenecks with X58 but this is the major one I noticed. If you're only concerned with the CPU/motherboard and no other component upgrades I wouldn't bother.
 
limits the read speeds to about half of what the SSD is actually capable of
Click to expand...

But then again very few applications read or write in large enough chunks for this to make much of a difference outside of benchmarking and copying data from SSD to SSD.
 
Only reason why I ditched my 920 @ 4.5ghz was I got a stupid good deal on a used 3930k and Rampage IV. If my friend was not rebuilding - I would still be running on the 920. It is a rock solid CPU and overclocks like a champ.

Like others have said - if you have no need for more USB 3.0 or SATA3 then just upgrade the GPU and you will be good to go for awhile. I would have guess atleast another 2-3 years on my 920.
 
Yeah, just hang onto it, and when X99 shows up, all the early upgraders will toss off their x79 gear, then go x79. That is my plan. :D
 
I have to agree with everyone else in this thread. Just OC it. My C0 is at 3.6 and holding steady. Paired with a GTX780, gaming at 2560x1440 with all of the options set to high is no problem, even with Crysis 3.
 
r00k said:
If you're looking to do more parallel tasking stuff than what the 920 does as well as overclock, you also have cheap upgrade options a la L5639 or other six-core Xeon. They overclock exceptionally well too, lower TDP etc.

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1783399
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This is true. I picked up a L5639 and am running it at 3.6GHZ no problem. 6 cores and 12 threads for $100. Can't beat that.
 
techtips said:
i7 920 is old? LOL

I'm running an ancient pc at home then!
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Intel I7 920 isn't old ? LOL
Okay, i guess i'll buy a good cooler for OC but i don't know which one, because in the future ( maybe next year ) i want to upgrade the cpu and the cooler i buy i wish to keep it for the next cpu.
 
You can almost never go wrong with the Coolermaster Hyper 212 series, the current model being the Evo.
 
sioux said:
Intel I7 920 isn't old ? LOL
Okay, i guess i'll buy a good cooler for OC but i don't know which one, because in the future ( maybe next year ) i want to upgrade the cpu and the cooler i buy i wish to keep it for the next cpu.
Click to expand...

Maybe not so new but still fast enough for most of the tasks.
 
sioux said:
Intel I7 920 isn't old ? LOL
Okay, i guess i'll buy a good cooler for OC but i don't know which one, because in the future ( maybe next year ) i want to upgrade the cpu and the cooler i buy i wish to keep it for the next cpu.
Click to expand...

Any of the 120mm/240mm closed waterloops will keep your current and future CPUs nice and cool. I recommend any of the Corsair products, mainly the H100i if you have the case room.

They come with different brackets.. you MAY have to purchase the older bracket for like $10 for the 920.
 
so.. despite my urge.. there is nothing worth upgrading to atm.. my 26000k oc at 4.2 is pretty comparable to anything after it??
 
I concur with most people here, if you only have a 660, just OC the cpu and call it a day.
 
Ok, and about the 1366 socket : if i buy a pci ex card for USB 3.0 and SATA 3, will that help / improve the speeds / transfer ?
Click to expand...

The SATA part of that card will increase sequential performance for copying large files from SSD to SSD or reading or writing large files sequentially (most applications do not do that). For the applications that do not read or write in large chunks (like the OS and 90+ % of applications) it will most likely slightly decrease performance. Although you probably will not notice the difference. For hard drives it will make no difference at all.
 
I miss my 920. I rescued it out of a Dell XPS that had a bad motherboard. OC'd to 3.66 without a lot of effort and stayed nice and cool. If I didn't have so many PCs and so little money at the time, I wouldn't have had to sell it.
 
The i7 920 is indeed pretty old, but it's not a terrible CPU. I did have my 920 running at 4.3GHz.

I upgraded it last July with an i7 4770K and the new CPU is significantly faster for me. I have the 4770K running at 4.5GHz and in games that are CPU bottlenecked I'm seeing around a 40% increase in framerate.

Like in Guild Wars 2 in boss fights or massive WvW battles. I used to see 20FPS with the 4.3GHz 920, but now I see at least 30FPS with the 4.5GHz 4770K which is noticeably smoother. Or like big 4v4 battles in Star Craft 2. I used to see 40fps, now I'm seeing around 60.

Both PCs had the same speed DDR3 RAM so I know its not the ram making a difference and I'm using the same GPU.
 
as other's stated. Oc what you have, or get one of the 1366 Xeons, which I may do to replace my 920 which doesn't like to oc over 3.6-3.8ghz w/out having a hissy fit. I have an older 920 non DO though, so you may want to check your stepping of 920. If it's a DO stepping or better, may just keep that and go.
 
I had a xeon l5639 OC'd on the mid 3ghz range and it ran like a champ. played BF4 with a 280x, no bottlenecks at 1440p
 
Bump!

My i7 920 which is happily running at 3.33GHz base -> 3.48GHz Turbo. It's a C0 and I don't plan on ever doing water-cooling so I won't take it further. In order to keep the whole system current, I changed the video cards over the years, and that seemed to have done the trick. Started with a GTX 285, then went to a 6870, then 6870 CFX, then GTX 680 and now GTX 680 SLI. Mind you that due to the board design back then, I spaced out the video cards for cooling reason and thus they are both running on PCI-e 8x.

