Is it wise to upgrade to i7 now?

[classy]

yeah but the i7 is the better cpu for high end gpu setups now and going forward. your X6 is going to show its weaknesses with more gpu power. in other words next year when when people are running 6870 cards your cpus architecture would clearly limit the potential of that much gpu power compared of the i7. Thuban is based off old architecture and just doesnt scale as well as even the i5 750 when pushing tons of gpu power.

You get no argument from me. But there is no going forward, thats the problem. If Bulldozer is released in AM3 which is highly probable, it will more than likely smoke an I7. Of course this is all speculation. But in encoding the X6 is as good as an I7. And as games continue to utilize more cores, I think I'll gamble and say two extra physical cores will beat hyper-t. And video crads continue to evolve and depend less on the cpu. Like I said there is no argument against an I7, but will I or anyone truly see a difference, the answer is no in 90% of the cases. The power of the I7 is top-notch, but is it worth paying for. Thats the question. For me it was no.

 

[toyota]

You get no argument from me. But there is no going forward, thats the problem. If Bulldozer is released in AM3 which is highly probable, it will more than likely smoke an I7. Of course this is all speculation. But in encoding the X6 is as good as an I7. And as games continue to utilize more cores, I think I'll gamble and say two extra physical cores will beat hyper-t. And video crads continue to evolve and depend less on the cpu. Like I said there is no argument against an I7, but will I or anyone truly see a difference, the answer is no in 90% of the cases. The power of the I7 is top-notch, but is it worth paying for. Thats the question. For me it was no.

well games will utilize the better architecture of the i5/i7 before the extra 2 cores of the X6 ever matter in the foreseeable future. for example RE5 uses 6 cores but is still faster on the i5 750. also by the time we get games that can actually fully push 6 cores the X6 will be practically irrelevant.

 

[classy]

well games will utilize the better architecture of the i5/i7 before the extra 2 cores of the X6 ever matter in the foreseeable future. for example RE5 uses 6 cores but is still faster on the i5 750. also by the time we get games that can actually fully push 6 cores the X6 will be practically irrelevant.

You are still arguing the same thing. The reality is, with the same video card in either a AMD X6 or even a I7 975, at a true gaming resolution you won't notice any difference. Now if you want play at 800x600 you still won't notice a difference. You'll only know a difference through benching. A lot of people like yourself argue purely on benchmarks and not actual usage. All the modern cpus provide comparable minimum framerates so your gaming experience won't be changed no matter what cpu is in the box. And if I look at your argument using irrelevancy, then I should always build the cheapest box. Because I don't build to bench a computer, I build to use a computer. Big difference. Anyone who says they see a difference without a framerate counter is telling a bleeping lie. Now when it comes to productivity apps thats a different story.

And if he wants to spend the extra couple bills for an I7, he can't wrong either. But all this jazz that he will have an experience above and beyond a comparable AMD system is just not true by a long shot. Only in a slim number of circumstances will there be a tangible difference.

 

[toyota]

You are still arguing the same thing. The reality is, with the same video card in either a AMD X6 or even a I7 975, at a true gaming resolution you won't notice any difference. Now if you want play at 800x600 you still won't notice a difference. You'll only know a difference through benching. A lot of people like yourself argue purely on benchmarks and not actual usage. All the modern cpus provide comparable minimum framerates so your gaming experience won't be changed no matter what cpu is in the box. And if I look at your argument using irrelevancy, then I should always build the cheapest box. Because I don't build to bench a computer, I build to use a computer. Big difference. Anyone who says they see a difference without a framerate counter is telling a bleeping lie. Now when it comes to productivity apps thats a different story.

no I am saying that with moderate cards there will be no difference but with a high end gpu setup there will. if someone wants to get a gtx480 or even two then they are much better off with an i5/i7 quad. that doesnt mean the X6 wont be perfectly playable but if I am spending top dollar on gpus then I dont want my cpu to be the limitation of them.


"Lo and behold, even with the fastest single-GPU card you can buy, the Phenom II X6 doesn’t spring to life. Meanwhile, the overclocked Core i7 leaps forward by quite a bit."



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[evolucion8]

yeah but the i7 is the better cpu for high end gpu setups now and going forward. your X6 is going to show its weaknesses with more gpu power. in other words next year when when people are running 6870 cards your cpus architecture would clearly limit the potential of that much gpu power compared of the i7. Thuban is based off old architecture and just doesnt scale as well as even the i5 750 when pushing tons of gpu power.

Besides of Far Cry 2 and Dragon Age Origins, will you notice the difference between 108fps and 141fps? The Phenom X6 is a nice processor that benefits greatly with heavy multi threading scenarios where it is snipping the heels of the Intel's more expensive processors. By the time that the X6 will show weaknesses, the Core i7 will show them as well. Even the Phenom II X4 performs very close to the i7 in terms of gaming performance.

