Gulftown Expense Justification?

[hennessy1]

In your opinion is there any justification to purchase the 6core cpu to replace the I7-975? It didn't look like there was enough of a performance increase to do that. I am just looking for your opinions on it?

 

[Markfw]

Depends. If you can really use it, and have limited space, it better than a quad and a dual.

Spendy ? Yes, but no more than the previous extreme CPU's.

 

[LoneNinja]

There is more justification to that purchase, than there was getting the 975 over the 920 in my opinion.

 

[RussianSensation]

In your opinion is there any justification to purchase the 6core cpu to replace the I7-975? It didn't look like there was enough of a performance increase to do that. I am just looking for your opinions on it?

If the time you save from the 6-core processor is significant or it helps you make more $$$ faster, then yes . Otherwise, I'd rather get an SSD! The SSD Core i7 975 will be miles ahead compared to a mechanical drive + 980X. That's what I am saving for next hehe

 

[Hyperlite]

If the time you save from the 6-core processor is significant or it helps you make more $$$ faster, then yes . Otherwise, I'd rather get an SSD! The SSD Core i7 975 will be miles ahead compared to a mechanical drive + 980X. That's what I am saving for next hehe

yeah that's probably true 90% of the time.

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

Wouldn't a 32nm quad core i7 be much more useful than the 6 core? It would most likely clock to the moon and programs could actually use all the cores.

 

[formulav8]

I personally Never see a cpu higher than $400-$500 a good deal. I am a cheapo.

A cpu more than a $1k is just nutty imo. Of course its just an opinion. I'm sure someone with to much money will buy them.

I'm sure Intel will follow AMD and offer lower-cost Hexa core cpu's under the $500 price in the near future. I would highly recommend anyone to wait and see what Intel's response will be to AMD's new cpu's, if Intel responds that is.


Jason

 

[aigomorla]

If the time you save from the 6-core processor is significant or it helps you make more $$$ faster, then yes . Otherwise, I'd rather get an SSD! The SSD Core i7 975 will be miles ahead compared to a mechanical drive + 980X. That's what I am saving for next hehe

im still in debate on that.

id rather run raptors disks in raid 0 then have an SSD.

You almost see 0 gaming performance. And i bet you the raptors will have a longer MTBF time then the SSD's will.

But then again im a gamer.

Also the only time an SSD system beats me is at windows loadup and its not by much.

A few seconds... however i have 3x the storage they do at the same price.


OP, a 980X is never worth it.
980X like all EE Chips is something u want, never need.

If you need a 980X, then you should be getting a X5650 x 2 on a 5520 chipset, and bling out 24t.

Wouldn't a 32nm quad core i7 be much more useful than the 6 core? It would most likely clock to the moon and programs could actually use all the cores.

vs a 975?
Not an upgrade... a side grade...
Tell me how your gonna get a noticable improvement in just having a larger cache?

True the 32nm scale better, but they are also a ton more fragile.
The 975 is an awesome chip, in fact its the longest i7 i had in shelf life only to be replaced by two gulftowns.

 

[hennessy1]

Yeah I think I am going to take your ideas and see what intel comes out with besides that cpu. I am interested in the 6 cores as it will help me out but I don't know if it will help out in a 1K difference. Not to change the thread considering the subject it's in but would an increase in ram be a better route to go? I basically do alot of VM's audio and video encoding and decoding. I do play a few recent gaming titles as well.

 

[aigomorla]

grab a gainestown system then bro.

Do you really need the overclocked speed over more cores?

 

[solofly]

I thought about 980X myself but for me it's too close for Sandy Bridge and 68X chipset...

Do I have the money to do it, yes but in the end I know I would be kicking myself...(for stupidity that is)

 

[mv2devnull]

If you need a 980X, then you should be getting a X5650 x 2 on a 5520 chipset, and bling out 24t.

Or at least a W3680. Same stock price as 980X, but apparently better memory controller.