Output is 1920x1200 and BF4 settings are Ultra everything except AA Deferred is Off and Motion Blur 0.

The GTX 680 is slightly slower than the current GTX 770, and BF-series should have decent multi-GPU scaling. So, I think that my GPU power should be plenty for that resolution output and setting.

However, Shanghai and Zavod both run a bit below 50fps, and Shanghai Levelution makes it worse. The biggest problem, though, is when my player is suppressed / getting hit, the stuttering gets somewhat bad that returning fire accurately becomes very difficult.

Perhaps the most telling that there might be a CPU bottleneck in there, is that my monitor broke for a bit, so I played BF4 on an LCD TV and ran it at 1280x720 for a couple of weeks. Performance was about the same.

Now I'm eyeing either the i5 4670k or the i7 4770k, with a new motherboard to go with it of course. Tried to do some research, and it looks like clock-for-clock going from Nehalem to Haswell doesn't yield much improvement, maybe 15%. That 15%, though, MIGHT bring my minimum framerate to the Adaptive V-Sync's 60fps.

Also, my Nehalem is now pretty much topped out at 3.33GHz, while the new Haswells both START at 3.4GHz and go quite a bit higher thanks to the much smaller manufacturing process and energy-saving architecture.

Finally, the modern motherboard will allow both my GTX 680s to run on 16x while still being spaced out. Not sure how much that will help, though.

To go with the i5 will put me back about $400 CDN, while the i7 will be a bit over $500. For 15% clock-for-clock improvement it seemed awfully pricey, and the other improvements seemed somewhat trivial. I have no plans on using SATA3 or USB3, so the rest of the chipset upgrades seem to be wasted. What do you guys think?
 
Veritable said:
Bump!

My i7 920 which is happily running at 3.33GHz base -> 3.48GHz Turbo. It's a C0 and I don't plan on ever doing water-cooling so I won't take it further. In order to keep the whole system current, I changed the video cards over the years, and that seemed to have done the trick. Started with a GTX 285, then went to a 6870, then 6870 CFX, then GTX 680 and now GTX 680 SLI. Mind you that due to the board design back then, I spaced out the video cards for cooling reason and thus they are both running on PCI-e 8x.

Output is 1920x1200 and BF4 settings are Ultra everything except AA Deferred is Off and Motion Blur 0.

The GTX 680 is slightly slower than the current GTX 770, and BF-series should have decent multi-GPU scaling. So, I think that my GPU power should be plenty for that resolution output and setting.

However, Shanghai and Zavod both run a bit below 50fps, and Shanghai Levelution makes it worse. The biggest problem, though, is when my player is suppressed / getting hit, the stuttering gets somewhat bad that returning fire accurately becomes very difficult.

Perhaps the most telling that there might be a CPU bottleneck in there, is that my monitor broke for a bit, so I played BF4 on an LCD TV and ran it at 1280x720 for a couple of weeks. Performance was about the same.

Now I'm eyeing either the i5 4670k or the i7 4770k, with a new motherboard to go with it of course. Tried to do some research, and it looks like clock-for-clock going from Nehalem to Haswell doesn't yield much improvement, maybe 15%. That 15%, though, MIGHT bring my minimum framerate to the Adaptive V-Sync's 60fps.

Also, my Nehalem is now pretty much topped out at 3.33GHz, while the new Haswells both START at 3.4GHz and go quite a bit higher thanks to the much smaller manufacturing process and energy-saving architecture.

Finally, the modern motherboard will allow both my GTX 680s to run on 16x while still being spaced out. Not sure how much that will help, though.

To go with the i5 will put me back about $400 CDN, while the i7 will be a bit over $500. For 15% clock-for-clock improvement it seemed awfully pricey, and the other improvements seemed somewhat trivial. I have no plans on using SATA3 or USB3, so the rest of the chipset upgrades seem to be wasted. What do you guys think?
Click to expand...

You might want to look at a Xeon X5650/X5660/X5670. They are 6core server chips (basically 980x's). Most easily get 4.4ghz. And 4.6-4.8ghz if you get a good chip.

The 6core should last you for quite a bit of time. There is a HUGE thread about it here in the [H] forums.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1040805611#post1040805611

Right now I have no problems with any maps in BF4. I max out all details and even use 130% Screen resolution with 1 780 MSI lightning.

Sure some of the X58 motherboards lack native sata 6.0 and USB 3.0. But some still do have those options on them (Not sure what your motherboard is).

If you ask me that would be the best and cheapest upgrade route possible. Specially if you play at 1080p.

Looking on Ebay I see some X5650's selling for $110ish

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trk...Xeon+X5650&_nkw=Xeon+X5650&_sacat=0&_from=R40
 
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Nehalem is plenty powerful even today. Only Core 2 Quad is really showing its age at this point. By no means should you waste your money on Ivy or Haswell. If anything, just get a Westmere drop-in Xeon upgrade.
 
Yes you need to OC, just hope your 920 chip is better than mine rofl, the Xeon w3520s are the real sleepers haha, my 920 DO chip must be a dud really doesn't want to do 4ghz rofl
 
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going to ivy or Haswell is/would not be a waste really....they are better in like every way....
 
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