Originally Posted by smc8788 Hmm, the only thing that worries me is the price of the future 1366 CPUs. If Intel is going to discontinue the 920 then that only leaves the high end CPUs which are £400+, and I doubt I'll ever spend that much on a CPU. Intel's silly pricing scheme may only be silly for now, until they make 1366 too expensive for people like me and the only "affordable" i7s (i.e. the 860) will be released on 1156.
Of course I could be completely wrong, but it's a worry nonetheless and the lack of transparency from Intel regarding their intentions for each socket doesn't help.
That also worries me if i go down the i7 920 route now the chances of being able to upgrade look pretty slim. 1366 will become the ultimate high end leaving me with nowhere to go from my 920, Where as if i go 1156 i can have an i5 now and upgrade to a i7 if i wanted in the future.
Originally Posted by smc8788 Hmm, the only thing that worries me is the price of the future 1366 CPUs. If Intel is going to discontinue the 920 then that only leaves the high end CPUs which are £400+, and I doubt I'll ever spend that much on a CPU. Intel's silly pricing scheme may only be silly for now, until they make 1366 too expensive for people like me and the only "affordable" i7s (i.e. the 860) will be released on 1156.
Of course I could be completely wrong, but it's a worry nonetheless and the lack of transparency from Intel regarding their intentions for each socket doesn't help.
We think the i7-920 is the 'new' Q6600 (if there is such a thing), in that you shouldn't need to upgrade it for the foreseeable future if you don't mind a bit of overclocking, but it won't be around forever according to the roadmaps we've seen... hence the recommendation to buy it while you still can.
Originally Posted by V3ctor Still not leaving my Q6600... That's a really good CPU for a great price, but for everyone that has a QCore, I don't think it's that important, I just OC'ed my Q6600 to 3.2Ghz without volting up, and I think I'll have a good performance on games for at least 1-2 years until I switch to Sandybridge (or something else). It's a good buy for people with single cores, and "small" dual-cores, nothing more
Agreed, my work PC is a Q6600 which I also do some casual gaming on and I am more than happy with it, I think it would be a waste of money to upgrade from that at this moment in time.
Unfortunately at home I am running a 939 AMD X2 4400, while it is ok on day to day tasks gaming has become quite sluggish on it!
Yes I did. I'm done with overclocking for now. I am hoping that the 860 comes out at the $230 price range like quoted on other sites, but I am waiting on newegg at the moment.
I've had my eye set on the P55 SLI from EVGA for a while ($200)
So thats $430 compared to the $520 I would spend on a similar setup.
I won't have to spend another $50 on a cpu cooler since the P55 SLI has LGA775 mounts, and I will only have to buy 2 stick of Ram off the bat instead of 3.
I guess I was hoping that the low end i5 would be basically an i920 in desquise for less, instead, its just an over priced bit of silicone.. Oh well, I guess I'll be buying a 2nd hand e8400 etc. to pass the years instead then..
I'll stick to my over-clocked Core2 and 775 motherboard; a nice GeForce "395" (dual Gt300) will give a blast to the majority of this "11XX" "i7": And frankly, till the majority manages to really take advantage of 920's SLI dual "395" option (because of the price) we will have something completely new on the market. :D
In other words, Intel is not going to see my money for a while.
I found out yesterday when I was doing some overclocking together with my brother that running two Nvidia cards in SLI is slower then decoupling the cards and use one as a GPU and one as a physics GPU. We don't know why but we got higher numbers in vantage then with SLI.
now that Intel have released the data sheet on these processors, what is interesting is that i7 920 have thermal spec of 68c. while all LGA1156 processors have thermal spec of 73c.
does this mean as long as the temperature stay below 72c on i5's, it will turbo boost when single thread is needed?
is that how turbo boost works? i plan to overclock my 750 to 3.8Ghz at 190 Bclk, then take advantage of turbo boost in single threaded applications to achieve speed pass 4Ghz.
