E6850 to i7 920 - Worth it?

[Nromncr]

Hi All,

I'm looking to help stimulate our economy by upgrading from my E6850 OC'd to 3.6 @ 1066 to a shiny new i7 920 with a Gigabyte X-58 Mobo..

I'm wondering though, would such an upgrade be worth it? I'm using my machine as a gaming rig and have been somewhat happy overall. I'm using a GeForce GTX 280 card, so I'm pretty happy with that aspect of my machine.

Thoughts?

 

[angry hampster]

What resolution? You may be better off with a better (or a duplicate) video card if you're seeing framerate dips.

 

[Nromncr]

Originally posted by: angry hampster
What resolution? You may be better off with a better (or a duplicate) video card if you're seeing framerate dips.

I'm running it at 1920 x 1200.

 

[chizow]

You won't see $600 worth of improvement and it will depend a lot on what games you play, but yes you'll see significant gains in some games provided you also plan to overclock the i7. I just went from a 3.6GHz Q6600 to an i7 @ 3.9Ghz and I've been very pleased with the results.

I'm waiting for my 2nd 6GB kit to come in before comparing benches, but from the games I've loaded and played around in so far, GTA4, World In Conflict, any UE3.0 game, LOTRO (WAR or WoW too, I'm sure if you play those as they're also massively CPU intensive) all have shown significant increases in FPS and also play much smoother, especially when panning camera angles quickly. GTA4 is amazing on an i7, which is pretty incredible given how much a Quad over Duo impacts performance.

 

[A554SS1N]

I'd stick with what you have for now, it's more than fast enough for virtually everything - I doubt you'd notice any increase in performance (not talking exact numbers, just perception). The only exception is in something like a heavy RTS title, such as Supreme Commander, or GTA4 which is just badly optimised.

 

[aigomorla]

Originally posted by: Nromncr
Hi All,

I'm looking to help stimulate our economy by upgrading from my E6850 OC'd to 3.6 @ 1066 to a shiny new i7 920 with a Gigabyte X-58 Mobo..

I'm wondering though, would such an upgrade be worth it? I'm using my machine as a gaming rig and have been somewhat happy overall. I'm using a GeForce GTX 280 card, so I'm pretty happy with that aspect of my machine.

Thoughts?

on a 24.. what board do you have right now?

If you can sli a second 280GTX will give you better frame rates then a processor upgrade.

If you SLI + i7 you will see noticable increase in frame rates.

If you just i7 no gpu upgrade, i dont think you'll notice anything much.

 

[Nromncr]

Originally posted by: aigomorla

Originally posted by: Nromncr
Hi All,

I'm looking to help stimulate our economy by upgrading from my E6850 OC'd to 3.6 @ 1066 to a shiny new i7 920 with a Gigabyte X-58 Mobo..

I'm wondering though, would such an upgrade be worth it? I'm using my machine as a gaming rig and have been somewhat happy overall. I'm using a GeForce GTX 280 card, so I'm pretty happy with that aspect of my machine.

Thoughts?

on a 24.. what board do you have right now?

If you can sli a second 280GTX will give you better frame rates then a processor upgrade.

If you SLI + i7 you will see noticable increase in frame rates.

If you just i7 no gpu upgrade, i dont think you'll notice anything much.

I'm using an eVGA 680i SLI motherboard, currently.

 

[Tweakin]

Having come from a 6750, to a 9650, and now an i7...get a second video card......

 

[Nromncr]

Originally posted by: Tweakin
Having come from a 6750, to a 9650, and now an i7...get a second video card......

Good deal.. I have an eVGA GTX 280 SSC edition card, which looks like it's not being manufactured anymore..

Would I be better off going with a GTX 295 at this point and selling the GTX 280 SSC?

 

[Tweakin]

Originally posted by: Nromncr

Originally posted by: Tweakin
Having come from a 6750, to a 9650, and now an i7...get a second video card......

Good deal.. I have an eVGA GTX 280 SSC edition card, which looks like it's not being manufactured anymore..

Would I be better off going with a GTX 295 at this point and selling the GTX 280 SSC?

yep...when I went sli it was the biggest improvement I have ever seen. I was drawn into the quad crowd, and while each cpu did make a difference, none were as dramatic as going sli...or in your case going to a nice 295.

I would also think you should have no problem selling your old card in the forums as I'm sure someone else has one of those and would like to go sli.

 

[demiurge3141]

Originally posted by: Nromncr
Hi All,

I'm looking to help stimulate our economy by upgrading from my E6850 OC'd to 3.6 @ 1066 to a shiny new i7 920 with a Gigabyte X-58 Mobo..

I'm wondering though, would such an upgrade be worth it? I'm using my machine as a gaming rig and have been somewhat happy overall. I'm using a GeForce GTX 280 card, so I'm pretty happy with that aspect of my machine.

Thoughts?

No

 

[lopri]

Originally posted by: demiurge3141

Originally posted by: Nromncr
Hi All,

I'm looking to help stimulate our economy by upgrading from my E6850 OC'd to 3.6 @ 1066 to a shiny new i7 920 with a Gigabyte X-58 Mobo..

I'm wondering though, would such an upgrade be worth it? I'm using my machine as a gaming rig and have been somewhat happy overall. I'm using a GeForce GTX 280 card, so I'm pretty happy with that aspect of my machine.

Thoughts?

No

 

[lopri]

If you really want to see and feel speed-up's, as well as stimulate the economy, consider SSDs.

 

[corei7965]

I went from an E8600 to I7 965 and was amazed. I would at least try for the 940

 

[aigomorla]

Originally posted by: lopri
If you really want to see and feel speed-up's, as well as stimulate the economy, consider SSDs.

SLI > SSD

 

[fire400]

upgrade the i7 if you're going to do a memory upgrade and get a faster video card

otherwise, if you do peice by peice, depending on the time table it takes you to upgrade to the next peice, maybe several months if you decide to take your time, you'd have realized that signif. price drops might have taken place

remember that if you don't already have the games you want to play on it, damn... you're going to be crackin' the piggy for software apps unless you just borrow them from friends or something, *you know what I'm sayin' ?

 

[aigomorla]

In order of the most benifical upgrade [not looking at budget]

1. i7 + SLI
2. SLI
3. i7

In Order of the best upgrade path budget looking.

1. SLI


OP get SLI. On a 24 its your best upgrade path.
Unless your a encoding junkie, you run a fansub service and need massive crunching and editing, or your a movie holic... or your gonna run a full blown SQL server on it, highly doubt cuz u dont game on that machine, SLI is your best path.

Dualcore @ 3.6 is still a good machine.

 

[Sacraster]

i7 is more for encoding or other multi-thread apps. Gaming wont gain much benefit, go with what other people are saying here get another video card

 

[nyker96]

you probably see improvements on other areas especially ones require quad core.