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i7 920 the way to go?

w311zy said:
i would wait for GTX295 before making your chioce.
Click to expand...

Argh go away :p

every single time I talk about a new build, people always say.. "best off hanging around for 6 weeks for the new card"

Never a right time to buy.. Saying that a pair of 260s in SLI appears roughly the same as a 295 in some tests..
 
Whilst my next purchase point is 295 vs 4970X2 or whatever they call it, I don't like the fact that Nvidia haven't at least made half an effort like ATi and put them on one PCB, you could roast your turkey in there...
 
rafster said:
Whilst my next purchase point is 295 vs 4970X2 or whatever they call it, I don't like the fact that Nvidia haven't at least made half an effort like ATi and put them on one PCB, you could roast your turkey in there...
Click to expand...

honestly it doesn't really make a difference, and in this particular instance ATi seem to have a monopoly on GDDR5, they invested HEAVILY in it and helped the companies involved in making it and establishing the standard with technical help, staff and helped push it forward, I wouldn't be surprised to see that it gave them a fairly decent exclusive contract for a certain amount of time and some great prices on the chips.

Either way bandwidth wise with gddr3/4 Nvidia had no choice but a large bus, it increases the pinout from the chip massively and in turn means there are a huge number of extra traces and the PCb has to be much thicker which in turn is MUCH more expensive to make. two gpu's with that number of traces on one pcb just isn't feasable. If ATi had gone 512mbit bus they'd be on dual pcb's aswell, in reality, it makes no difference, 2 cards, 1 card you get whats best value, if one card with 2pcb's sells cheaper than 2 separate cards, get it.

Big Wayne, it would be nice but generally you design an IC to operate at a certain frequency and voltage, and they don't run along a nice line on a graph where voltage vs frequency is a stable ratio, its exponential and eventually you hit a limit at which need a certain voltage to run at all.

Realistically you'd want one core of the 4870x2 to shut down completely the other to drop to 150Mhz at 0.2v and use almost no power.

I think when Fusion and the INtel equivilent come out in a few years we should see discrete gfx simply turned on for gaming only or HD decoding if the ondie gpu isn't capable or there aren't enough cores by then. Thats probably the likely outcome as then the on chip core can be designed to run at low power and your gaming gpu doesn't have to forfill multiple roles which isn't what IC's are best at.
 
V-Spec said:
Argh go away :p

every single time I talk about a new build, people always say.. "best off hanging around for 6 weeks for the new card"

Never a right time to buy.. Saying that a pair of 260s in SLI appears roughly the same as a 295 in some tests..
Click to expand...

i would tho.... or get a pair of 260's but you need a sli board
 
Big.Wayne said:
Get back on topic lol! :D
Click to expand...

Thanks for all your advice guys, just bit the bullet and dropped £1.7k here at OCUK! (even rhymes :/)

Went for:

i7 920
2x BFG Maxcore 260GTXs
P6T Deluxe X58
6Gb G.skill
300Gb Velociraptor
Additional cheap 24" monitor (samsung one)

Already got some existing bits, including my oldschool Coolermaster ATC 410 :D

Looking forward to getting back into playing some good games again, and should give my photography workflow a good boost ;)
 
V-Spec said:
Thanks for all your advice guys, just bit the bullet and dropped £1.7k here at OCUK! (even rhymes :/)

Went for:

i7 920
2x BFG Maxcore 260GTXs
P6T Deluxe X58
6Gb G.skill
300Gb Velociraptor
Additional cheap 24" monitor (samsung one)

Already got some existing bits, including my oldschool Coolermaster ATC 410 :D

Looking forward to getting back into playing some good games again, and should give my photography workflow a good boost ;)
Click to expand...

congrats dude thats gonna be one kick arse system.

you gonna overclock it ?
 
i just bit the bullet and ordered my stuff too

Intel Core i7 920 2.66Ghz (Nehalem) (Socket LGA1366) - Retail 1 £209.99
Asus P6T Deluxe Intel X58 (Socket 1366) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard 1 £204.99
Antec 1200 Twelve Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case - Black (No PSU) 1 £124.99
Corsair TX 750W ATX2.2 SLI Compliant PSU 1 £74.99
G.Skill 3GB DDR3 NQ PC3-10666C9 1333MHz (3x1GB) Triple Channel DDR3 (F3-10666CL9T-3GBNQ) 1 £71.99
Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103UJ) 1 £68.99
Sub Total: £755.94
DHL Select Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri) Shipping: £10.99
Total Vat: £115.04
Total inc Vat: £881.97
 
