Intel i7-920 x58 vs Haswell @1080p and above - Still no urgency to upgrade?

DASHlT said:
You could always buy a X5650 Xean (6core 1366 socket CPU) for $150 on ebay. Most get around 4.2-4.4ghz with ease.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1783399

It's what im running now :)
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Thanks brother, but I don't really wanna go for an old model, which will consume a lot more power than new models. I have thought about the 4930k, but it's a little too pricey for me, but more than price it's the wish of seeing what Intel will announce this year actually, I am little sad as they have pushed back the Broadwell announcement :(
 
@jgonz: Thanks for putting that up. I see that there are some differences, I mean advantage of 4770k over a 920, but that's no way enough for me to switch. So once again this itch of mine is gonna get defeated by my brain:)
Anyway, the only problem for my rig is the power consumption really. I took my kill a watt to my friend's home who runs a 4770k, and I found that my system sucks 2.5X more power (65W vs 165W) than his. Well that's a big advantage of new CPUs but not enough, as performance is my first priority.
Btw, does anyone know how much difference in power usage there might be between a 4930k and 4770k? I mean the former will definitely be high, but how much than the Haswell? Anyone knows?
 
i parted out my last i7 920 build a few months ago. having a 4ghz 920 running side by side with a 3770k i'd say the i7 920 machine is about as fast as the 3770k at stock when gaming at 25x16. with the ivy bridge overclocked to 4.5ghz there was a good bump in mins with 7970cf or 680sli and then a r290x or a 780ti.
 
rennyf77 said:
i parted out my last i7 920 build a few months ago. having a 4ghz 920 running side by side with a 3770k i'd say the i7 920 machine is about as fast as the 3770k at stock when gaming at 25x16. with the ivy bridge overclocked to 4.5ghz there was a good bump in mins with 7970cf or 680sli and then a r290x or a 780ti.
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See, that is what I'm interested in. CF and SLI vs single card. Sometimes my mins are pretty shitty in certain games and I'm at 1080p. This is the only reason I have been considering upgrading.
 
ithehappy said:
Hey guys I have found this topic and it's the only topic which has 'practical' replies/informations out of many in same league.
I am not hijacking this thread, but rather than creating a new one I thought it's better to ask here. Problem is I have been thinking to upgrade from my X58 based i7 950 to Haswell i7 4770k, which I am using for almost 3½ years. But every time I refrain. I am having this itch once for almost every week now, and it has got to a stage where I am getting kinda crazy.
Anyway, let me ask this again, as this topic is now silent for over a month, will it be a worthy upgrade., from i7 950 to i7 4770k? I am running mine at 3.7 GHz, honestly even at stock clock I haven't seen the CPU usage going anywhere near 100% while gaming. Gaming matters to me the most, games which have released so far, Ghosts, BF4, Arkham Origins etc, all these ran pretty fine when I un-parked all the cores, averaging at around 40-45 FPS, so if I had the 4770k would experience have been much better or marginal? My GPU is a GTX580 Lightning btw.
I don't care about benchmark results to be honest.
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The games you play I would believe the answer is flat out no its not worth upgrading. Doing a quick Google at modest resolutions. If no ONE core is ever maxed you are unlikely to see a tangible benefit.

http://www.techspot.com/review/733-batman-arkham-origins-benchmarks/page5.html

http://www.techspot.com/review/734-battlefield-4-benchmarks/page6.html


I retired my 920@4GHz some 8 months ago for a [email protected]. The ONLY game I believe I saw tangible significant benefits isi good old Supreme Commander Forged Alliance (have said that a few times). For me it was worth it in the end, as I still love Forged Alliance, and yes there are a few other games that do benefit!

The old 920 platform does consume more energy but its over stated, home ducted aircon can consume 4000-7000watts input where you might be only saving 50watts by upgrading your PC to keep it in perspective. The reality is we are talking relatively minor amounts of power and it would take likely several years to get a return on investment on that bases alone, really depends if your PC runs 24/7.
 
I was wondering the same thing myself, should I stick with the 920, and just bump up the memory to 12GB, and replace the 260's with a 780, or is that pouring money into a hole?
 
As the OP, I eventually did just bite the bullet because I got an insane deal on my 4770K (running it at 4.4GHz). But if money were tight, in hindsight, I would have stuck with my 920 at 4.1GHz. I really notice zero difference in the system's performance.

Native USB3 and SATA3 are nice benefits. But, again, I don't really notice them. And, finally, though my system can now sleep (my 920 couldn't while overclocked), I usually have sleep disabled most of the time.

