Are you going i7 or not?

Going i7 or no

  • You betcha I am

    Votes: 121 38.1%

  • Nope, my s775 system is just fine or other system is just fine.

    Votes: 102 32.1%

  • Nope, going AM3

    Votes: 15 4.7%

  • I'll wait for the next round of Intel/AMD stuff.

    Votes: 80 25.2%
  • Total voters
    318
I'll be keeping my current pc until next year save for GPU updates.

To me, core i7 makes sense if 1) I needed multi GPU 2) did video editing 3) played RTS games 4) had something other than a new core2quad system. Since none of that is the case...I voted option 2.

Also, I don't believe FPS games benefit from i7 vs c2q since they're typically GPU bound...and I'm pretty much just interested in FPS games ( no RTS or mmorpg business )
 
BM00 said:
I'll be keeping my current pc until next year save for GPU updates.

To me, core i7 makes sense if 1) I needed multi GPU 2) did video editing 3) played RTS games 4) had something other than a new core2quad system. Since none of that is the case...I voted option 2.

Also, I don't believe FPS games benefit from i7 vs c2q since they're typically GPU bound...and I'm pretty much just interested in FPS games ( no RTS or mmorpg business )
Click to expand...

Very reasonably and accurately put. Well said.

Edit: I don't fit the same mold as you. I'm a big RTS gamer ;)
 
I plan to skip i7 now and just get an e8400 or a quad core. My e6300 has been good to me for 2 years now, but it's about time for an upgrade. I can't justify spending like $700 +- for an i7 computer right now.
 
Nope, if anything I'll get one of the 'S' quads to hold me over a bit down the line, but it's unlikely.

Too much money for something I'll only notice in benchmarks seeing as I don't play any games on my PC lately...
 
My Athlon X2 is 3 years old, so I7 was the logical choice. All components sitting ready except for the mobo, need to decide between Evga and Asus this week :confused:
 
Inu said:
Would you say your performance increase change was like night and day? What games have you been able to compare on at least some level?
Click to expand...
WoW went from medium/high in game setting with no AA/AF and decent fps to all max in game settings, full AA/AF and 60 FPS locked during 25man Three Drake Sartharion.

TF2/HL2 went from medium game setting with no AA/AF to keep it playable, to full in game setting full AA/AF and an awesome framerate (I don't use vsync in FPS) all the time. UT3 was the same way.

Yeah, it was a pretty huge difference.
 
I all ready jumped on the i7 bandwagon.......;)

I mainly did this because all I had to pay for was the CPU its self..................:D
 
I'm planning to get another Wolfdale or even a Q9550 and a Mini ITX motherboard.
Yeah, you heard right.

I like it small and as long as the i7 system doesn't come in SFF, I'm gonna grab 775 as long as I can.
Actually, the system I'm using now (E8400 and mATX) covers all the performance I needs.

Our hobby number 1 is very ungreatful and outdates on the day of purchase, therfore skipping one generation might not be such a bad idea.
Those of you who have decided to stuck on socket 775 for the time being, let's relax and wait for the 32nm CPUs.
Until then, we may have saved enough $$$ to get this 1TB SSD drive as well, finally ...
 
No reason to whatsoever...Games don't use more then 2 cores at the moment anyways...And to all the idiots that say "well, you can game and burn a DVD and compress a file and chat on MSN and use facebook all at the same time"...LOL! whatever!!
 
Cov said:
I'm planning to get another Wolfdale or even a Q9550 and a Mini ITX motherboard.
Yeah, you heard right.

I like it small and as long as the i7 system doesn't come in SFF, I'm gonna grab 775 as long as I can.
Actually, the system I'm using now (E8400 and mATX) covers all the performance I needs.

Our hobby number 1 is very ungreatful and outdates on the day of purchase, therfore skipping one generation might not be such a bad idea.
Those of you who have decided to stuck on socket 775 for the time being, let's relax and wait for the 32nm CPUs.
Until then, we may have saved enough $$$ to get this 1TB SSD drive as well, finally ...
Click to expand...

There are at least 2 mATX i7 boards out there. DFI and ASUS
 
Yeah, sorry. I should have specified it better. I meant Mini ITX.
 
maleficarus said:
No reason to whatsoever...Games don't use more then 2 cores at the moment anyways...And to all the idiots that say "well, you can game and burn a DVD and compress a file and chat on MSN and use facebook all at the same time"...LOL! whatever!!
Click to expand...

