i7 920 Bloomfield upgrade to i7 2600k question. Worth it for gaming?

[SHAQ]

I would wait and see as well unless you love upgrading and want the best performance on day 1. An OC'd 2500K/2600K will be faster than an OC'd 920 but only around 20% unless you get a great 2500K that can get close to 5.0 Ghz.

 

[BD231]

i7 920 to i7 2600K isn't upgrading within the same architecture, though.

Haha, if it wasn't the same CPU in a new package they wouldn't have called it the I7 again .

 

[exar333]

Haha, if it wasn't the same CPU in a new package they wouldn't have called it the I7 again .

So a SB-based 'Pentium' is the same as a first-gen 'Pentium' at 90hz?

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

stock 920 vs stock 2600k

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/47?vs=287

or if you want to compare an overclocked 920 to a stock 2600k, this should be fairly close

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/157?vs=287

OP is running his i7 920 at 3.4GHz. A similar OC would be a 2600K at 4GHz.
Also, the Core i7 970 is a Six-Core. That means it'd be faster in multi-threaded programs and slower in single-threaded, so not a good way to compare. My previous calculations were a bit off, so you should be seeing around 25% higher performance out of a 2600K at 4GHz in comparison to a 920 at 3.4GHz. Still doesn't change the overall picture, though. It's a waste of money.

 

[bryanW1995]

O'C your 920 to 4.0ghz and wait for S2011 if i were you.

This

 

[BD231]

So a SB-based 'Pentium' is the same as a first-gen 'Pentium' at 90hz?

Damn you!!

 

[Makaveli]

I agree with most here its a sidegrade don't bother.

I personally don't try to upgrade unless its a 50% improvement in performance.

So I did 4890 to 6950 and Opteron 170 to i7 920 which was a huge upgrade and far bigger than my 50% improvement minimum.

I would either wait for SB-E or even Ivy bridge.

I myself am thinking of going the 970 route and skipping SB-E all together and going straight to Ivy which will be a nice performance boost and quite the reduction in power. However i'm uncertain at this time that it will offer my 50% minimum.

 

[RussianSensation]

I would wait and see as well unless you love upgrading and want the best performance on day 1. An OC'd 2500K/2600K will be faster than an OC'd 920 but only around 20% unless you get a great 2500K that can get close to 5.0 Ghz.

SB = 1.15-1.20x IPC increase.

4.6ghz 2600k = 5.3ghz i7 920

5.3 / 4.0 = 32.5%

So the theoretical performance increase is > 20%, esp. for minimum framerates.

Granted, you prob. won't see this type of CPU increase in most games (perhaps SC2 and WOW which love fast cores) since you'll be GPU limited. Also, for most people it's probably not worth ditching a 4.0ghz i7 920 for a 2500k/2600k unless they can get a good deal on their used parts and then get SB parts at MicroCenter or something.

 

[pantsaregood]

I agree with most here its a sidegrade don't bother.

I personally don't try to upgrade unless its a 50% improvement in performance.

So I did 4890 to 6950 and Opteron 170 to i7 920 which was a huge upgrade and far bigger than my 50% improvement minimum.

I would either wait for SB-E or even Ivy bridge.

I myself am thinking of going the 970 route and skipping SB-E all together and going straight to Ivy which will be a nice performance boost and quite the reduction in power. However i'm uncertain at this time that it will offer my 50% minimum.

Can we please stop saying "wait for SB-E" and "wait for IB?"

Sandy Bridge-E is the LGA 2011 implementation of Sandy Bridge. The quad-core SB-E models will perform identically to the LGA 1155 parts in most cases. They will, in some synthetic benchmarks, see a bit of a performance boost from memory bandwidth. That's it.

Ivy Bridge is a die shrink. Northwood was a die shrink of Willamette. Cedar Mill was a die shrink of Prescott. Penryn was a die shrink of Conroe. Westmere was a die shrink of Nehalem.

Northwood's L2 cache was increased from Willamette. Penryn added SSE 4.1. Westmere added AES instructions.

Willamette to Northwood yielded big performance gains from its boosted clock speed and (eventually) doubled FSB. Conroe to Penryn resulted in a negligible performance boost. Nehalem to Westmere resulted in an equally small performance boost.

"But IB is a tick+"

Yes. The IGP is getting beefed up and the CPU should, as a whole, be a lot more energy efficient. That doesn't change the fact that, clock-for-clock, it will perform almost identically to Sandy Bridge.

Ivy Bridge will likely overclock better than Sandy Bridge. Waiting for an extra 500 MHz, however, seems a little ridiculous. Almost every 2500K/2600K will hit 4.5 GHz without being pushed very hard. An equivalent Ivy Bridge may hit 5.0 GHz, but (assuming linear clock scaling - rarely the case) that would only result in an 11% performance increase.

