Any reason to consider getting a 965?

[statik213]

I was ready to spend around $400 for a 955 + mobo and 4GB of DDR3 but was holding out for the new i5 and i7s. Looks like my wait paid off. I'm thinking of picking up a 860 at Microcenter and a mobo/ddr3 from newegg for around the same price.
Any chance AMD is going to retaliate in the near future?

I'm looking to mostly game, do some media transcoding and development work (java, django and c++). OS will be windows 7 and I might even run a linux VM (or two).

The other upgrade I was hoping on doing was a 120GB OCZ Vertex. Total of ~$700. Does this seem like a decent way to spend $700

I already have a 4870 and a 1.5 tb seagate running on a poor opteron 165 .

Updated:

This spreadsheet might be useful to others who are thinking of similiar upgrades:

http://spreadsheets.google.com...0Y0ZLMGhkT2Mybnc&hl=en

 

[Darkrage]

if your mostly gaming, and already have a 955, just keep what you have and overclock the 955....getting an 965 when you already have a 955 wouldn't be smart. the 860 isnt a bad ugrade but doesnt seem worth it in your case just pick up that 120GB OCZ Vertex and profit

 

[statik213]

Originally posted by: Darkrage
if your mostly gaming, and already have a 955, just keep what you have and overclock the 955....getting an 965 when you already have a 955 wouldn't be smart. the 860 isnt a bad ugrade but doesnt seem worth it in your case just pick up that 120GB OCZ Vertex and profit

I am using a socket 939 opteron 165 now.. so any of these processors would be a huge upgrade. i _was_ thinking of the 955 pre core i7 860..

 

[Sylvanas]

I'd go the Lynfield 860, a 965 is nothing more than a higher stock frequency 955. The 860 simply has more room to stretch it's legs in terms of overclocking and HT- and IMO a better buy.

 

[imported_coconutboy]

If you're set on an AMD rig, I'd hold off till they do a price cut since that's almost sure to happen, and soon.

If you have a microcenter near to you so you can get the walk-in prices, your options are excellent. I'm in a similar situation, building a pair of new gamer boxes for me and my woman over the next month. If I wasn't overclocking, I'd go for an i7 860 or i5 750. But since I will OC (mildly), I've settled on the following for the two rigs-

Me
$200 i7 920 from microcenter (lightly OC'd to 3.2-3.6 or so, stock voltage hopefully)
$170 ASRock x58 extreme from newegg

G/F
$160 i5 750 from microcenter (mildly oc'd)
$100-120 mobo from newegg

Both systems will use a cheap-o vid card for now till the new ATI/Nvidia cards are in the retail chain. Probably going for ATI 4850s to tide us over, or maybe an even cheaper model like the Nvidia 9600GT or ATI 4670. Also, I've been somewhat annoyed that DDR3 prices have been steadily climbing over the last 2 months. I've been carefully watching a number of kits at newegg while waiting to see how things panned out between the intel x58 and p55 systems. Over that time, prices for the 8 or so 6GB and 4GB kits have gone up $20-50 grrr. This is on RAM from Corsair, Patriot, Geil and OCZ.

 

[Gikaseixas]

Originally posted by: Sylvanas
I'd go the Lynfield 860, a 965 is nothing more than a higher stock frequency 955. The 860 simply has more room to stretch it's legs in terms of overclocking and HT- and IMO a better buy.

:thumbsup:

 

[Bleser]

Sounds like you've already hit the nail on the head - get the i7 860 setup.

I haven't read much about the OCZ SSD, but I have an Intel X25-M and it, without a doubt, was the best upgrade I ever made. Simple things like unpacking/decompressing/installing software is just unbeliveabliy fast - and I'm running an E6300 1.86 GHz C2D - can't wait to see how it performs with my i5 750 on the way. Installing Vista x64 will be joy just watching it fly by.

 

[swanysto]

I have the 60gb version of the OCZ Vertex, and it has made more of a difference in real world activities than pretty much any upgrade I have ever done. This thing has my operating system(win 7) up in like 20 seconds. No waiting for stuff to load. I personally can't say as to whether the 120gb is worth $700, as it isn't to me. I would probably get 2x60gb and raid them for around $420+shipping. Then again, I didn't need that kinda space. I keep my OS and a couple programs on it, and everything else goes on my 750gb backup drive.