What about the idiots who think all games only use 2 cores? They're worse idiots, by far. They're the morons who disregard WiC, Company of Heroes, and Supreme Commander as valid quad core aware games.
 
moshpit said:
What about the idiots who think all games only use 2 cores? They're worse idiots, by far. They're the morons who disregard WiC, Company of Heroes, and Supreme Commander as valid quad core aware games.
Click to expand...

Not to mention GTA4, John Woo's Stranglehold, Left 4 Dead, Far Cry 2, Flight Simulator X, as well as most any Unreal Engine 3 game. But the vast majority of games currently do not.
 
I recently put together my first i7 system and it's amazing. It's hard to believe personal computers can offer up this much breathing room.
 
Mr. Bluntman said:
Not to mention GTA4, John Woo's Stranglehold, Left 4 Dead, Far Cry 2, Flight Simulator X, as well as most any Unreal Engine 3 game. But the vast majority of games currently do not.
Click to expand...

I think a central problem is that many of the GPU limited games support multiple CPU cores (look at L4D!) whereas a whole lot of the CPU-heavy games tend to be sequestered to one or two cores at most. This makes sense as most of the GPU-limited games are big budget titles (including all the ones you listed) that therefore can afford some savvy threaded programmers.

It's the smaller studios putting out compute-heavy titles that run on a single core, that's the issue. I am playing a game called Drakensang, a German RPG, that is running one of my i7 cores to 100% while not touching the rest.
 
My e6300 will be replaced by an e8400 Thursday or Friday. It's a free upgrade, so I'll definitely be skipping i7 now. :D
 
I'm skipping I7.

I just upgraded to a Q8200. It was 99 bucks. was a steal I think. I skipped core duo, core 2 duo, kentfield and went straight to yorkfield core 2 quad from a pentium D. probably skipping I7 and the next 2-3 after that before I upgrade again.
 
soccrstar said:
I'm skipping I7.

I just upgraded to a Q8200. It was 99 bucks. was a steal I think. I skipped core duo, core 2 duo, kentfield and went straight to yorkfield core 2 quad from a pentium D. probably skipping I7 and the next 2-3 after that before I upgrade again.
Click to expand...

That might be a while. Depending on your uses, the Q8200 may last you a while. The MC deal was rather good, though.
 
Probably ill skip the i7 boat, even if my Q6600 @ 3.4Ghz is a significant bottleneck on my GTX285 the cost is not justified for a very insignificant performance difference unless i am able to hit 4.3~4.4Ghz on air
 
Nope, not as of yet.
My current rig does 4.0Ghz @ 1.24v, so i am a happy camper.
Besides i need to sell my current rig so i can pay off my NewEgg bill first before any new upgrade or builds. ::)
But with this economy, not likely.
 
moshpit said:
What about the idiots who think all games only use 2 cores? They're worse idiots, by far. They're the morons who disregard WiC, Company of Heroes, and Supreme Commander as valid quad core aware games.
Click to expand...

Dude let us be honest....95% of todays games use max 2 cores, even arguing about this is stupid and certainly not enough to justify buying a quad core for gaming geez...
 
Source games use multi-core just fine maleficarus. A lot of people play nothing but source games.
 
Not going i7 here, even though I'm building a new system right now. My build will be a budget Q6600 build, and going i7 would mean paying a $200 premium over the $750-ish total that I'm spending, not really worth it to me... From a performance-per-dollar viewpoint it'd probably make sense, but I'm simply not in desperate need of the extra performance in non-gaming stuff which isn't really critical to me (i.e. video encoding etc, none of that is part of my job or anything, and most of it is stuff I let run overnight or in the background).

I'll consider an i5 upgrade when mobo prices on future P55 boards are more reasonable (and DDR3 has dropped completely down to the level of DDR2), though low-end i5 pricing will probably be similar to the i7 920. Maybe I'll tie it to my Windows 7 upgrade... Hopefully i5 runs cooler, gonna be a bitch in Puerto Rico otherwise.

P!rate said:
It should be more like, "do you have enough money to go i7?
Click to expand...

Pretty much, it makes complete sense for anyone that can afford the premium... I'm pinching pennies and paying 25-30% more on a new system for extra performance on non-gaming stuff just isn't worth it to me. Gonna wait 'till all the mobo kinks are ironed out too, last I heard every single X58 board still had random issues with suspend/resume.
 
Last edited:
headless said:
Upgrade to i7 from a fast quad 775 setup? Probably not the best idea for most people, but anyone building a new machine should be seriously considering i7, or if they are looking to build new from an extremely old p4 or athlon xp setup - DDR3 and a new socket = future proofing yourself for your next upgrade.
Click to expand...

