Who is still using a Sandy Bridge era chip

ha... 2014 resurrected 2022 however I am not using it often I do have a Sandy bridge i5-2500K around here that I guess is sort of a back up if my wife`s or my own computer went down for some reason? for general usage sandy bridge would still get it done.. not sure it would be a "great" option for gaming however at this point?

people got their monies worth on sandy bridge/ ivy Haswell (my mistake this stuff is OLD as dirt now) that is for sure.. I built a i7-4770K rig (yes I know Ivy Haswell) in 2014 and gave my wife the i5-2500k she used it until I upgraded my pc to ryzen 5 3600 in 2020 (middle) and she is still using the i7 now... however if I`m honest the board is prone to random boot failures (occassionally) now and is getting replaced in the next month.. but 2014 to late 2022 is quite a run really ..the sandy bridge was someone`s main rig from 2012 thru the middle of 2020. great value for money really.
 
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I have a Dell Optiplex 990 with a i7-2600 running Folding@Home. May add a GPU to it soon. Main PC is a Dell Inspiron 660 with a i5-3330. Backup PC is a Dell Optiplex with a i5-4570. All machines have 8gb RAM and SSDs. They run Windows 10 fine. No problems.
 
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Are you planning on fighting to get Win 11/12/15/er, 13 running on it in the next 10 years?

I figure I'll cross that bridge once I arrive to it and keep on using Win7 Pro until I find an application that I want to use that doesn't run on it. So far I haven't found a compelling reason to move to Win 8 or 10. Maybe GTA6 will need Win10 or something and prompt me to want to change O.S.es? I don't like to fix what isn't broke, and this machine has been so good to me. So trouble free and rock solid stable that I don't have a desire to search for problems when I already have none.


Anyways ZodaEX why not pick up a Xeon E3-1270 for a bit over $20 and get a bit more speed and hyper-threading to boot, as it's basically an i7-2600 without integrated graphics so it has a lower TDP:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/165362645954?epid=4020284212&hash=item268061bbc2:g:OKQAAOSwPOZiHp-Q


I'm not sure it would be worth the trouble to be honest. My motherboard has the igpu disabled currently. It's my understanding that it's not using it anyway right now, and my tdp readings in Open Hardware Monitor certainly reflect this.
I also like the idea of having an igpu in the event that this machine ever eventually gets rotated over to serve the role of driving my HTPC computer. I currently have an Athlon II X4 powered HTPC, and that machine has a Ati HD3200 graphics chip built into the motherboard which I'm using now to watch movies and TV on it. I could imagine a case sometime in the distance future where I might want to rotate my Sandy Bridge hardware over to serve my HTPC needs. And in that circumstance, it's built in Intel HD2000 graphics might come in useful since I wouldn't need a descrete GPU just to watch movies with. It's save a little electricity too.
My board supports multi core enhancement anyhow. So if I felt like running at 3.4 GHZ all-cores it would be as easy as changing a couple of bios settings. I really don't feel the need to at the moment, but it's nice that the option is there if I ever change my mind.
 
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Running ivy 3570k in the htpc (not CPU-limited in console ports running on controllers)

because My 2500k died unexpectedly in early 2017, I had to either upgrade to clearance 4790k , or pay double for new Ryzen 5 1600 plus 16GB DDR4

Man, those early Ryzen BIOSES weer such a ram crap-shoot (and if my stupid 2500k could have waited to die until Coffee Lake, I would've splurged on the 8700k!)

Now, neither company has enough bump for my dollar to upgrade yet (so still stuck on haswell refresh), and DDR5 plus having to run Win Eleventy is too high a price to go Intel/.
 
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My old 2600k, got a second chance at life as a Mediacoder-Handbrake box. Runs 24-7 365, only sees a break when I'm transferring new work to it over the network.
Still the longest used CPU I own next to my X4 975, best CPU purchase I ever made.
 
Still have my 2500k going strong in my kid's gaming PC. Just sat down and tweaked it back to 4.4 GHz the other evening. An oldie but a goodie.
 
lol I did not know we kept count. I will pay closer attention now lol
:) i do
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An old hand-me-down the wife is still using my MSI Z68A-GD80--B3 with i7 2600k 8GB memory 11 going on 12 yrs old.
 
I had a Sandy Bridge E i7-3820 (socket 2011) in one of my rigs until about a year ago. I still have the machine (typing this on it actually), but I upgraded it to a cheap used Xeon E5-2687Wv2 from eBay, so now it's running an Ivy Bridge chip. 8 cores, 64GB... it's not bad. Gets to 60fps in most games. The 64GB of ram I put in it years ago for a programming project is why I bothered upgrading it.
 