 

[statik213]

Originally posted by: swanysto
I have the 60gb version of the OCZ Vertex, and it has made more of a difference in real world activities than pretty much any upgrade I have ever done. This thing has my operating system(win 7) up in like 20 seconds. No waiting for stuff to load. I personally can't say as to whether the 120gb is worth $700, as it isn't to me. I would probably get 2x60gb and raid them for around $420+shipping. Then again, I didn't need that kinda space. I keep my OS and a couple programs on it, and everything else goes on my 750gb backup drive.

The 120 is around $300; there was a squeamish "deal" on FW for about $270 that involved, bing and paypal recently. I did consider raiding 2 60GB drives but TRIM will probably not work w/ RAID. 60 GB will be a hard fit for my OS/Apps I think.

 

[statik213]

Originally posted by: Bleser
Sounds like you've already hit the nail on the head - get the i7 860 setup.

I haven't read much about the OCZ SSD, but I have an Intel X25-M and it, without a doubt, was the best upgrade I ever made. Simple things like unpacking/decompressing/installing software is just unbeliveabliy fast - and I'm running an E6300 1.86 GHz C2D - can't wait to see how it performs with my i5 750 on the way. Installing Vista x64 will be joy just watching it fly by.

Thanks for the advice guys, looks like the 955/965 is not worth the money. First intel build for me in abt 10 years. Sucks for AMD.

 

[Darkrage]

Originally posted by: statik213

Originally posted by: Darkrage
if your mostly gaming, and already have a 955, just keep what you have and overclock the 955....getting an 965 when you already have a 955 wouldn't be smart. the 860 isnt a bad ugrade but doesnt seem worth it in your case just pick up that 120GB OCZ Vertex and profit

I am using a socket 939 opteron 165 now.. so any of these processors would be a huge upgrade. i _was_ thinking of the 955 pre core i7 860..

oh sorry thought you already had it lol, well then that's different if you dont have the 955, yeah the 860 wouldn't be a bad buy, the only thing that holds me back from the new i7's and i5's is the fact that there motherboards are only 8x pcie slots for the most part.

 

[statik213]

Originally posted by: Darkrage

Originally posted by: statik213

Originally posted by: Darkrage
if your mostly gaming, and already have a 955, just keep what you have and overclock the 955....getting an 965 when you already have a 955 wouldn't be smart. the 860 isnt a bad ugrade but doesnt seem worth it in your case just pick up that 120GB OCZ Vertex and profit

I am using a socket 939 opteron 165 now.. so any of these processors would be a huge upgrade. i _was_ thinking of the 955 pre core i7 860..

oh sorry thought you already had it lol, well then that's different if you dont have the 955, yeah the 860 wouldn't be a bad buy, the only thing that holds me back from the new i7's and i5's is the fact that there motherboards are only 8x pcie slots for the most part.

Srsly? I didn't notice that. I know that the CPU's PCIe controller can do only x16, so most boards should have a single 16x or dual 8x slot (with the lane switching thing). But are you saying that these boards have only a single 8x slot?

 

[RussianSensation]

There is major confusion about Lynnfield. The boards all support PCIe 2.0 slot that operates at full 16x. It is in CF and SLI that Lynnfield limits performance to 8x/8x but single card performane is unaffected.

 

[statik213]

Originally posted by: RussianSensation
There is major confusion about Lynnfield. The boards all support PCIe 2.0 slot that operates at full 16x. It is in CF and SLI that Lynnfield limits performance to 8x/8x but single card performane is unaffected.

Cool... that's what I was expecting.

 

[mazeroth]

Don't give up on AMD just yet. Take a look at the bottom of this page of the new Anandtech article. AMD on top:

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3639&p=3

 

[v8envy]

AMD is up on top for gaming benchmarks when

1. the i7 860 is not part of the test
2. not very threadable games are tested with stock clocks on the AMD and Intel.
3. some weird performance anomalies are mentioned by the tester

A very artificial restriction -- but if you'll be gaming on stock clocks only with current or previous generation games and are not willing to consider the i7 860 then yes, the 3.2 ghz AMD is a much better CPU than the i5 750 and even the 2.66ghz i7 920.

At the more typical 3.6-4ghz i7 clocks run by enthusiasts the picture will change dramatically. You can see a hint of that from the non-gaming benchmarks where the AMD is outperformed by as much as 30% in some cases.

