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

I'm running a I7 920 C0 as well at 3.6 It's been fine but i have had the itch to do a completenew system build for a while now and so I might bite at haswell in the next month or 2. We'll see. Maybe I should wait for sepetember for Ivy -e?
 
As many others in this thread, I'm in a similar situation. However, I play many of my games in eyefinity at 5040x1050 (without bezel compensation, so actually like 5290x1050: 1680x1050 * 3), and by Christmas time I will be upgrading to 5760x1200 (1920x1200 * 3). For the past few months I have been getting involved with streaming live to twitch.tv/my website, so my 920 D0 which is only at 3.8ghz is doing a lot of extra work. The few times I've tried to stream in 1080p while playing it was just too much of a hit in performance, so I've been sticking to 720p which it does fine with generally maxed settings. I only play in 1680x1050 while streaming.

So, I have my high resolution when using eyefinity along with the extra resources required for streaming as reasons omto upgrade. Also, going from a 130+w to 84+w processor sounds appealing. Ideally I would just like 4.0.-4.2ghz. I'm not an oc whore. I realize my two aging 5850s with their 1gb of vram is the main botttle neck for my eyefinity resolution, but I'd really like to wait until the 8xxx series from AMD.

But, if the general consensus is wait then ill just wait and upgrade around the same time as the new video cards. Just get those three ips monitors sooner (yay)!
 
Yeah, I think I'm going to skip the cpu upgrade this generation and stick with my 930 @ 4.0. Replace my 5970 with 2 780s, see how I fare.
 
I'm in the same boat. Whoa, the boat's getting kinda filled up and I'm feeling that the boat may capsize... :p

I'm at 4.44GHz and still think that I am OK here. Game at 2560x1440 at 110Hz and don't notice any kind of bottleneck honestly...
 
I haven't felt the need to upgrade either. Have a 965x/Rampage III Formula, running stock and it's plugging away just fine. Just upgraded the video card recently and Skyrim went from very frustrating and choppy to smooth as silk. I'll probably be keeping this another year or two.
 
Got a good OC on X58? Don't go anywhere.

I like my Sata3 other than that Ivy didn't do much for me over Nehalem.
Hold on to those Hex cores especially....Cos they are cool.

I would wait for some sick Cpu, something that doesn't leave any room for 'meh' or disappointment.
Hopefully Skylake because it has a cool name :D
 
I was lucky, my wife's computer is ages old (Core 2-era) so Haswell was a good opportunity to build up something for her: great light-OC performance for a reasonable price.

As for my i7-920, as slow as it may feel next to her computer, I am going to wait for Ivy-E. Unfortunately what I'm really after right now are chipset features, such as enough I/O to allow all SATA ports to really breathe. Unfortunately it looks as though Ivy-E will continue the X79 chipset exactly as is (if I am reading things correctly) which I'm not sure how to feel about. Either way, I want some of the new CPU instruction set features such as TSX without overclocking restrictions, so Haswell is off the table for now.
 
I'm still running a 920, screen resolution 2560 x 1440.

I recently upped the RAM from 6 GB to 12 GB and switched out my 460 GTX SLI for a single GTX 770, but after those two upgrades I'm rather content with where my machine is at.

Haswell for desktop doesn't really excite me as of yet, and it's honestly been nice to allocate more of my budget towards mobile and other pursuits. I'm thinking about upgrading my HTPC for use as a Steam Box as well.

YMMV of course, but I am with many in this thread in believing that for many or even most games out there X58 is still holding its own.
 
Like many others, I'm on a 920 @4.0 with a 660TI. I was planning on haswell being my next upgrade but honestly... I don't feel my CPU is a huge bottleneck yet and I'm a bit disapointed with how haswell is turning out.

Now my motherboard on the otherhand, seems to be falling apart and may force my hand. I'm going to try to wait and go nuts with haswell-e or skylake.


Damn, the 920 was such a great processor.
 
Rig in Sig.
Not feeling a cpu upgrade.
I like the statement that it leaves more rom for SSD's and Video cards.

Even with SATA II, my SSD's seem instantaneous. I'm sure there are people that benefit from SATA III but I am not one of them. It will probably be when DDR4 comes along that my power to resist will evaporate.
 
Like someone said earlier, depends how much you value SATA3/USB3. But also if need the extra CPU power. With a 950 @ 4.2HT and GTX670, 64 player BF3 games was choppy. Even some 32 player games would slow down if it got crazy, but I play at 1600x1000@110hz.

Looking at BF3's performance overlay, the CPU was the bottleneck. I don't remember exactly but I think CPU sat around 5-6, while GPU sat at 3. (Lower is better) When it got crazy the CPU would spike off the chart.

Picked up a 4770k from Microcenter and everything's straight now. Silky smooth with no more stuttering and max FPS is up, obviously. Sata3 loads games faster on the SSD. And I can finally use my USB3 external HDD at full speed..
 