That's so subjective and dependent on everyone's specific circumstance though... I waited for s939 (vs s754) when I was building my last rig thinking it'd future proof me, and even tho an X2 upgrade probably would've made sense somewhere along the road it just didn't pan out (though this is the longest I've kept a system in years, haven't gamed much over the last 2 or so). Had I waited even longer I could've gone AM2/PCI-E and I would've been much better off, but where does it end?

Most people tend to end up upgrading mobo + CPU simultaneously anyway, and more often than not RAM as well ('sides even DDR3's becoming dirt cheap); and those that do upgrade much more often could probably care less about future proofing anyway. Who knows whether Intel will stay committed to LGA1336, 'specially after the mainstream i5 parts are out, or 'specially after they decide to move to 32nm. They may even stay committed to LGA1336 but the only budget upgrade options that appeal to one might end up on i5's socket.

It's nigh impossible to predict that kinda stuff or really make the best choice w/o making yourself crazy, just buy whatever you can afford whenever you're ready to upgrade or whenever you really need to upgrade.
 
Last edited:
sphinx99 said:
I think a central problem is that many of the GPU limited games support multiple CPU cores (look at L4D!) whereas a whole lot of the CPU-heavy games tend to be sequestered to one or two cores at most. This makes sense as most of the GPU-limited games are big budget titles (including all the ones you listed) that therefore can afford some savvy threaded programmers.

It's the smaller studios putting out compute-heavy titles that run on a single core, that's the issue. I am playing a game called Drakensang, a German RPG, that is running one of my i7 cores to 100% while not touching the rest.
Click to expand...

While regrettable, it's still probably gonna take a few more years for that to change... 'Specially given the nature of the genres for big budget tittles (FPS, etc) and the development cycles for other types of games (any RPG, big budget or not).
 
It's been about a year since my last upgrade. I've been waiting for DDR3 price drop, and now is the good time. I thought about goint to AM3 and played with it for about a month. With a help from a friend of mine who is devoted AM2+/AM3, it wasn't too difficult to setup and overclock the system, but AMD really needs to work on couple of bugs before they can win my heart. Phenom II has problems on Vista 64, it cannot maintain the overclock speed that was set on Vista 32. Also, for a decent overclocking, only 2 memory slots should be filled up. What good is a Black Edition cpu, if it can't overclock much with more than 4Gb of system memory under 64 bit OS?
On the other hand, I've been thoroughtly enjoying i7 system I put together a week ago. Even Vista 64 start up time has been reduced to 1/4 of the AM3.
 
I thought about it, but I decided to stick with AMD. About 3 months ago my ASUS AM2 board quit on me and because of limited funds at the time, I couldn't purchase an entire system. Instead I bought an ASUS M32N-HD/HDMI as a replacement board and slapped in my old AMD64 x2 5000+ and RAM.

Since the board is pretty new and AM3 compatible (AM2/AM2+ board), I only yesterday purchased an AM3 Phenom II 720, a pair of 2gb Corsair 5-5-5-15 DDR2-1066, and an ASUS AMD Radeon 4890HD, in addition to a 750w PSU and an Antec 900 case, all for $680 with shipping from NewEgg.

Considering the system in my sig, I think I will find myself experiencing a massive boost in speed.

So, nope, no i7 for me this time.
 
maleficarus said:
TF2 ran fine on my old single core P4 3.4 Prescott....next...?
Click to expand...

HAHAHA!!!! Your looking for games that bring your dually down? I got just the game, and you THINK you play it fine already, but you don't because you, like most people, never stress your games out to the maximum of the game engine's ability. Supreme Commander. You think "I've played that and it runs fine on my dual core E8x00...". Bullcrap. The only part of that game that runs fine for you is at most, a couple of AI's on a 40km x 40km map. I happen to KNOW your CPU specifically cannot handle 7 Sorien AI's on an 80km x 80km map with 10K units per AI. Why do I know this? I've tried this scenario on EVERY MAJOR ARCHITECTURE being sold today. And none of them can do it past 12 hours into the game with anything over 15FPS, and there's only one CPU that managed that, Core i7.
 
Impulse said:
That's so subjective and dependent on everyone's specific circumstance though... I waited for s939 (vs s754) when I was building my last rig thinking it'd future proof me, and even tho an X2 upgrade probably would've made sense somewhere along the road it just didn't pan out (though this is the longest I've kept a system in years, haven't gamed much over the last 2 or so). Had I waited even longer I could've gone AM2/PCI-E and I would've been much better off, but where does it end?
Click to expand...