I was using an even older i7 980X CPU up until early 2021 when I finally upgraded to an AMD Zen 3 5800X...I upgrade my GPU frequently but don't see the same value in upgrading CPU's
 
Does it count I still have a Q9450 on a P965 still running as a web browsing / music / photoshop PC for my wife? lol. Also still have my old 5960X x99 setup as a second gaming PC with a 2080Ti in it on my entertainment setup. Will use it from time-to-time past video streaming for racing or flying games where I use a controller.
 
Does it count I still have a Q9450 on a P965 still running as a web browsing / music / photoshop PC for my wife? lol. Also still have my old 5960X x99 setup as a second gaming PC with a 2080Ti in it on my entertainment setup. Will use it from time-to-time past video streaming for racing or flying games where I use a controller.

I had a very similari setup, 5960X heavily limits the 2080ti
 
I had a very similari setup, 5960X heavily limits the 2080ti
You would be surprised with a heavy OC on it. I still have it at 4.625Ghz as i did when it was my primary setup. Before I built my new system, I had my 3090 in it. It did pretty good at 4K resolution as the GPU was the limiting factor. Never had a problem with it, but yeah, things are much smoother now with 0 stuttering. I think that chip had slight stuttering in Battlefield V when a ton was going on, from what I recall from the time...
 
You would be surprised with a heavy OC on it. I still have it at 4.625Ghz as i did when it was my primary setup. Before I built my new system, I had my 3090 in it. It did pretty good at 4K resolution as the GPU was the limiting factor. Never had a problem with it, but yeah, things are much smoother now with 0 stuttering. I think that chip had slight stuttering in Battlefield V when a ton was going on, from what I recall from the time...

the problem of older CPUs is that they create stuttering even at 4K where GPU is the limiting factor, it's difficult to understand when it's time to swap the CPU for a new one because the benchmarks doesn't shows bad results.
the problem is as said, the stuttering that is inevitable with an old CPU like Haslwell-E
 
the problem of older CPUs is that they create stuttering even at 4K where GPU is the limiting factor, it's difficult to understand when it's time to swap the CPU for a new one because the benchmarks doesn't shows bad results.
the problem is as said, the stuttering that is inevitable with an old CPU like Haslwell-E

If you use the right benchmarks stuttering will show up in the frame time graphs.
 
the problem of older CPUs is that they create stuttering even at 4K where GPU is the limiting factor, it's difficult to understand when it's time to swap the CPU for a new one because the benchmarks doesn't shows bad results.
the problem is as said, the stuttering that is inevitable with an old CPU like Haslwell-E
Well the good ones do. GN and others always include 1% and 0.1% lows. In addition to frame time data.
 
I've got an i7-2600K with Asus Sabertooth and 16GB of DDR3 ready to go.... (just can't figure out what to do with it)

Not to mention the multiple HP ProDesk i5 2500's /w 8GB I've got in the closet.

(They're still quite admirable machines.. Especially if you use that tool to disable Meltdown/Spectre degradation - InSpectre)
 
the problem of older CPUs is that they create stuttering even at 4K where GPU is the limiting factor, it's difficult to understand when it's time to swap the CPU for a new one because the benchmarks doesn't shows bad results.
the problem is as said, the stuttering that is inevitable with an old CPU like Haslwell-E
I don't disagree, hence I said even at 4K, BFV did have some stuttering. But overall, it was still a decent chip, considering its age and what I use it for now as it has been retired from primary gaming PC duties.
 
I still have a Gigabyte GA-P67A-UD4-B3 + 2600k + 4x4GB Samsung Greens running latest Win 10 Ent. Running at 4.0 GHz now (was 4.5 GHz as a home PC) with 2x 1660ti GPUs doing Distributive Computing on GPUs when not being used as my PC at work.

I got a great batch number and was able to boot at 5.6GHz with 2 cores using Massman's binning process.
 
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I had a Sandy Bridge E i7-3820 (socket 2011) in one of my rigs until about a year ago. I still have the machine (typing this on it actually), but I upgraded it to a cheap used Xeon E5-2687Wv2 from eBay, so now it's running an Ivy Bridge chip. 8 cores, 64GB... it's not bad. Gets to 60fps in most games. The 64GB of ram I put in it years ago for a programming project is why I bothered upgrading it.

I have a 3820 and 4930k in two of my computers. There's a seller on Ebay with E5-1680V2s for $67 a pop, I might just have to pick up two of them to slap into my computers.
 
Nah, not anymore.. My 2500K is long gone and I don't see the point of a "backup" cpu's... It was a great cpu and brought so much excitement back then. Now days everything is different.
 
