even worth upgrading?

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sm625

Diamond Member
May 6, 2011
8,172
137
106
Downclock you i7-920 to 3.2GHz. If you can notice that sort of difference vs your current 3.8GHz, then you will notice just as much in the other direction if you upgrade to a 3770k. As far as power savings you are looking at ballpark 2 cents per hour of actual cpu loaded time, and maybe a few pennies a week for the rest of the time. It wont add up to anything.
 

tarmc

Senior member
Mar 12, 2013
322
5
81
I wouldn't be so sure with those statements. i7 4770K 3.9ghz's preliminary scores are about 7.82 in Cinebench and my i7 860 @ 3.9ghz scored 6.92. That's a rather sad level of increase since September of 2009 and even worse over 2600K. Even if modern CPUs overclock much more, for gaming it makes almost no difference unless you play strategy games or MMOs that happen to be specifically CPU limited genres or you are running HD7950 OC CF / GTX670 SLI or faster and that's 1080p, not 1440p or higher where you are literally like 99% GPU limited.

The only way to get any tangible performance increase on the CPU front from i7 920 @ 3.8ghz is through serious overclocking of SB/IVB parts or if you are doing work that takes full advantage of all the cores (video/audio encoding) where 6-core SB-E parts come into play then it's an automatic upgrade. Otherwise, you are looking at nothing to write home about unless you need every last 10-15% of performance if you have 2 or more GPUs.

For single GPU setups with HD7970GE or GTX680, the system will be mostly GPU limited even with a Core i7 1st gen @ 3.8ghz in modern games:

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/far_cry_3_graphics_performance_review_benchmark,7.html

And in the most demanding games like Tomb Raider, Crysis 3 and upcoming Metro Last Light, the i7 @ 3.8ghz won't be the bottleneck - the GPU will be. On the AMD side, there is no processor that's an upgrade from i7 920 @ 3.8ghz for gaming. On the Intel side, I wouldn't upgrade to anything at this point since Haswell is so near. Just get that if you need the upgrade.



Get a new videocard instead and go from there. If you have anything less than HD7950 OC / GTX670, you should be upgrading the GPU if most of your usage is gaming. Then in 2014, you can grab Broadwell with SATA express.

already running a 670, maybe adding a second would be a better upgrade