Why not do both?Is it Worth upgrading to Ivy Bridge or wait for Haswell??
Why not do both?
Ivy bridge now, Haswell when it is out
Why not do both?
Ivy bridge now, Haswell when it is out
Because thats a waste of money.
im running on a i5 650 on socket 1156 on a H57 platform which i believe is from Clarkdale ?
I'm more or less in the same boat as you with an i3 550 (3.2GHz, 2C/4T, no Turbo unlike your chip). I was planning on Ivy for my first quad but after everything I've read about Haswell I'm thinking of just waiting it out.
My i3 is adequate for most of the gaming I do these days, the only time I really stress it at all is for encoding the occasional DVD and I usually just queue those up in handbrake and let it run overnight.
It's really too bad they aren't launching the Ivy duals until late 2012, if they were coming out now I would probably snag one of those for the IPC improvement, power savings and QuickSync. But oh well...
I seem to be the only person that still considers that its not worth upgrading unless you can get nearly 2x the performance. Going from any model of i7 to IB wont net you that (although SB-E will in the limited circumstance of 6 core capable programs).
the turbo feature is basically OC your cpu.... its pretty useless if you ask me.. have you OC'd it ?
I've built a few i3-540 machines for my broke gamer friends and they all did 4.4-4.6 GHz with 1.3v, but I backed all of them down to 4.2 GHz for 24/7. 99% of the time they are idle and running at ~2 ghz. That should last almost any gamer until Haswell.
You have an opportunity for a 35-45% boost in single threaded performance without altering your hardware configuration, and you are asking people to talk you into ivy?
get the motherboard model number...
Leave it at 3.6 then. Your system is fast enough for what you do. If you spend $400 upgrading to ivy bridge you will be completely disappointed. If you buy a 6 or 8-core chip thinking it'll make your games faster you'll be even more disappointed.
that's because the H100 is a good cooler. but if you can't overclock in the BIOS, then don't bother.
This board is pretty cheap and will get you to 4.2-4.6 GHz:
http://www.amazon.com/ASRock-LGA1156.../dp/B003BTV920
But personally I think your PC is fast enough and you should wait for Haswell. On the other hand, $65 is a small price to pay for a 40% boost while you wait for Haswell. It depends on exactly what you are trying to improve.