X58 Sabertooth - Keep or Upgrade

jwright30

Member
Jul 12, 2008
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I had been planning on a minor upgrade to my x58 sabertooth system, going from a 4ghz I7-950 to a x5650 and some case and water cooling updates. My budget for a new system was only about 300, but recently it has come to my attention how much x58 sabertooths are selling for. Mostly I just game on my pc and tinker with overclocking and cooling. So, my question is, is it time to bid my old system goodbye while its selling so well, and move to something more modern?
 

MongGrel

Lifer
Dec 3, 2013
38,751
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I'm sticking with my X5650 myself personally awhile.

Just my two cents.

Might even hold out and see if the X5670's drop in price later, even using a ASUS P6T7 here, yeah the Sabertooths run em even better I guess.

Depends one if you want to mess with re clocking different maybe, or starting from scratch with Haswell maybe.
 
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jwright30

Member
Jul 12, 2008
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I think I am leaning towards the x5650 and other case/cooling improvements. Its just when you get to the point of realizing the money you are spending is equal to what a new setup might cost, that you feel you need to ask the question out loud.
 

Burpo

Diamond Member
Sep 10, 2013
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Is $70 equal to a new system? I think not! Your system will run cooler with the 95 watt X5650 than your 130 watt I7-950. What else do you need to spend other than CPU?
 

jwright30

Member
Jul 12, 2008
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Sorry, I was looking to spend about $300 total on a few things like bigger case (haf stacker) new tubing, ex140 radiator, a few new fans for new case, x5650 and some other associated cable pieces. What I was comparing was the spending of $300 on the old system vs $300+old system sale= new system.
 

beginner99

Diamond Member
Jun 2, 2009
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Maybe search for a used gulftown (six-core, 32nm) i7-980?

EDIT: OK, mentioned xeon is a gulftown but a lot lower clocked than i7-980.
 

Burpo

Diamond Member
Sep 10, 2013
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473
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Not a 130 watt Gulftown.. Please let me know when you can get a Gulftown above this.. Westmere EP Xeons cost 2-3X what Gulftown did for good reason. These 95 watt server chips have more room for overclock & make less heat. Changing the CPU is all that you need to do, and you can probably sell the i7-950 and recoup your $70.. X58 SaberTooth + X5650



Buy a nice fast SSD if you want to spend your $$ :) Or splurge and spend $122.32 for X5670..
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Xeon-...sor-/181536296838?pt=CPUs&hash=item2a44680f86
 
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CropDuster

Senior member
Jan 2, 2014
366
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I thought about selling my rig also when I saw how much the X58 boards are going for on Ebay. However, I don't think making $200 or so on the current board and then having to drop $1k or so to replace it is worth it when this system still laughs at pretty much everything I use it for (ArcGIS and gaming mostly).
 

vmarkx3

Member
Sep 19, 2001
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I had a i7 920 @ 3.5Ghz and upgraded to Xeon X5650 @ 4.2Ghz.

My cinebench R15 score went from 510 to 981. Thats equivalent to a 4770K score.
Not bad for $70 upgrade.

save your $$ and upgrade gfx card or to SSD.
 

Mk pt

Member
Nov 23, 2013
67
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81
I had a i7 920 @ 3.5Ghz and upgraded to Xeon X5650 @ 4.2Ghz.

My cinebench R15 score went from 510 to 981. Thats equivalent to a 4770K score.
Not bad for $70 upgrade.

save your $$ and upgrade gfx card or to SSD.

I had a i7 920 @ 3.6ghz and upgraded to xeon X5650@4.12ghz.. +/- 955-960 cb in cinebench 15.

4770k @ 4.6ghz scores +/- 930cb in cinebench 15.

So X5650 with a nice oc can beat all mainstream i7's in multithread tasks.


Ssd is a great upgrade if he doesn't have one yet.
 
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