Who's struggling to justify upgrading their CPU?

[Necc]

Great thread title, this is exactly how I feel too.

Q9650
6970
X38
4GB / Win 7 64

Only interested in Gaming. I know my cpu is SO OLD and people always say it’s holding your gpu back etc etc. right? Not according to benchmarks. I game at 1920 x 1200 so I looked at Anandtechs review of my gpu (6970) on a newer faster system. Anandtech used a Intel Core i7-920 @ 3.33GHz which will hammer my ancient Q9650 right? I even put my cpu back to stock speed to further exaggerate the difference (I have the upgrade itch). So, in Crysis Warhead, how many frames per second is my old cpu slower than Anand’s newer, faster, overclocked cpu? Answer: One FPS. One.

And I have people telling me to upgrade my ancient CPU because it’s holding my new graphics card back. Do your own research first people. Spend a grand on a cpu and it’ll make sod all difference in graphically intensive games. Even Sandy B which is even newer and faster (and cheaper) – looks amazing, but for gaming, I simply can’t justify it. And I can afford it.

QFT

Same here, I know having the latest hardware sounds cool, but for that minimal gain especily for gaming its just not worth it, as said before Ijust can't find a reason to change my Q6600@3.2Ghz to the new Sandy only for gaming.

 

[blckgrffn]

The SSD was a way better investment than a new CPU for me.

A Core2 Quad is likely going to hold its own for a really long time, like a 3800+ x2 (which is actually still a very viable CPU...)

Game choking on quads is unlikely for some time without some real physics improvements.

Needing a quad (or better!) to play would cut out so much of the already small gaming PC install base..

 

[Dravic]

I just did my rigs final update when the Mobo in my kids PC went belly up.

Put the 1055 in my rig and gave the kids the 955 along with a budget am3 880gx. I may max the ram out on this box is it will eventually become my Linux VM workstation (currently 8GB Opteron 2 x 175's).

Does everything i need, will prob wait for Bulldozers second spin, esp with 6 cores currently.

Wont get an SSD till I can get better than $1/GB on 120+ GB drives

 

[wheresmybacon]

E8400 @ 3.6 + HD4870 right now and I don't see an upgrade in my future anytime soon. 🙁 I've had this thing since summer 2008 lol. I got married last June, we're going to be getting a new car in a few months, then we'll be buying a house next year.

I'm a WoW addict so this thing is mostly playable, although of course it could be better.

 

[Darkrage]

well I just upgraded the main rig from a Ph II X4 965 C2 version to a PH II x6 1100t...I"m not sure if it was really justified but since all my rigs are AMD...I, in a sense upgraded 3 machines lol....

Main got an 1100t--->backup/htpc got the 965---->girlfriends rig went from a AMD 5400x2 to a PH II x3 720 that was in my backup rig..so shes happy lol...

the girlfriends rig was the reason for the upgrade.........

 

[Dave3000]

The i7 960 recently had a 50% drop in price and I can afford it. I currenlty have an i7 920 and I sometimes feel tempted to upgrade to an i7 960 and sell my i7 920. However, I have self control and I'm going to stick with my i7 920 until I can get like an i7 2700k if there is going to be one or the upcoming Bulldozer.

 

[Axon]

E8400 @ 3.6 + HD4870 right now and I don't see an upgrade in my future anytime soon. 🙁 I've had this thing since summer 2008 lol. I got married last June, we're going to be getting a new car in a few months, then we'll be buying a house next year.

I'm a WoW addict so this thing is mostly playable, although of course it could be better.

Whenever I get "the business" about some computer hardware, I just point out the thousands of dollars in designer shoes and purses that lay at the bottom (totally unorganized, mind you) of my wife's closet. There was much grumbling over Sandy Bridge...too bad, so sad. 😛

 

[coloumb]

Q8300 + HD4870 - and honestly do not see any reason yet to upgrade yet since I mainly play games.

The biggest obstacle is having to reinstall Windows and the numerous programs I use. That takes about a day and is very painful. 🙂

 

[TurtleCrusher]

Whenever I get "the business" about some computer hardware, I just point out the thousands of dollars in designer shoes and purses that lay at the bottom (totally unorganized, mind you) of my wife's closet. There was much grumbling over Sandy Bridge...too bad, so sad. 😛

Thank god my fiance' isn't like that. I've had too many girlfriends who sounded exactly like this.

