GTA V and "last gen cards" - not THAT bad as some claim.

[Makaveli]

I've noticed very few games show such a big difference between Sandy Bridge, IB & Haswell.. it just so happens GTA V is one of them, Haswell pulls ahead massively.

Can you point me to a review that shows this.

 

[RussianSensation]

Can you point me to a review that shows this.

The thing is though it should be obvious that Core i7 4790K with 4.4Ghz boost would be way ahead of a stock Core i5 2500K/2600K. Unfortunately even sites like GameGPU don't do Core i7 920 @ 4.0Ghz vs. 2500K/2600K @ 4.8Ghz vs. 4770K/4790K @ 4.6Ghz. That would be far more useful for us. Also, a lot of times CPU limited scenarios are tested with GTX980 SLI or R9 295X2 or Titan X. If a gamer has a 970/980/R9 290X or even 680 SLI/7970Ghz CF, or slower, how much does it really matter if you have an i7 4790K vs. a stock 2600k?

Either way I think a lot of Core 2 Quad/1st and 2nd gen i5/i7 users will finally be upgrading to Skylake, so in a matter of 6 months this will become a moot point.

 

[Face2Face]

I don't know much about Gamer's Nexus, but here's his results. I came across it when looking for 3570K Benchmarks for GTA V-

Also, PCLabs...if it's still considered a decent source? At least here they're showing overclocked performance. Sandy and Ivy are still holding strong in the face of Haswell.

 

[Whitestar127]

CPUs nowadays last for ages. No point in upgrading Sandy Bridges yet.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Overclocked Skylake would be interesting to compare for this title sooner or later vs my i7 3770 non k.These newer Intel chips are just unbelievable as far as longevity goes.Almost kind of sucks how boring upgrades have become.

65/45nm C2D/C2Q upgrades and X58 was about the last time things really got exciting.Doesn't feel like to long ago when i had a i7 940/gtx295

 

[Makaveli]

The thing is though it should be obvious that Core i7 4790K with 4.4Ghz boost would be way ahead of a stock Core i5 2500K/2600K. Unfortunately even sites like GameGPU don't do Core i7 920 @ 4.0Ghz vs. 2500K/2600K @ 4.8Ghz vs. 4770K/4790K @ 4.6Ghz. That would be far more useful for us. Also, a lot of times CPU limited scenarios are tested with GTX980 SLI or R9 295X2 or Titan X. If a gamer has a 970/980/R9 290X or even 680 SLI/7970Ghz CF, or slower, how much does it really matter if you have an i7 4790K vs. a stock 2600k?

Either way I think a lot of Core 2 Quad/1st and 2nd gen i5/i7 users will finally be upgrading to Skylake, so in a matter of 6 months this will become a moot point.

True however since i'm already on a 6core chip my next chip has to be the same core or more. So its either Haswell E for me to skylake E and the high price of DDR4 and the DMI bandwidth limitation on x99 has me thinking I should wait.

And you are right at gpu limited settings it won't matter much.

 

[RussianSensation]

Overclocked Skylake would be interesting to compare for this title sooner or later vs my i7 3770 non k.These newer Intel chips are just unbelievable as far as longevity goes.Almost kind of sucks how boring upgrades have become.

65/45nm C2D/C2Q upgrades and X58 was about the last time things really got exciting.Doesn't feel like to long ago when i had a i7 940/gtx295

I agree. Back then when so many people on AT were hyping E8400-8600 4.3-4.4Ghz overclocks over Q6600/6700/9550 3.4-3.8Ghz, I went against the grain and recommended people to go quads if a gamer intended to keep his/her system for 4-5 years. Those high-clocked C2Ds became obsolete in no time.

I also find it strange how many people on AT downplay how amazing 1st gen i5/i7s are when overclocked. I guess since so many people upgraded to SB, IVB and Haswell, they want to justify that their upgrades were really worth it to them over i7 920 / 860 @ 4.0Ghz! On our forum you constantly see people exaggerate the IPC increase/move from Nehalem to SB and downplay the move from C2Q to Nehalem. The reality is it was Nehalem that improved the most, not SB over Nehalem. This is obvious when we look at gaming benches of a Nehalem i7 against IVB i7 when they are clocked at identical speeds. Core 2 Quad could never keep up with these!

