Is the Core i7 950 getting a price cut?

[Sickamore]

I was reading some articles online about the core i7 950 getting a price cut either today or tomorrow. Is this really true because i am building a new rig. I was thinking about getting the 930 core i7. Can some one clarify this for me.

 

[coffeejunkee]

Yes, it's really true. New price will be $294 per 1000 (was 599). Don't know how long it will take before this trickles down to the shops though.

 

[Sickamore]

Thats a great price point there. Do you think its worth it over sandy bridge

 

[bryanW1995]

that depends if you want to wait 5-6 months or you want it right now. Will SB be faster? yes. but sb will be more expensive for overclockers and possibly for everybody else, too. what do you have now?

 

[Sickamore]

I have a amd system a while now. The problem is i dont want to buy 1366 socket board and then feel like i have a old system. I want to build a system that is capable of running everything i need it to do eg gaming. What i notice in some benchmark that the amd 1090t beats some core i7 in software benchmark. When it comes to games the core i7 burns a hole in the 1090t chest. Will i feel like an ass for not waiting. Is Bulldozer going to be am3 or new socket.

 

[Tsavo]

I have a amd system a while now. The problem is i dont want to buy 1366 socket board and then feel like i have a old system. I want to build a system that is capable of running everything i need it to do eg gaming. What i notice in some benchmark that the amd 1090t beats some core i7 in software benchmark. When it comes to games the core i7 burns a hole in the 1090t chest. Will i feel like an ass for not waiting. Is Bulldozer going to be am3 or new socket.

So, wait. Buy a 2nd gen Core i5 when it comes out in a few months.

Or wait even longer for the 2nd gen Core i7.

And even longer still for BD, which is going to require a new socket and thus a new mainboard.

 

[Sickamore]

Thats alot of waiting. Crysis 2 is around the corner. Plus new ati cards and nvidia cards is around the block. I will just have to buy it now and sell it later.

 

[Sickamore]

When is sandy bridge making its first debut.

 

[khon]

When is sandy bridge making its first debut.

Looks like it will be at CES 2011, so early january next year.

 

[Zap]

Yes, it's really true. New price will be $294 per 1000 (was 599). Don't know how long it will take before this trickles down to $199 at MicroCenter.

Fixed! :whiste:

 

[Sickamore]

http://www.microcenter.com/single_pr...uct_id=0331303

This is the price of the 930 at micro-center that's for sure. Thats a good deal i can go there and buy that processor right now but the 950 is going to be around the 300 dollars i might as well wait for the 950 and just buy it from there. Also the price of their Asus Rampage Extreme 3 is 429 there. They won't price match tigerdirect or Jr. Also guys which of these two boards would you choose. Asus Rampage extreme or the MSI big bang Xpower.

 

[SHAQ]

You mineaswell consider EVGA boards as well if you don't mind spending that much. A 930 and 950 will OC about the same anyway.

 

[extra]

I have a amd system a while now. The problem is i dont want to buy 1366 socket board and then feel like i have a old system. I want to build a system that is capable of running everything i need it to do eg gaming. What i notice in some benchmark that the amd 1090t beats some core i7 in software benchmark. When it comes to games the core i7 burns a hole in the 1090t chest. Will i feel like an ass for not waiting. Is Bulldozer going to be am3 or new socket.

If you have a 1090t just stick with it until bulldozer and sandy bridge socket 2011 stuff is out, geesh.

You won't feel like an ass for not waiting, but you will feel like a dumbass for throwing your money away essentially. The i7 is faster, but the phenom x6 (you do have it oc'd to 4ghz ish right?) is great for gaming. A 4ghz-ish i7 will be faster at most things, but it's not enough faster to warrant switching platforms. And cpu-bound games that use a lot of floating point stuff do really well on phenom anyway (it's the int cores that are behind intel, phenom's fpu is quite good).

Save your money--if you wanna go Intel wait till the real enthusiast sandy bridge stuff comes out!

 

[Sickamore]

I haven't build a system as yet. Everytime i research and put my items together there is always a new thing coming out. I planned and buying the Asus rampage 3 extreme and then intel is coming out with new socket. I figured well i put i choose the wrong time to build a machine. I highly doubt sandy bridge is going to be that fast. I dont have a new system just a old amd 64 athlon.

 

[coffeejunkee]

What i notice in some benchmark that the amd 1090t beats some core i7 in software benchmark. When it comes to games the core i7 burns a hole in the 1090t chest.

What benchmarks you been looking at? The 1280x1024 ones? 1090T is actually a very good gaming cpu at the resolutions any slightly self-respecting gamer plays at, even faster than 980X sometimes. The only times i7 is substantially faster is when 1090T can't use all its cores (except 980X ofc).

The way I see it all depends on your graphics cards. Do you plan on using 1 or 2 midrange cards or just 1 high-end card: s1156 is for you. Do you plan on using 2 high-end cards: get s1366.
AMD has a very viable alternative with reasonable priced 800 chipset mobo's combined with 955/965 or 1050T/1090T. All these systems will last a couple of years imho.

But yeah, sandy bridge is coming up but I can't really tell if it's wise to wait. The normal sb cpu's will have very limited overclocking capabilities. I'm fairly sure that an i5 750 at 3.8GHz will be faster. The unlocked cpu's will demand a price premium and I don't really dare to say anything about their oc-ing potential. Although I hope it will be good. Even then sb is limited to 16 pci-e 2.0 lanes which will slightly bottleneck 2 high-end cards. And since gpu is more important than cpu in most games X58 or 890FX is still the way to go.

