What happened to old CPUs going down in price? :)

[Atreidin]

I don't think you can properly analyze the effect of Intel's competition on the prices of its processors without taking into account changing market conditions.

10 years ago, how satisfied were most people with a 6 year old processor (or whole computer) for day-to-day tasks? That means that, at best, a 300MHz PII when P4s over 3GHz were coming out. Every non-techie I know would have complained about using a slow computer from '97 in 2003 for work stuff.

Today, how many people could even tell they are using a 6 year old processor (or whole computer) for day-to-day tasks? You know, like a Core2 Duo or Quad, the processors we don't stop seeing threads about being "good enough" for various people as long as they don't play recent games on high settings.

There are lots of people who just don't need new processors for what they do with their computer. The market is filled with "good enough" computers for many people, which is a situation it took a long time to get to.

Which doesn't mean that AMD doesn't put pressure on Intel's prices. It is possible for something to have more than one cause. It amazes me how many people are incapable of understanding that.

 

[86waterpumper]

It's weird. Some go down and some go up it seems like. I just picked up a amd x4 610e for 50 bucks, this is the lower power (45w) part and fairly rare or was when it came out.

 

[Geforce man]

search harder! I've seen used i7 970's go for sub 200$ on some of the forums / ebay, that would be a decent upgrade for you. Also, do you overclock at all? If yes, might be time to look into some decent cooling and see if you can't get that 920 to the 3.8-4.2Ghz range, which most can do fairly easily.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

Thanks, I'll keep my eyes out.

I never overclock, but thanks for the suggestion.

 

[Torn Mind]

When modern day Celerons start thrashing the old CPUs, that's when they get real cheap. Some Core 2 Duos can be had for 20-30 dollars used on Amazon because the Celeron G1610 surpasses them in performance.

 

[piasabird]

Intel has monopoly power.

 

[Diogynes]

Look at it on the flipside - you can probably get $150+ for your CPU and probably a good amount for the motherboard, meaning an upgrade to 1155 will cost you almost nothing... That's what any of us do here - upgrade on the cheap by flipping our old gear on the forums or ebay (or locally if that's an option).

I also have an i7 920 and my upgrade plans are on hold until I find out what Intel plans for the successor to the X79 chipset. Do you really see a 1155 system as an upgrade?

 

[WaitingForNehalem]

I also have an i7 920 and my upgrade plans are on hold until I find out what Intel plans for the successor to the X79 chipset. Do you really see a 1155 system as an upgrade?

You should wait for the next enthusiast platform. That's what I'm doing.

 

[cbn]

Deleted.

 

[jiffylube1024]

I also have an i7 920 and my upgrade plans are on hold until I find out what Intel plans for the successor to the X79 chipset. Do you really see a 1155 system as an upgrade?

1155 is definitely an upgrade; whether or not it's a tangible upgrade is up for debate. But you definitely get the advantage of new process nodes giving you lower power, etc.

First of all, do 1336 motherboards even support SATA3 (6G) natively with Intel controllers, or do they have those horrible Marvell SATA3 ports? Because that could be a good reason if you have an SSD.

The i7 920 is a 130W CPU that runs at 2.66 GHz/Turbo up to 2.93 GHz. For ~$200 or less you can get an i5 2500k that runs at 3.3 GHz / 3.7T (90W TDP) or an i5 3470 3.2 Ghz / 3.6T (77W). Granted there's no HyperThreading on the i5's, but they're definitely faster than an i7 920.

This is all specs and figures though; chances are the system won't "feel" any faster, but the lower power consumption is nice.

At this point, though, both Sandy and Ivy have been out for a bit, so you may as well wait for Haswell if you've made it this far.

 

[dagamer34]

It's the Apple model, no price cuts, just new models ever year. Maintains profits for as long as humanly possible.

 

[SocketF]

Thanks, I'll keep my eyes out.

I never overclock, but thanks for the suggestion.

Seriously do it. It is anyways an old rig without any warranties left.

Just check with CPU-Z, if you have an C0 or D0 stepping before you try. It's written in the "Revision" box:

See for example here:

That one's a C0. The difference is the OC quality, with a C0 you should aim around 3.8 Ghz, with D0 you can try 4.0 - 4.2. But you might be limited by your cooler anyways. My W3520 Xeon (techincally same as your 920) is currently running@4.2 GHz but I have a good water cooler.

If you need the speed for games, also don't forget to raise the NB-multiplier that controls also the L3-clock. Very important for games. Since SandyB, intel runs the L3@core clock, but before it ran only @2,13 Ghz. However, it overclocks very easily, 3.6 Ghz should be possible any time, I run mine @3.9 GHz.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

I won't overclock because my data is more important to me than a little bit of extra performance. Even if the chance of data corruption is only marginally higher, I will not take that chance.

I am not actively thinking on a daily basis "man this rig is slow!" I just thought the better chips would be cheaper by now.

If Intel hadn't decided that only servers need ECC, then I might change my mind. But they are still in the dark ages from when memory was expensive, and refuse to change their minds and allow it as an option for those of us who care about such things -- even though they KNOW at this point that memory errors are not as rare as they once were portrayed.