Source

Sure, there will be outliers like Total War games, WoW,, etc. that scale well with high single core IPC performance of Haswell, etc. However, for the most part, you really need to be packing some serious GPU firepower (GTX970 SLI or greater) to really start to see the benefits of moving from i7 920 @ 4.2Ghz to Haswell/Skylake for the most part. If you have a lower end GPU like 770/7970Ghz or a single 970/R9 290X, you are unlikely to see significant benefits moving from a 4.0Ghz Nehalem unless you specifically play a lot of CPU-limited games at 1080P.

The biggest benefits of moving off Nehalem/Lynnfield are lower idle and load power usage and new features such as PCIe SSD with NVMe (or even SATA 3) and if you are going to cross-fire / SLI more modern GPUs. However, even PCIe 2.0 x8 / PCIe 1.1 x 16 do not really hold back GTX980 that much. I would say most people just want to justify why they upgraded but when we look at real benchmarks, the 1st generation i7 is really the real star of the show, not SB, not IVB, not Haswell.

True however since i'm already on a 6core chip my next chip has to be the same core or more. So its either Haswell E for me to skylake E and the high price of DDR4 and the DMI bandwidth limitation on x99 has me thinking I should wait.

And you are right at gpu limited settings it won't matter much.

I know what you mean. I've started using quads since August 2007 with Q6600. It feels strange that i7 6700K Skylake is still a quad. Not sure which way I'll go with my upgrade path but next round I am getting an i7, no more i5s for me. With BW-E slated for Q1 2016, I feel like we might not even see Skylake-E until Q4 2016.

Given the staying power of modern i7 CPUs (I mean look at the i7 920 @ 4.2Ghz even!), I feel that a 6-core Skylake-E @ 4.5Ghz will last 5 years easily.

 

[bystander36]

I've been waiting years for a good upgrade from my i7 920, but nothing really jumps out at me as worth it. Though I'm getting close to pulling the trigger, as I don't really want to dump money into more RAM on an old system.

 

[skipsneeky2]

I agree. Back then when so many people on AT were hyping E8400-8600 4.3-4.4Ghz overclocks over Q6600/6700/9550 3.4-3.8Ghz, I went against the grain and recommended people to go quads if a gamer intended to keep his/her system for 4-5 years. Those high-clocked C2Ds became obsolete in no time.

Bought a E6750 then jumped on a Q6600 quite quickly.UT3 played quite a bit smoother on that vs the E6750.Desktop usage felt amazing but i got told a couple times what a waste it was.When i jumped on my i7 940 i had one of my buddies who claimed i had wasted my money pretty much asking to buy my Q6600 to replace his E6600 lol.

Nehalem and all that complicated mumbo jumbo scared me so much,i skipped the 920 and went for 940 cause i just didn't want to try to oc that 920 cpu lol.Wasn't the easy fsb adjustments anymore.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

I agree. Back then when so many people on AT were hyping E8400-8600 4.3-4.4Ghz overclocks over Q6600/6700/9550 3.4-3.8Ghz, I went against the grain and recommended people to go quads if a gamer intended to keep his/her system for 4-5 years. Those high-clocked C2Ds became obsolete in no time.

Heh, thanks to getting a killer deal locally for a SR2 and a pair of X5675s, I'm going to try for a 4.5GHz 12c/24t monster

 

[ocre]

I've been waiting years for a good upgrade from my i7 920, but nothing really jumps out at me as worth it. Though I'm getting close to pulling the trigger, as I don't really want to dump money into more RAM on an old system.

You should be looking at the 32nm xeon 6 cores, WestmereEP. If for no other reason than heat/power consumption. Intel's 32nm node was one of the most impressive out of the last few. It is the same process that Sandy Bridge launched on. The cool temps and crazy overclocks, 4.5ghz-5ghz.

Just to put it into perspective, intels 32nm silicon was so amassing that they were able to launch 6c/12thread CPUs that ran 3.06ghz base up to 3.46ghz turbo on a 95watt TDP!!! This is 150% the cores running at a good bit higher clock speed with a TDP 73% the amount of the i7 920.
http://ark.intel.com/products/52577/Intel-Xeon-Processor-X5675-12M-Cache-3_06-GHz-6_40-GTs-Intel-QPI

I run my chip at 24/7 with very modest 4.2-4.4 turbo overclock (1.3v), at its sweet spot. It is amassing how much power an overclocked 920 uses, my westmere uses so much less.