Hurin said:
I'm thinking I'd be better off increasing my RAM from 6GB to 12GB, and replacing my GTX 580s with GTX 780s. . . and leaving the CPU and motherboards as-is.
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I went from 4gb to 12gb awhile ago and noticed literally nothing in gaming. I grabbed a 2500k on release day, and see little reason to upgrade until 6 core CPUs are more reasonably priced. Youd be far better served in the gaming arena by upgrading your gpu(s).
 
Everyone overclockes different and can miss a setting like payload size which effects output as it can be set to high for some game and cause shutters also it was always know to turn off HT for BF3 on the socket 1366 cpu's if i remember right.

The i7-920 was the lowest end chip for socket 1366 and 4770K is the highest end for socket 1150.. even the i7-930 was an upgrade as Intel built it alittle different..

Check out the i7-930 going clock for clock with the i7-975EE

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2010/03/01/intel-core-i7-930-cpu-review/1
 
This staggered enthusiast part release schedule is messing me up. What incentive do I have to buy SB-E when all the cool kids in the forum are playing with IB? What incentive do I have to buy IB-E when all the cool kids are playing Haswell?

Conversely, what incentive do I have to "upgrade" to Haswell when I'd be losing cores? That makes it feel like a sidegrade. Though honestly, I wouldn't notice it outside of video encoding (and maybe even then) and I'd really enjoy native USB3 and lower power consumption. Hey, does Haswell have VT-D?

Better question - what incentive do I have to upgrade when my 980X takes everything I throw at it like a champ?
 
Well you have already won part of the fight in having a part that is 3 years old and not being worthless like other tech.. (8800GTX > 8800GT)

I still have a almost new 1st gen e6600 and still have my 7900GT /8800gts 320Mb and 8800GT which are just collectors items now with no value.

Your 980X can still kick some ass..
 
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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I was very disappointed with the Haswell review. I just don't even see a reason to upgrade my cpu/motherboard/RAM. The only noticeable upgrade I get is video card upgrades. I am not even sure I will upgrade for CPU speed. More than likely PCI Express 3.0 ,native USB 3.0 and Serial ATA 3 will be the reason to upgrade.

If everything Is running fine, keep what you have. Those X79 threads I have read with people saying they barely notice any noticeable increase from X58 to X79 at 2560x1600 is depressing. I hope broadwell isn't a disappointment.
 
i had my old c0 920 @ 4.2 from day one the only reason i switched was to low power usage and heat output
 
nissanztt90 said:
I went from 4gb to 12gb awhile ago and noticed literally nothing in gaming.
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Understood. I run some virtual machines from time to time for work though. So it would be nice to be able to assign them a bit more RAM.
 
albertyouwrong said:
Like someone said earlier, depends how much you value SATA3/USB3. But also if need the extra CPU power. With a 950 @ 4.2HT and GTX670, 64 player BF3 games was choppy. Even some 32 player games would slow down if it got crazy, but I play at 1600x1000@110hz.

Looking at BF3's performance overlay, the CPU was the bottleneck. I don't remember exactly but I think CPU sat around 5-6, while GPU sat at 3. (Lower is better) When it got crazy the CPU would spike off the chart.

Picked up a 4770k from Microcenter and everything's straight now. Silky smooth with no more stuttering and max FPS is up, obviously. Sata3 loads games faster on the SSD. And I can finally use my USB3 external HDD at full speed..
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I started off this thread feeling really good about my 930, now you're making me reconsider.
 
I don't know how well it compares to OPs i7-920 @4Ghz but I upgraded from an i5-655k (Clarkdale/Westmere) OCed to 4Ghz and a H55 chipset (on an admittedly very cheap mobo) to a 4670k and Z87. I haven't OCed it yet.

I have a 660Ti and always run games at 1920x1200. I haven't had much time test but in two games that I knew were CPU limited (also possibly very unoptimized) — Tribes Ascend and Assassin's Creed 3 — I'm getting MASSIVE FPS increases, going from almost unplayable (AC3 practically ground to a halt first time I reached Boston; T:A bogged down pretty bad on certain maps with a full compliment of players) to a solid 60fps.

The upgrade also took me from 2 to 4 cores, unlike if I were coming from an i7, for whatever difference that might make.
 
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You'll get next to nothing over a 4GHz 920. As in MAYBE 5-10% in select, cherry-picked examples.

As a caveat, take this example: SLI titans on a single 144Hz 1080p monitor. In that sort of situation, you might see some tangible benefits.

Otherwise, the main advantage is power consumption; Nehalem is hungry.
 
There is a russian website gamegpu.ru that regularly tests new games with various video cards, and for each review if you scroll down to almost the end, they also have one graph where they test different stock CPUs with high quality graphics at 1080p (with a single Titan installed as of late).

Unfortunately they don't have any clock for clock, but they show core loads too, so maybe there is some useful info to be gleaned from there.
 
I just replaced an i7-930 @ 4GHz with a 4770k. On the 930, Planetside 2 reported a CPU bottleneck in nearly all cases where I dipped into the 30fps range. With the 4770k at stock with a big CPU cooler, I didn't really see any dips into the 30fps range, and GPU was reported as the bottleneck a LOT more. I also noticed generally higher FPS. My GPU is a GTX 680.

