Upgrade from i7 920 Bloomfield

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boygorge

Weaksauce
Joined
Sep 20, 2005
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114
Hi everyone,

I sold my pc and at the time I put it together I couldn't afford an expensive processor so I did a little research and asking around when I found out the i7 920 2.6ghz was very forgiving in terms of overclock and was at the ideal price point (Sub $300).

Now I'm on the market again and I'm debating because I had the i7 920 overclocked @ 3.8ghz with a Corsair H100, so what I'm having a hard time with is should I go with the i7 2600k or i7 3770k. I don't want to upgrade for at least 3 years and I will be gaming entirely. I would like to sit above 3.8ghz of course because I have tasted the speed and I can never go back...

I can spend $300-330, but if I can save money and reach relatively close overclocks on either one I would prefer to save money. I'm also looking at a motherboard in the sub $300 dollar range like the Asus Maximus V Formula or the MSI Mpower z77.

I don't want my question to be too general so I'd like some of you that already made this decision to share what overclocks they are reaching (stable) with what processor and what motherboard.

Thanks all.
 
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You know about the newer Ivy-Bridge quad core CPU's right? The 3770k and the 3570k. From what I gather, you'll get around 4.5ghz OC's with these give or take.

I'd personally go Ivy over Sandy (Unless you want a six core CPU in which case it must be Sandy) if I was building today, but, I'm waiting for Haswell.
 
Im thinking you wont see any noticeable performance increase going from a 3.8ghz i7 to a 4.4ghz+ sandy/ivy. not saying there isnt a difference, just generally CPU isnt the bottleneck in gaming.
 
@Mason- Yeah I forgot to include that, the 3570k is really well priced compared to the 3770k. The only reason I can't see myself going with the 3570k is because I can only imagine the 3770k to be just a hair strand below the new upcoming Haswells with the exception of the 3820/3960X extreme processors out there which are way out of my budget.

The price point on the 3570k is just too good to pass up but I have about a month's worth of salary I can add to the build if I wait until October. If I jump the gun now yes I can probably put what I save on the i5 3570k into an SSD.
 
You know what I didn't take into consideration is that, although I will be gaming almost entirely, I wouldn't mind having the ability to use the HT technology to some degree. But what exactly would I use HT would be another question.
 
Sandy bridge e all the way. It'll last you for a while, and it has a common processor type (from what ive heard will come soon). Gl
 
I have an I7-950 and no need to upgrade yet. Your still ok in my opinion, and I am running 2 480's in SLI.
 
buttons said:
Im thinking you wont see any noticeable performance increase going from a 3.8ghz i7 to a 4.4ghz+ sandy/ivy. not saying there isnt a difference, just generally CPU isnt the bottleneck in gaming.
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Aco Strkalj said:
Not worth it.
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martinje said:
I have an I7-950 and no need to upgrade yet. Your still ok in my opinion, and I am running 2 480's in SLI.
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What all these people said. You might notice a bit better FPS in gaming due to better single thread performance...but paying retail price it isn't worth it IMHO. I'm only running z68 because I got my board/proc for the cost of the board refurb'd, else I'd still be rocking x58 and my i7-950.
 
I can understand, but I want to be current. I'm going from an X58 USB2.0 and i7-920 that was 3 years old and I want to be up to date.

I can imagine waiting on the Haswell chips provided the base clocks are higher than the current i7's.
 
boygorge said:
I can understand, but I want to be current. I'm going from an X58 USB2.0 and i7-920 that was 3 years old and I want to be up to date.

I can imagine waiting on the Haswell chips provided the base clocks are higher than the current i7's.
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All right, remember most devices out there apart from large mass storage get zero benefit from USB3...and unless specifically labeled they probably don't support USB3 either. Sandy boards and procs do run cooler though.

Go 2600k if you're set on doing this. Many z68 boards can be found cheap, and z77 may not offer much depending on what you're wanting exactly. My Gene-Z I got refurb'd for $130 off Egg.
 
Skripka said:
All right, remember most devices out there apart from large mass storage get zero benefit from USB3...and unless specifically labeled they probably don't support USB3 either. Sandy boards and procs do run cooler though.

Go 2600k if you're set on doing this. Many z68 boards can be found cheap, and z77 may not offer much depending on what you're wanting exactly. My Gene-Z I got refurb'd for $130 off Egg.
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Thanks Skripka,

I didn't immediately think of that, but it makes sense. As much as I'd like to save some money, I have that mentality "its better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it" and I did consider the z68 boards along with i5's. My original internal hard drive had only 500gb which included my operating system and games and I completely regretted not getting something larger, so I would like take advantage of the higher speeds USB3.0 drives will offer when they are available.
 
If you have access to a local Microcenter, you can get a nice combo deal, the 3770k or the 3750 and an Asus Z77 motherboard.

Personally, I just got the 3770k, and love it. I haven't even tried, and already OC'd it to 4.4GHz. With more tweaking I can go higher.
 
martinje said:
I have an I7-950 and no need to upgrade yet. Your still ok in my opinion, and I am running 2 480's in SLI.
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I agree that his 920 would have been fine, it just needed an SSD to perk it up a ton. However, he sold that computer, and is starting fresh. I was about to post something similar to you, then realized that he sold it. :)
 
save your money for the next 2 years, there will be nothing that will limit you cpu wise for that long, then be prepared to buy the best pc that you can when the new consoles are released. that will be about the next time we will see any noticable improvements in video games anyway
 
RM_Bulldog said:
save your money for the next 2 years, there will be nothing that will limit you cpu wise for that long, then be prepared to buy the best pc that you can when the new consoles are released. that will be about the next time we will see any noticable improvements in video games anyway
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I've thought about this too^^ with new consoles comes new generation hardware but that is a long time without playing with my friends. I think maybe you are all right, I can get the i7-2600k and save some money along with the motherboard. In two years I can just switch out the motherboard and processor I suppose. I presume the i7-2600k has decent overclocking capability and it offers HT which is something I want but don't necessarily need.
 
I am still running my 930 and it is just as fast as the newer i7 I use at work. I will keep the 930 for a few more and upgrade to a 12 core beast when they are $300/chip. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Besides, I am on a server kick.
 
the i7-2600k and i7-3770k are about $30.00 apart I might as well just go with the 3rd generation for that price. i've come to the conclusion that i will likely go i7-3770k if i don't hold out for Haswell.

-Correction. I am not going to hold for haswell.
 
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I just built a new i7 2600k rig with SSD and nvidia 670 graphics after getting all horned up reading reviews about the new stuff. I still am using my old 920 i7 setup with 4650 ATI graphics and 7200rpm HD lol. Keep putting off tearing down my main desk to replace with the newer rig, but it's hard to justify taking the time to do it, b/c tbh my 920 does everything I need and I now regret spending ~$1k on this "upgrade". I think if I had to do it all over I'd do the SSD and the graphics upgrade and skip the cpu, mobo, ram upgrades. hard to tame the tiger though when I get excited about spending $ on upgrades though lol
 
the USB3.0 ports on my Z68 motherboard are very useful..... if i mistakenly plug my keyboard into on of them (which i did) i can't use my keyboard to enter the bios :rolleyes:

quite useful indeed..... of course I don't own any usb 3.0 devices i briefly had a Corsair M60 (which has usb3.0 compatibility) but I returned it because I hated it.
 
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