Time to upgrade from Intel i7 920 air OCed to 4.2 / Asus Ramage III Extreme?

daines1

Weaksauce
Joined
Jan 24, 2007
Messages
73
Wanted title to be as obvious as possible.

Here's my current system:

CPU - Intel i7 920 2.8 OCed to 4.2 on air
MOBO - Asus Rampage III Extreme
Memory - 8 GB DDR3 1600mhz
GPUs - Galaxy Windforce GTX 670 SLI
PSU - 850w Corsair
HDD - 256GB Sata III SSD
- 3GB Seagate Sata III
Monitors - 3 x 27 Plantronics
Good keyboard and mouse

I've had this system for what feels like 2 years now. Has technology improved so much that I should consider upgrading to a new MOBO/CPU/Memory combo? Christmas time is here and I could add a few things to my wishlist.

If you need more info, please ask.

Thanks all!
 
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Never, EVER base your upgrades on how much technology has improved unless the improvements actually bring noticeable benefits to YOU. ALWAYS base them on your personal needs and budget. Even if the new chips were 100x faster, if you don't notice any slowdowns in the things you do, upgrading to those new chips would be 100% useless.

If you're noticing slowness in your machine, you'll need to describe it in detail so we know what parts could use an upgrade.

But in general, Haswell isn't that big an upgrade over Nehalem. At least you don't have that POS LGA 1156 platform. CPU-wise what you WILL gain, however, is a moderate reduction in power consumption. It may pay off within a year or two if you're one to keep your computer on 24/7 - unless you go for maximum, extreme, useless overclocking that doubles (or more) the TDP of your CPU for no noticeable gain. If you keep it reasonable, you could save $5 a month. Personally I'm willing to bet you don't have any reason to OC your CPU that far, even, except that you just like to overclock things (like many here), but as you likely already know, that overclock does indeed more than double your TDP, and the system cannot totally make up for it even at idle. Depends on how much you value minimizing your electric bill, I suppose. I realize mentioning this can seem like I'm suggesting a muscle car lover buy a Prius to save money (not that I'd ever recommend any Toyota in actuality), but with modern computers you don't notice having more CPU than you need, whereas having more engine than you need can be quite fun. And never buy more than you need to "future proof" because there is no such thing.

When we joined this site, all computers, even incredibly expensive multi-socket servers and workstations, were very noticeably slow. Especially due to the lack of SSDs. This is a bad assumption to continue to run on, because many modern computers are fast enough for many people that they literally cannot be further improved until the software gets more advanced and starts really pushing the boundaries again.
 
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Wanted title to be as obvious as possible.

Here's my current system:

CPU - Intel i7 920 2.8 OCed to 4.2 on air
MOBO - Asus Rampage III Extreme
Memory - 8 GB DDR3 1600mhz
GPUs - Galaxy Windforce GTX 670 SLI
PSU - 850w Corsair
HDD - 256GB Sata III SSD
- 3GB Seagate Sata III
Monitors - 3 x 27 Plantronics
Good keyboard and mouse

I've had this system for what feels like 2 years now. Has technology improved so much that I should consider upgrading to a new MOBO/CPU/Memory combo? Christmas time is here and I could add a few things to my wishlist.

If you need more info, please ask.

Thanks all!

First off...good going getting that to 4.2Ghz on air... :)

Secondly....yikes that must push out some tremendous heat! :eek:

I'd say hold off if you can do everything with your current rig unless you know there is a slow down in games and you suspect cpu?
 
What exactly are you looking for in performance increases?
 
Rig looks pretty solid to me....

But, don't 920's run triple-channel?

So by using 8gb instead of say... 12..... isn't he losing performance??

(just trying to learn etc)
 
Rig looks pretty solid to me....

But, don't 920's run triple-channel?

So by using 8gb instead of say... 12..... isn't he losing performance??

(just trying to learn etc)

Not much performance: 2% to 3% at mot.
 
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