Take those numbers with a grain of salt- Planetside 2 CPU loading is highly variable based on which continent you're on, and how big the battles are. It's also poorly threaded, which may play into haswell's IPC advantage. That said, I feel like I found a fairly bigass fight while testing the 4770k, and it sure seemed smoother than I had come to expect from my 930.

The real question is, what are you waiting for? Overclocked performance has more or less been flat since Sandy Bridge- IPC has compensated for lower overclock potential. 22nm Ivy bridge sure wasn't magical, are you going to bet on 14nm being magical? Or will it just be even more difficult to dissipate heat at high overclocks, and/or have more systems added to the chip that cost heat? If the performance increase on your favorite app isn't worth it to you now, then I think you will be using that Nehalem for a lot more years.
 
Tych-0 said:
I started off this thread feeling really good about my 930, now you're making me reconsider.
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A follow-up poster seemed to indicate that his poor performance in BF3 might have been due to his having HT enabled. But I wouldn't know.

I'm just having a hard time getting my head around how the CPU is the bottleneck in some of these cases when the clock speeds and even architecture of the chips are so similar.

The key here, of course, is that the i7-920 is at 4.0GHz+ from its stock of 2.66GHz. It was those rather large overclocks that I think we all agree has been a huge factor in the x58/i7-920/30's longevity.

I'm probably going to go dual 780s, maybe increase RAM to 12GB (for giggles). . . and then start saving again for a 30" monitor. I'm no longer in the "money is no object" crowd due to a growing young family being on the scene. When I upgrade, it's usually because I'm ebaying everything I own (which the wife agrees doesn't go towards family expenses).
 
I was ready to go for a 4770k but then I decided it would benefit me more to get a 780 instead since I game at 2560 x 1600
 
I have a i7 930 at 4.5GHz currently (HT Off). I'm still really thinking about getting a 4770K. If I can get the 4770K to 4.5GHz on my Swiftech H220 (seems doable, and I'm willing to delid) then via IPC alone I should see about a 30% increase in performance.

I'll also go from 6GB to 16GB of RAM and SATA 2 to SATA 3 for my SSD.

I think i'll just wait another month or so to see some more results from Haswell.
 
I'm also considering an upgrade but not sure if I should just hold off. For the people who have hyperthread turned off, what benefit does that serve? Wouldn't that be more detrimental to performance?
 
Turning off HT means I'm able to reach a higher overclock. All the things that I'm CPU limited in are limited by the speed of the cores so a higher clock speed gives me better performance.
 
I noticed a positive performance difference in games when i upgraded from a 920 @ 3.6ghz to my 3770T

also, SATA 6gbps
 
Just want to drop in here that I went from a 920 @ 4.0 (asus p6t) to a 3770K @ 4.5 and my FPS in ARMA2 engine nearly doubled.

It was a life altering experience for me. For the price I paid at microcenter for the cpu. Very, very worth it.

With haswell out, I have to say it is worth it at that price point and there is very little reason NOT to do it.

Edit: Not to mention a free upgrade on my SSD gaining nearly 70% throughput on the SATAIII interface.
 
I think to sum it up: If you have Ivy or better, don't bother, get a GPU or SSD; otherwise, go for the upgrade, but don't break the bank.
 
I was doing a comparison for an AMD cpu that i was thinking of getting for a small budget build and i was kind of shocked alittle as so many trash talk AMD but i think they are coming and only need that one magic cpu ..

Check out the AMD FX 6300 ($139) vs i7-920 which both are stock but both overclock well.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/699?vs=47

To me it show the level AMD is at now as the i7-920 is a great chip but they did at 95w and Intel needed 135w
 
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fanboy said:
I was doing a comparison for an AMD cpu that i was thinking of getting for a small budget build and i was kind of shocked alittle as so many trash talk AMD but i think they are coming and only need that one magic cpu ..

Check out the AMD FX 6300 ($139) vs i7-920 which both are stock but both overclock well.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/699?vs=47

To me it show the level AMD is at now as the i7-920 is a great chip but they did at 95w and Intel needed 135w
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Yes... AMD managed to meet Intel's performance 4 years after Intel.. /golfclap :rolleyes:

How about a current Intel chip in the same price range as that AMD...

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/699?vs=702

The i5 3470 mops the floor with it at 77w not 95w.
 
Shantarr.Dalrae said:
Just want to drop in here that I went from a 920 @ 4.0 (asus p6t) to a 3770K @ 4.5 and my FPS in ARMA2 engine nearly doubled.

It was a life altering experience for me. For the price I paid at microcenter for the cpu. Very, very worth it.

With haswell out, I have to say it is worth it at that price point and there is very little reason NOT to do it.

Edit: Not to mention a free upgrade on my SSD gaining nearly 70% throughput on the SATAIII interface.
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ARMA2/ARMA3 would be my main reason for upgrading. Your framerates on a single 680 made that big of a difference? My 580s in SLI are not being fully utilized, but neither does any single CPU core. That game engine baffles me.
 
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