 

[Arkaign]

AMD will dramatically drop the higher-end PhII prices soon. When they do, a quality AM3 board + X4 Black Edition will be a good bargain, and leave room in the budget for more/better ram/video/ssd/whatever. I think the i7 is better, but really only if you overclock it, and of course 1156 really only shines with a very strong single video card, the 2x8x PCIe is a bit of a limiting factor for nutballs wanting two high-end cards

 

[statik213]

Originally posted by: v8envy
AMD is up on top for gaming benchmarks when

1. the i7 860 is not part of the test
2. not very threadable games are tested with stock clocks on the AMD and Intel.
3. some weird performance anomalies are mentioned by the tester

A very artificial restriction -- but if you'll be gaming on stock clocks only with current or previous generation games and are not willing to consider the i7 860 then yes, the 3.2 ghz AMD is a much better CPU than the i5 750 and even the 2.66ghz i7 920.

At the more typical 3.6-4ghz i7 clocks run by enthusiasts the picture will change dramatically. You can see a hint of that from the non-gaming benchmarks where the AMD is outperformed by as much as 30% in some cases.

Hmm.. the 860 is within my budget (well, at microcenter for $230). Maybe I'll give it another week or two to see if AMD drops price like mad ($160ish for 965?). But it's still hard to see myself going w/ a 965.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

Originally posted by: v8envy
AMD is up on top for gaming benchmarks when

1. the i7 860 is not part of the test
2. not very threadable games are tested with stock clocks on the AMD and Intel.
3. some weird performance anomalies are mentioned by the tester

1. But the 920 is part of the gaming suite, and as all other tests shown the 860 and 920 perform extremely close to each other, especially clock for clock.

2. Far Cry 2 is pretty threadable and can make use of at least four cores. The Core i7/i5 processors were also tested with Turbo enabled, meaning they weren't exactly at stock (minimum) clocks. But no matter the clock speed nor the chip (when paired with a Radeon card), Core i7/i5 and the PhII 965 are giving you the same performance in games.

3. The anomaly was with a Geforce card. Since the user here is using a Radeon card, these anomalies probably wouldn't rear their heads.

A very artificial restriction -- but if you'll be gaming on stock clocks only with current or previous generation games and are not willing to consider the i7 860 then yes, the 3.2 ghz AMD is a much better CPU than the i5 750 and even the 2.66ghz i7 920.

At the more typical 3.6-4ghz i7 clocks run by enthusiasts the picture will change dramatically. You can see a hint of that from the non-gaming benchmarks where the AMD is outperformed by as much as 30% in some cases.

Yeh, I don't agree with the picture changing dramatically. The tests were done with Turbo enabled on the Intel processors, so there were already running closer to overclocked clockspeeds. But that doesn't really matter. With just an HD4870, and I'm going to also state that even with the upcoming 5800 series video cards, all of those tested processors are fast enough to deliver the same performance in gaming applications.

In other words the bottleneck is going to be on the GPU. And I think it's a little silly to get a head of ourselves by picturing games which will use more than four cores (hence, take advantage of HT), because games are just beginning to take advantage of quad cores.

But all of that above was applicable to gaming. Since the OP does other uses, like media transcoding and development work (java, django), and c++), then go Core i7 all the way.

 

[Gikaseixas]

Originally posted by: statik213

Originally posted by: Bleser
Sounds like you've already hit the nail on the head - get the i7 860 setup.

I haven't read much about the OCZ SSD, but I have an Intel X25-M and it, without a doubt, was the best upgrade I ever made. Simple things like unpacking/decompressing/installing software is just unbeliveabliy fast - and I'm running an E6300 1.86 GHz C2D - can't wait to see how it performs with my i5 750 on the way. Installing Vista x64 will be joy just watching it fly by.

Thanks for the advice guys, looks like the 955/965 is not worth the money. First intel build for me in abt 10 years. Sucks for AMD.

both the 955/965 are nice chips but the new i5/i7 coupled with cheaper motherboards make it a bit harder for us to recommend AMD. For gaming it's a wash but for other intensive tasks the Intel cpus really show their muscles (AMD needs to introduce turbo).

 

[statik213]

Originally posted by: Gikaseixas

Originally posted by: statik213

Originally posted by: Bleser
Sounds like you've already hit the nail on the head - get the i7 860 setup.

I haven't read much about the OCZ SSD, but I have an Intel X25-M and it, without a doubt, was the best upgrade I ever made. Simple things like unpacking/decompressing/installing software is just unbeliveabliy fast - and I'm running an E6300 1.86 GHz C2D - can't wait to see how it performs with my i5 750 on the way. Installing Vista x64 will be joy just watching it fly by.

Thanks for the advice guys, looks like the 955/965 is not worth the money. First intel build for me in abt 10 years. Sucks for AMD.

both the 955/965 are nice chips but the new i5/i7 coupled with cheaper motherboards make it a bit harder for us to recommend AMD. For gaming it's a wash but for other intensive tasks the Intel cpus really show their muscles (AMD needs to introduce turbo).

