H61 In real life vs Z77

[Ibrihim]

My son runs a g860 on a basic Gigabyte H61 board with a GTX460. Now without a stopwatch in his brain will he see any discernible difference using a Z77 based board? May I add I run a 2550k on a Z77X-D3H but surely it's horses for courses. I believe no conventional hard drive achieves sata 2 speeds let alone sata 3 for instance but many forums say sata 3 is a must have and so on. All too often enthusiasts seem devoted to expensive overkill.

[Sleepingforest]

SATA3 will only matter for SSDs. That said, a full speed SSD
is said to make your whole system feel more responsive and greatly improve program load times. Consider B75 or H77 if you want an SSD; otherwise, SATA2 should be fine.

In my opinion, the difference between PCIe 2.0 and 3.0 is a bigger deal (around 5% at the top end). A much more cost effective solution would be to upgrade the GPU from the 460 (nearly 3 generations behind now) to a GTX 660 or HD 7770.

[VirtualLarry]

Originally Posted by Sleepingforest

In my opinion, the difference between PCIe 2.0 and 3.0 is a bigger deal (around 5% at the top end). A much more cost effective solution would be to upgrade the GPU from the 460 (nearly 3 generations behind now) to a GTX 660 or HD 7770.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't a 7770 slower than 6850, and a 6850 is slower than a GTX460? Therefore, it would be pointless to "upgrade" a GTX460 to a 7770. Unless, for some reason, power-consumption is a serious issue.

After all, regardless of how many generations old it is, the GTX460 IS a DX11 card.

[Torn Mind]

Originally Posted by VirtualLarry

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't a 7770 slower than 6850, and a 6850 is slower than a GTX460? Therefore, it would be pointless to "upgrade" a GTX460 to a 7770. Unless, for some reason, power-consumption is a serious issue.

After all, regardless of how many generations old it is, the GTX460 IS a DX11 card.

The GTX 460 is either almost the same as or better than the 7770 depending on the game, according to Anandtech's benches.

[SPBHM]

Originally Posted by VirtualLarry

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't a 7770 slower than 6850, and a 6850 is slower than a GTX460? Therefore, it would be pointless to "upgrade" a GTX460 to a 7770. Unless, for some reason, power-consumption is a serious issue.

After all, regardless of how many generations old it is, the GTX460 IS a DX11 card.

the 6850 was released after the 460, and it was a little bit faster than the reference (675Mhz) 460, but many 460's were overclocked from factory to over 750MHz which makes them faster than the 6850...

the 7770 is slower than the 6850 in many or most cases, but in some newer DX11 stuff it's faster, I think overall is pretty close to the reference 460, but slower than a 460 OC.

[StrangerGuy]

Originally Posted by Ibrihim

My son runs a g860 on a basic Gigabyte H61 board with a GTX460. Now without a stopwatch in his brain will he see any discernible difference using a Z77 based board? May I add I run a 2550k on a Z77X-D3H but surely it's horses for courses. I believe no conventional hard drive achieves sata 2 speeds let alone sata 3 for instance but many forums say sata 3 is a must have and so on. All too often enthusiasts seem devoted to expensive overkill.

No difference except lack of SATA3, even then it is going to mighty hard in real life to tell a difference with a good SSD.

Yeah the bolded part is all too true. The amount of people who do things like having a $200 board but a $150 video card as a gaming rig is staggering.

[Belegost]

You would have to go to a 7850 to see a noticeable upgrade from the 460, the 7770 is not much difference. Which is sad considering I grabbed my 460 for under 100 bucks over 2.5 years ago... Today I could just about get double the performance for double the price, my how technology advances!

As for the motherboard, definitely on the overkill side. SATA3 makes a difference benchmarking my SSD and working with large datasets in matlab, but not really a noticeable difference that I could tell in gaming.

[Ibrihim]

Thanks to all. I was beginning to think I was an ill informed cheapskate. However I came unstuck using an H61 board on HTPC/media pc (I had a spare one doing nothing) as I had to buy a discrete passive graphics card to get HDMI to my telly for sound. Costwise I should have left it in the box and bought a b75. Live and learn.

[ShintaiDK]

Assuming you ignore SATA3 and USB3 plus overclocking. Then performance wise it will perform absolutely the same in H61 vs Z77.

[Ibrihim]

I think that about sums it up. I feel the overclocking is not an issue now Intel lock anything below approx 170 euros. Also my son added a sata 2 SSD which cost roughly half the price of the sata3 version as they are "old stuff" in a sale. Most of his money went on the graphics card. I believe he budgeted correctly.

[IntelEnthusiast]

Originally Posted by ShintaiDK

Assuming you ignore SATA3 and USB3 plus overclocking. Then performance wise it will perform absolutely the same in H61 vs Z77.

I think this is something that a lot of people don't understand; outside of the features that the board offers the board won't make a real difference on performance. A board may have features that allow something to run faster i.e. USB 3.0 or SATA III but for the most part the H77 will perform the same as the Z77.

[Insert_Nickname]

Originally Posted by Ibrihim

I feel the overclocking is not an issue now Intel lock anything below approx 170 euros.

Technically you are correct, with a small "quirk"...

