i7 not looking all that super

Dicehunter · 20 Oct 2008 at 15:37

Well everyone thinks that i7 is going to be superman on steroids, not likely, my brother works for a very reputable games review company and recently got a chance to have a look and play with a full working i7 setup, he told me that for servers and company based machines like mainframes it works great but dont expect a big increase in game performance, this stuff is more for buisnesses than gamers.

Rroff · 20 Oct 2008 at 15:41

Yah - most modern games are GPU limited rather than CPU - unless your running say 4870X2 crossfire then a 3gig core 2 duo is enough to max out most games...

Things like 3D Marks 06 should see a big boost from it

mrthingyx · 20 Oct 2008 at 16:15

DF1986 said:
Well everyone thinks that i7 is going to be superman on steroids, not likely, my brother works for a very reputable games review company and recently got a chance to have a look and play with a full working i7 setup, he told me that for servers and company based machines like mainframes it works great but dont expect a big increase in game performance, this stuff is more for buisnesses than gamers.

This was flagged up a while ago when Anandtech took a look at the Core i7 architecture.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's going to be pretty damn awesome for server- and workstation-based applications, but I don't think it's going to be the joygasm 78%* of this forum think it's going to be.

* Figure is based on a 'which way does the grass blow in a light breeze' guess method... figure is probably closer to 99%.

RizlaKing · 20 Oct 2008 at 16:18

Initial I7's will be mainly for people that must have the latest thing but i don't see it being adopted as quickly or heavily as core2 was. Fact is if you have a decent core2 setup there is no need to upgrade to this platform.

Sylver123 · 20 Oct 2008 at 16:25

If your into heavy multitasking, media encoding and 3d rendering, etc, then this is where the Core i7 shines. As far as im aware, it's only gaming performance is slightly slower at.

RizlaKing · 20 Oct 2008 at 16:29

There seems to be a lot of stuff about I7 that is either true or false but what it definately is, is a reason not to pre order and wait for it to be released and then make a choice as right now this could become early adopter hell on earth. I will wait till it is released and then see what it does or does not have to offer but at this point in time i can't see me binning my core2quad setup to switch.

EvilOne · 20 Oct 2008 at 16:31

I7, much like DDR3 6 months ago is an unnecasery upgrade for almost all gamers. There are much better ways to spend that crazy amount of cash to get that small amount of extra performance.

Wonder how a DDR2 core2 quad with good cooling would do against a normal I7 with normal DDR3 with exactly the same budgets. My bet wouldnt be on the I7

mmj_uk · 20 Oct 2008 at 16:43

i7 will be much better for multithreaded applications, the current Core 2's are artificially better for singlethreaded applications because of the shared cache.

Greebo · 20 Oct 2008 at 17:40

EvilOne said:
I7, much like DDR3 6 months ago is an unnecasery upgrade for almost all gamers. There are much better ways to spend that crazy amount of cash to get that small amount of extra performance.

Wonder how a DDR2 core2 quad with good cooling would do against a normal I7 with normal DDR3 with exactly the same budgets. My bet wouldnt be on the I7

Its what I've been saying for months with all these AMD 3800+ people saying they are waiting for I7 to upgrade.

Now they are crying foul after the prices have come out and early performance figures.

And yes, you are quite right EvilOne, for gamers with the cost of an I7 setup you could have a q9xxx cpu, lots of ram, decent tried and tested mobo, watercooling plus probably two graphics cards compared to only one in the i7 setup.

The 775 rig would blow the other one away in games.

The i7 has its market but gamers and value for money are not two of them IMO

PaulyD · 20 Oct 2008 at 18:36

Agree Greebo.

Obviously it was designed for the server/enterprise market first but people will always adopt to the latest thing but at that cost!?! No thanks esp when am existing setup will compete on most levels..

Sylver123 · 20 Oct 2008 at 18:52

People that don`t like the gaming performance, and price of the Core i7, should buy the latest Core 2 or AMD equivalent, until Intel tweaks Core i7 for gaming - which they probably will at some point.

keyser · 20 Oct 2008 at 18:58

Sylver123 said:
People that don`t like the gaming performance, and price of the Core i7, should buy the latest Core 2 or AMD equivalent, until Intel tweaks Core i7 for gaming - which they probably will at some point.