Or why not go right to a quad of octacore Xeon X7560's? $3700 per CPU ...


No, unless one really really needs that parallel raw power, there is no reason to consider the beasts.

 

[hennessy1]

I currently have a evga x58 mobo. I don't want to get rid of that one to change it to a server one. It looks like I'll be staying on the 975x then. I just wasn't sure if the 980x would provide a noticeable increase in performance for what I currently use my rig for.

 

[Rubycon]

Rolling under the deck laughing...

Have you used even a single SSD?

Does not sound like you have. All I can say is damn! There! You got me cursing!

I was put off and not so much an early adopter to SSD with the controller issues (Jmicron anyone?) and seemingly finite life...

Now that has passed all I can say is if you do SSD right there is no going back. No you don't need a fancy $3000 RAID controller (but it's required if you have special requirements with large numbers of disks, etc.). I have a system with a single Intel X25M G2 160GB and it puts any raid array to shame whether made up with raptors or 15K SAS disks.

I have systems running with single velociraptors and Raptor-Xs (the silly window ones) and frankly those drives are steaming piles of rattling monkey beans compared to a single X25M. The two systems side by side is like an old Zeos 486DX vs. a Dell Vostro 220s with a Conroe! There is no comparison. None, nada, zip. Does not matter if you game or not. With a high performance system (especially with 6 cores!) you are doing your CPU a big dis-service by having those slow drives hitched to it. It's like taking 10 slow pills before you start your work day. Speaking of work day at the end of the day I cannot see how someone can afford NOT to have an SSD in a top of the line system! It makes no sense whatsoever.

MTBF? Not a problem either. The drive will outlast several generations of sockets/chipsets and of course SSDs will improve too.

As far as 32nm being fragile I don't see them being any more fragile than Nehalem 45nm parts. You lost an ES chip which were high leakage parts. Enthusiasts loved them because you could goose the voltage while filling your LN2 pots and crash through 6+ GHz like a Ginsu that's been sitting out in the Caribbean sun - slices through butter.

The retail parts are solid. Of course (as with other chips of the past) they certainly WILL die if you get silly with vcore/vtt. That's a mathematical certainty.

im still in debate on that.

id rather run raptors disks in raid 0 then have an SSD.

You almost see 0 gaming performance. And i bet you the raptors will have a longer MTBF time then the SSD's will.

But then again im a gamer.

Also the only time an SSD system beats me is at windows loadup and its not by much.

A few seconds... however i have 3x the storage they do at the same price.


OP, a 980X is never worth it.
980X like all EE Chips is something u want, never need.

If you need a 980X, then you should be getting a X5650 x 2 on a 5520 chipset, and bling out 24t.



vs a 975?
Not an upgrade... a side grade...
Tell me how your gonna get a noticable improvement in just having a larger cache?

True the 32nm scale better, but they are also a ton more fragile.
The 975 is an awesome chip, in fact its the longest i7 i had in shelf life only to be replaced by two gulftowns.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Rolling under the deck laughing...

Have you used even a single SSD?

Does not sound like you have. All I can say is damn! There! You got me cursing!

I was put off and not so much an early adopter to SSD with the controller issues (Jmicron anyone?) and seemingly finite life...

Now that has passed all I can say is if you do SSD right there is no going back. No you don't need a fancy $3000 RAID controller (but it's required if you have special requirements with large numbers of disks, etc.). I have a system with a single Intel X25M G2 160GB and it puts any raid array to shame whether made up with raptors or 15K SAS disks.

I have systems running with single velociraptors and Raptor-Xs (the silly window ones) and frankly those drives are steaming piles of rattling monkey beans compared to a single X25M. The two systems side by side is like an old Zeos 486DX vs. a Dell Vostro 220s with a Conroe! There is no comparison. None, nada, zip. Does not matter if you game or not. With a high performance system (especially with 6 cores!) you are doing your CPU a big dis-service by having those slow drives hitched to it. It's like taking 10 slow pills before you start your work day. Speaking of work day at the end of the day I cannot see how someone can afford NOT to have an SSD in a top of the line system! It makes no sense whatsoever.