Ivy Bridge hitting 5.0 GHz on average is also a complete bullshit guess, honestly. Intel is more concerned with energy efficiency with this release. Modern CPUs are becoming increasingly sensitive to voltage increases. Just to make a complete "out of my ass" statement, I'd guess that most SBs can hit 5.0 GHz stable. No one attempts to push it (including me) because no one really knows what kind of voltage Intel's 32nm process can take. The 22nm process, for all we know, could be more fragile in regard to voltage.

Nehalem to Sandy Bridge is an upgrade, even if only slight.
Sandy Bridge to Ivy Bridge is purely a sidegrade.

Neither "upgrade" is worth it.

 

[Imouto]

All those 10/20/30% are facts and all games have a linear performance boost over CPU clocks. True story.

I wouldn't sidegrade/upgrade until BF3 is available. Once out I would check all pros and cons about spending 400$ for a given framerate increase.

 

[Makaveli]

Sandy Bridge-E is the LGA 2011 implementation of Sandy Bridge. The quad-core SB-E models will perform identically to the LGA 1155 parts in most cases. They will, in some synthetic benchmarks, see a bit of a performance boost from memory bandwidth. That's it.

How can you say this and be sure you are correct?

Ivy Bridge will likely overclock better than Sandy Bridge. Waiting for an extra 500 MHz, however, seems a little ridiculous. Almost every 2500K/2600K will hit 4.5 GHz without being pushed very hard. An equivalent Ivy Bridge may hit 5.0 GHz, but (assuming linear clock scaling - rarely the case) that would only result in an 11% performance increase.

I agree with you that 500mhz isn't a huge increase.

However my upgrading cycle is different now than in the past. I prefer to built a machine and get a minimum of 3 years out of it before I look to upgrade. And since I built my machine around oct 2009 I won't be looking at anything until fall of 2012 so whatever is out at that time I will consider it. That may be a 2nd generation BD chip it may be Ivy bridge whatever.

I will indeed be "waiting" for IB or BD2 cause SB-E will be out before i'm ready to upgrade and when I am ready IB should be on the market and hence my reason for waiting. And never really had any interested in SB as its a midrange platform, same reason I didn't bother looking at lynnfield.

The only reason I would switch to SB would be for the reduced power consumption it wouldn't be for performance. Its not great enough for me to dump my current setup.

 

[rgallant]

I have a 920 and won't upgrade until a real life boost can be felt in a good game like bf3 and only after the gpu's are maxed.
-you can show me benches all day showing a [920 @ 4.2] =80fps ,[ sb @ 4.8]=92 fps and I would lol.
-now if with my 580 sli , benches showed bf3 [1920x1200] 920 = max. 45fps- min. 25 fps and sb = 60+ max.- 45 min.you might get my money , but a very unlikely to happen this year or to mid. 2012.

 

[exar333]

Can we please stop saying "wait for SB-E" and "wait for IB?"

Sandy Bridge-E is the LGA 2011 implementation of Sandy Bridge. The quad-core SB-E models will perform identically to the LGA 1155 parts in most cases. They will, in some synthetic benchmarks, see a bit of a performance boost from memory bandwidth. That's it.

Ivy Bridge is a die shrink. Northwood was a die shrink of Willamette. Cedar Mill was a die shrink of Prescott. Penryn was a die shrink of Conroe. Westmere was a die shrink of Nehalem.

Northwood's L2 cache was increased from Willamette. Penryn added SSE 4.1. Westmere added AES instructions.

Willamette to Northwood yielded big performance gains from its boosted clock speed and (eventually) doubled FSB. Conroe to Penryn resulted in a negligible performance boost. Nehalem to Westmere resulted in an equally small performance boost.

"But IB is a tick+"

Yes. The IGP is getting beefed up and the CPU should, as a whole, be a lot more energy efficient. That doesn't change the fact that, clock-for-clock, it will perform almost identically to Sandy Bridge.

Ivy Bridge will likely overclock better than Sandy Bridge. Waiting for an extra 500 MHz, however, seems a little ridiculous. Almost every 2500K/2600K will hit 4.5 GHz without being pushed very hard. An equivalent Ivy Bridge may hit 5.0 GHz, but (assuming linear clock scaling - rarely the case) that would only result in an 11% performance increase.

Ivy Bridge hitting 5.0 GHz on average is also a complete bullshit guess, honestly. Intel is more concerned with energy efficiency with this release. Modern CPUs are becoming increasingly sensitive to voltage increases. Just to make a complete "out of my ass" statement, I'd guess that most SBs can hit 5.0 GHz stable. No one attempts to push it (including me) because no one really knows what kind of voltage Intel's 32nm process can take. The 22nm process, for all we know, could be more fragile in regard to voltage.

Nehalem to Sandy Bridge is an upgrade, even if only slight.
Sandy Bridge to Ivy Bridge is purely a sidegrade.

Neither "upgrade" is worth it.