I don't see how they can tweak anything :confused:

I'm waiting for benchmarks and price drops.

pastymuncher · 20 Oct 2008 at 19:12

Sylver123 said:
People that don`t like the gaming performance, and price of the Core i7, should buy the latest Core 2 or AMD equivalent, until Intel tweaks Core i7 for gaming - which they probably will at some point.

Personally when i upgrade next (not for some time as my rig is more than powerful enough for me) i will be looking to see if AMD's new Deneb cpu's are going to be as good as the rumours suggest. There will not be a way to tweak Core i7 for gaming. You can have 4, 8 or even 12 cores but if the games are not coded to use multi cores then it won't be any faster than what we already have.

Strife212 · 20 Oct 2008 at 19:15

I'm guessing it will still be worth going to for us on first generation Core 2 setups. I'm using an nForce 680i with an E6600 bought on the day nforce 6 came out!

Helios1234 · 20 Oct 2008 at 20:18

Yeah I'll be liking moving to it myself from an AMD 3000+ so I don't see the point in going with lga775 since I'll be limited with upgradeability later on.

RizlaKing · 20 Oct 2008 at 20:39

I am guessing mine and many others C2Q setups will be good for at least the next year or two and then when everything has been ironed out and if Amd are not competing it might be worth going to the tock part of I7. Right now even if i still had an old system for what i could get for the I7 sort of money on Skt775 i would still not go I7 but thats just a personal view.

zykan · 20 Oct 2008 at 20:52

yeah ive heard this, this is also why claims of the Deneb will regain some of the lost market that amd used to have. i'm more awaiting deneb than i7 if im honest.

decto · 20 Oct 2008 at 21:55

What I'm recommending to those who ask me...

Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5200 "LGA775 Core 2" 2.50GHz (800FSB) - Retail £49.99
(£58.74) £49.99
(£58.74)
MSI P31 Neo2-FR Intel P31 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £39.99
(£46.99) £39.99
(£46.99)
OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400C5 Dual Channel Vista Gold Series DDR2 (OCZ2G8004GK) £34.99
(£41.11) £34.99
(£41.11)
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775) £13.99
(£16.44) £13.99
(£16.44)
Sub Total : £138.96
Shipping cost based on delivery to Credit/debit card billing add
FREE SHIPPING (City LinkNext Day)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : FREE
VAT is being charged at 17.50% VAT : £24.32
Total : £163.28

Should easily hit 3.6Ghz without OC'ing the mem or the board .... lots of performance for pocket change until i7 or AMD comes out.

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Lee456 · 20 Oct 2008 at 21:58

RizlaKing said:
Right now even if i still had an old system for what i could get for the I7 sort of money on Skt775 i would still not go I7 but thats just a personal view.

That's what I'm going to do, spend a bit less than I was planning with a mind to therefore upgrade again sooner

realscot · 20 Oct 2008 at 22:13

decto said:
What I'm recommending to those who ask me...

Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5200 "LGA775 Core 2" 2.50GHz (800FSB) - Retail £49.99
(£58.74) £49.99
(£58.74)
MSI P31 Neo2-FR Intel P31 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £39.99
(£46.99) £39.99
(£46.99)
OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400C5 Dual Channel Vista Gold Series DDR2 (OCZ2G8004GK) £34.99
(£41.11) £34.99
(£41.11)
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775) £13.99
(£16.44) £13.99
(£16.44)
Sub Total : £138.96
Shipping cost based on delivery to Credit/debit card billing add
FREE SHIPPING (City LinkNext Day)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : FREE
VAT is being charged at 17.50% VAT : £24.32
Total : £163.28

Should easily hit 3.6Ghz without OC'ing the mem or the board .... lots of performance for pocket change until i7 or AMD comes out.

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You can't argue with a whole upgrade (minus graphics of course) for less than the price of an E8600. It's ideal for a single core AMD user or P4 user.