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even worth upgrading?

tarmc

tarmc

Senior member
Currebtly running an i7 820 @ 3.8, have been considering upgrading but nit sure if its even worth while? Also what would selling current hardware would go fo to offset cost? Thinking either going fx6300 or i5-3470 possibly 3570
 
It depends on how much you like the performance, heat and power consumption.

The only i7 820 that I see is a 820QM for laptops.
Did you mean i7 920?

If so, then I would definitely sell it off and upgrade. The 920 generates a ton of heat and consumes a lot of electricity.

You could probably sell the cpu/motherboard for about $120-$140 as a combo.
A 3570k would consume about half the power at load and much less at idle.
 
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Price checks are not allowed so I'm not touching that part at all.

Going from an i7 920 @ 3.8GHz to an FX 6300 would be a decided step down in performance. Going to an i5 3570 would be a relatively small step up but would reduce power consumption noticeably (whether or not this is important to you...).

A better idea would be waiting like a month or two for Haswell to launch. New generation CPU on a new socket - meaning an upgrade is viable in a couple of years without changing motherboard.
 
Oopsies. Typod. Not 820, 920 gigabyte ga-ex58-ud5 12g corsair 1600. So not really worth while to upgrade eh.
As for usage, gaming mostly, some video and audio encoding
 
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I would still stick with i7 920. The Bloomfield was way ahead of it's time and current mainstream tech has finally caught up.
 
Yeah, nothing available is currently a noticeable step up. The power usage argument isn't that compelling either, imo - the 130w max TDP of the 920 is comparable to top-end AMD hardware. It's hardly in a league of its own.

Although, okay, idle is pretty bad.
 
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nehalem i7 at 3.8GHz is faster than the 6300 at 4.5GHz, based on what 2.66 vs 3.5GHz looks like on the anandtech bench.
I'm not sure about power usage, but it should be close?
 
SPBHM said:
nehalem i7 at 3.8GHz is faster than the 6300 at 4.5GHz, based on what 2.66 vs 3.5GHz looks like on the anandtech bench.
I'm not sure about power usage, but it should be close?
Click to expand...

No the i7 would use far more power due to being overclocked 58% over stock while the 6300 is only overclocked 29%. With the i7 920 at 130W stock vs the 6300 95W stock it's no contest in performance per Watt - but yes the i7 would be a little bit faster at those clock speeds.
 
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SiliconWars said:
No the i7 would use far more power due to being overclocked 58% over stock while the 6300 is only overclocked 29%. With the i7 920 at 130W stock vs the 6300 95W stock it's no contest in performance per Watt - but yes the i7 would be a little bit faster at those clock speeds.
Click to expand...

You cant use the TDP as a measure of power consumption and just guess it will use more 🙄

i7 920 dosent really start to pull stupid wattage until 4ghz+, toms did an article about this ages ago but they used a really crappy c0 chip.
 
Maximilian said:
You cant use the TDP as a measure of power consumption and just guess it will use more 🙄

i7 920 dosent really start to pull stupid wattage until 4ghz+, toms did an article about this ages ago but they used a really crappy c0 chip.
Click to expand...

Yeah, 3.8 is a joke (relatively speaking). you should see how much power you need to hit 4.2, but I do have a d0.
 
Maximilian said:
You cant use the TDP as a measure of power consumption and just guess it will use more 🙄

i7 920 dosent really start to pull stupid wattage until 4ghz+, toms did an article about this ages ago but they used a really crappy c0 chip.
Click to expand...

I think i did read that article. The performance to power consumption goes to hell at 4 ghz and higher. This c0 i have doesnt seem to want to go higher than 3.8 but havent really tried to push it. Will likely just stick with it for time being and maybe eventually upgrade. Have been looking at the 1366 xeons and 6 core cpus for the hell of it, might be an option just for fun
 
tarmc said:
Currebtly running an i7 820 @ 3.8, have been considering upgrading but nit sure if its even worth while? Also what would selling current hardware would go fo to offset cost? Thinking either going fx6300 or i5-3470 possibly 3570
Click to expand...

Nope, not worth it. Maybe Haswell-E, when that arrives, would be a worthwhile upgrade.
 
Gotta love the staying power of intels core i5 and core i7 chips especially the 900 series and the 2000 series.

Intel with these small increment improvements on each refresh and next generation honestly makes it hard for anyone to consider upgrading and if i did not sale my core i7 940 tower in late 2009,i bet i wouldn't have upgraded yet to this day besides the gpu.
 
aaksheytalwar said:
Then ATB shows how a 920 is just too slow compared to modern CPUs.
Click to expand...
aaksheytalwar said:
It still isn't. Modern cpus oc much more.
Click to expand...

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.

tarmc said:
As for usage, gaming mostly, some video and audio encoding
Click to expand...

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.
 
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