Nehalem last call please stand up!

[Makaveli]

So i've just picked up the last two pieces of hardware for this rig until Haswell. And will be totally skipping SB and Ivy.

Picked up a brand new Seal in box i7 970 for $450 on the weekend and I purchased a second Intel 160 G2 SSD to go Raid 0 when the Rst 11.5 drivers are released. This looks to be the second rig i've build that i've managed to keep good performance 3+ years with just minor upgrades and new videocards.

My rig prior to this was a socket 939 Opteron 170 which is now doing HTPC duty. That Rig also lasted me about 3 years before I had to retire her.

I've found now that i'm abit older and have more funds available I tend to build rigs to last me a few years instead of doing updates on a more regular basis. It also helps too that alot of games there days are just console ports which hasn't really pushed the barrier. I found myself upgrading far more in the past than in the present because of that fact.

So to all of you do you have any rigs that you build that you've had fond memories of that just lasted. You were able to squeeze every last ounce of performance out of it?


Back to the chip. I must say i'm very impressed with gulftown at stock clock it idles at like 1.088 vcore. My 920 D0 needed 1.25vcore to hit 3.8 with this chip I can hit 4.0 at the same vcore and its about 8c cooler temps most likely due to it be 32nm. My goal will most likely to hit 4.2 a full 1ghz overclock and call it a day.

Batch number 3012B129 seems to be a very good overclocker from reports that I see.

 

[nanaki333]

the i7 9x0 series are good chips, even by today's standards. my main work pc is a 960. i was contemplating getting a 970/980, or getting an SB-E.

 

[Makaveli]

If you can pick one up for a good price I would very happy with it so far. The first guy I talked to was asking $600 then the next guy I talked him down to $450. This was on kijiji, helps when you know what you are talking about too. I basically told the guy this is a EOL cpu and first gen i7 and you aren't going to get many takers at $600 so either drop the price or get stuck with hit. There was someone selling a 970 on this forum for $400 but in the US and i'm Canadian so was better for me to do a local pickup.

Now I have to decide if I should build another box around my 920 D0 to sell or just sell the chip itself.

 

[Anubis]

my 920 is still rocking at 4GHz i really dont see myself replacing it anytime soon

 

[MoxJr]

why not just get a 2600k?

 

[nanaki333]

why not just get a 2600k?

because he was probably looking for a way to get some 6 core action without replacing his entire system. i7 970 is a 6 core CPU, and for $450, it's a nice upgrade.

 

[Makaveli]

why not just get a 2600k?

Simple.

Canadian pricing
www.canadacomputers.com


2600k $339 + Asus P8Z68 DELUXE $264 + Corsair Vengeance 16GB 1.5v (4x4GB) $116

+ Sales tax 13%

Total = 812.47

or

(cheaper motherboard)

2600k $339 +Asus P8P67 $139 + Corsair Vengeance 16GB 1.5v (4x4GB) $116

+ Sales tax %13

Total = $671.22


A i7 970 $450 flat was a far better deal.

 

[lehtv]

Tbh you could have waited for Ivy Bridge 3770K which will be available at the same price as 2600K, but along with it comes the Z77 chipset. Z77 could lower Z68 board pricing, and combined with cheaper yet equally good RAM, it wouldn't have been a lot more than i7 970 and it'd have been faster, less power hungry and with better features (like native USB3.0, SSD caching, PCIe Gen 3.0 etc.).

However, an upgrade from i7 920 to that just isn't worth it IMO. Running a two year old 920 myself, it'll last until Haswell.

 

[Ferzerp]

I'm still running my i7-930@4.0Ghz. I will likely keep it until haswell, or whatever AMD part is available at that time if somehow they perform a miracle and become competitive again.

 

[Makaveli]

Tbh you could have waited for Ivy Bridge 3770K which will be available at the same price as 2600K, but along with it comes the Z77 chipset. Z77 could lower Z68 board pricing, and combined with cheaper yet equally good RAM, it wouldn't have been a lot more than i7 970 and it'd have been faster, less power hungry and with better features (like native USB3.0, SSD caching, PCIe Gen 3.0 etc.).

However, an upgrade from i7 920 to that just isn't worth it IMO. Running a two year old 920 myself, it'll last until Haswell.

I also encode video so this was one of the major reasons and a close to 50% decreased in encoding time was well worth it.

Native USB 3.0, SSD caching, PCI Gen 3.0 don't really care for any of those right now as I have no devices that can use any of it!

And as I stated i'm skipping SB and Ivy. Has intel confirmed if Haswell is going to require a new socket yet or will it fit into socket 2011?