Are we forgetting that there is going to be 55% off of MSI boards etc from all of the retailers out there as of 2pm today until they are sold? This makes the £130 boards that bit-tech are testing these chips on around £60-65. That then brings down the price of a system to (i5 750, a £65 mobo, 4gb ram) £300. Not the £480+ of the 920 with equivalent motherboard and 6gb of ram. That makes the 750 an absolute bargain and even brings the 860 into the equation HOWEVER when prices go back up it becomes one of those scenarios where you cant help but um' and ah'.
Each of the 4 companies that I know are partaking in the offer only have 40 of the boards, so the chance of you getting one is pretty so damn slim, its not worth thinking you will get one for £65..
Great review. Pity you couldn't have incorporated a SLI graphics test into it to show differences in scaling.... I'm really interested in seeing that when you've finished!
All this talk of the possible astronomical prices of 1366 upgrades doesn't bother me. I know this chip will do over 4.5GHz on water. I'll just upgrade my cooling system instead :) I think the other poster is right. The i7-920 is the new Q6600.
Interesting results with HT! As image editing is one of my main tasks, I'll be doing some tests to see how Photoshop performs with and without it.
Why use Gimp to test image editing performance? This has been annoying me for a while now. I know of not a single photographer or graphics artist who uses Gimp. How about using Photoshop please? After all... probably over 90% of people who would actually consider image editing performance as a buying factor will NOT be using Gimp.. trust me.. they wont.
Other than that... fantastic review. Not a complete surprise due to Wuyanxu publishing benchmarks before the NDA.. he he... :)
No idea why there's a fuss about Turbo Boost2.. it's great for people who run it stock out of the box (mainstream end users) but I think everyone on here will be OCing (or most anyway) and to me, Speedstep is way more important. Does Lynnfield still have that? You just OC to the max, and let speedstep throttle it back when idle. Makes far more sense (Me looks at my 2.4GHz clock speed and 47watts while typing this). Turbo Boost will be disabled by most in short order I think.
<me carefully inspects Pookeyhead's i7-920 for damage> :p
This leaves me with a slight dilemma. I'm about to embark on building a high-spec HTPC, to include gaming as well as the normal HTPC functions, water-cooled for quietness (more details in its own thread in the not-too-distant future). Gaming (on Full HD) is the only reason I need anything more than a mid-range spec (any encoding etc. will be done on another computer). I was considering the i7-920, but now have to bear the i5-750 in mind. This part:
Quote:
Originally Posted by review the X58 chipset and triple-channel memory are better for gaming than P55 and dual-channel memory
(from the third-last paragraph) confuses me slightly. At stock speeds, both games tested were faster on the i5-750, and when overclocked, the two chips were within a hair's breadth of each other. Was this sentence (referring to the LGA 1366 socket, not than the i7-920 processor specifically) just suggesting that getting an LGA 1366 motherboard leaves the door open for future CPU upgrades which will be better for gaming, or is it suggesting that the i7-920 is better for gaming than the i5-750? I think it's the former, but if it's the latter, in what situation would I be likely to find the i7-920 faster (more than a couple of fps) in games than the i5-750, given the benchmark results?
I'd love an i7-920 for my main rig too, but I can only afford so many parts at once...
Thanks for the great, in-depth write-up. Invaluable.
"If you're too lazy or scared to overclock" so everyone that runs at stock speeds for whatever reason is deserving of a slagging off, absolutely amazing comment.
Originally Posted by GrahamC "If you're too lazy or scared to overclock" so everyone that runs at stock speeds for whatever reason is deserving of a slagging off, absolutely amazing comment.
I think this comment wasnt said to people anyone down but was just to say that going on p55 with this new turbo mode that can give you up to 3.5ghz is an easy way of overclocking the cpu without you having to do anything as most people are happy with an overclock to say 3.5ghz and its only those with no sense or those who know what they are doing that take overclocking to 4ghz or so.
As for the pricing... I wont be getting an i5 as a second machine unless I can get the 55% off. If I cant then I shall resurrect my qx6700. problem is I run nvidia and have sli caperble cards so that means 680i/780i/790i all of which are over priced and offer worse performance than p45 or x48. When you factor in the price of the nvidia boards it makes things similar in price to going i5 anyway and then I can sell the qx6700....