MTBF? Not a problem either. The drive will outlast several generations of sockets/chipsets and of course SSDs will improve too.

As far as 32nm being fragile I don't see them being any more fragile than Nehalem 45nm parts. You lost an ES chip which were high leakage parts. Enthusiasts loved them because you could goose the voltage while filling your LN2 pots and crash through 6+ GHz like a Ginsu that's been sitting out in the Caribbean sun - slices through butter.

The retail parts are solid. Of course (as with other chips of the past) they certainly WILL die if you get silly with vcore/vtt. That's a mathematical certainty.

Thank you very much for ranting that so I didn't have to. To even consider a Gulftown without an SSD is shocking.

I see SSDs like the jump to Dual-Cores, to gigahertz CPUs, or real GPUs with T&L.

Everything before it just pales in comparison, and the only people who don't agree are those who haven't made the jump....

 

[Markfw]

Thank you very much for ranting that so I didn't have to. To even consider a Gulftown without an SSD is shocking.

I see SSDs like the jump to Dual-Cores, to gigahertz CPUs, or real GPUs with T&L.

Everything before it just pales in comparison, and the only people who don't agree are those who haven't made the jump....

I haven't made the jump. And for several very valid reasons.

1) The SSD is even today MUCH less dependable than a good quality HD, I have heard so many stories. And I do NOT like re-installing 20-30 games, programs, settings, and such. It takes weeks. The benefit is mostly boot times. I leave my computers on 24/7, so I never see that. Everything else is so fast, who cares.
2) Cost. enough said on this point.

 

[poofyhairguy]

I haven't made the jump. And for several very valid reasons.

1) The SSD is even today MUCH less dependable than a good quality HD, I have heard so many stories. And I do NOT like re-installing 20-30 games, programs, settings, and such. It takes weeks. The benefit is mostly boot times. I leave my computers on 24/7, so I never see that. Everything else is so fast, who cares.
2) Cost. enough said on this point.

I don't know if I agree on the less dependable point. I have only had mine for a while, and so far so good with many different partition types (ext4, ntfs, hfs+, xfs).

I disagree with the "HDs are fast enough" reason. SSDs make even basic things like web browsing faster than with HDs- it really is a total performance boost because the I/O is such a bottleneck on HD based system. I mean, that is why SSDs got invented/sold!

But in the end your cost reason trumps all. The price per GB is amazingly high today. But so is a price of any of the Intel Extreme CPUs to me.......

 

[Toadster]

to me - an SSD is a GREAT upgrade for ANY computer with a SATA port... yes, even SATA-I can benefit from it...

as for cores/threads - if you can use them - DO IT! some of the multi-threaded testing shows great improvement... and in today's mindset where nobody likes to wait for results - any amount of time savings is priceless!

I remember when the Core 2 CPU's came out we tested a P4 vs Core 2 Duo and the difference on a video compilation was 4.5 hours as compared to 1 hour... it gets even better now!

Sure we may not see 4X improvements like the P4 test, but scaling your output is much easier to do now...

 

[Rubycon]

I haven't made the jump. And for several very valid reasons.

1) The SSD is even today MUCH less dependable than a good quality HD, I have heard so many stories. And I do NOT like re-installing 20-30 games, programs, settings, and such. It takes weeks. The benefit is mostly boot times. I leave my computers on 24/7, so I never see that. Everything else is so fast, who cares.
2) Cost. enough said on this point.

Reliability is less? That's just a farce. There's a lot of PEBKAC killing drives. Let me tell you if I cannot kill one that is saying a lot and I mean a lot!

Stories - let me tell you how that works. If a million people have something and 990,000 of them work without issue and the other 10,000 fail the 10,000 that fail WILL complain. It will appear that it's a POS because well that's a lot of stories, right? Most folks that are working aren't squawking. That works with just about anything...

