is it worth it to upgrade to an i7 for gaming?

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jjolin

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is it worth it to upgrade from an overclocked e6600 at 4ghz to i7? i ask because not many games use 4 cores, and i am going to have some money to spend and i want to know if id benefit from upgrading to i7, or should i spend the money on ddr2 memory, a monitor, ect.
 
What are the rest of your specs? Games taking advantage of multi-core systems are growing. For example, Valve just updated Team Fortress 2 with the tech and are pushing it to other Source games. I don't use my i7 primarily for gaming, but when I do play, it's a dream. I don't think the i7 will bottleneck a GPU anytime soon, so it's a solid platform with good longevity.
 
jjolin said:
is it worth it to upgrade from an overclocked e6600 at 4ghz to i7? i ask because not many games use 4 cores, and i am going to have some money to spend and i want to know if id benefit from upgrading to i7, or should i spend the money on ddr2 memory, a monitor, ect.
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How often do you upgrade?

If you upgrade every 2 years, I wouldn't jump just yet. If you're like me and upgrade every 4-5, then yes, go ahead and jump. Difference between the C2D's and i7's are pretty substantial and will offer you more longevity than your current CPU.
 
is it worth it to upgrade to an i7 for gaming?

Only if you are doing sli or triple. Typically, 30" screen res.
 
jjolin said:
is it worth it to upgrade from an overclocked e6600 at 4ghz to i7? i ask because not many games use 4 cores, and i am going to have some money to spend and i want to know if id benefit from upgrading to i7, or should i spend the money on ddr2 memory, a monitor, ect.
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I7 is only about 25% improvement clock for clock over core2 chips. You would need about a 3.25ghz i7 to match your current chip, so unless you can clock an i7 higher than 3.25, you're not going to notice a boost.
 
I7 is only about 25% improvement clock for clock over core2 chips.
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This is not true...
Only heavily multiprocessors optimized applications do significantly benefit from i7.
Generally, games (single video card setup) do not benefit at all and some are know to run slower on i7 (Far Cry 2).
Fortunately, disabling HT brings back some performance.
 
What is the difference between Q9XXX and i7? I just bought a q9650 and plan to oc it to 4ghz and beyond, is i7 that much of an improvement in comparison?
 
damn you got your e6600 to 4ghz?

that should be more then enough for gaming for the next year or so.
 
I think this depends a lot on which resolution you're going to be gaming at. At resolutions like 1920x1200 and above, most gaming systems are GPU-limited. In that situation, the CPU would be spending more time just waiting for the video card to finish what it's doing. Since it's already idle, upgrading the CPU would not produce any improvement.

If you're gaming at more modest resolutions, on the other hand, it's much more likely that you're CPU-limited at least some of the time. So, upgrading the CPU could yield a serious improvement in that kind of a case. This is even more true for games that use more physics calculations (unless you're using a PhysX-enabled nVidia card with a compatible game).

Unlike what the post by Mega666 above seems to imply, I would say that CPU bottlenecks are not related to resolution at all, and in fact, the higher the resolution, the higher the likelihood that you have a GPU bottleneck instead.
 
If you use SLI/Crossfire, i7 will give a good boost to framerate as that is one of its great advantages.
Using single card, there isnt much benefit going to i7 from your CPU.
As pointed out, unless you clock your i7, it may be a backward step for some things.
 
IF you dont currently own a 30" monitor and run SLI then no. Invest in a 30" monitor first :) I went to i7 because the x58 chipset scales so much better when using SLI than x48.
 
TWolf79 said:
What is the difference between Q9XXX and i7? I just bought a q9650 and plan to oc it to 4ghz and beyond, is i7 that much of an improvement in comparison?
Click to expand...

i wouldn't sweat it, your q9650 is fine. no reason to move to i7 unless you just really have to have one or your current rig is on its last legs. and if you are in the group of the former you would have already bought one
 
I'm in the same dilemma. But I decided to sell my E6600 and get a E8400. I can sell my E6600 euro 70 euros and buy the E8400 for 146

The upgrade to i7 would cost me a lot more (130 motherboard, 75 RAM, 50 CPU, 30 CPU cooler) (euros more compared to switching to E8400).

I can do this because my 965P board died early 2008 and got a X38 board in return :)

And with an E8400 I finally get my system synchroom again.

I've had a 7900GTX with an Venice 3000 (major CPU bottleneck). Then I got an E6600 and last december I got a GTX260 I'm now stepping up to GTX285. With getting a E8400 I have a reason to not upgrade anything because nothing is bottlenecking anything.
 
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