I can't say I am too surprised that the 920 is still looking like the best deal. I was hoping that i5 would be significantly cheaper and offer very similar performance, but it looks like optimism isn't enough.
Originally Posted by 500mph Finally! I've been waiting for this day for sooooo long
I will probably be getting the Evga P55 SLI and a I7 860 to pait with my GTS 250(Waiting for Geforce 300) and my WD 1tb drive for a nice little gaming/multimedia rig.
This E6300(@2.8ghz) and 680i setup now just isn't cutting it anymore. (Will make a great secondary system though)
wha?
Quote:
Originally Posted by droitwichdosser erm... did you read the review?
what i was thinking...
Quote:
Originally Posted by 500mph Yes I did. I'm done with overclocking for now. I am hoping that the 860 comes out at the $230 price range like quoted on other sites, but I am waiting on newegg at the moment.
I've had my eye set on the P55 SLI from EVGA for a while ($200)
So thats $430 compared to the $520 I would spend on a similar setup.
I won't have to spend another $50 on a cpu cooler since the P55 SLI has LGA775 mounts, and I will only have to buy 2 stick of Ram off the bat instead of 3.
they qoute that price when it's out of stock, then when it gets in, they raise it...don't waste your time waiting on that.(newegg has it in stock at 299.99) and the cost to grab "3" sticks of ram has nothing to do with it really. 3 x 2GB sticks don't cost much more than 2 x 2Gb, say 25% cost increase to 50% capacity increase if that.
Even though I did win a i7-750 + P7P55D at the Asus/Bit-Tech event, I'm still using my i7 920 + P6T Deluxe, slightly overclocked @ 3.1 Ghz. I figured the memory bandwidth is just superior in triple channel.
Now what to do with it ? Second PC ? Low Voltage mediaPC/server ? ebay? BT "for sale" forum ?
Originally Posted by g3n3tiX Even though I did win a i7-750 + P7P55D at the Asus/Bit-Tech event, I'm still using my i7 920 + P6T Deluxe, slightly overclocked @ 3.1 Ghz. I figured the memory bandwidth is just superior in triple channel.
Now what to do with it ? Second PC ? Low Voltage mediaPC/server ? ebay? BT "for sale" forum ?
Why does the article say that 'HT does not increase the power consumption of your PC' when the graph seems to show it does? (p10) Although the much higher load consumption may be due to the fact HT is loading the system more efficiently, as the WPrime benchmark showed an improved speed with HT enabled.
Comments 26 to 50 of 98
ReplyThat also worries me if i go down the i7 920 route now the chances of being able to upgrade look pretty slim. 1366 will become the ultimate high end leaving me with nowhere to go from my 920, Where as if i go 1156 i can have an i5 now and upgrade to a i7 if i wanted in the future.
We think the i7-920 is the 'new' Q6600 (if there is such a thing), in that you shouldn't need to upgrade it for the foreseeable future if you don't mind a bit of overclocking, but it won't be around forever according to the roadmaps we've seen... hence the recommendation to buy it while you still can.
Agreed, my work PC is a Q6600 which I also do some casual gaming on and I am more than happy with it, I think it would be a waste of money to upgrade from that at this moment in time.
Unfortunately at home I am running a 939 AMD X2 4400, while it is ok on day to day tasks gaming has become quite sluggish on it!
Yes I did. I'm done with overclocking for now. I am hoping that the 860 comes out at the $230 price range like quoted on other sites, but I am waiting on newegg at the moment.
I've had my eye set on the P55 SLI from EVGA for a while ($200)
So thats $430 compared to the $520 I would spend on a similar setup.
I won't have to spend another $50 on a cpu cooler since the P55 SLI has LGA775 mounts, and I will only have to buy 2 stick of Ram off the bat instead of 3.
I guess I was hoping that the low end i5 would be basically an i920 in desquise for less, instead, its just an over priced bit of silicone.. Oh well, I guess I'll be buying a 2nd hand e8400 etc. to pass the years instead then..