The crazier thing is how little intels 22nm brought, as far as clock speed on the top end. The 5820k/5830k at 4.2ghz is an absolute power hog. There is info on the internet, it will blow your mind if you compare them to the 32nm 6cores. Then maybe you can understand how special intels 32nm silicon was.

I agree. Back then when so many people on AT were hyping E8400-8600 4.3-4.4Ghz overclocks over Q6600/6700/9550 3.4-3.8Ghz, I went against the grain and recommended people to go quads if a gamer intended to keep his/her system for 4-5 years. Those high-clocked C2Ds became obsolete in no time.

I also find it strange how many people on AT downplay how amazing 1st gen i5/i7s are when overclocked. I guess since so many people upgraded to SB, IVB and Haswell, they want to justify that their upgrades were really worth it to them over i7 920 / 860 @ 4.0Ghz! On our forum you constantly see people exaggerate the IPC increase/move from Nehalem to SB and downplay the move from C2Q to Nehalem. The reality is it was Nehalem that improved the most, not SB over Nehalem. This is obvious when we look at gaming benches of a Nehalem i7 against IVB i7 when they are clocked at identical speeds. Core 2 Quad could never keep up with these!

Source

Sure, there will be outliers like Total War games, WoW,, etc. that scale well with high single core IPC performance of Haswell, etc. However, for the most part, you really need to be packing some serious GPU firepower (GTX970 SLI or greater) to really start to see the benefits of moving from i7 920 @ 4.2Ghz to Haswell/Skylake for the most part. If you have a lower end GPU like 770/7970Ghz or a single 970/R9 290X, you are unlikely to see significant benefits moving from a 4.0Ghz Nehalem unless you specifically play a lot of CPU-limited games at 1080P.

The biggest benefits of moving off Nehalem/Lynnfield are lower idle and load power usage and new features such as PCIe SSD with NVMe (or even SATA 3) and if you are going to cross-fire / SLI more modern GPUs. However, even PCIe 2.0 x8 / PCIe 1.1 x 16 do not really hold back GTX980 that much. I would say most people just want to justify why they upgraded but when we look at real benchmarks, the 1st generation i7 is really the real star of the show, not SB, not IVB, not Haswell.

I know what you mean. I've started using quads since August 2007 with Q6600. It feels strange that i7 6700K Skylake is still a quad. Not sure which way I'll go with my upgrade path but next round I am getting an i7, no more i5s for me. With BW-E slated for Q1 2016, I feel like we might not even see Skylake-E until Q4 2016.

Given the staying power of modern i7 CPUs (I mean look at the i7 920 @ 4.2Ghz even!), I feel that a 6-core Skylake-E @ 4.5Ghz will last 5 years easily.

Depending on the game, My benches with the 980 can be 2-5% slower than review sites with overclocked 4770k. It is a wash really because there are plenty where i get the => the frame rates as well.
I do believe the PCIe 2.0 16x can be limiting me in some cases because after i overclock the PCIE bus to 110mhz, i do gain those frame rates back. I have heard of others who tried 120mhz pcie with no issues, but i am not brave enough. It doesnt take that much anyway. I have actually settled for a PCIe 105mhz setting. It is a 5% overclock for my daily usage. In games that are PCIe bandwidth sensitive, this bump up makes a real difference. It is more than enough to offset the pcie 2.0 limitation, at least in the few titles that i went back and checked on.

With a single 980 on this old system, it really holds up well against review sites. The PCIe overclock makes a difference on the games that were a little off.

but i am pretty sure SLI 980s would actually be held back. The single 980, it really isnt at all. I am also thinking that anything more powerful than a 980, it might really start to bottleneck. I see the 980 and it is on the edge, where the PCIe overclock relieves it. It would be interesting to see the PCIe test with a titan X now. I can easily get 1-2% back with a 105mhz pcie bus, but titan x will probably be much more bottle necked

 

[escrow4]

Haswell automatically gives you a few FPS in recent games - V, Inquisition, and possibly Unity. Stock vs stock. See Gamegpu.