 

[geokilla]

I feel dropping $450 in a i7 970 is a waste of money. It's been shown that an overclocked i5 2500k outperforms the Nehalem CPUs. Plus there have been a lot of bundle deals from NCIX and Memory Express lately where a bundled i5 2500k with Gigabyte P67/Z68 and 8GB DDR3 RAM comes to roughly $300CAD.

Also feel that he could have got a better SSD, but since he wanted to go RAID 0, guess he didn't have a choice. Not sure why you would want to go RAID 0 with a SSD though.

 

[Makaveli]

I feel dropping $450 in a i7 970 is a waste of money. It's been shown that an overclocked i5 2500k outperforms the Nehalem CPUs. Plus there have been a lot of bundle deals from NCIX and Memory Express lately where a bundled i5 2500k with Gigabyte P67/Z68 and 8GB DDR3 RAM comes to roughly $300CAD.

Also feel that he could have got a better SSD, but since he wanted to go RAID 0, guess he didn't have a choice. Not sure why you would want to go RAID 0 with a SSD though.

If I was going to the SB route the 2500k wouldn't have cut it I need more than 4 threads. I do more than just play games on my rig. Dropping to 8GB of ram was also a no go I currently have 12GB which I need for VM's!

I picked up the second G2 for $150 bucks and want to remove my 640GB drive that I have for games and go with a 320 GB Raid 0 for both my OS+Apps+Games.

 

[Kenmitch]

I'm with the OP as his choice seemed to be the most logical for him.

Building a new rig one would be better off going SB.

 

[Makaveli]

I'm with the OP as his choice seemed to be the most logical for him.

Building a new rig one would be better off going SB.

Thanks I posted because I wanted different opinions but it made the most sense for me since I wasn't doing a new build.

For my purpose the IPC gains in SB and IVY aren't enough for a complete rebuild yet and the additional cores will benefit me more right now.

 

[vshah]

i've still got a 920 and dont' see myself replacing it for another couple years at least.

the gtx260 on the other hand is due for an upgrade soon...

 

[billyb0b]

I'm running a 975 extreme and am very happy with it. Depending on needs, and unknowns, I plan on skipping Haswell and waiting for Skylake for the next BIG upgrade.

 

[blckgrffn]

Awesome, reading through the thread I would have totally gone that route as well.

Being able to cheaply do 24GB of ram vs 16 on SB/IVB is not trivial if you have need for it.

You are going to have TRIM RAID support with those SSDs, right? Awesome.

Basically you've gone SB-E. For those saying he should have gone SB, that's really the equivalent platform and is obviously even more expensive to do that than SB and at that point the power utilization becomes less of a major differentiation.

Espcially now that SB-E is in danger of losing its PCIe-3 feature set, there will be even less of a difference between Gulftown/1366 and LGA2011.

If I could get a hexacore for $400, I would consider building a brand "new" 1366 rig today. You can get a board for ~$50-$80 B-Stock EVGA if you time it right. That and $90 worth of ram and you have that platform maxed out and good for years to come.

 

[geokilla]

If I was going to the SB route the 2500k wouldn't have cut it I need more than 4 threads. I do more than just play games on my rig. Dropping to 8GB of ram was also a no go I currently have 12GB which I need for VM's!

I picked up the second G2 for $150 bucks that is why I want to go Raid 0.

But benchmarks have shown that 4 threads is better than 6 threads when comparing Sandy Bridge to Nehalem... I understand programs aren't like benchmarks but still, says a lot about the CPU's performance and stuff. Otherwise if you needed more cores, I'd say Bulldozer would have got the job done as well (troll sentence). And to back up what I meant:

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...2500k-core-i7-2600k-processors-review-10.html

Go all the way to page 15. As you can see, the performance is pretty close to the Core i7 Nehalem CPUs. Well I believe it's similar. You may have a different opinion on that.

As for 8GB RAM not being enough, well you needed to buy 12GB of DDR3 RAM anyways, so that shouldn't play a factor in whether you needed Nehalem or Sandy Bridge. It is essentially a sunk cost. Heck you could probably get 16GB of RAM for around $120AR tax included since DDR3 RAM is so cheap nowadays.

You do not get TRIM with RAID afaik.

 

[Makaveli]

Awesome, reading through the thread I would have totally gone that route as well.

Being able to cheaply do 24GB of ram vs 16 on SB/IVB is not trivial if you have need for it.

You are going to have TRIM RAID support with those SSDs, right? Awesome.

Basically you've gone SB-E. For those saying he should have gone SB, that's really the equivalent platform and is obviously even more expensive to do that than SB and at that point the power utilization becomes less of a major differentiation.

Espcially now that SB-E is in danger of losing its PCIe-3 feature set, there will be even less of a difference between Gulftown/1366 and LGA2011.