See, your argument is that you didn't upgrade to a useful chip that your s939 could run but an s754 could not, thus the possibility of future proofing is nonsense. In reality, you have simply opted out of upgrading - becausse, as you say, you haven't been gaming much lately. If you had been gaming alot, you'd have very likely long since done what I did - upgraded to a dual core opteron, then upgraded again to a core2 machine, then upgraded to a core2quad, then upgraded to an i7 ;)

Impulse said:
Most people tend to end up upgrading mobo + CPU simultaneously anyway, and more often than not RAM as well ('sides even DDR3's becoming dirt cheap); and those that do upgrade much more often could probably care less about future proofing anyway. Who knows whether Intel will stay committed to LGA1336, 'specially after the mainstream i5 parts are out, or 'specially after they decide to move to 32nm. They may even stay committed to LGA1336 but the only budget upgrade options that appeal to one might end up on i5's socket.

It's nigh impossible to predict that kinda stuff or really make the best choice w/o making yourself crazy, just buy whatever you can afford whenever you're ready to upgrade or whenever you really need to upgrade.
Click to expand...


It's true, you can't predict it 100% accurately, but you can hedge your bets. If you had bought a S754 instead of your 939, you'd have had no chance of ever running a decent x2 cpu and would have been forced to go ddr2/new mobo. You skipped that upgrade, so it's true, in your case you could've settled for an s754. I am one of the people who do upgrade more often, and I do care about future proofing when it's cost effective. Why in the world would i put together a quad system on 775 right now if i intended to upgrade soon? It'd be wasting a ton of cash, i'd need a new mobo, new ram and new cpu to get any upgrade at all. Buying a quad system right now that isn't an i7 is a waste of money. A Q9550 is still over 250$ from newegg, and you can get an i7 920 for only 20-30$ more. Mobos are down to ~180 for 1366 now, and socket 775 is dead. I suspect that we'll see faster 1366 chips come down the pipe before the socket is phased out...sure, intel might just switch sockets immediately, but like you said, they might not too, and it IS a surety that they aren't going to start making 775 stuff again.
 
headless said:
I suspect that we'll see faster 1366 chips come down the pipe before the socket is phased out...sure, intel might just switch sockets immediately, but like you said, they might not too, and it IS a surety that they aren't going to start making 775 stuff again.
Click to expand...

You suspect right. There are MANY future chips that will populate socket 1366. Socket 1366 is Xeon's new socket, so Intel will not be phasing it out anytime soon. In fact, it will coexist with socket 1160 for quite some time as the "enthusiast choice". Xeon's use of this socket also means it's here to stay. Even when you cannot get Core i7 for it anymore, there will most likely be Xeons that will work in it just fine.
 
headless said:
See, your argument is that you didn't upgrade to a useful chip that your s939 could run but an s754 could not, thus the possibility of future proofing is nonsense. In reality, you have simply opted out of upgrading - becausse, as you say, you haven't been gaming much lately. If you had been gaming alot, you'd have very likely long since done what I did - upgraded to a dual core opteron, then upgraded again to a core2 machine, then upgraded to a core2quad, then upgraded to an i7 ;)
Click to expand...

Well, the thing is, had I been gaming a lot (other than a MMORPG I quit a couple years ago) I would've needed a new mobo anyway, because w/s939 I was stuck w/AGP... So I'm not sure waiting for s939 and having the X2 as an option was really worth much. For the sake of general productivity I should've done the X2 upgrade (alas I had a C2D laptop from work); but for gaming it wouldn't have helped anywhere near as much as an 8800GT or something along those lines, but that was out of reach.

We could go on, but it just becomes an endless game of what ifs, heh... All I said is that it's highly subjective and down to personal circumstances. A lot of it will depend on what you tend to do with your older systems/parts, I tend to pass them down to family members, so I have even more of an incentive to do combined mobo/CPU upgrades myself... If you tend to sell 'em out part by part then you'd want as much flexibility in your rig as possible, yeah.


I'm still going w/a C2Q now regardless of i7/920 prices tho (and I think they're very reasonable prices, don't get me wrong)... :p Definitely not a Q9550, the Q6600 or Q8300 are like $185-190, good enough for me. The 920 would be like $80 more over that, the RAM would be around $40-50 over a DDR2 kit (and I actually own one already too), and the biggest difference would be the extra $90 or so I'd spend on the mobo. I'd rather just go w/the C2Q now than pay the $200 premium on a $750 system. If when i5 comes out I really have the itch I'll just pass my system along to someone for a lil' cash and I'll upgrade to i5 then, but if not I think I can survive w/the C2Q for a year or two at 'least. I might even end up spending the same amount of money on i5 then as I would on going i7 instead of C2Q now, but I can live with that.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top