i7 920 vs i7 860 Gaming/OC which one is best?

[Zer0Cool98]

Hello everyone,

Just yesterday I thought I was ready to get my my i7 with X58 mobo, today im not sure anymore... My goal was to go for 4.0Ghz+ OC and from what I seen i7 920 does a good job. does anyone know how much better will the 860 OC to?

I know that 920 will cost me a bit more, but if it can out perform the 860 I don't mind. I know that both chips are using new sockets, does anyone know if one socket is more "future proof then the other" What socket will the new i8/i9 use? This question is really important to me as I would like to have the ability to upgrade my CPU with ought having to spend money on a new mobo again...

I would like to place my order by the end of the week. Alll your help is truly appreciated.

Thank you

 

[lvknguyen]

I am in the same boat. I've been thinking about getting the i7 920 for about $200 plus tax, plus another $300 for an X58 mobo and 6 Gb of DDR3 memory. Now I wonder if I should wait another month for prices on the new 860 and p55 mobo to drop a little bit.

 

[RussianSensation]

Zer0Cool98, your graphics card will now be 2 generations old. If you are using your rig for gaming, just overclock the Q9450 and forget about Core i7s. A 5850 or even a 4890/GTX 275 will increase your frames substantially. Considering you are running a 24 inch monitor, the videocard is the biggest bottleneck for you.

 

[Shmee]

afaik, ALL the 1156 chips OC worse than the bloomsfields(i7 D0's.) However, I would agree with russian, upgrade the video card first. If you still have money you can upgrade to a 920, or simply get a Q9550 E0, and OC it.

 

[SonnyDaze]

Originally posted by: RussianSensation
Zer0Cool98, your graphics card will now be 2 generations old. If you are using your rig for gaming, just overclock the Q9450 and forget about Core i7s. A 5850 or even a 4890/GTX 275 will increase your frames substantially. Considering you are running a 24 inch monitor, the videocard is the biggest bottleneck for you.

Agreed. I have a Q9400 @ 3.4 and just went from a 4830 to a 4890. FPS didn't increase dramatically but noticeable improvement in smoothness in games. I do a good bit of FSX sim so this helped. This is on a 23" @ 1920x1080.

I too had considered bailing out of 775 now. I had an offer for my mobo and cpu which would give me the $$ (plus a little extra) to go into an AM3/i5. I think I'm going to hold off and see where the i5/i7 goes.

 

[Jayzbent]

I am in the same boat I have a guy by me who has a i7 920 and a EVGA Classified x58 mobo for sale for a good price. He may be willing to trade some stuff I have for it but I am sorta on the fence as if I should pick it up or not. He wants $200 for the cpu and $350 for the board.

I am actually more interested in the CPU since I don't have a Microcenters around me (nearest being Kansas City and thats 4 hrs away). But there is one opening in Nov. by me. Also the USB3.0 thing and Sata 3 have got me weary of buying his mobo since thats suppose to be coming out soon too.

So question is do I hold off till Nov? Do you think the deals will be just as good then? The only thing is I do play a lot of games and I do get some hanging in Crysis warhead and Empires and it does bug me but I don't want to buy a GPU till the new lines come out.

 

[Mattdoommaster]

Originally posted by: Jayzbent
I am in the same boat I have a guy by me who has a i7 920 and a EVGA Classified x58 mobo for sale for a good price. He may be willing to trade some stuff I have for it but I am sorta on the fence as if I should pick it up or not. He wants $200 for the cpu and $350 for the board.

I am actually more interested in the CPU since I don't have a Microcenters around me (nearest being Kansas City and thats 4 hrs away). But there is one opening in Nov. by me. Also the USB3.0 thing and Sata 3 have got me weary of buying his mobo since thats suppose to be coming out soon too.

So question is do I hold off till Nov? Do you think the deals will be just as good then? The only thing is I do play a lot of games and I do get some hanging in Crysis warhead and Empires and it does bug me but I don't want to buy a GPU till the new lines come out.

I think reviews have been pretty clear that the Core i5 is better than the Core i7 920 for gaming. Unless he is giving you that Core i7 920 and mobo for a crazy low price I'd skip it and go for the Core i5.

 

[RussianSensation]

Jayzbent there is no need for the Classified $350 board unless you are into extreme overclocking. You can get the core i7 860 + $120 board + $200 graphics card for almost the same price (or a $280 920 + $175 board and put the rest into video).

Over the last 2-3 years with the likes of Gigabyte 965/P35/P45 DS3L style boards for $100, the major differential between top boards is now primarily feature set. With a multiplier of 21x, a BLCK of 190 will already get you to 4.0ghz. Almost any board will do 190 base clock from an $80 board to a $250 board. Even for $150 you can get an awesome Asus or a Gigabyte board with CF/SLI support on 1156.

 

[Ben90]

Originally posted by: Mattdoommaster

Originally posted by: Jayzbent
I am in the same boat I have a guy by me who has a i7 920 and a EVGA Classified x58 mobo for sale for a good price. He may be willing to trade some stuff I have for it but I am sorta on the fence as if I should pick it up or not. He wants $200 for the cpu and $350 for the board.