So, in the end. . . totally not worth it. But am I glad I did it? Yes. Because it's new and shiny and I now like it quite a bit. Is that logical. . . no. =)
 
Battleneter2 said:
The games you play I would believe the answer is flat out no its not worth upgrading. Doing a quick Google at modest resolutions. If no ONE core is ever maxed you are unlikely to see a tangible benefit.

http://www.techspot.com/review/733-batman-arkham-origins-benchmarks/page5.html

http://www.techspot.com/review/734-battlefield-4-benchmarks/page6.html


I retired my 920@4GHz some 8 months ago for a [email protected]. The ONLY game I believe I saw tangible significant benefits isi good old Supreme Commander Forged Alliance (have said that a few times). For me it was worth it in the end, as I still love Forged Alliance, and yes there are a few other games that do benefit!

The old 920 platform does consume more energy but its over stated, home ducted aircon can consume 4000-7000watts input where you might be only saving 50watts by upgrading your PC to keep it in perspective. The reality is we are talking relatively minor amounts of power and it would take likely several years to get a return on investment on that bases alone, really depends if your PC runs 24/7.
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Thanks for your reply. Well I haven't even heard about that game, so it won't affect my needs. So once again, I am sticking with my current rig. If there is no performance gain I wouldn't bother just for power consumption. However the power consumption difference is quite a bit imho, I mean mine idles at around 165W, when my friend's 3770k idles at 64-65W, it's a pretty hefty difference, my system stays on around 15-16 hours per day. Still, not enough.
I will wait till Haswell-E announcement, or maybe Broadwell too, if Intel doesn't take more time, and see if I can find anything, if not I will be getting the 4930k, which I am eyeing for some times now. I don't think I will be able to wait till Skylake, or whatever it will be called.
Anyway, thanks for the inputs, and helping me to not waste the money.
 
there's some pretty decent 6-cores available for cheap nowadays:
l5639-40,x5650s..
x5660s..
ones i listed have more performance because of larger L3 and (maybe) clock higher..
also use less power.
plus..6 cores :)
 
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ithehappy said:
X5660 is cool, but don't know, kinda old....OC room is limited too I guess?
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the old the `1366 socket will be limited compared to Sandy Ivy or Haswell.

The thing i though, compared to other 6core procs they are ALOT cheaper and still have pretty good overclocking.

Also remember 1366 6core/X5650 are 32nm, where as the I7 920/920/950 is 45nm.

Anyway just my 0.02c
 
Dashit, I feel you make a great point. The 6 core Xeons are built on the same 32nm process that the i7 970/980/990 are, and would consume less power then a 6 core on a 45nm process if one existed.

If someone had one of the higher end 1366 boards and could pick up one of the higher model Xeon Hexcores for ~$120 I think it would be a nice upgrade. You can sell off your old quad core to offset a good portion of the Xeon as well.
 
When I compare the 4930k with say X5650/5660, the former looks a lot better! Well there is a huge price difference, so that's not really the point anyway...
 
Still rocking my 920 @ 4.2GHz with the EVGA Classified mobo. I think finally with the 4790K its time to upgrade. Although I have to say the only game that seems to tax my CPU is Crysis, which even with HT on I have seen 90% usage at some parts and this is with two GTX 780Ti's. But even then, all games are smooth. I want to upgrade more for USB 3.0, SATAIII, UEFI and lower energy usage.
 
To add to this, I was recently running a 4770k and a Gigabyte G1.Sniper board. I came across an X58 rig on CL for $70, ditched the i7-930 it came with in favor of an X5650 for $89 that OC's to 4.0ghz easily. I ended up selling my Haswell parts and using the money towards a new monitor that I needed badly.

In games like BF4, my frame rate actually went up over the Haswell at 4.0ghz (mine was not a good clocker). In very, very CPU limited games like World of Tanks, I saw a 5-10 fps loss at the same settings, but still very playable in the 70-130fps range.

I notice no difference in speed with my Samsung 840 EVO on the Intel SATA II ports vs Haswell native SATA III. The only negative so far is the extra power consumption and the glacial boot times, just the AHCI BIOS alone takes like 15-20 seconds to complete its checks so it takes the rig about two minutes to fully boot. After the cost of the CPU and rig, and selling the Haswell stuff I came out about $350 ahead. Makes me wish I kept my i7-980X machine those years ago.
 