Running ivy 3570k in the htpc (not CPU-limited in console ports running on controllers)

because My 2500k died unexpectedly in early 2017, I had to either upgrade to clearance 4790k , or pay double for new Ryzen 5 1600 plus 16GB DDR4

Man, those early Ryzen BIOSES weer such a ram crap-shoot (and if my stupid 2500k could have waited to die until Coffee Lake, I would've splurged on the 8700k!)

Now, neither company has enough bump for my dollar to upgrade yet (so still stuck on haswell refresh), and DDR5 plus having to run Win Eleventy is too high a price to go Intel/.
Yep, I have my dad's old computer that has a 3570K in it. Going to turn it into a htpc.
 
My 2500K / Z68 system has become one of my two vintage gaming systems. I paired it with two Radeon 6870s in Crossfire. The Radeon 6870 is from AMD's last generation of cards that used the VLIW architecture, while the 7xxx cards were the first cards that used the GCN architecture. That makes the 6870s great cards for the vintage gaming system since that is the architecture those games were optimized for, and crossfire with the old cards works in most old games also. The 2500k setup is perfect for this system because the CPU + mobo is old enough to have great support older operating systems yet still delivers great performance.

I also had an i5-2500 (non-K) in my HTPC but about 6 months ago I swapped that out for a E3-1270 Xeon (also Sandy Bridge) which gave me a slightly higher clockspeed and more importantly hyper-threading. The hyper-threading makes a huge difference when software decoding newer video codecs. The i5-2500 was borderline when software-decoding 4K HEVC / x265 (audio sync issues and minor stuttering) but the E3-1270 Xeon handles it great.
 
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My pfsense box is currently running a Intel Xeon E31245 3.30/3.70 GHz 4core/8thread chip which is Sandybridge on a generic Intel board with 16 GB of RAM. I actually upgraded it from a low power Ivy Bridge chip that I put into a computer for my parents. I also have a 2700k on an Asus P8Z68 Pro board with 16 GB of DDR3 1600 that I retired last year when my wife decided she no longer needed a desktop and is just using a laptop. It's sitting idle waiting on something to do. I clocked it as high as 4.8. It was set at 4.5 for long term use.
 
I was gonna try and use my old 3570k as a NAS/Server but I wanted low power and even disabling a core (so tri-core) and undervolting and underclocking as low as I could in Gigabyte Z77 BIOS (just literally wouldn't let me enter any lower numbers) - I was only able to get it down to about ~49watts vs ~77 normal. When I can get 10watt embedded Intel boards just didn't seem worth it for my use/wants.
 
I was gonna try and use my old 3570k as a NAS/Server but I wanted low power and even disabling a core (so tri-core) and undervolting and underclocking as low as I could in Gigabyte Z77 BIOS (just literally wouldn't let me enter any lower numbers) - I was only able to get it down to about ~49watts vs ~77 normal. When I can get 10watt embedded Intel boards just didn't seem worth it for my use/wants.
If you can reduce the FSB that will help then drop more voltages.
Also disable onboard audio if not needed, etc.
 
I was gonna try and use my old 3570k as a NAS/Server but I wanted low power and even disabling a core (so tri-core) and undervolting and underclocking as low as I could in Gigabyte Z77 BIOS (just literally wouldn't let me enter any lower numbers) - I was only able to get it down to about ~49watts vs ~77 normal. When I can get 10watt embedded Intel boards just didn't seem worth it for my use/wants.
Idle power has more to do with platform than anything else. Your board has a chipset, probably a few offboard controllers, etc., so it will never idle well. The embedded boards are built on a SoC so at idle they can power off more or less the entire chip.
 
I am just finishing up my new folding rig. Running a 2600k and P8P67 WS Asus board. Has 4 2080ti's and running good. Was my wife's old system until her upgrade.
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2 360mm rads internal and a 480mm mounted on the back. 3 pumps to push through all of it.
 
Dell Precision M6600 mobile workstation Core i7 2720M, 16GB RAM, 512GB SATA SSD. Took delivery July 13, 2011. Running Windows 7 Enterprise. Still used daily as a dev device and controller. Been through three power adapters and batteries along the journey. It's been over 375 meters in the air on towers and wind turbines and been used at clubs for music too. Super reliable machine. Very snappy machine to this day!
 
I am just finishing up my new folding rig. Running a 2600k and P8P67 WS Asus board. Has 4 2080ti's and running good. Was my wife's old system until her upgrade. View attachment 507490View attachment 507491
2 360mm rads internal and a 480mm mounted on the back. 3 pumps to push through all of it.
What case is this?

I still have an old HP 8300 Elite that I use with Batocera Linux for my retro gaming fix! The integrated graphics on the Xeon seems to be OK with the games I am currently using now.
 
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