Source for Phenom X6: http://www.anandtech.com/show/3674/amds-sixcore-phenom-ii-x6-1090t-1055t-reviewed/9

"Today's conclusion is no different than what we've been saying about AMD's CPU lineup for several months now. If you're running applications that are well threaded and you're looking to improve performance in them, AMD generally offers you better performance for the same money as Intel. It all boils down to AMD selling you more cores than Intel at the same price point.

Applications like video encoding and offline 3D rendering show the real strengths of the Phenom II X6. And thanks to Turbo Core, you don't give up any performance in less threaded applications compared to a Phenom II X4. The 1090T can easily trump the Core i7 860 and the 1055T can do even better against the Core i5 750.

You start running into problems when you look at lightly threaded applications or mixed workloads that aren't always stressing all six cores. In these situations Intel's quad-core Lynnfield processors (Core i5 700 series and Core i7 800 series) are better buys. They give you better performance in these light or mixed workload scenarios, not to mention lower overall power consumption.

The better way to look at it is to ask yourself what sort of machine you're building. If you're building a task specific box that will mostly run heavily threaded applications, AMD will sell you nearly a billion transistors for under $300 and you can't go wrong. If it's a more general purpose machine that you're assembling, Lynnfield seems like a better option."

Source for Phenom II X4: http://www.anandtech.com/show/2819/7

"As a gaming CPU, it's actually competitive with the i7s. If you exclude the FarCry 2 results, which I hardly believe are representative of most games, the Phenom II X4 965 is easily just as good of a gaming CPU as an i7 in today's titles. Now once you start throwing in background tasks and look at future titles being more threaded then the picture becomes a little more muddy.

Overall application performance is very good from the 965's perspective. It's only in a handful of 3D or well threaded apps where we see the i7 really pull away. The 965 BE is competitive, just not faster."

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/phenom-ii-x6-1090t_6.html#sect0

Back during the first Gulftown tests we already saw that contemporary games can’t really take advantage of six-core processors. Today we can only once again confirm the same conclusion: at this time games obviously have no use for six-core Phenom II X6 processors. Phenom II 965 is slightly faster than both six-core AMD CPUs in most cases, even though AMD tried to use Turbo CORE technology to make up for their slightly lower clock frequency. In other words, Intel quad-core processor seem to be the best choice for gaming these days, because their microarchitecture is best suited for the type of load created during contemporary gameplay.

However, to be fair we have to say that both, Phenom II X4 and Phenom II X6, are powerful enough to deliver pretty high fps count. And it means that in reality the major bottleneck of the contemporary gaming system will be not the CPU but the graphics accelerator, which should be picked out very thoroughly for this reason.

So, Phenom X6 is a Six Core processor which can process six threads, Intel Core i7 series excluding the more expensive Six Core version, are quad cores with Hyper Threading, which means that 8 threads are processed and shares the execution resources, 50% more performance compared to a Core 2 Quad in heavily multi threaded scenario.

Phenom X6 showed 50% more performance compared to a Phenom II X4 in multi threaded scenarios, so considering that the Phenom II X4 is quite competitive with the Core 2 Quad, the performance gap between the Phenom X6 and i7 isn't that great except in single threaded or lighly threaded scenarios where the Intel CPU smokes the Phenom II architecture, who buy powerful CPU's for single threading performance or light threading usage?

Also some type of code will perform better with Intel than AMD and vice versa, but Intel still having the edge, but the difference in performance can't justify the huge price gap of paying almost $1000 for a CPU. I can really say today that AMD is far more competitive now with the X6 line of processor against the i7 that it was with the Phenom II X4.

GPU performance is more important in games that CPU performance. And since the Phenom II X6 shines in multi threading scenario, by the time that games are heavily multi threading, the Phenom X6 will age as good as the i7 and better CPU's will be out already in the market.

Multi threading is the future, but today and in the future, GPU power will matter more in games. (Please don't use the Pentium 4/ATi HD 5870 argument, always there'll be some limitations of course.)

 

[toyota]

perhaps you missed the pic that clearly showed the X6 at a disadvantage to i7 with a gtx480 in Crysis. again the POINT is that the more gpu power you add the bigger advantage that the i7/i5 architecture has over the Thuban/Phenom old architecture. this has been proven on xbitlabs and legionhardware when using 5870 crossfire.

 

[evolucion8]

Tom's Hardware? Please, how's possible that in a CPU limited situation a stock clocked CPU performs the same as the overclocked version of the same CPU?