The TDP of the x5650 is 90, and the 4770k is 84. Pretty much the same at stock speeds. 4770k skyrockets more than the 5650 does when overclocked though.
 
King Icewind said:
The TDP of the x5650 is 90, and the 4770k is 84. Pretty much the same at stock speeds. 4770k skyrockets more than the 5650 does when overclocked though.
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Yeah, much better then the 130W of the 920, or in my case probably closer to 200W with the overclock.
 
raidflex said:
Yeah, much better then the 130W of the 920, or in my case probably closer to 200W with the overclock.
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That sir is the reason I got rid of my d0 920, the thing needed to be under water to hold 4.2...... which was very heavy to carry to lan parties.
 
ythe1300 said:
That sir is the reason I got rid of my d0 920, the thing needed to be under water to hold 4.2...... which was very heavy to carry to lan parties.
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I figured with the 4790K being stock at 4GHz even before overclocking I will have a faster processor, while using less then half the energy even before I overclock it.
 
It seems as though next gen games make use of multiple threads... Please see the following article for a very interesting graph set comparing 8 HT cores to 6 HT and to 4 HT, and AMD processors. I do not agree with their stacking of average fps in their graph, which are on top of the min fps however, although the numbers seem interesting...

Russian translated page...

Has consensus now changed?

I have, under your advisement, ordered a hexa core x5660 as a drop-in replacement... Hopefully it will last for a little longer.
 
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Honestly, the only reason I want to upgrade is for more USB 3.0 ports (my mobo only has 2 that are 3rd party chipset and has no motherboard header for front panel USB 3.0). But I can't justify upgraded for small gains from my i7 950; it's clock has slightly deteriorated from 4.2 to 4.0 for a long time and just recently is only stable at 3.9.

Intel needs to introduce a CPU that would be a substantial upgrade for me and/or software needs to take better advantage of multiple cores/HT.
 
still on an i7 860 here just stuffed it full of ram and a 780ti
 
Yea, this Christmas month I've been on the scope for a new i7 setup that would provide a big upgrade without breaking the bank too much - and there's just no way I could figure it worth being the money. I'm on an i7 930 and I'm still feeling it's too expensive to jump to X99 while seeing a worthwhile increase in performance. I'd say I struck gold in terms of value with purchasing this i7 930 near when it came out, but honestly 920 users have me inched out because some 920'ers can OC their chips much easier than I can my 930.

Instead, I've just been decking out my 5 year old setup with liquid cooling (H-240X), getting a nice spiffy new case (Corsair 450D), and improving my RAM situation (went from 6gb to 16gb), and my HD situation (1tb spinpoint to 256gb 850 Pro and 3tb Caviar). Not having any problem maxing any games with my single 980 GTX. Also, with this upgrade, it honestly feels much more like getting a new computer than instead forking over that money towards a new i7 proc. :p
 
t1337Dude said:
Yea, this Christmas month I've been on the scope for a new i7 setup that would provide a big upgrade without breaking the bank too much - and there's just no way I could figure it worth being the money. I'm on an i7 930 and I'm still feeling it's too expensive to jump to X99 while seeing a worthwhile increase in performance. I'd say I struck gold in terms of value with purchasing this i7 930 near when it came out, but honestly 920 users have me inched out because some 920'ers can OC their chips much easier than I can my 930.

Instead, I've just been decking out my 5 year old setup with liquid cooling (H-240X), getting a nice spiffy new case (Corsair 450D), and improving my RAM situation (went from 6gb to 16gb), and my HD situation (1tb spinpoint to 256gb 850 Pro and 3tb Caviar). Not having any problem maxing any games with my single 980 GTX. Also, with this upgrade, it honestly feels much more like getting a new computer than instead forking over that money towards a new i7 proc. :p
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I don't blame you a bit....a new 980gtx is money a lot better spent than the jump to x99 especially if your not getting bottlenecked
 
The ONLY reason i upgraded from my i7 920 system is the motherboard was causing BSOD's all the damn time and it was becoming unstable. Looking for an x58 board is hilarious, they are charging stupid amounts of money for them.
 
I just got a system with a Xeon E5530 2.4GHz and for almost I guess 5 year old technology it's pretty damn fast. I guess Intel was making processors way too good?
 
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Hurin said:
So, does the consensus remain that so long as you don't need native USB3 or 6Gbps SATA, that there's no point in upgrading from a decently overclocked "Nehalem"-era CPU and x58 chipset?

