Discussion Amazed at how well Bloomfield/Gulftown i7s have held up for PC Gaming

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loki1944

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I have to say that I am absolutely astounded by how well even a 2008 i7 920 holds up in 2020. I have done hours and hours of testing with i7 920/930/960/980X as well as Lynnfield i5 750 and i7 870. Most recently I have started running my i7 920 against my Ryzen 2600X and even in Red Dead Redemption 2 @1080p the 920 holds its own quite well. A really smart and budget oriented person could have grabbed one of these in 2008/9 and still be g2g in 2020! Anyone else have Bloomfield still in action?

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All Benchmarks
 
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A///

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Why is it comparing OC'd Intel processors to a stock 2600X? It's about a weird comparison as a i7 920 @ 4 Ghz compared to a stock 9700K.

 
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Shmee

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Nice benches. Does the 2600X OC well though? My understanding was that the newer ryzens didn't so much. Nehalem and Sandy had amazing OC headroom on the other hand, perhaps due to conservative clocking and binning.

That said, you should replace those i7s with westmere Xeons such as the X5660. Those xeons are being sold super cheap too.
 
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loki1944

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A/// said:
Why is it comparing OC'd Intel processors to a stock 2600X? It's about a weird comparison as a i7 920 @ 4 Ghz compared to a stock 9700K.

Click to expand...

Because the this 2600X doesn't overclock worth a damn; and typical case I'd wager i7 920s will overlock very well. This overclock is on air for the i7 920 as well. And it has about a decade's less refinement vs the 2600X anyway. Also the fact you can still play modern games on the 920 is the more impressive part to me.
 
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loki1944

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Shmee said:
Nice benches. Does the 2600X OC well though? My understanding was that the newer ryzens didn't so much. Nehalem and Sandy had amazing OC headroom on the other hand, perhaps due to conservative clocking and binning.

That said, you should replace those i7s with westmere Xeons such as the X5660. Those xeons are being sold super cheap too.
Click to expand...

No, it is a terrible overclocker; worse than my 4770K in that it can't even maintain XMP settings (though my 920 isn't using XMP; running at something like 1400Mhz on the RAM vs the stock 2133Mhz on the Ryzen). If I build another PC inside the near future, my wife may slay me.

Also, I will not that going above ~1070Ti level GPU sees diminishing returns on Bloomfield/Gulftown @1080p.
 
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Shmee

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www.ebay.com

Intel Xeon SLBV6 X5660 2.8GHz CPU | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Intel Xeon SLBV6 X5660 2.8GHz CPU at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!
www.ebay.com

You don't need to build anything, just update BIOS(as needed) and replace the old 4 core bloomsfields with faster 6 core westmeres for under $20!
 
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Shmee

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Yeah, it has a 23x core multi, so you could do 4.4 GHz at 191 BCLK, which most decent X58 boards can do. As long as your board and cooling can handle, most of these can do 4.3+ I think.
 
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cortexa99

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This is what I had complained about, looks like PC development has slow down since years ago, new platform can offer better energy/performance ratio for sure due to process shrinking, but raw performance enhancing is so slow.
More important is old platform often OCing like hell, 3Ghz to 4Ghz is easy. Nowaday many SKUs stock clock at around 4Ghz but either OC like shxt or even don't allow you to OC it, everything that these manufacturer did recently looks like a trolling to me LOL.:confused_old:
 
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loki1944

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cortexa99 said:
This is what I had complained about, looks like PC development has slow down since years ago, new platform can offer better energy/performance ratio for sure due to process shrinking, but raw performance enhancing is so slow.
More important is old platform often OCing like hell, 3Ghz to 4Ghz is easy. Nowaday many SKUs stock clock at around 4Ghz but either OC like shxt or even don't allow you to OC it, everything that these manufacturer did recently looks like a trolling to me LOL.:confused_old:
Click to expand...

I think that's a big reason they keep adding cores, even though above 4C/8T or sometimes 6C/6T/12T it doesn't make a difference for gaming, because games on average don't GAF about them. But saying "8, 12 whatever cores" briefs well to uninformed gamers.
 
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DAPUNISHER

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Shmee said:
www.ebay.com

Intel Xeon SLBV6 X5660 2.8GHz CPU | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Intel Xeon SLBV6 X5660 2.8GHz CPU at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!
www.ebay.com

You don't need to build anything, just update BIOS(as needed) and replace the old 4 core bloomsfields with faster 6 core westmeres for under $20!
Click to expand...
I goofed around with a Dell T7500 dual Westemere X5667's@3.5GHz and it definitely still had gas in the tank for gaming, when paired with a 2060 super.

I am typing this from a i7 4820K@4.56GHz 1.375v on an Asus P9X79 LE - 4x4GB XPG 1600 in quad channel, and a 2070 Super. It is also showing it has gas left in the tank. This board takes up to a 12/24 CPU, so I have not decided if I am going to upgrade it or sell it. Yesterday's expensive HEDT and workstation kit makes for great budget gaming in 2020.

