Is the i7-970 still a good choice?

[Burpo]

Yeah, just not 40% eh? :whiste:
$60 vs $1000 OP.. You choose.. worth it for 23%?

 

[Lepton87]

Yeah, just not 40% eh? :whiste:
$60 vs $1000 OP.. You choose.. worth it for 23%?

I don't care about improvements in programs but only in games. And it's not 23%, If I bought a westmere I wouldn't OC it past 4.2GHz most likely, not everyone gets a good chip. And it doesn't matter, seems like my psu has broken down, it doesn't boot with 2 cards and it gives strange noises while booting so another 200$ for a PSU... Damn it.

 

[Burpo]

At these speeds, we're throwing lots of current at these bits of silicon.. Board & power supply have to be up to snuff..

Sorry to hear.. Your rig was working fine until you started pushing that chip.. See above ^^^^^

 

[Lepton87]

Sorry to hear.. Your rig was working fine until you started pushing that chip.. See above ^^^^^

No it wasn't, I had just one card installed at first it never worked with two, hence I'm not even sure it's the PSU but about 90% sure, it looks like it, it starts for a second and it stops with a noise like some kind of over wattage protection system engaged, but it's just my speculation unfortunately I don't have a friend with a 1KW+ PSU to check if it works then. When I bought it it was literally the strongest PSU I could find available, I know that only one PSU on the market had a better wattage at the time and that was 1250W that was back in late 2010 or early 2011.

 

[Lepton87]

This is beyond my comprehension... I wanted to test the PSU not having enough power theory, if that was the case the problem would replicate anytime something draws more power than 2xTitan. I added a Radeon 6950 to my titan and the system booted just fine, at that point it shouldn't draw much less power than 2xTitans, right? How about a Titan+2x6950s, should it draw more power? I think so, it booted and detected the cards just fine. OK, so I was thinking could a Titan really require more power than 2x6950 to boot? I found an old GeForce 8800GTS and added it to the mix, surely 2x6950s(4x6PIN total) and 8800GTS512(6PIN) must require more power than a single Titan, right? Those cards booted just fine. I switched one Radeon for a Titan, any guesses what happened?

 

[YBS1]

Doesn't sound like a power issue, it sounds like one of your two Titans is kaput. Try the other one by itself and see if it boots. (Didn't read back through to see if you had already done that).

 

[YBS1]

If they both boot solo, try swapping their positions. Strange things happen, my 680 Lightnings were particular about which was the primary and which was the secondary, I have no idea why.

 

[Lepton87]

Doesn't sound like a power issue, it sounds like one of your two Titans is kaput. Try the other one by itself and see if it boots. (Didn't read back through to see if you had already done that).

No, both are fine and working together now. Strange. Swapping the Titans was the first thing I did.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

... both are fine and working together now.

Good to hear :thumbsup:

 

[Lepton87]

For people arguing that HW is such a minor improvement you won't feel it check this out:


http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2403976

you really need HW for this game

 

[Burpo]

A badly written game? Only 2 Intel hex cores listed and they do pretty well.. an overclocked Westmere hex core will work..

 

[Lepton87]

A badly written game? Only 2 Intel hex cores listed and they do pretty well.. an overclocked Westmere hex core will work..

badly written games are exactly the reason I upgraded my rig. This game doesn't care about the number of cores(3970X gets badly beaten by a HW i3) so I don't know why you even mentioned hex cores, if Sandy is barely enough than surely westmere would do no better, how much worse we don't know since they didn't test nehalem cores. The game acts uniquely with HW providing a much higher boosts over SB than on average. The same might be true for SB over Nehalem or not we just don't know. I wish they would still test Nehalem CPUs, but it's getting a big long in the tooth so they don't

 

[Burpo]

And I don't know why you continually hijack this thread! Are all people in Poland like that?
This thread is NOT about YOUR Haswell, YOUR PS, YOUR Titans, or what YOUR specific needs are.
It was a question about the i7-970..