If I could get a hexacore for $400, I would consider building a brand "new" 1366 rig today. You can get a board for ~$50-$80 B-Stock EVGA if you time it right. That and $90 worth of ram and you have that platform maxed out and good for years to come.

Great post and yes people often overlook the power requirements because they are comparing SB 95w chips to Nehalem/gulftown which are 130w chips. If you compare them to the SB-E 130watt chips the power consumption doesn't look so bad.

And as for Trim in Raid just waiting for intel to release those drivers already

 

[Makaveli]

But benchmarks have shown that 4 threads is better than 6 threads when comparing Sandy Bridge to Nehalem... I understand programs aren't like benchmarks but still, says a lot about the CPU's performance and stuff. Otherwise if you needed more cores, I'd say Bulldozer would have got the job done as well (troll sentence). And to back up what I meant:

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...2500k-core-i7-2600k-processors-review-10.html

Go all the way to page 15. As you can see, the performance is pretty close to the Core i7 Nehalem CPUs. Well I believe it's similar. You may have a different opinion on that.

As for 8GB RAM not being enough, well you needed to buy 12GB of DDR3 RAM anyways, so that shouldn't play a factor in whether you needed Nehalem or Sandy Bridge. It is essentially a sunk cost. Heck you could probably get 16GB of RAM for around $120AR tax included since DDR3 RAM is so cheap nowadays.

You do not get TRIM with RAID afaik.

It does play a factor because SB should be used with 1.5v ram and i'm rocking 12GB's of 1.65v memory.

And page 15 of your benchmarks is only for games.

I wouldn't have done this upgrade if I only played games, I would have dropped $450 on a used 7970.

Once you stop focusing on games the gap widens abit.

And trim is coming with RST 11.5 drivers!

I also now have a 920 D0 that I'm going to be getting rid of maybe 150-$200 which will cut into that cost I paid for the i7 970.

Thanks for all the feedback so far tho keep it coming!

 

[jpeyton]

Given current used prices in the US, the OP could have also done:

i7-2600K ~ $270
P67 Mobo ~ $60
16GB DDR3 (4 x 4GB) ~ $40

$370 total, and most good P67 mobos are Ivy compatible as well.

Overclocked, I think SB would have done well against 6C Gulftown.

 

[blckgrffn]

Given current used prices in the US, the OP could have also done:

i7-2600K ~ $270
P67 Mobo ~ $60
16GB DDR3 (4 x 4GB) ~ $40

$370 total, and most good P67 mobos are Ivy compatible as well.

Overclocked, I think SB would have done well against 6C Gulftown.

Probably, it all comes down to use case.

If you are folding/crunching, etc. then the extra cores are hard to replace. And any case where you are running the CPU flat out 100% for extended periods of time...

If for any reason you think a 3930k is the CPU for you, I don't understand how this situation is different.

 

[Makaveli]

I would never build a rig on a $60 motherboard!

Those prices look good but they are used components. I would have rather just gone SB in a complete new build.

I have a few rules when it comes to computers these are just 5 of them.

1. I never build a platform on a used motherboard!

2. Also never buy used memory!

3. I never buy extreme edition processors

4. Crossfire/Sli is not for me.

5. I never use stock cooling!

 

[geokilla]

It does play a factor because SB should be used with 1.5v ram and i'm rocking 12GB's of 1.65v memory.

And page 15 of your benchmarks is only for games.

I wouldn't have done this upgrade if I only played games, I would have dropped $450 on a used 7970.

Once you stop focusing on games the gap widens abit.

And trim is coming with RST 11.5 drivers!

I also now have a 920 D0 that I'm going to be getting rid of maybe 150-$200 which will cut into that cost I paid for the i7 970.

Thanks for all the feedback so far tho keep it coming!

I said go all the way to page 15 as read up to page 15... Page 10 to 14 are non-gaming benchmarks as well.

Well either way you already bought your stuff and it's hard to go back now.

Let's just hope TRIM works properly in RAID for you? RAID 0 is performance RAID right?

Where does it say that Sandy Bridge should be used with 1.5V RAM? I got some DDR3 RAM lying around and I believe they are 1.65V. I know generally speaking, a lot of people use 1.65V RAM as well with their Sandy Bridge builds.

 

[jpeyton]

I would never build a rig on a $60 motherboard!

It's $60 used, probably $150 new on Newegg. That's why I buy used. Your own Asus P6-T will be worth $60 eventually, and you built a computer on that.

Those prices look good but they are used components.

I prefer let other people buy stuff brand new off Newegg, and then I pay them 50% or less of their purchase price and keep the difference.

I have a few rules when it comes to computers these are just 5 of them.

My only rule is to pay the lowest price possible.