In other words, Intel is not going to see my money for a while.
does this mean as long as the temperature stay below 72c on i5's, it will turbo boost when single thread is needed?
is that how turbo boost works? i plan to overclock my 750 to 3.8Ghz at 190 Bclk, then take advantage of turbo boost in single threaded applications to achieve speed pass 4Ghz.
Andy
Great write up as always.
Sooooo pleased i bought my 920 last week...
Great review. Pity you couldn't have incorporated a SLI graphics test into it to show differences in scaling.... I'm really interested in seeing that when you've finished!
All this talk of the possible astronomical prices of 1366 upgrades doesn't bother me. I know this chip will do over 4.5GHz on water. I'll just upgrade my cooling system instead :) I think the other poster is right. The i7-920 is the new Q6600.
Interesting results with HT! As image editing is one of my main tasks, I'll be doing some tests to see how Photoshop performs with and without it.
Why use Gimp to test image editing performance? This has been annoying me for a while now. I know of not a single photographer or graphics artist who uses Gimp. How about using Photoshop please? After all... probably over 90% of people who would actually consider image editing performance as a buying factor will NOT be using Gimp.. trust me.. they wont.
Other than that... fantastic review. Not a complete surprise due to Wuyanxu publishing benchmarks before the NDA.. he he... :)
No idea why there's a fuss about Turbo Boost2.. it's great for people who run it stock out of the box (mainstream end users) but I think everyone on here will be OCing (or most anyway) and to me, Speedstep is way more important. Does Lynnfield still have that? You just OC to the max, and let speedstep throttle it back when idle. Makes far more sense (Me looks at my 2.4GHz clock speed and 47watts while typing this). Turbo Boost will be disabled by most in short order I think.
This leaves me with a slight dilemma. I'm about to embark on building a high-spec HTPC, to include gaming as well as the normal HTPC functions, water-cooled for quietness (more details in its own thread in the not-too-distant future). Gaming (on Full HD) is the only reason I need anything more than a mid-range spec (any encoding etc. will be done on another computer). I was considering the i7-920, but now have to bear the i5-750 in mind. This part:
(from the third-last paragraph) confuses me slightly. At stock speeds, both games tested were faster on the i5-750, and when overclocked, the two chips were within a hair's breadth of each other. Was this sentence (referring to the LGA 1366 socket, not than the i7-920 processor specifically) just suggesting that getting an LGA 1366 motherboard leaves the door open for future CPU upgrades which will be better for gaming, or is it suggesting that the i7-920 is better for gaming than the i5-750? I think it's the former, but if it's the latter, in what situation would I be likely to find the i7-920 faster (more than a couple of fps) in games than the i5-750, given the benchmark results?
I'd love an i7-920 for my main rig too, but I can only afford so many parts at once...
Thanks for the great, in-depth write-up. Invaluable.
I think this comment wasnt said to people anyone down but was just to say that going on p55 with this new turbo mode that can give you up to 3.5ghz is an easy way of overclocking the cpu without you having to do anything as most people are happy with an overclock to say 3.5ghz and its only those with no sense or those who know what they are doing that take overclocking to 4ghz or so.
As for the pricing... I wont be getting an i5 as a second machine unless I can get the 55% off. If I cant then I shall resurrect my qx6700. problem is I run nvidia and have sli caperble cards so that means 680i/780i/790i all of which are over priced and offer worse performance than p45 or x48. When you factor in the price of the nvidia boards it makes things similar in price to going i5 anyway and then I can sell the qx6700....
Andy
EDIT!!!!!!!!
SCAN HAVE BOARDS IN STOCK 12.18PM
wha?
what i was thinking...
they qoute that price when it's out of stock, then when it gets in, they raise it...don't waste your time waiting on that.(newegg has it in stock at 299.99) and the cost to grab "3" sticks of ram has nothing to do with it really. 3 x 2GB sticks don't cost much more than 2 x 2Gb, say 25% cost increase to 50% capacity increase if that.
it's 750 or 920 right now it seems.
Now what to do with it ? Second PC ? Low Voltage mediaPC/server ? ebay? BT "for sale" forum ?
It's my birthday on the 30th...
edit: tigerdirect has boards, all kinds in fact. looks like newegg just flat out dropped the ball here.
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