As someone who likes everything maxed out at 1920x1200 and will possibly be going larger (30" 2560x1600 some day), am I likely to even notice a difference with Haswell so long as my i7-920 is OCed to 4.09GHz?

I get the sense that the x58's PCIe bandwidth/lanes plus a good overclock for the CPU keeps this aging platform in contention and won't cause more than a few percentage points of "bottlenecked" performance in resolutions at or above 1080p.

Please, correct me if I'm wrong. . . so I can better direct my upgrade budget in the coming months.

I would love to see a gaming-oriented review of Haswell where a 4GHz+ i7-920 is put into the mix. But that's been hard to find. :(

--H
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stick a xeon 5670. job done
 
I'm in a similar boat, i5 [email protected]. It's the s1156 quad core version of your chip. Stock to stock the 4790k would be doubling my horsepower.

Plantside 2 is the game that cpu bottle necks me running at 1950x1200 with a 290x. Shadow of Mordore(sp) had slowdowns too.

My main game is PS2, and I want to upgrade.

I'm just going to upgrade when s1151 comes out. 5th gen i series, should be greater than 50% performance upgrade.

Save your cash, grab an nvidia 980, put away $100 a month till the 5th gen comes out. This socket will be capable of using ddr3, and IMHO, ddr4 won't be matured/affordable enough to justify the extra cash by launch date.
 
I use my main machine (UD3R, X5650 and 24gb of 'generic' Adata Ram) for a lot of VM work relating to my job. I also use it as my main game machine.

For gaming alone, moving off X58 is a silly idea, as it performs admirably. But lately I've been wondering if I should move to Haswell E due to the fact I'm hitting the wall in RAM limitations. I really need 48-64GB to run what I need (it's a home lab where I simulate ESX/Hyper V nested clusters) and I'm not sure if I should shell out for a 6 8gb dimms or just bite the bullet and go with Haswell E. Trouble is, DDR4 is super expensive at the moment so the whole move will likely end up costing me megabucks to 'futureproof'.

What would you guys do? Apat from better RAM capacity, better CPU performance (a 5620K I doubt is going to benefit me over a 5650 a whole lot for what I do) and the ability to crossfire (the X58 PCIE slots are too close together for CF) I'm leaning towards just keeping my X58 board and sinking money into that.
 
I think Star Citizen is going to be the game that screams you need an upgrade but that is not till next year and new cpus and graphics cards will be out then.

Till then a 6 core xeon might be a good idea with some of these new games like battlefield using 8 threads.
 
Wally Simmonds said:
I use my main machine (UD3R, X5650 and 24gb of 'generic' Adata Ram) for a lot of VM work relating to my job. I also use it as my main game machine.

For gaming alone, moving off X58 is a silly idea, as it performs admirably. But lately I've been wondering if I should move to Haswell E due to the fact I'm hitting the wall in RAM limitations. I really need 48-64GB to run what I need (it's a home lab where I simulate ESX/Hyper V nested clusters) and I'm not sure if I should shell out for a 6 8gb dimms or just bite the bullet and go with Haswell E. Trouble is, DDR4 is super expensive at the moment so the whole move will likely end up costing me megabucks to 'futureproof'.

What would you guys do? Apat from better RAM capacity, better CPU performance (a 5620K I doubt is going to benefit me over a 5650 a whole lot for what I do) and the ability to crossfire (the X58 PCIE slots are too close together for CF) I'm leaning towards just keeping my X58 board and sinking money into that.
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Do you know if the UD3R supports registered ECC DIMMs? 6x8GB of ECC is not too expensive, probably will run you somewhere around $250.
 
so final said screw it and pulled the trigger on 4790K ill post how it goes
 
Just upgraded from a I7-950 to a I7-4790 and a Gigabyte X97 board. I spent less then $500 and to me it was well worth it. I could of even spent less if I went with a cheaper CPU and board. The Corsair A70 H/F could of also been used on the X97, but I decided to get a new one, so that was a extra $30. So really I could of put together a system for anywhere from $300 to $400. The $500 I paid is still far less then previous systems I have put together, and I'm getting a faster CPU plus a whole bunch of new and exciting features with the Z97 motherboard.
 
You can currently get a I7-4790K at Micro Center for $279, or a I7-4790 for $249. In store deal only though.
 
ok so
4790k is a beast 4.5 out of the box at 1.18v
temps between 30c idle an 60c full load
i pick up a Samsung 850 EVO 250GB ssd as well
fastest pc i have ever built

the ASUS Z97-A seem rock solid too

ill have too see how much i can OC the cpu and ram now
 
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