Double edge sword? Now I have no excuse to buy hardware as her hobbies are cheap! 🙁

 

[ummduh]

Only reason I am upgrading is due to my kids' computer being unable to even play youtube videos. So I am giving them my current computer and building a new one for myself/wife. Otherwise I have zero need to upgrade it..

Well, I'll be building a new one once I decide if I can wait for BD or just suck it up and go SB already. The wait for BD is killing me.

my comp is a e2180 @ 3.0GHz.. and nothing else fancy. nvidia IGP.
kid's comp (mind you they're 6 and 7 ) is an old dell sempron 3100 and 512MB ram. It can't even handle recent kids games anymore.

 

[ShadowVVL]

I am still running C2Q 9550 so i dont see a reason to upgrading until mid 2012.

Now on the other hand my hp is 3 years old and running a older 90nm athlon x2 5600+ windsor which im looking forward to upgrading to llano if llano turns out ok.

 

[ArizonaSteve]

Running X3350 (Q9450) @ 3.2GHz, and have no desire or need to upgrade following an SSD addition last year. Maybe Intel will have to get into writing games in order to sell more chips in the future, because consoles have completely stalled progress.

 

[A5]

I built the system in my sig in July 2009 - I upgraded the video card to a 560 and doubled my RAM earlier this month, so I think I'm good for awhile. My only complaint is that my motherboard won't go into sleep mode if I set the FSB over 150MHz (and sleep not working drives my wife crazy)...I've run it stable at 3.8 GHz, but I have to keep it at 3.0 due to that 😛

 

[LostPassword]

my rig freezes from time to time, thats reason enough for me. i think its my mobo. so once i see some bulldozer reviews, i'll make my decision and regut my pc.

 

[coloumb]

my rig freezes from time to time, thats reason enough for me. i think its my mobo. so once i see some bulldozer reviews, i'll make my decision and regut my pc.

Mine does that randomly too as well has issues during BIOS initialization due to abit ip35pro beta bios I have to use with Q8300 processor. If I don't use the beta bios, then the CPU temps are reported incorrectly or I can't use VT. I just hate having to reinstall Windows + 3rd party programs...

 

[Pumpkin Cream]

my rig freezes from time to time, thats reason enough for me. i think its my mobo.

Yup, check your mobo. That happened to me with my last rig. I checked the mobo and found 3 leaking capacitors. The Gigabyte AM2 mobo was 3 and a half years old though.

Anyways I'm running a Ahtlon II X3 440 and, together with a HD4850 512mb, it handles all the games and software I use. Apart from a component failure or uncontrollable tech lust, I can't see any reason for a upgrade.

 

[BD2003]

Back when I was a big PC gamer I used to upgrade almost every year. Now that I've mostly moved to the console side, I too am finding it really hard to justify an upgrade.

I'm on an e6300, one of the first C2D chips made. Overclocked to 2.8ghz, its served me well for almost 5 years now. Sure I threw in a 9600GT a few years, and then an OCZ vertex SSD made a HUUUUUGE difference in responsiveness. I honestly cant imagine what a CPU upgrade would do for me, it still feels as fast as can be.

Nowadays I'm more interested in the low-end efficient chips. I've had a E2180 and nvidia 9300 HTPC for years, and I cant imagine what an upgrade could do for me there either. I'd considered buying one of those AMD E-350 boards, but it'd basically be a downgrade...

I've also got a windows home server that's running happily with a e1200 celeron dual core. And a 2.0ghz C2D laptop. Basically, I'm heavily invested in C2D chips right now, at the time they were a revelation for performance, efficiency and overclockability compared to the P4 and the AMD chips of the time. What more could you want?

Part of me wants my ancient P965 board to just die already so I can justify an upgrade, but there's always something better around the corner. Why get sandy bridge when I can get ivy bridge a year later?

 

[sangyup81]

I'm waiting to see what happens with Bulldozer. I ignored the Conroe reports and bought a K8 rig so I won't be making that same mistake again. If Bulldozer disappoints, I'm jumping on Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge if it goes that long

 

[biostud]

I just upgraded my parents computer

A64 1.8Ghz
Asus-V7700 Geforce2
2.5Gb ram
80 gb Hdd
winXP
HP III laserprinter (lpt1) (it was from 1990)

to a
SB i5-2400
4Gb ram
1Tb Hdd
win7
Brother HL-2035 laserprinter

My mother who's retired, got to tired of the old one being too slow, and argued that it was a necessity to upgrade it sooner or later anyways, so why not now. My father just had to agree and go with me to the shop and pay 😉

 

[akugami]

Wow. This thread is exactly how I feel. I mean, I feel like others are posting my exact thoughts.