This is just a personal preference and not intended as a criticism of anyone who does decide to overclock.

 

[SocketF]

Well my Xeon version could use ECC, but the mainboard wont.
Otherwise I am quite confident that I don't have any data loss. My rig is running for Boinc and my chosen projects always calculate one work unit twice. Thus my results are checked. No problems since 2 years.

Anyways, if you don't think that your machine is slow now, then you can wait for Haswell and buy a 1P Xeon. They are usually not more expensive than the normal i7 processors.

Currently you could e.g. buy a Xeon E3-1230v2.

ECC Memory Supported: Yes

http://ark.intel.com/products/65732/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E3-1230V2-8M-Cache-3_30-GHz

Price: $240 @newegg, not that much.

The only disadvantage is that you cannot overclock because of the locked multipliers. In other words: Perfect for you ;-)

If you need more cores, than you can wait for Haswell-E (6 and more cores) due next year and featuring DDR4.

P.S: If you want to buy a normal Haswell Xeon for socket 1150 in summer, please pay attention to the mainboard. Not many support ECC in the BIOSes).

 

[Charles Kozierok]

Thanks. I didn't think about looking at a Xeon. I'm not sure if they'd be supported on this old Asus board.. and ECC memory definitely is not.

I'm just going to wait, I think, and possibly look at a workstation setup when I make my next machine.

 

[john3850]

Most people held on to there 58 platform with hopes of a cheap 6 cores which will never happen.

 

[dawp]

guess I was luck when I got my current cpu and motherboard 2 years ago, the i7 950 and the x58 sabertooth were something like $200 each when I bought them at microcenter. they have been a really good combo for all that time and they're about to be replaced with a 3770k and a p8z77 v when the board get here tomorrow.

 

[Arkaign]

Although the conroes were boom back than, there has definitelly been a notable progress between nehalem and conroe.
Nehalem introduced intregrated graphics core and memory controller, and allowed for greatly higher frequencies.
We have windows xp based conroe computers still at work and I find them very annoying and slow to use.
Though my 2009 penryn based laptop feels quite responsive.

I bet those work XP/Conroe systems have terrible HDDs and not that much ram.

I'd rather use a C2D E6600 w/4GB and an SSD for daily generic duties (Outlook, Web, Word, etc), than a 3970X w/4GB and a HDD, for example. Drive performance is by the far the most noticable difference in usability when you're not gaming, rendering, or encoding (or other fairly obscure calc-heavy apps). CPUs have gotten so good beginning in the A64-X2 and C2D eras that you can pretty much just update to more ram + SSD and still be fully usable.

Exceptions are garbage like Atom I know, they're not really supposed to be compared to 'real' CPUs, but damn they're slow, even with an SSD.

 

[SocketF]

Thanks. I didn't think about looking at a Xeon. I'm not sure if they'd be supported on this old Asus board.. and ECC memory definitely is not.

I'm just going to wait, I think, and possibly look at a workstation setup when I make my next machine.

The 1P Xeons are normally working in any board with the correct socket, even without official support. Many of overclockers use them, because they are a bit better. But that doesnt help your case, because you wont get ECC Support without official CPU-Support, obviously.
The Workstation segment is a good idea, Asus has Workstation mainboards, afaik these have ECC in the BIOS.
The other options are Server boards from Supermicro/Tyan. These should be ok, too.
Maybe AsRock could be a cheap option, they official support Xeons on their enthusiast boards, but I am not sure, if they also support ECC within the BIOS. Ask again when you want to buy your new machine ;-)

Most people held on to there 58 platform with hopes of a cheap 6 cores which will never happen.

Yes me, too, but I dont care .. I have time and can wait. >4 Intel-GHz and 8 threads are still enough for the next 3 years. Maybe even longer, but then I guess AVX will be used widely.

guess I was luck when I got my current cpu and motherboard 2 years ago, the i7 950 and the x58 sabertooth were something like $200 each when I bought them at microcenter. they have been a really good combo for all that time and they're about to be replaced with a 3770k and a p8z77 v when the board get here tomorrow.

Great, please tell us how much of a difference you notice. I assume that you have oc'ed your L3 of your i7, too?

 

[NTMBK]

Exceptions are garbage like Atom I know, they're not really supposed to be compared to 'real' CPUs, but damn they're slow, even with an SSD.

Meh, my 1GHz Bobcat notebook is surprisingly usable, and that's based on ancient 40nm tech - I'd definitely expect the new 22nm Atom to get over that "good enough" threshold. Fanless slim notebooks running a quad core Atom/Jaguar and Windows 8 will be pretty fantastic, and cheap too. I just hope Intel are over their fear of cannibalising their high-end sales!

 

[Midwayman]

My 6 year old C2D processor got relegated to HTPC duties where it has more than enough power to do anything it needs. Its still plenty fast for casual use as a desktop processor. I wouldn't mind putting a quad in there just for a little extra buffer room, but yah old processors are stupid expensive now.