I should add that if you care even a little about power efficiency SB will be the better choice, even the non-overclock models. i5 750 does use a substantial amount of extra power when overclocked to 3.8GHz. Then again, it's fast enough at stock for 99 out of 100 games and can do 3.33 at stock voltage for that last one.

 

[Sickamore]

I am buying one high end card for now most likely nvidia. If amd fix the crossfire i will take on radeon. I plan on using two high end sli card. I would build a amd system in a flash. I just wish their motherboard supported both cards so that way i won't have to stick to one card manufacturer. I really want to put this machine together to handle crysis 2 and its going to be my lil toy to mess around. I have the money but i want to feel like yeah i have a machine.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

So the 950 replaces the 930? Noooooooo. I'm outdated already...

it's ok. I don't think you can really clock any higher on the 950 versus the 930 in most cases. 4.0 - 4.1ghz will still be the limit for most people for 24/7 ops.

 

[coffeejunkee]

I'm pretty sure you will never find an AMD chipset board that supports SLI.

So X58 for you. In that case I would wait a bit for the 950 to come down in price, say 3-4 weeks max. Else get 920 or 930 because as mentioned they will all pretty much oc the same. You're gonna get heat problems before you can max out your chip anyway.

 

[Sickamore]

Articles that i read said august 30th prics cut is coming out. When i overclock this proccessor what type of heat am i going to experience. Should i choose fan cooling or liquid cooling. I am new to overclocking willing to learn it and try it out.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Articles that i read said august 30th prics cut is coming out. When i overclock this proccessor what type of heat am i going to experience. Should i choose fan cooling or liquid cooling. I am new to overclocking willing to learn it and try it out.

Air honestly tops out around 4.1ghz or so. You might be able to get 4.2 ghz, but even if you hit 4, you have to consider 24/7 operations. What if your house heats up? Heat wave? I run 4ghz 24/7. I benched open air on my desk and hit 4.1 and got decent temps. When I put it all together in my case and turned down the fans to a level I'd like it I had to scale back to 4ghz, and I'd hit 80 doing LINPACK tests. Nothing over 75 in real world gaming though... Maybe barely 70.

You will definitely be able to push more with liquid cooling, but if you are going to go liquid, don't go something lame like a Corsair H50. You should be spending a lot more on liquid.

If you're new to overclocking, try air. Even if you don't hit 4ghz, 3.8 is a fair point to hit. That's already close to a 40% overclock for a 930. I forgot. i7s like odd multis right?

I run 21x191 or so for 24/7 on air.

Be patient. If you're overlocking, spend 2-3 weeks experimenting. People who expect to boot their PCs and start gaming the same night are retarded. Overclocking is tweaking. You want to isolate all variables and figure out the performance curve of your CPU before you start doing 24/7 on it. I still remember during senior year in college, I played dota everyday. My "enthusiast" friends put together several computers and for the next 3 days they kept crashing out of inhouse games... critical ones that made us look retarded. I was pretty pissed because they wouldn't spend a few days just to figure out the OC settings and expected some cookie cutter guide to work perfectly fine.

 

[Sickamore]

Thats interesting. I wanna ask should i choose asus rampage 3 extreme over the msi big bang xpower. Which is better motherboard for overclocking.

 

[Rifter]

i think both of those boards will be fine, you dont need a super high end board to get a good overclock. I got a $220 Asus P6X58D-E that overclocks just fine to 4.2Ghz with my i7 930.

 

[coffeejunkee]

Agree with Rifterut, those boards won't really help if you're looking for a normal 24/7 overclock. They're usefull if you work with phase change/ln2 cooling and try to set new benchmark records. What you do need is a good cooler: Thermalright Ultra Extreme or Venomous, Prolimatech Megahalems, Noctua.

I also completely agree with Dlerium. There are no shortcuts for a good stable oc. Ignore all automatic overclocking features. Read some guides, forums and google around before you get to work.

 

[386DX]

But yeah, sandy bridge is coming up but I can't really tell if it's wise to wait. The normal sb cpu's will have very limited overclocking capabilities. I'm fairly sure that an i5 750 at 3.8GHz will be faster. The unlocked cpu's will demand a price premium and I don't really dare to say anything about their oc-ing potential.

I'd have to disagree with you here. I think even at stock speed and limited overclocking SB is going to be good for the mainstream crowd and should give you roughly the performance of current OC i5's. If we look at Anandtech's preview the i5 2500 version of SB is the CPU that will be replacing the i5 750/760 price point. Now if we take the conservative 10% improvement Anandtech says SB will bring over current i5's we get this:

SB i5 2500@3.3GHz approximately equal to i5 750@3.63GHz, which is a bit slower then your 3.8GHz OC i5 750.

But, with the partially locked SB Anandtech says you will still get a few multiplier bins to overclock with. Lets once again be conservative and say Intel gives you 1 multiplier (100Mhz) to overclock with, we would get this:

SB i5 2500@3.4Ghz approximately equal to i5 750@3.74 GHz. That is pretty much identical speed to the OC i5 750 system you would get now. And remember this is based conservative numbers for both the performance improvement clock for clock and multiplier. Plus with the SB system you would also retain the turbo which you may have to disable on the i5 750 when you overclock for it to remain stable.

It looks like Intel is basically giving the customer an OC i5/i7 system with its upcoming SB CPU without the need to OC.

 

[RussianSensation]

If you have a 1090t just stick with it until bulldozer and sandy bridge socket 2011 stuff is out, geesh.

Exactly. Instead of spending all this money on getting a new platform (new mobo + cpu), get the upcoming HD6000 card to improve your frames in games. Unless you can sell the AMD setup and upgrade to the i7s for very cheap, I would stick with it.