I am actually more interested in the CPU since I don't have a Microcenters around me (nearest being Kansas City and thats 4 hrs away). But there is one opening in Nov. by me. Also the USB3.0 thing and Sata 3 have got me weary of buying his mobo since thats suppose to be coming out soon too.

So question is do I hold off till Nov? Do you think the deals will be just as good then? The only thing is I do play a lot of games and I do get some hanging in Crysis warhead and Empires and it does bug me but I don't want to buy a GPU till the new lines come out.

I think reviews have been pretty clear that the Core i5 is better than the Core i7 920 for gaming. Unless he is giving you that Core i7 920 and mobo for a crazy low price I'd skip it and go for the Core i5.

most (all) reviews ive seen the 860 only beats out a 920 due to aggressive turbo modes; since OP is overclocking it pretty much takes that advantage away from the 860

The pci-e controller on package does basically nothing (except limit OC), i believe it is intel making a step to having a gpu integrated into package as well... they are just taking tiny steps and making sure everything is working one step at a time.

The 920's memory controller is even faster at dual channel then the 860's is, granted 1333+ isnt supported on 920's, but i dont think any chip has a problem with less than 1600

 

[Makaveli]

"The 920's memory controller is even faster at dual channel then the 860's is"

Now I haven't built an I7 system yet. But doesn't it require 3 memory slots to be filled at miminum. Any thing less would that prevent the system from booting?

So how does one get the triple channel boards in the first Gen I7 to work in dual channel mode care to explain?

Secondly I think the PCI E controller was put on die to also make the system boards cheaper, and its yet to be seen what other benefits it will provide. It might not do anything performance wise from the current test we see. But saying it basically does nothing sounds kinda far fetched to me.

I'm still running a S939 Opteron and will finally be upgrading this fall. So it looks like a i860 is in my future. After pricing the two options out I can get both processors for around $320 canadian. However the 1366 boards are way more expensive than the 1156 and memory just alittle bit more. I won't be using Xfire or SLI never really care for the heat and it only working half the time a single GPU to me is always the best solution!

I'm aware of the so called upgrade path that you get with 1366 but by the time I can actually benefit from a 6core cpu or more I will want to replace the 1366 board anyway for PCI 3.0 and Sata 3 so I don't really see that as an issue at all.

The price and lower power usage and excellent performance of lynnfield is what has me sold. Funny thing is I was this close to going 955BE and now looks like I will be joining the dark side

 

[Shmee]

no, Afaik, the i7 920 can run with only one memory module. It does not need three, or six, but needs at least one.

And 1333+ may not be officially supported by intel, but it will work with a good board and some tweaking.

 

[Ben90]

Originally posted by: Makaveli
"Secondly I think the PCI E controller was put on die to also make the system boards cheaper, and its yet to be seen what other benefits it will provide. It might not do anything performance wise from the current test we see. But saying it basically does nothing sounds kinda far fetched to me.

Well there was all this hype about the pci-e controller being on package lowering latency and stuff like that; but it really didnt turn out to any performance benefits... maybe it lowers power consumption by like a watt, but not much other than that.


Basically for me it would come down to how heavily you want to overclock. If you really like to push things to the absolute limit with stuff like ram sub-timings and stuff i would go 1336, if you like to overclock but don't want to spend hours tweaking every setting; its kinda a tossup (leaning more to the 1336). If you don't want to OC 1156 wins absolutely hands down

 

[Mrbarton]

I have a question.

I am running an intel E6850 at 3.6Gig (3599 but hey) with 8 gigs ram and a 9800gtx+.


Will going to a core i7/i5 with 4 cores be a big jump in gaming performance? Or should I wait and see if early 2010 has 6 core westmere. I think its westmere.

 

[Ben90]

Honestly most of this upgrade stuff depends on how much money you have in your pocket; and how important different things are to you:

Is there anything where you find your performance lacking?
Ive been playing CS:S semi-competitively for years on an overclocked x2 6000+ and a 7800gtx i averaged 100+, with 80 being the absolute minimum i ever saw... I used every single command possible to gain any performance advantage because it didnt matter how pretty the game looked, as long as it ran smooth as possible (-dxlevel 81, lowest models, cl_minmodels 1, no AA, no physics props, ect ect) I still wasnt happy with that and was going to wait for gulftown, but i gave in early and got a i7/4890 system.

Ask pretty much anyone on the forum if i shoulda upgraded JUST to play CSS and they would have said no, i could have maxed the game out with 4xAA and all the extra commands that the source engine has to go above and beyond high settings at 60+ at all times... But to me im glad i upgraded because to me it is worth it

So you gotta look at the benchmarks yourself and ask yourself if you want another 20 fps in crysis, or an extra 50 in something else to see if its worth it to you (maybe you hate the minimum framerates on crysis or something)

cmon man though, u gotta up the fsb 1 to get a true 3.6ghz

As for me, im keeping my overclocked 4890 @ 2xAA because i saw it dip to 115fps once scoping up de_inferno using 4xAA