If you do nothing but leave them on 24/7 and download workers then sure no benefit.

Whether you use mechanical drives or not you should ALWAYS have a disc image policy in place. No more taking days [sic] to get your ducks in order.

I've always had the need for extremely high IOPS. In the past this was done with dozens - sometimes 100s of 15K drives. Noise and heat, etc. And failures.

Today a box with 20 SSD can do the work of a room full of loud mechanical drives.

They are definitely a boon for portable users - longer battery life, faster and durable.

Oh and speaking of durable!!! These things will take a beating that NO other mechanical drive can! Including being completely submersed in sea water for over 24 hours!

 

[ElFenix]

SSD is so awesome. i double click the lightroom icon and it's open. so sweet.

now i need a gig-e switch.

 

[Markfw]

Reliability is less? That's just a farce. There's a lot of PEBKAC killing drives. Let me tell you if I cannot kill one that is saying a lot and I mean a lot!

Stories - let me tell you how that works. If a million people have something and 990,000 of them work without issue and the other 10,000 fail the 10,000 that fail WILL complain. It will appear that it's a POS because well that's a lot of stories, right? Most folks that are working aren't squawking. That works with just about anything...

If you do nothing but leave them on 24/7 and download workers then sure no benefit.

Whether you use mechanical drives or not you should ALWAYS have a disc image policy in place. No more taking days [sic] to get your ducks in order.

I've always had the need for extremely high IOPS. In the past this was done with dozens - sometimes 100s of 15K drives. Noise and heat, etc. And failures.

Today a box with 20 SSD can do the work of a room full of loud mechanical drives.

They are definitely a boon for portable users - longer battery life, faster and durable.

Oh and speaking of durable!!! These things will take a beating that NO other mechanical drive can! Including being completely submersed in sea water for over 24 hours!

OK, The last time I bought that argument, I got a X2 550 to unlock.... It didn't. It's not even turned on, I bought it just to prove a point.

OK, so now I have to get an SSD to prove a point.

Recommendations ? (lets not derail this thread, just one reply maybe)

 

[Rubycon]

What OS and what size are you looking for?

For Win7 I'd recommend the Intel X25G2.

 

[n7]

I don't know how you managed to justify purchasing an i7 965 in the first place, but having six cores vs. four certainly could make sense if you are running software that utilizes them.

AT review covers that pretty well here.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2960

As for SSDs, thanx Rubycon, for saying what needs to be said.

To me, including for games, SSDs are easily the most important part in a high end rig these days.

It's baffling hearing people argue against them, as quite frankly, you'd have to be a ridiculously simple/basic user to not appreciate the amazing difference even a cheaper Indilinx SSD makes.

And even simply doing things like installing a program or launching your web browser or iTunes, things the most basic users do, i don't see how one cannot notice the improvement & marvel.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Recommendations ? (lets not derail this thread, just one reply maybe)

I think even my "cheap" 30GB OCZ that I got for my HTPC rocks!

 

[Markfw]

I don't know how you managed to justify purchasing an i7 965 in the first place, but having six cores vs. four certainly could make sense if you are running software that utilizes them.

AT review covers that pretty well here.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2960

As for SSDs, thanx Rubycon, for saying what needs to be said.

To me, including for games, SSDs are easily the most important part in a high end rig these days.

It's baffling hearing people argue against them, as quite frankly, you'd have to be a ridiculously simple/basic user to not appreciate the amazing difference even a cheaper Indilinx SSD makes.

And even simply doing things like installing a program or launching your web browser or iTunes, things the most basic users do, i don't see how one cannot notice the improvement & marvel.

In the first place, thanks for insulting me. Second, I can't use less than a 160 gig ssd, as that's my boot drive, unless I want to re-install Xp, and win7 and 30 or more apps, including all settings.

Not to mention the partitioning, and the cost for no benefit (for me)

Did anyone read my post ?