A Z77 board will allow you to overclock any CPU that supports Turbo Boost by 4 turbo bins. That's +400MHz... (Generally i5 and higher. The Pentium G860 does not, unfortunately)

From personal experience I can also say that this increase in clockspeed should not affect TDP if you're not using the IGP. My own 3770non-K draws very close to 77W fully loaded at 4.3GHz.

[Ibrihim]

Tried sending this private, but it seems I don't have enough posts!
Hi and thanks for your info.Have you any idea of the power draw of IGPs? Also do IGPs use zero watts if you don't use them i.e. they are not in idle state or anything that contributes to CPU temps or activity. I hope it's ok to bother you in private but I felt it was a bit off topic for a motherboard section but I would love to Know.

[Zap]

Originally Posted by Ibrihim

Have you any idea of the power draw of IGPs? Also do IGPs use zero watts if you don't use them i.e. they are not in idle state or anything that contributes to CPU temps or activity.

You could have started a new thread on this. I don't think the IGP draws anything when not in use. I think Intel calls it "power gating."

With Ivy Bridge the HD 4000 uses around 8W. I get this figure from the TDP of socket 1155 Ivy Bridge Xeon chips (E3 V2) because they are sold with and without IGP. With IGP the TDP is 77W. Without is 69W.

Standard disclaimers apply regarding TDP not being exact power draw, plus lower power at low loads, etc.

[Ibrihim]

Thanks.

[Insert_Nickname]

Originally Posted by Zap

With Ivy Bridge the HD 4000 uses around 8W. I get this figure from the TDP of socket 1155 Ivy Bridge Xeon chips (E3 V2) because they are sold with and without IGP. With IGP the TDP is 77W. Without is 69W.

Just checked. The HD2000 in my Celeron G465 uses 0.06W when idle. At least according to Aida64. Though how accurate that is can be debated...

In all circumstances I would expect it to be well below 1W.

[bigystyle84]

Its going to be REALLY hard (I think impossible unless your constantly copying large files to or from the SSD, which is unlikely) to notice the difference of a SSD on SATA 2 or SATA 3.

Unless he has a specific need for Z77 (like overclocking, which he can't currently anyways), its a waste.

[Ibrihim]

Originally Posted by Zap

You could have started a new thread on this. I don't think the IGP draws anything when not in use. I think Intel calls it "power gating."

With Ivy Bridge the HD 4000 uses around 8W. I get this figure from the TDP of socket 1155 Ivy Bridge Xeon chips (E3 V2) because they are sold with and without IGP. With IGP the TDP is 77W. Without is 69W.

Standard disclaimers apply regarding TDP not being exact power draw, plus lower power at low loads, etc.

Yes I am bit new at this sorry I did not start a new thread. The reason I asked about IGP is I bought a 2550k was to avoid excess baggage but Intel give the same TDP as the 2500k which does have an IGP. Maybe 100 mhz faster = an Igp. Or perhaps its a Sandybridge thing?

[Ibrihim]

Originally Posted by bigystyle84

Its going to be REALLY hard (I think impossible unless your constantly copying large files to or from the SSD, which is unlikely) to notice the difference of a SSD on SATA 2 or SATA 3.

Unless he has a specific need for Z77 (like overclocking, which he can't currently anyways), its a waste.

My first SSD (slow) blew me away. Now I wonder about read/write speed in real life.Let alone sata 2 or 3.

[Insert_Nickname]

Originally Posted by Ibrihim

My first SSD (slow) blew me away. Now I wonder about read/write speed in real life.Let alone sata 2 or 3.

The real reason your SSD "blew you away" is a combination of much lower access time across the whole disk and the shear amount of IOPS the SSD controller can do...

Very high sequential read/write speeds is just icing on the cake. But honestly you'll be hard pressed to spot the difference between a SATA2 or SATA3 link in real life, outside benchmarks.

[Zap]

Originally Posted by Ibrihim

Yes I am bit new at this sorry I did not start a new thread. The reason I asked about IGP is I bought a 2550k was to avoid excess baggage but Intel give the same TDP as the 2500k which does have an IGP. Maybe 100 mhz faster = an Igp. Or perhaps its a Sandybridge thing?

It is how Intel rates TDP. They rate it for a "family" of processors, so for instance a Core i5-2310 and a Core i7-2700K both have a 95W TDP even though the 2700K is much higher MHz, has 33% more cache and 100% more EUs in the integrated graphics. I'm willing to bet, however, that in the real world, at stock speeds and using the IGP, the 2700K ends up using a bit more power.

[Ibrihim]

Originally Posted by Zap

It is how Intel rates TDP. They rate it for a "family" of processors, so for instance a Core i5-2310 and a Core i7-2700K both have a 95W TDP even though the 2700K is much higher MHz, has 33% more cache and 100% more EUs in the integrated graphics. I'm willing to bet, however, that in the real world, at stock speeds and using the IGP, the 2700K ends up using a bit more power.

On over clocking I've read a lot on the temperature effect of upping voltage and quite a bit on how high a processor speed can be increased at stock voltage. I have not seen much on CPU speed increase on power draw at stock v. (or decrease) Though a speed drop seems to feature on most "low power" CPUs. Also lately even low price motherboards offer the option of upping the IGP speed again I am curious about power and heat .