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i7 920 upgrade (or downgrade) to i5 4570

1

1hello

Junior Member
I have a dell 435mt which has a i7 920 stepping cpu. This computer does not have USB 3.0 nor SATA III.

From everyone's opinion what should I do?

Should I just upgrade the motherboard to a sabertooth x58 board that has the USB 3.0 and SATA 3

or should I go for a haswell i5 4570 (non k) and a new board (lower end).

My budget is about $300-350 bucks. .

I feel the current machine is bottle necked by the SATA II, as I have a SSD drive. I have a paid version of windows already, so that will not be a factor either.

Your opinion is greatly appreciated
 
while you will get higher benchmark scores with SATA III, I doubt you will notice a difference in real-life usage.

The only scenario were you might notice if you copy large files from one ssd to another one.

USB 3 is another story but I would not upgrade just because of that. you could get eSATA instead for external harddrives.
 
1hello said:
upgrade the motherboard to a sabertooth x58 board that has the USB 3.0 and SATA 3
Click to expand...

do not upgrade to this motherboard, it's a waste of money (I had this board about 2 years ago)! the SATA 6 ports are not intel chipset, so you end up with a subpar marvell sata 6 g chip that doesn't perform very well. For usb 3, you can always pick up a pci expansion card if you really need usb 3.
 
There's an ASUS USB3/SATA combo card. Nehalem platform has plenty of PCIe, so I would recommend that (ASUS U3S6), if you're happy with the computing throughput.

CPU-wise Haswell would be a nice upgrade, memory bandwidth should remain similar, only I/O-wise you lose some PCIe lanes (but gain PCIe3.0, so overall PCIe bandwidth will probably be rather similar)
 
Thanks for your help and input guys. I will look up that combo card rick. dmoney, i read that is the best x58 board, thats why i selected that.
 
1hello said:
Thanks for your help and input guys. I will look up that combo card rick. dmoney, i read that is the best x58 board, thats why i selected that.
Click to expand...

It is a great board no doubt, but hardly worth the investment just for SATA 6 / USB. I'd look for that add on card instead, or do a full fledged upgrade if you have the budget.

What kind of things do you use the PC for?
 
Nothing intensive just some gaming. My thoughts on sabertooth as well was to OC as my chip as it is a d0 stepping. I just feeling my machines still isnt that much faster even though I have a SSD. thanks.
 
_Rick_ said:
There's an ASUS USB3/SATA combo card. Nehalem platform has plenty of PCIe, so I would recommend that (ASUS U3S6), if you're happy with the computing throughput.

CPU-wise Haswell would be a nice upgrade, memory bandwidth should remain similar, only I/O-wise you lose some PCIe lanes (but gain PCIe3.0, so overall PCIe bandwidth will probably be rather similar)
Click to expand...

i think i may have read a review about that combo card, doesnt work properly if its used on a non asus mobo.

personally i prefer the gigabyte boards, might be able to find something decent on ebay with sata 3 support if thats the route you choose
 
I went from i920 to 3570K and while performance is better and that's great but the BIG difference was just how much easier it was to build a quiet system with IB. You will notice the same when moving to Haswell. My system is quiet, cool, and uses less power.
 
Would likely cost alot less to swap out the board and oc the cpu(assuming you havent) im still running sata 2 with a ssd and dont really think its bottlenecking too badly
 
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