Please Recommend i7 920 Upgrade

the.ronin

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 25, 2008
Messages
508
Hoping to get some recommendations to upgrading my i7 920 setup I use for gaming:

i7 920 @ 3.9GHz
EVGA GTX 970
EVGA X58 SLI3 motherboard
SanDisk SSD 480GB
LG Ultrawide 2560x1080

I play mostly games like Ark and have been able to run them at near high settings just fine. I would like to keep the CPU, motherboard and ram at 500-ish since I'd also like to get Windows 10 with the new setup. I know my GPU is also aging but was hoping to put off that upgrade for later. I'm running the i7 920 OC'ed with no addl voltage cooled with a brand new H60 cooler (I had the original H50 running for close to if not over a decade LOL!!).

All in all my current set up runs fine. Adobe Premiere Pro struggles a bit on HD video editing but otherwise it's ok. I just wanted to not get to a point where I was totally far behind and needed to upgrade everything.

Any advice appreciated.
 
Are you wanting to stay with intel?. honestly with that budget in mind, I would consider going with an AMD Ryzen Build and overclock the hell out of it. 300$ Ryzen 1700, 100$ RAM, 100$ mobo and you are set. you will doubling the core and thread count with a huge increase in single thread performance at same clocks.

a Kaby i7 7700K overclocked at 5GHZ will offer better gaming performance for sure, but you will be above your desired budget and it won't be extremely better than a Ryzen 8c/16t at 4ghz, all your video editing apps will be pleased with that path.
 
Since you do some rendering, some options...

If you want a machine with a bias to higher end gaming performance, 7700K. If you want a machine with more of a bias towards rendering/workstation performance that can do a lot of multithreaded work, you may want to look at the Ryzen 1700/1700X/1800X.

Both will be decent upgrades over the 920 but if you think your current setup runs 'fine', you may not get the kind of performance upgrade you are expecting.
 
Thank you both very much. I game much more than I video edit but smoother real time rendering would be nice. So I'll be looking into the Ryzen.
 
I'll throw out the age old upgrade advice... throw in a hex-core server chip into that thing, clock it to 4.2Ghz, and have a 6c12t monster for rendering, they run cooler / take less power than the 45nm chips, as they are 32nm, and if you are really motivated some people get them to 4.4-4.6Ghz. (I wouldn't count on a whole lot more than 4.2Ghz though).

something like this:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Xeon-X5680-3-33-GHz-Six-Core-Processor-Socket-1366-X58-Dual-Way-CPU/301833752984?_trksid=p2045573.c100506.m3226&_trkparms=aid=555014&algo=PL.DEFAULT&ao=1&asc=20150817211709&meid=a759231f8c964aebaed7314904542238&pid=100506&rk=1&rkt=1&


You will gain far more for gaming out of doing that with a gtx 1070 or 1080, than you would with a full platform upgrade. Yes there are some caveats, such as lower IPC than the 7700k etc., but for the money its pretty hard to beat.
 
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I'll throw out the age old upgrade advice... throw in a hex-core server chip into that thing, clock it to 4.2Ghz, and have a 6c12t monster for rendering, they run cooler / take less power than the 45nm chips, as they are 32nm, and if you are really motivated some people get them to 4.4-4.6Ghz. (I wouldn't count on a whole lot more than 4.2Ghz though).

something like this:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Xeon-X5680-3-33-GHz-Six-Core-Processor-Socket-1366-X58-Dual-Way-CPU/301833752984?_trksid=p2045573.c100506.m3226&_trkparms=aid=555014&algo=PL.DEFAULT&ao=1&asc=20150817211709&meid=a759231f8c964aebaed7314904542238&pid=100506&rk=1&rkt=1&


You will gain far more for gaming out of doing that with a gtx 1070 or 1080, than you would with a full platform upgrade. Yes there are some caveats, such as lower IPC than the 7700k etc., but for the money its pretty hard to beat.

I was going to post this same advice, but I think the EVGA X58 motherboard does not support the Westmere xeon processors without some sort of solder modification. If it is at all possible to throw in an x5660 or x5670 cpu, they are dirt cheap on ebay. I have mine running at 4.2 and it kills my old i7 930 in every way imaginable.
 
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I just built a cheap ass rig for a client this week and I sprung for a Kaby based Pentium with an ASUS mini itx board with DDR3 and a cheap Kingston SSD from a local shop and man was that thing fast. I have been on an i7- 920 @ 3.8 GHZ and that Pentium made my 920 look sad. System boots fast as hell and web browsing is near instantaneous.

I can only imagine what a 7700k would be like overclocked.
 
Thank you guys. After some more research, I think I'm leaning towards just biting the bullet and going with a 7700k. Except I'll need to purchase little by little over the course of a few months.

I had come across the Xeon suggestion before and while very tempting, I prefer to have the peace of mind like when I initially bit the bullet on the i7 920 knowing my system will perform for a decent time.

Buy a win7 license on FS/FT and upgrade it to 10 on install, it works fine and costs < 10$

Thanks for this! I picked up a W10 OEM license instead since it was only $18.
 
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