Perfect_Chaos said:
i just bit the bullet and ordered my stuff too

Intel Core i7 920 2.66Ghz (Nehalem) (Socket LGA1366) - Retail 1 £209.99
Asus P6T Deluxe Intel X58 (Socket 1366) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard 1 £204.99
Antec 1200 Twelve Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case - Black (No PSU) 1 £124.99
Corsair TX 750W ATX2.2 SLI Compliant PSU 1 £74.99
G.Skill 3GB DDR3 NQ PC3-10666C9 1333MHz (3x1GB) Triple Channel DDR3 (F3-10666CL9T-3GBNQ) 1 £71.99
Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103UJ) 1 £68.99
Sub Total: £755.94
DHL Select Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri) Shipping: £10.99
Total Vat: £115.04
Total inc Vat: £881.97
Click to expand...

wow everyones getting I7 sytems..... im feeling left out :(
 
i had a phone call saying there was a problem with my order, i thought he was gonna say its too late for christmas delivery but turns out the 1333mhz ram wasnt in stock, so i had to change it for 1600mhz 20 quid more
 
Just thought I would share my experience with you guys.


Previous System
Q6600 @ 3.3G | Gigabyte P45 | 4Gskill 1000C5 | GTX280 | = 17137 3Dmark06 (180.48 driver)

New system (Config A - intel boost on)
i7 920 @ 2.83 | Gigabyte X58-DS4 | 3G Corsair 1600C9 | GTX280 | = 17493 3Dmark06 (180.84 driver)

New system (Config B - intel boost on)
i7 920 @ 2.83 | Gigabyte X58-DS4 | 3G Corsair 1600C9 | 4870x2 | = 19124 3Dmark06 (8.12 driver)


Ok so what do I read from the numbers ?
The i7 chip as standard unclocked is a little faster than my Oced Q6600 with same hardware.


How was actual game play ?
Even tho the 4870x2 benched higher in 3Dmark06 the GTX 280 felt smoother in game ( less intermittant stutters )

Games I tried:
Arma , Sins of Solar empire , IL-2 , DCS Black shark , Company of Heroes , Vegas6 2


Do I think it was worth the upgrade? ( Q6600 -> i7 920 )
Honest answer is No , maybe If I do some overclocking on the 920 it would make it more justifiable.
But as is stands if you have a good Quad core OCed system you are still set pretty well for the next
while.
 
^ my stuff (apart from graphics) is so far behind, i just went for the current best which should last me a good 2-3 years. I can get more ram and better graphics later

for somebody far behind and can just scrape it for cash then i dont see it as a bad thing
 
wombraider said:
Just thought I would share my experience with you guys.


Previous System
Q6600 @ 3.3G | Gigabyte P45 | 4Gskill 1000C5 | GTX280 | = 17137 3Dmark06 (180.48 driver)

New system (Config A - intel boost on)
i7 920 @ 2.83 | Gigabyte X58-DS4 | 3G Corsair 1600C9 | GTX280 | = 17493 3Dmark06 (180.84 driver)

New system (Config B - intel boost on)
i7 920 @ 2.83 | Gigabyte X58-DS4 | 3G Corsair 1600C9 | 4870x2 | = 19124 3Dmark06 (8.12 driver)


Ok so what do I read from the numbers ?
The i7 chip as standard unclocked is a little faster than my Oced Q6600 with same hardware.


How was actual game play ?
Even tho the 4870x2 benched higher in 3Dmark06 the GTX 280 felt smoother in game ( less intermittant stutters )

Games I tried:
Arma , Sins of Solar empire , IL-2 , DCS Black shark , Company of Heroes , Vegas6 2


Do I think it was worth the upgrade? ( Q6600 -> i7 920 )
Honest answer is No , maybe If I do some overclocking on the 920 it would make it more justifiable.
But as is stands if you have a good Quad core OCed system you are still set pretty well for the next
while.
Click to expand...

I think that sums it up well, for those of us on lower end dual core systems (or people who do a lot of encoding etc.) we would most likely see quite a big improvement going to i7.

Ofcourse the current issue/unknown is how well the Phenom II (Deneb) will perform (gaming performance), because if it turns out to be a very good performer with regards to gaming then I could see a lot of people going that route so they can save money using their old memory (I know I'd quite like to be able to use the 8GB of DDR2 I have sitting here and save ~£200).

Atleast whatever route I go, I won't be using the Asus P5N-E SLI anymore... :D
 
Last edited:
Gazb said:
I think that sums it up well, for those of us on lower end dual core systems (or people who do a lot of encoding etc.) we would most likely see quite a big improvement going to i7.

Ofcourse the current issue/unknown is how well the Phenom II (Deneb) will perform (gaming performance), because if it turns out to be a very good performer with regards to gaming then I could see a lot of people going that route so they can save money using their old memory (I know I'd quite like to be able to use the 8GB of DDR2 I have sitting here and save ~£200).

Atleast whatever route I go, I won't be using the Asus P5N-E SLI anymore... :D
Click to expand...

Yeah thats all im waiting for now Phenom II :D
 
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