 

[RussianSensation]

but i am pretty sure SLI 980s would actually be held back. The single 980, it really isnt at all. I am also thinking that anything more powerful than a 980, it might really start to bottleneck. I see the 980 and it is on the edge, where the PCIe overclock relieves it. It would be interesting to see the PCIe test with a titan X now. I can easily get 1-2% back with a 105mhz pcie bus, but titan x will probably be much more bottle necked

I am not disagreeing with you and I did mention that someone going 970 SLI or greater will have more justification for finally ditching the older 1st gen i5/i7 platforms. However, consider how old the i7 920/860 are and that X58 could be given a 2-3 year longevity increase with a Xeon upgrade such as the one you have. :thumbsup:

Haswell automatically gives you a few FPS in recent games - V, Inquisition, and possibly Unity. Stock vs stock. See Gamegpu.

That's true but a stock 4770K/4790K has way higher boost than an i7 920 2.66Ghz. What happens if we compare an i5 4690K / i7 4770K @ 4.5Ghz against an i7 920 @ 4.2Ghz? It'll be very very close in performance. Most games today are still GPU limited. You yourself stated that your 780Ti overclocked can't keep up with your CPU. Chances are it'll be the more limiting component in the i7 920 @ 4.2Ghz system too. Basically for someone going out now and buying a new $150 mobo, $100 16GB DDR3 and $340 i7 4790K, the benefits for gaming performance from the upgrade aren't really commensurate with nearly $600 it costs to upgrade. I would say if you are after features and reduction in power usage, it becomes a lot more worthwhile -- just don't expect an i7 4790K @ 4.5Ghz to be 50-100% faster than an i7 920 @ 4.2Ghz in games. :awe:

 

[TheELF]

So basically you are locked to an old platform because you overspend by getting a killer machine,and now you want your moneys worth...
By buying only what you really need you spend a lot less and with the difference + maybe a small amount more ,you can get a new platform of the same level of cost a few years later.

 

[bystander36]

So basically you are locked to an old platform because you overspend by getting a killer machine,and now you want your moneys worth...
By buying only what you really need you spend a lot less and with the difference + maybe a small amount more ,you can get a new platform of the same level of cost a few years later.

I'm not sure that even pans out, as long as you didn't go with the extreme setups. i5 K setups aren't that cheap either.

 

[mohit9206]

How will it run on my Pentium G630 Radeon 7750 8gb ram setup? I did not get the game yet as im not sure how it will perform on normal quality settings at 1600x900. I also did not get Assassin's Creed Unity and Far Cry 4 either because of their poor performance.

 

[RussianSensation]

So basically you are locked to an old platform because you overspend by getting a killer machine,and now you want your moneys worth...
By buying only what you really need you spend a lot less and with the difference + maybe a small amount more ,you can get a new platform of the same level of cost a few years later.

I am not sure what you mean. i7 920 / i7 860 weren't expensive. They cost about $284-330, similar to what an i7 costs today. Same for SB users. Many gamers could have easily afforded to upgrade from 1st and 2nd gen i5/i7s but as you can see from benchmarks, if your GPU is slower than GTX980, your CPU is clocked at 4.0-4.5Ghz, you aren't going to get much benefit.

Did you see this? Moving from a stock i5 2500K to an i7 4790K on a Titan (which is basically GTX680 SLI!) only netted a 6% increase in performance.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2389580

The point many PC gamers are still sitting on Nehalem/Lynnfield and Sandy is not because they are trying to get their money's worth by overspending 5-6 years ago, but because newer CPUs aren't much faster in games unless you start rocking serious GPU firepower. Even today, if you crank 4xMSAA, you instantly become GPU limited even on 980 SLI / Titan X.

As crazy as it sounds, outside of very special cases (strategy games, Blizzard titles that scale with 2 fast cores, Crysis 3), you probably need Titan X SLI before something like an i5 2500K/2600K @ 4.6Ghz becomes a bottleneck. Even if it does, you can enable DSR and instantly you are GPU limited. Hence why modern Intel i5/i7s in overclocked states easily last 5+ years. The GPU is where it's at today.

I am sure a lot of us will upgrade to Skylake/Cannonlake/Skylake-E but it'll be mostly for fun. Sure, on paper Skylake will be 30% faster than SB/IVB but in games, I doubt this will show up.