Yeah, I do agree, the Phenom IIs are pretty good, but intel did come out w/ a good (better?) alternative. For my money it seems that intel is offering better perf/$. It's been a while since I built an intel build... they still run windows right?

 

[heyheybooboo]

I wouldn't be expecting any quantum leaps in your gaming performance depending upon your screen rez and favorite plays.

$700 is a bunch of money these days and can go a long way --- especially if you stay away from the 'bleeding edge'.

You can get an e7400, P45 mobo and 2x2Gb DDR2 for $400 ---- with a second HD4870 thrown in for good measure. 'Enthusiasts' like to say s775 is dead but the deals are getting better and better, and from what I have seen it will not go EOL until 2011 at the earliest (meaning a quad upgrade in a year or so will be a great option).

That same $400 will also get yah a Phenom 720BE / AM3 mobo / DDR3 with a second HD4870 --- and then there are the Athlon II X4s rolling out soon.

The longer you wait on the SSD the better --- by the end of the year you will probably see $50-$100 drop in drives from OCZ and Super Talent on Gen2 stuff. Who knows? You may be able to go 256Gb on Black Friday for what you may purchase a 128Gb SSD today.

 

[imported_Scoop]

One thing I'm wondering about AMD, its motherboards and CPUs is the bios support needed to run these things. Does the 965 need it's own bios update to work properly, or is it enough that a board supports 955? From what I know, 955 needed a bios update to work. I can't even understand why, it just runs faster?

 

[v8envy]

Originally posted by: cusideabelincoln


1. But the 920 is part of the gaming suite, and as all other tests shown the 860 and 920 perform extremely close to each other, especially clock for clock.

But that's the thing. With the turbo mode enabled, the i7 920 will be at 2.79 ghz with more than one core loaded or 2.92 ghz with a single core loaded. The i7 860 starts at 2.8 ghz, and "turbo modes" up to 3.46 ghz. About 500 mhz of frequency is a gigantic advantage. 920's turbo mode 2.79 (the maximum with more than one core loaded) is nowhere near enthusiast target OCs of 3.6 to 4.0 or the stock frequency of the 955 or 965.

As far as multithreaded games -- look at Resident Evil. That's a game which will scale to all 8 virtual cores and deliver increased performance. It's the first of the new breed of games designed to run on multiple CPUs. Ignoring this data point is very analogous to people recommending single core gaming machines at the start of 2006 because at the time all games ran best on single core boxes. By the end of 2006 those machines were insufficient for games of the day.

We keep having this discussion. I really wish the benchmarkers would post minimum frame rates as well as maximum. There are always multiple bottlenecks in every system. Sure, your GPU may be limiting your frame rates. So is your monitor. But if a CPU is not potent enough you will get hit where it matters most -- minimum frame rates when the action gets heavy. I don't care if I get 80 or 800 fps max, 60 is good enough for me. But I do care if minimums drop below 30.

ArmaII and GTA4 are two games I can think of right off the top of my head which want as much CPU as they can get if you wish to avoid a chugfest. In fact, check this out. http://www.pcgameshardware.com...with-18-CPUs/Practice/ The 3.5 X4 955 posted 24 fps at 1280x1024. The 920 wasn't much better (with 26) at stock clocks, but went up to a playable 33 fps when clocked to 3.5 ghz -- right around the frequency of a 'turbo mode' i860.

The i860 is cheaper when paired with the plethora of $100 or less boards, less power hungry and has uses other than gaming. And we haven't really seen any software to make use of SSE 4.2 yet. Unless the 965 drops to well below $200 soon there's absolutely no reason to with the underdog.

 

[statik213]

OK.. So I've convinced myself that I'm going to go with the 860. I'll probably order the Mobo and RAM tmrw.

I'm thinking of the "ASRock P55 Pro LGA 1156" board. I've never used ASRock, are they any good? Aren't they an ASUS spin-off?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813157171

I haven't decided on which RAM sticks to get. I'd like to get 4GB DDR3 1066 for about $70. Is the additional $20-30 worth it for DDR3 1600? I'd appreciate any suggestions.. This is my current selection:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/..._-20-227-346-_-Product


This combo is also interesting.. the only thing not so great is the mobo seems to lack at least an 8-phase power solution.. is this a big deal?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...?ItemList=Combo.258614


Finally, I put together various build estimates on the best prices I could get on a spreadsheet. This might be useful to others who are thinking of similiar upgrades:

http://spreadsheets.google.com...0Y0ZLMGhkT2Mybnc&hl=en