I'm done.. Sorry to the op

 

[Lepton87]

And I don't know why you continually hijack this thread! Are all people in Poland like that?
This thread is NOT about YOUR Haswell, YOUR PS, YOUR Titans, or what YOUR specific needs are.
It was a question about the i7-970..

I'm done.. Sorry to the op

Yes, totally, it's a polish trait.

 

[Blue_Max]

And I don't know why you continually hijack this thread! Are all people in Poland like that?
This thread is NOT about YOUR Haswell, YOUR PS, YOUR Titans, or what YOUR specific needs are.
It was a question about the i7-970..

I'm done.. Sorry to the op

No prob... still some useful info coming in from that conversation... like the fact that the only way it'll benefit my gaming experience is if I use the mobo's multiple PCIe16 slots to crossfire my Radeon 270. Pity my old classic 7770 won't crossfire with it!

On the plus side, upgrading it for under $100 to 12 threads should increase its resale value far more than the $100 sunk into it!

 

[Burpo]

You got that right

 

[Makaveli]

For people arguing that HW is such a minor improvement you won't feel it check this out:


http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2403976

you really need HW for this game

I'm downloading this right now.

http://www.bethblog.com/2014/10/30/this-week-on-steam-halloween-demo-for-the-evil-within/

I will let you know how it plays on my rig.

 

[Blue_Max]

Bumping this thread because I have a decision to make... trading off one of my two desktops and my regular lappy to get a gaming-class laptop.

I have a Dell Optiplex 9010 w/ i5 3470 (obviously no overclocking!)
or
a system w/ pretty high-end Gigabyte 1366 mobo and currently an i7-920.

Which one makes more sense to trade away? Having re-read this thread, I'm still leaning towards keeping the 1366 combo and loading it with 3x4GB sticks. Heck, maybe I can find someone willing to trade DDR3 for the processor and I'll order the X5650 to put in there. (I'd better check CPU support for xeons, eh?)

I'll also gain more video slots to crossfire my current R9-270 if I need more gaming power... 12 threads will come in handy if games ever REALLY go multi-core!

Still... I'm not 100% convinced this is the right decision to make so your input is welcome!

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

man you know the right decision is to keep the 1366 platform, stop playin, lol

 

[schmuckley]

I'd go with Westmere-EP chip
x5650,5660,5670,5680

 

[Blue_Max]

I'd go with Westmere-EP chip
x5650,5660,5670,5680

That's the plan... unless someone can convince me the faster-single-thread-at-default i5 3470 is the more sensible choice? Gad, I hate needing to be ~100% convinced in order to act.

But I've already placed the ad to sell the 920 or trade it for some much-needed DDR3, to be replaced with the one of the above Xeons.

 

[Burpo]

These overclocked Xeons are no slouch in single thread performance, and chew through whatever else you throw at them too. They were expensive chips when new, but now you can have a noticeably faster machine for peanuts..

 

[ClockHound]

Thing is, say you get a 5660-5670, clock it easily to 4.2-4.5...it will kill the 3470 even single threaded. Not kill as in fry, your now (thankfully) sold 3470, but will give you better single thread performance and much, much better multi-threaded performance.

Once you been hexified, there's no going back to those square little quads. Plus you get to OC and you know you want to. You get to set the speed of your system, not some bland marketing focus group back in Oregon.

You're on an Enthusiast forum talking about keeping a beige Corolla beater chip or getting a once (and still) glorious Xeon Vette that you can hotrod. Why is this even a question to discuss? ;-)

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

How well do the 4 core 32nm Xeon's overclock?

 

[Lepton87]

How well do the 4 core 32nm Xeon's overclock?

http://anandtech.com/show/2960/15

Here's what Anand got. 4.4GHz is a very solid overclock for a Westmere, just don't expect 4.8 or higher as those speeds aren't even guaranteed for SB chips which overclock better.