Isn't it funny how many of us have C2D or C2Q's that are overclocked and just see no real reason to spend the money to upgrade. Sure, the new CPU's are nice. It's always cool to see them crunching through the benchmarks. I think I can speak for many of us when I say that as I'm going through my gaming sessions or doing some of my daily tasks, thinking about how slow I'm getting work done or how crappy a game is performing is the last thing on my mind.

I'm on an overclocked C2Q 9550 @ 3.3ghz and a Radeon 4870. I just don't see a reason to upgrade at this time.

 

[Edzard]

On the conservative end of the “upgrade justification distribution curve”, here’s an outlook that might produce a few yuks and possibly be informative.

I'm so bloody Scotch that I only do significant upgrades about every 5 years. When I do upgrade I mostly use “pre-owned” components that are already 1-2 years old but have a track record of being reliable. Since computer gear depreciates at about 40-45% per year (my observation over several years), this saves quite a bit of money. I’m probably compulsive about that.

My current main rig is a Socket 754 Sempron 2500+, E6 core, 1.4GHz stock overclocked to 1.8 or 2.2GHz (at default Vcore), depending on how I feel on any given day. Motherboard is a Chaintech VNF3-250 (bought used here on the AnandTech forums for 25 bucks) that is still fully functional. Early on I installed a 30MM fan on its south bridge heatsink and I think that minor mod has extended the board’s longevity. My case is a $23 (delivered) ATX overclocking case with provisions for 13 case fans (!) that I bought in 2001. I love that case and may instruct my heirs to include it in my grave (thought the same way about my ’83 Toyota Corolla but sold it last year to a needy neighbor). Hard drive is a five-year old 80GB Seagate ST380013A (7200.7 series) that still passes Seagate’s quick self test with flying colors (a 92MM intake fan is blowing air above and below it – installed the fan simultaneously with the drive). Memory is 1GB of PC3200 (original DDR, 184 pin), a relatively late upgrade from 512MB precipitated by “going virtual” during eBay searches that produced tens of thousands of hits.

And I’m still running Win2K (behind a router’s firewall and using the last free version of ZoneAlarm that runs on Win2K).

Do I hear several gasps, “gawds” and/or expletives?

Thankfully the latest versions of Avast still run on Win2K. WinXP is OK but I just have no need for it. Vista (yuk) and Win 7 certainly aren’t necessary for what I use my PC for. And since, as a retired software developer, I remember the days of stuffing code into as little as 32K of memory (yes, that’s “K” as in Kilobyte, 1024 bytes), breaking programs via subroutines into overlay segments (an approach to memory management used prior to the advent of Virtual Memory), I don’t have much respect for Operating Systems that eat 500MB+ idle at the desktop.

I just use my system to surf the net (Cox “Preferred” service) and very occasionally play the original version of Far Cry (started using an AGP FX 5200 graphics card [yes, yuk – but suffices] about 3 years ago after my heatsink mod covering several chips on my Radeon 9700 fell off the chips it was supposed to cool and I was too lazy to fix it).

BUT (trumpet fanfare) it is time to upgrade. Over 5 years have passed since my last major upgrade. Between ZoneAlarm being a processor resource hog and the processor demands contributed by Avast and all the scripts that one encounters on web pages, I’m seeing my CPU utilization hit 100%. In early morning tests (periods of less bandwidth competition from other Internet traffic, which tends to make bandwidth testing more meaningful), when I turn off ZoneAlarm my Internet bandwidth increases substantially. My tolerance for anything less than maximum Internet bandwidth is not high, especially given that I’m paying for that bandwidth.

So I’ll probably buy an E2000, E3000, or E5000 series processor (likely one of the 45nm jobbies), clock it to between 3 and 3.3GHz on a (used, of course) Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2L (V1.1) I have as a spare board for a customer (his build warranty is nearing its end), add a 7600GT and get on down the pike, still running Win2K with the option to migrate to Linux (the Gigabyte board is very amenable to Linux). And do the upgrade for a hundred bucks or so.

Keep in mind that lack of money is by no means an issue here.

It’s my attitude…..

 

[VirtualLarry]

So I’ll probably buy an E2000, E3000, or E5000 series processor (likely one of the 45nm jobbies), clock it to between 3 and 3.3GHz on a (used, of course) Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2L (V1.1) I have as a spare board for a customer (his build warranty is nearing its end), add a 7600GT and get on down the pike, still running Win2K with the option to migrate to Linux (the Gigabyte board is very amenable to Linux). And do the upgrade for a hundred bucks or so.

