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What am I losing apart from bragging rights?

G-Dubs

G-Dubs

G-Dubs

Associate
Joined
2 Jan 2009
Posts
1,737
Location
Lincolnshire coast
Looking to build a second rig for a friend and the question has been asked,

"what is the down side to i5 750 as opposed to the i7 920", bragging rights aside of course.

When you factor in Mobo and RAM etc the difference is around £200 - £250 which may makes the purchase of a better graphics card on the same budget a viable option.

So I guess it boils down to i5 and better graphics card
or i7 and lesser graphics card

what am I missing here???
 
Hyper Threading
Tri Channel Memory
16x 16x Crossfire / SLi (board dependant)

have you thought of getting a 860 instead of a 750?

whats the pc going to be used for?
 
If its just for gaming, he won't be losing much at all. Clock-for-clock the i5 is almost as fast as the i7 in games. It also overclocks well (though not as hilariously easily as an i7 920 D0) so you would be aiming for 4GHz on the i5 when using a decent board.

However, for CPU intensive programs (CAD, photo/video/image editing etc.) the i7 is much faster on account of its hyperthreading. So If he intends to use the system for these kind of applications regularly - an i7 would be worth going for.

It is also worth noting that the i7 900 series use the X58 board. Compared to the i5's P55 , the X58 is easier to overclock, supports triple channel memory (P55 uses dual) and has two full x16 PCI-E lanes (P55 has one which can be split into 2 x8 lanes), so X58 is better if you plan to use more two graphics cards at some point.
 
Another thing is that the socket for the i7 is, I believe, the same as the upcoming i9 processor and so you will have a very good degree of upgradability with i7. (Though I am sure there will be just as much with the 1156 boards).
 
So if it were your money right now would you go for an i7 920 and a £150ish graphics card or would you go for the i5 and a £350ish graphics card?

used for gaming and odds and sods but not cad or video editing and the like
 
G-Dubs said:
When you factor in Mobo and RAM etc the difference is around £200 - £250 which may makes the purchase of a better graphics card on the same budget a viable option.

what am I missing here???
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G-Dubs,

the difference between an Intel® Core™ i5 and a Intel® Core™ i7 is the difference between a Double-Whooper and a Double-Whooper with cheese! . . i.e you would have to be the most analy retentive geekon on earth to be passionate about the difference, either that or just plain allergic to cheese! :p

G-Dubs said:
Looking to build a second rig for a friend
Click to expand...

Now, what is the budget for this build you are considering doing for your *cough*friend*cough*, and does your friend have a special name and is his visible to other people? :D

If so please let me show you some AMD alternatives! :cool:
 
maddness said:
lmao ^

have you had a Double-Whooper without cheese, I have and never again :D
Click to expand...

Double-Whooper are crap.

this is what you call a burger
burger.jpg
 
Now that's what I call a Burger!! (Booger)

Budget wise my "friend" is flexible in the region of £800 excluding case and PSU which have already been sorted.

So I figure
i7 set up (approx costs)
CPU £200
Mobo £200
RAM £150
HDD £50
DVD £25
Cooler £30

Total £655
leaving £145 for GPU

i5 set up (approx costs)
CPU £150
Mobo £100
Ram £100
HDD £50
DVD £25
Cooler £30

Total £455
leaving £245 for GPU

So the question still stands,

Would you go for an i7 920 and a £150ish graphics card or would you go for the i5 and a £350ish graphics card?

Better to have a "weaker" cpu and better graphics or the other way round???

Big Wayne, happy to look at AMD solutions, not really a intel fanboy, just not that aware of AMD products.
 
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G-Dubs said:
happy to look at AMD solutions
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You should do, it's good hardware for not a lot of money, side by side with your Intel® Core™ i7 how would you feel if you couldn't tell the difference! :eek:

G-Dubs said:
not really a intel fanboy, just not that aware of AMD products.
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Yeah I'm not suprised at that one! . . . for the budget your talking about you could almost build two gaming machines if you shopped carefully, or just one and keep a wodge of mulla for something else (so many things to spend money on these days!) . . .
 
Here we go iv done all the work for you
games.jpg

and you can sell one of your copys of dirt 2
plus you have money left over for one of them burgers i posted before
 
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I'd definitely go with the better graphics card like Th3D0n says. i5 is not a weak CPU in any way, and the graphics card will make a much bigger difference. You'd have a lot of trouble maxing out the CPU but no trouble at all maxing out a £150 graphics card.
 
either a i5 750 +P55 or P2 955/965+ 790X + agree with what's been said above about spending a good chunk of the cash on a GFX card 5850 is a good bet.
 
I'd go for cheaper AM3 setup with crossfire board and cheap GPU (5770 / 4890 ) ... and then after few months IF you feel you need more GPU power add another in crossfire for half price or whatever new is available at that time.

Am I the only person in this forum that thinks that 250quid GPU is overkill unless you use 30" monitor ? Most games will run 100% smooth on single 4890 @ 1680x1050 with both AA and AF.

You could say - Yeh I don't wanna upgrade for the next 3yrs but why? It's both cheaper and more efficent to upgrade some parts nowadays, the times where you could buy DX486 or amiga for 5yrs are gone, if you wanna be up to date you better upgrade cheaper parts but more often, especially GPUs are coming out every 6-8months now - why spend 250-300 on 5850+ when 5770 can run everything just fine and in 6months we gonna have 6xxx cards that will cost half as much and be 50% faster.

Think carefully first about what you really need and if it's really worth spending more if you aren't going to use that power for the next 2years or so - just because you can spend 800quid doesn't mean you have to spend all of that.

If you have money to spare better invest in SSD, case, PSU, monitor, soundcard - whatever that will stay with you longer than just 1 season.

Just my 2p
 
alternatively activate your trust and check the members market

you missed a great bargain yesterday

Asus P7P55D LE
Core i5 750
Corsair H50-1
4Gb G.Skill Ripjaw PC12800
Click to expand...

that lot went for £265 inc

another went for a similar price
 
Like the loo£ of the AMD set up, but how does it compare? like I said, i'm not really up on AMD products. I've just sold my old Q6600 set up so as a benchmark how does it compare? obviosly still competative against Q6600 price wise but what about performance?

Members market??

heard it mentioned but how do I get at it? looked to various links but don't see it, might just be me being dumb though
 
G-Dubs said:
Like the loo£ of the AMD set up, but how does it compare?
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How does economy travel compare to first class? . . well you don't get champagne served on the journey and you may have to take your own sandwiches, however both will get you to where you going except one is almost half price! ;)

I started out with always buying the most expensive hardware I could, seeing something come top of a benchmarks was always good for a few extra £££ hundred pounds, clever marketing maybe, dunno anyway when I started doing cheaper builds for friends I was always amazed at how well they performed! :eek:

You will never know until you try for yourself . . . . I'm running one of those AMD Athlon II systems and it's quality, even at stock its breezing through gaming and my photoshops tasks but its even better once you tweak/overclock it!

You got a great opportunity to get first hand experience yourself and I'm positive "Little Timmy" will be very impressed! :D
 
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