 

[escrow4]

I am not disagreeing with you and I did mention that someone going 970 SLI or greater will have more justification for finally ditching the older 1st gen i5/i7 platforms. However, consider how old the i7 920/860 are and that X58 could be given a 2-3 year longevity increase with a Xeon upgrade such as the one you have. :thumbsup:



That's true but a stock 4770K/4790K has way higher boost than an i7 920 2.66Ghz. What happens if we compare an i5 4690K / i7 4770K @ 4.5Ghz against an i7 920 @ 4.2Ghz? It'll be very very close in performance. Most games today are still GPU limited. You yourself stated that your 780Ti overclocked can't keep up with your CPU. Chances are it'll be the more limiting component in the i7 920 @ 4.2Ghz system too. Basically for someone going out now and buying a new $150 mobo, $100 16GB DDR3 and $340 i7 4790K, the benefits for gaming performance from the upgrade aren't really commensurate with nearly $600 it costs to upgrade. I would say if you are after features and reduction in power usage, it becomes a lot more worthwhile -- just don't expect an i7 4790K @ 4.5Ghz to be 50-100% faster than an i7 920 @ 4.2Ghz in games. :awe:

I agree. I would also like to see how minimum's/averages increase as clocks go up. My 5930K is a shocking overclocker (1.23v and can't crack 4.2GHz without volting further) so I run it max turbo 3.7GHz all cores @ 1.1v or less. I'd love to see what difference 3.7GHz vs 4.2GHz vs 4.6GHz really makes in 2013/2014 titles. Gamegpu tests stock and it seems stock is more than sufficient for 60FPS/your CPU isn't holding you back but still.

 

[TheELF]

I am not sure what you mean. i7 920 / i7 860 weren't expensive. They cost about $284-330, similar to what an i7 costs today.
As crazy as it sounds, outside of very special cases (strategy games, Blizzard titles that scale with 2 fast cores, Crysis 3), you probably need Titan X SLI before something like an i5 2500K/2600K @ 4.6Ghz becomes a bottleneck. Even if it does, you can enable DSR and instantly you are GPU limited. Hence why modern Intel i5/i7s in overclocked states easily last 5+ years. The GPU is where it's at today.

So what was the reason for someone(well for a gamer) in the days of the i7 920 to spend $300 on it?Where there any games that could fully use it?
That person overspend by a huge amount.
Same thing today,there is no game that will use the i7 as more than an i5.

If you want to be playing GPU limited anyway then why not go with the I3 in the first place? It will give you good enough FPS.

The i7 920 is a todays celeron with 4 cores + hyper.

 

[bystander36]

So what was the reason for someone(well for a gamer) in the days of the i7 920 to spend $300 on it?Where there any games that could fully use it?
That person overspend by a huge amount.
Same thing today,there is no game that will use the i7 as more than an i5.

If you want to be playing GPU limited anyway then why not go with the I3 in the first place? It will give you good enough FPS.

The i7 920 is a todays celeron with 4 cores + hyper.

The i7 920 was $100 more than an i5. The i7, due to slow progress sense then, has paid for itself in full, as upgrades since than has been unnecessary. Had the same people got i3's, they'd most certainly would have had to buy another, and with new motherboard and RAM costs, they would have spent more money and still be stuck with an i3 or i5.

In my opinion, based on the last several years of CPU progress, it makes the most sense to spend your money on a solid CPU foundation for your system, and replace GPU's a few times as the years progress.

 

[ocre]

So what was the reason for someone(well for a gamer) in the days of the i7 920 to spend $300 on it?Where there any games that could fully use it?
That person overspend by a huge amount.
Same thing today,there is no game that will use the i7 as more than an i5.

If you want to be playing GPU limited anyway then why not go with the I3 in the first place? It will give you good enough FPS.

The i7 920 is a todays celeron with 4 cores + hyper.

you cannot be serious.

The pesky difference in price is nothing. I spend 100$ just taking my family out to eat. The price difference is nothing, we are talking about a chip that will be used every day for years and years.

I dont know how you can even be saying that when there were 1000$ dollar CPUs back then. The 920 was a budget chip compared to them.

There are people who are restricted to a very tight budget and we always recommend to them going with the option that best fits their budget. But most people building a PC, they have a budget in mind and the spend about what they planned. I couldnt imagine people thinking, " i got to make this CPU last at least 8 years cause i spent so much on it"