You are somewhat mis-informed. IB may be a die-shrink, but Intel has been very vocal stating the power consumption will be 1/2. Yes, 1/2. IB brings some interesting new technologies outside of the 22nm process, and is more than just a shrink.

Unless Intel really misses the mark, 5.0ghz+ for IB should be very attainable, especially for quads. Obviously this is not known yet, but I would imagine we will start seeing some early observations pretty quickly.

Edit: Please also show me the 'comparable' 1155 model to the upcoming 6-core SB-E CPU. That's right, you cannot.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

How can you say this and be sure you are correct?

Because Sandy Bridge-E uses the Sandy Bridge architecture and Sandy Bridge is not cache starved or limited by its memory bandwidth. Quite the contrary, actually. Don't expect more than a 2% increase going from a Core i7-2600 to a Core i7-3820 at the same clock speeds in real-world applications.

You are somewhat mis-informed. IB may be a die-shrink, but Intel has been very vocal stating the power consumption will be 1/2. Yes, 1/2. IB brings some interesting new technologies outside of the 22nm process, and is more than just a shrink.

Unless Intel really misses the mark, 5.0ghz+ for IB should be very attainable, especially for quads. Obviously this is not known yet, but I would imagine we will start seeing some early observations pretty quickly.

Edit: Please also show me the 'comparable' 1155 model to the upcoming 6-core SB-E CPU. That's right, you cannot.

He was talking about performance, not power consumption.
Also, you missed the part where he said the Quad-Core implementation of SB-E won't offer any meaningful performance differences to the Quad-Core/HT implementation of SB, which is true. He never talked about an SB CPU comparable to an SB-E Six-Core CPU.

 

[Anubis]

keep your 920, OC it a bit and just get a 2nd video card, or 2 new ones and do SLI or Xfire

that will give you a larger gaming boost then going to a SB chip

TBH unless s2011 is flat out off the charts ill prob keep my 920 chugging along at 4GHZ for a few more years and just toss more GFX cards in my system if needed

 

[tweakboy]

It's an upgrade, but a very minor one at that. Since it looks like you do mild over-clocks on your CPUs, a 2600K at 4GHz would give you a boost of around 10% in gaming. So, in a nutshell: no, it's definitely not worth it. Your CPU shouldn't produce any bottlenecks, so go for the GTX 580 and forget the 2600K. As for the RAM, leave it as-is. The most you're gonna get in performance in gaming using DDR3 1600-1866MHz instead of 1333MHz is around 2%.

Also, just so you know: there's no difference in gaming between the 2500K and 2600K.

I totally agree with this. You will not see a ounce of difference. Get the video card the CPU is not a bottleneck. If it was, then we would tell you to get a 2500 or 2600. Thanks, gg

 

[kami]

Wait for SB-E. I have to keep fighting off the upgrade bug as well since my rig was first built nearly 3 years ago and it just feels wrong not upgrading for that long, but yeah I would regret spending the money when in 3-6 months SB-E comes out. Truth be told SB-E might not even be the massive upgrade I was looking for (compared to going from a core 2 duo to the i7), but I won't be able to last any longer

 

[mb]

Funny, I am actually going from a 920 to a 2600k. Should get my order from newegg tomorrow.

My mobo was crapping out on me, and I figured I might as well go with a 1155 board. I also got 16GB of DDR3 and two 2GB 6950s :awe: I've got the money to burn so I figured why not.

Plus I've already got an SSD and my 920 was never a good overclocker.

I got everything up and running this evening after a snafu with crossfire. This setup is so nice.
Before and after:
Asus P6T Deluxe ---> Asrock z68 professional gen3
920 @ 3.3GHz at 45C idle -----> 2600k @ 4.6Ghz at 25C idle. Might try pushing it harder still. I never understood why my 920 temps were so high.
6GB DDR3 ---> 16GB DDR3
SLI'd GTX 460s ----> Crossfired 6950s
Onboard sound -----> Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium PCI Express Sound Card


This thing plays solitaire so fast. You should see those cards fly when I win! :biggrin:


Sure something better may be right around the corner but I am happy with it. I'm doing my part in stimulating the economy :hmm:

 

[Grooveriding]

Video card all the way. SB will not bring the same gains you would see from adding say, a second 5870. Not even close.

 

[hamunaptra]

Im going from a 920 @ 3ghz 1v to a i3 550 ... LOL! mainly for mining =P and power conservation. Wanna see if I can get the i3 to 4ghz w/ decent voltage and establish same or lower power envelope yet gain a bit of per core performance. It will get rid of the bigass motherboard and all my RAM at least too...

 

[aigomorla]

mmmm

920 vs a 2600k?

Ummm... save money on not getting the 2600K

Use saved money to get Uber GPU's.... or Scale a second to the current gpu u have.
^ Uber Win on ANY Game vs you going 920 -> 2600K