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Upgrade from x58 to x79 question

S

Smartazz

Diamond Member
A friend of mine has an i7 950 on an x58 motherboard with 6x4GB of RAM. He wants to upgrade to an x79 platform. Will he be able to just use his current 6 dimms of triple channel memory in am x79 motherboard. Thanks for any help.
 
Smartazz said:
It's 1.65 volts, is that within spec?
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1.5v is the recommended max. What are the other specs of the RAM? If it is 1600Mhz @ 1.65v then you can push it down to 1333Mhz (and bring the voltage down to 1.5v). Since x79 is quad channel however so you will need a board with 8DIMM slots (and buy 2 more sticks of RAM). Or you can use a board with 4DIMM slots and not use 2 of your existing sticks.
 
Sandy Bridge wants 1.5v not 1.65v. Does the RAM support 1.5v at DDR-1333 speed? That's as fast as you need to run it for SB.

If this is for gaming, see the AnandTech review of SB-E -- it might make more sense to get Z68 now instead, then if that isn't fast enough upgrade the CPU to Ivy Bridge next year. He'll save $100+ on the motherboard and $200+ on the CPU.
 
mnewsham said:
1.5v is the recommended max. What are the other specs of the RAM? If it is 1600Mhz @ 1.65v then you can push it down to 1333Mhz (and bring the voltage down to 1.5v). Since x79 is quad channel however so you will need a board with 8DIMM slots (and buy 2 more sticks of RAM). Or you can use a board with 4DIMM slots and not use 2 of your existing sticks.
Click to expand...

You can still run in triple channel if you want, you just miss out on 1/4 the memory bandwidth.
 
DaveSimmons said:
If this is for gaming, see the AnandTech review of SB-E -- it might make more sense to get Z68 now instead, then if that isn't fast enough upgrade the CPU to Ivy Bridge next year. He'll save $100+ on the motherboard and $200+ on the CPU.
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Agree 100%. It is likely that the OP's friend can get 80% of the performance boost (near 100% in games) for 50% of the price.
 
My mistake, his RAM is 1.5v at 1333MHz. He has two of these kits: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231356

I recommended Z68, but he complains of slowdown with his 4GHz i7 950, so a 2600K wouldn't be a huge upgrade whereas he would see the advantage of the two extra cores on the i7 3930k in his work. He also wants to keep at least 24GB of RAM and possibily upgrade to 32GB. Would he be able to just buy a 2x4GB kit to add to his existing 24GB? Also, he has a Corsair H50 currently and I've heard that the X58 and X79 brackets are the same, is this true? I should add that he also doesn't game that much, just some Battlefield 3.
 
Smartazz said:
My mistake, his RAM is 1.5v at 1333MHz. He has two of these kits: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820231356

I recommended Z68, but he complains of slowdown with his 4GHz i7 950, so a 2600K wouldn't be a huge upgrade whereas he would see the advantage of the two extra cores on the i7 3930k in his work. He also wants to keep at least 24GB of RAM and possibily upgrade to 32GB. Would he be able to just buy a 2x4GB kit to add to his existing 24GB? Also, he has a Corsair H50 currently and I've heard that the X58 and X79 brackets are the same, is this true?
Click to expand...

The big question is what is he doing? A 4GHz Sandy Bridge core is quite a bit faster than a 4GHz Nehalem core. The cores in SB and SB-E are the same, so If he doesn't need massive parallelism, then he would be wasting money on getting 6 cores vs. 4 cores.
 
mfenn said:
The big question is what is he doing? A 4GHz Sandy Bridge core is quite a bit faster than a 4GHz Nehalem core. The cores in SB and SB-E are the same, so If he doesn't need massive parallelism, then he would be wasting money on getting 6 cores vs. 4 cores.
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Mostly rendering, which I think is pretty parallel.
 
He's looking to spend around $1000 in upgrades including an SSD, Motherboard and CPU. A 950 at 4GHz is pretty fast, so if he's unsatisfied with it, I think the next logical upgrade is SB-E.
 
Smartazz said:
He's looking to spend around $1000 in upgrades including an SSD, Motherboard and CPU. A 950 at 4GHz is pretty fast, so if he's unsatisfied with it, I think the next logical upgrade is SB-E.
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$1000 doesn't get you a SB-E that's faster than an i7 2600K, a motherboard, and an SSD though.
 
Another consideration is just waiting for Ivy Bridge. How would the best socket 1155 Ivy Bridge compare to the current i7 3930K?
 
Smartazz said:
Another consideration is just waiting for Ivy Bridge. How would the best socket 1155 Ivy Bridge compare to the current i7 3930K?
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If you are talking about current 1155 vs the 3930k it depends on the application. Gaming wise, the 2500k is on par with the 3930k. As far as anything that takes use of all the cores, its obvious what will do better. No one NEEDS sb-e. He would be 100% fine on a 2600k, but if he has the cash feel free.

Personally though I would go z68 and a 2500 or 2600k. It's a better price to performance increase and makes more sense.

Either way, it just depends on if he wants to waste cash because thats what SB E is for, wasting cash 🙂
 
Smartazz said:
Another consideration is just waiting for Ivy Bridge. How would the best socket 1155 Ivy Bridge compare to the current i7 3930K?
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It will probably be about the same performance by virtue of increase clock speeds. However, the real value is had by looking at the second or third best processor. For example, is the i7 2600K faster than the i5 2500K? Certainly. Is it 50% faster? Hell no.

I guess in the end, it comes down to whether or not he needs more performance now. If he's content with his current performance, then he'll get better bang for the buck by waiting. If he wants an upgrade, there is nothing dropping within the next 2 weeks which will significantly change the landscape.
 
Okay, thanks for the advice. It's important to him that he keeps his RAM so 1155 is probably out of the question. I guess he could either wait until IB-e or just get SB-e. He was originally going to get the 980x when his X58 system was built but couldn't stomach the cost but regrets it now. I suppose upgrading from a 950 to a 970/980 would be a mistake?
 
fastamdman said:
If you are talking about current 1155 vs the 3930k it depends on the application. Gaming wise, the 2500k is on par with the 3930k. As far as anything that takes use of all the cores, its obvious what will do better. No one NEEDS sb-e. He would be 100% fine on a 2600k, but if he has the cash feel free.

Personally though I would go z68 and a 2500 or 2600k. It's a better price to performance increase and makes more sense.

Either way, it just depends on if he wants to waste cash because thats what SB E is for, wasting cash 🙂
Click to expand...

For games SB E is probably a waste but if he is doing things that take 1 hour to render then getting a 6 core E will take time off the clock for sure.

The X79 platform crush the Z68 one in certain areas.
 
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