Keep in mind that lack of money is by no means an issue here.

It’s my attitude…..

Man, you really don't know what you're missing. If money isn't the issue, then what is? Do you have a psychological barrier to owning nice things, feeling like you always have to use hand-me-downs?

Anyways, my suggestion is, if you're not going to go for a nice (cheap too!) AMD quad-core, then an E5200 overclocked in a G31M-ES2L board makes a nice little dual-core rig. I've built a few of those for clients. I would, however, spring for Windows 7 64-bit. It's so much better than W2K or XP. I think you would happily be surprised. With legit Win7, you can also install Microsoft Security Essentials, which is MS's free AV, which is half-decent, at least.

If you have a Microcenter nearby, it's nearly impossible to beat their combo deal on AMD CPUs + mobo. Buy an AMD Athlon II X4 640 (3.0Ghz) for $99, get a mobo for free. Get one that takes DDR3 memory, and then pick up some cheap DDR3 from Newegg, if MC doesn't have any.

That's really the best deal going for desktop performance, in my mind.

Either way, your choice.

My personal preference is also to not be on the bleeding edge. I think Socket 775 is still very viable from a performance perspective. The only reason for going to sandy bridge is high-end gaming, or high-end video/photo editing. Everything else is just fine on a C2D/C2Q. Still though, I don't think that I would have stuck to a Socket 754 CPU for so long, that's just asking for pain. If you had upgraded two years ago to a P35 mobo, and a dual-core C2D 65nm CPU, like an E2xxx, then you could be upgrading right now to a Core2Quad 45nm CPU for cheap, like I just did. And enjoy that performance boost all along.

Edit: You might check out a Zacate mini-ITX rig too, if you are conservative about power consumption. See thread here: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2144118
Still, it would cost a little bit more than a used C2D rig, and probably be slower overall, but oh those low power numbers.

 

[Martimus]

I have to admit that my current computer is very slow in relation to most posters here. (I have a Manchester 4200+ X2 on a S939 MB, with a HD3850 as my video card) That said, I can actually run everything I have tried to run on it.

I still want an upgrade, but the biggest reason I want to upgrade is that my case is falling apart from moving so often and the power button is tempermental, and it will shut off randomly as well (which I traced back to the cases power circuitry) Rather than buy a new case and put the old computer back together in that, I would rather just get a new computer. I am a little bummed that I can't buy a SB processor for another few months though.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I have to admit that my current computer is very slow in relation to most posters here. (I have a Manchester 4200+ X2 on a S939 MB, with a HD3850 as my video card) That said, I can actually run everything I have tried to run on it.

I still want an upgrade, but the biggest reason I want to upgrade is that my case is falling apart from moving so often and the power button is tempermental, and it will shut off randomly as well (which I traced back to the cases power circuitry) Rather than buy a new case and put the old computer back together in that, I would rather just get a new computer. I am a little bummed that I can't buy a SB processor for another few months though.

I don't mean this to be insulting, but if you are still on a mid-level S939 dual-core, it seems like you are not really a hardcore gamer, or if you are, then you tend to stick to older (2+ years old) games. (Or you have a tolerance for really, really, low framerates.)

That said, why do you feel you need SB? Just because it's the newest thing out there? Or because you only upgrade once in a blue moon, so that when you do upgrade, you want the latest and greatest, so that you can ride out the lack of upgrades for a longer time? (Edit: Or perhaps you want the good idle power consumption, combined with the good overclocking with the 'K' chips.)

If I were you, I would (especially if you have a Microcenter nearby) think about picking up an AMD rig on the cheap. A quad-core, or possibly even a hex-core. It would cost a bit less than a SB, you wouldn't have to wait as long for it either.

Then again, that would be much more solid advice, if only AMD had stuck to AM3 for BD, or if they had released AM3+ mobos already. Then you would have had an upgrade path to 8-core BD, which will likely be as future-proof as anything else out there, as far as CPUs go. Hopefully it will be the cheapest 8-core CPU on the market. Then again, if AMD is going to label them as FX CPUs, they might not be cheap overall, although I'm pretty sure they will be cheaper than Intel.

 

[natto fire]

Considering my only "rig" is an N270 Atom netbook, upgrading has been about the only thing on my mind for the past month or so. I just bought a "stop gap" solution in the form of a pre-built HP (great deal) that will certainly last me until socket 2011 or bulldozer.