More to the point of the thread: I had a 4770K@4.5GHz and my experience was not always good gaming on it. Don't get me wrong, it was great for most of my library, but AC: Odyssey was when I knew it was getting on in age. I would probably have kept it longer if I paired it with a free/g-sync compatible monitor. But it was doing HTPC duty, with a 1080p TV. The problem, and I have mentioned this before, was when you get deep in the game. Something you never see benchmarked. I would be fighting 5 mercenaries and the citizens in Athens, and it would start having frame pacing issues that were very frustrating. In its defense, a Ryzen 2600 did not completely smooth the game out at all times either. It wasn't until I played it with a Ryzen 3600 that it stayed smoothed.

And forget about it for high refresh gamers.

Also, test these games with discord running, and streaming or recording. Or with multi monitor setups with other things going besides the game. And let's not forget CPU intensive games like BFV 64 player. So many things gamers are doing now, beat up 4c/8t CPUs. Which makes the comment about only uninformed gamers caring about more cores, absolute nonsense. Look, I played on console for years, because it let me play with my son as he grew up. It is crazy what you can get used too. That does not mean it is a good experience for someone used to better. ;)
 
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Shmee

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For the X79, I would consider a Xeon E5 1680 v2. It is an unlocked, overclockable 8 core.
 
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DAPUNISHER

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chrisjames61 said:
X58 motherboards cost an arm and a leg today if you try buying one. Plus aren't you missing instruction sets for some modern games?
Click to expand...
The Chinese are chock-a-block with the old server CPUs, to the point that they make boards for them.

Ali Express link to new boards for old CPUs

My favorite tech tuber for messing around with these Ali Express boards is Phil -

 
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Shivansps

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DAPUNISHER said:
Also, test these games with discord running, and streaming or recording. Or with multi monitor setups with other things going besides the game. And let's not forget CPU intensive games like BFV 64 player. So many things gamers are doing now, beat up 4c/8t CPUs. Which makes the comment about only uninformed gamers caring about more cores, absolute nonsense. Look, I played on console for years, because it let me play with my son as he grew up. It is crazy what you can get used too. That does not mean it is a good experience for someone used to better. ;)
Click to expand...

Why streaming or recording? thats not a normal thing to do, stuff on the background mostly uses ram, rendering while gaming is not a normal thing. And if you do that you can going to have problems with every cpu, unless you have a 12/16C cpu.

Now streaming... discord streaming does need a fast cpu with more than 4 cores, but for anything else, for the common people, they have a Nvidia GPU and use NVENC and forget about it. Even some professionals do that. NVENC is good for streaming, even a 3000G can stream with NVENC (i would not recomend it).

Problems with slows CPUs with gamers motly comes from trying to mount a server and playing with friends, thats were you are going to have issues.
 
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CP5670

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Nice benches. I used to have a 920 at 4ghz, and it was a big step forward at its time and held up nicely for quite a few years. Back then it was actually worth overclocking too unlike today. For the 920 and the last 5-6 processors I had, I got 50% OCs for everyday use with modest air cooling. Today you might get 300mhz over stock, which is barely noticeable.
 
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loki1944

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DAPUNISHER said:
I goofed around with a Dell T7500 dual Westemere X5667's@3.5GHz and it definitely still had gas in the tank for gaming, when paired with a 2060 super.

I am typing this from a i7 4820K@4.56GHz 1.375v on an Asus P9X79 LE - 4x4GB XPG 1600 in quad channel, and a 2070 Super. It is also showing it has gas left in the tank. This board takes up to a 12/24 CPU, so I have not decided if I am going to upgrade it or sell it. Yesterday's expensive HEDT and workstation kit makes for great budget gaming in 2020.

More to the point of the thread: I had a 4770K@4.5GHz and my experience was not always good gaming on it. Don't get me wrong, it was great for most of my library, but AC: Odyssey was when I knew it was getting on in age. I would probably have kept it longer if I paired it with a free/g-sync compatible monitor. But it was doing HTPC duty, with a 1080p TV. The problem, and I have mentioned this before, was when you get deep in the game. Something you never see benchmarked. I would be fighting 5 mercenaries and the citizens in Athens, and it would start having frame pacing issues that were very frustrating. In its defense, a Ryzen 2600 did not completely smooth the game out at all times either. It wasn't until I played it with a Ryzen 3600 that it stayed smoothed.

And forget about it for high refresh gamers.

Also, test these games with discord running, and streaming or recording. Or with multi monitor setups with other things going besides the game. And let's not forget CPU intensive games like BFV 64 player. So many things gamers are doing now, beat up 4c/8t CPUs. Which makes the comment about only uninformed gamers caring about more cores, absolute nonsense. Look, I played on console for years, because it let me play with my son as he grew up. It is crazy what you can get used too. That does not mean it is a good experience for someone used to better. ;)
Click to expand...

Well, I ran the 920 for quite a while in The Division 2 which is basically an MMO with AAA graphics. And I'm more interested on the effect on the average gamer; i.e. don't care about high refresh or intensive streaming applications. Origins and Odyssey are really outliers, due no doubt to the DRM+VM Protect from Ubisoft on those titles, still playable but older cpus take a heavy hit.
 
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