• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

Gulftown or Sandybridge - If you were buying now?

Craterloads

Craterloads

Craterloads

Soldato
Joined
26 Dec 2009
Posts
9,715
Location
North
Hey guys,

If you were to build a new system now would you go i7 or Sandybridge?

Im not too bothered about whats the newest tek etc, more interested in price/performance.
 
Last edited:
Sandy Bridge. Far cheaper and just as good if not better for certain applications. Gulftown is far too expensive and doesn't offer much more performance. Especially for current games.
 
Craterloads said:
Im not too bothered about whats the newest tek etc, more interested in price/performance.
Click to expand...

Sandy Bridge without doubt, here is a review.

The i5 2500K looks to be the new price/performance king, especially if you plan to overclock.

However, if you will be using applications that can make use of hyperthreading then the i7 2600K is still a good deal.
 
Check the reviews... conclusions totaly pointless getting any of the old generation core i7 chips.

The sandybridges have prooven the rightful replacement chips, cooler, less power and cheaper.... and clocks and better tech behind it make it a lot better, obviously if u got an core i7 already proberly not worth upgrading better to wait till fall or see what AMD does this summer.
 
Craterloads said:
sorry by gulftown i meant just regular i7, not 6 core cpu's!!
Click to expand...

Gulftown is exclusively the 6 core s1136 32nm chips.

The cheaper (generally better value) s1366 i7 CPUs are called Bloomfield.

Comparing SB to Bloomfield, it generally depends what you want to do. SB is faster clock-for-clock, faster clocked, overclocks higher (when using K series chips) uses less power, is cooler and uses newer tech motherboards.

However, the benefit bloomfield has over s1155 SB is that these chips are limited to dual channel memory (triple channel on s1366) and x8x8 CF/SLI (x16x16 on s1366). Whether this difference in features affects your performance depends entirely on you usage, but generally the real-world performance difference due to these features is very small.

The cheapest P67 boards look like they will be available for just over £100 (however most of these will just have x16x4 SLI/CF - so not great for multi-gpu use). If you want "proper" x8x8 CF/SLI then you will need to pay a bit more (most likely starting around £140),
 
Last edited:
Martini1991 said:
Sandy Bridge,
Gulftown is pointless.
Click to expand...

QuackPot said:
Sandy Bridge. Far cheaper and just as good if not better for certain applications. Gulftown is far too expensive and doesn't offer much more performance. Especially for current games.
Click to expand...

cmndr_andi said:
Gulftown is exclusively the 6 core s1136 32nm chips.

The cheaper (generally better value) s1366 i7 CPUs are called Bloomfield.

Comparing SB to Bloomfield, it generally depends what you want to do. SB is faster clock-for-clock, faster clocked, overclocks higher (when using K series chips) uses less power, is cooler and uses newer tech motherboards.

However, the benefit bloomfield has over s1155 SB is that these chips are limited to dual channel memory (triple channel on s1366) and x8x8 CF/SLI (x16x16 on s1366). Whether this difference in features affects your performance depends entirely on you usage, but generally the real-world performance difference due to these features is very small.

The cheapest P67 boards look like they will be available for just over £100 (however most of these will just have x16x4 SLI/CF - so not great for multi-gpu use). If you want "proper" x8x8 CF/SLI then you will need to pay a bit more (most likely starting around £140),
Click to expand...

Thanks, very helpful

SLI is something i am not interested in, so look like SB is the way to go.
 
If you are going to upgrade now go for the Sandybridge! New architechture smaller chips they are 32nm making them run cooler and based on initial reviews they will perform as well if not better than the current i7's
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom