Sandy Bridge i5 or skt 1366 i7?

Secret_Window · 19 Jan 2011 at 17:45

Hi all.

Currently not very happy with my Q6600 for video editing in Sony Vegas, and problems with my motherboard have prevented me from using my 8800 GTX and my new ATI 6870. So figuring that I would have to buy a new motherboard, which again is old technology, I felt it was time to move onto something new.

At present, I am going back and fourth on the idea of going with the older SKT 1366 i7's, as they have some good motherboard deals and enough ram slots to keep adding more ram in the future. The other thing is, Sandy Bridge is here, and it looks damn impressive, and it's quite affordable, but the i7 sandy bridge is out of my price range and so I have been looking at the SB i5 range instead. What I am mostly keen on though (reason for looking at the old i7's) is having 8 cores (well the 4 threaded hyperthreading cores in addition) with the i7's, as this will really help me with the work I am doing at the moment with video editing, and future photoshop processing I will be doing. But, given the speed of the sandy bridge i5's, would I be better off just going with one of them than the older i7's?

Another thing, I realise now that my ATI 6870 card is not going to be helpful with my Adobe programs, as they seem to be more optimised for Nvidia's CUDA, which I see is very beneficial. So now I can't decide whether to keep my ATI 6870 or flog it and get an Nvidia card instead, possibly something cheaper - to add more money to the rest of my system. The problem I also have with possibly changing gfx cards again, is that it has made me feel anxious about the performance I will get in the games I play now (COD:BO, L4D2, BC2, GTAIV, Metro2033 and Crysis) with something cheaper from Nvidia. Ideally I would want the most comparable performance to my ATI 6870 or maybe faster for the same or slightly less money, but too many varying prices and benchmark performances has made me so confused, as to which card from Nvidia would be up for the job.

Lastly, is it better to go with a motherboard that has SLI/Crossfire configurations for futureproofing or should I save the cash and not bother it? Furthermore, if I do bother what sort of power supply would meet my needs in this regard for the future?

Sorry that is an awful lot to read, but I intend for this upgrade to last me 4-5 years like my Core 2 system did.

Budget is £400 (mobo, cpu and ram) but if I sell my ATI 6870 that will allow for a little more room, but will still need a gfx card!

Thanks in advance.

Gtiracer · 19 Jan 2011 at 18:08

I would say get sandsy bridge, the new processors are very efficient/powerful for the money, not sure what kind of SB system you could get for £400 though, check the OCUK bundles and PCs

Secret_Window · 19 Jan 2011 at 18:18

I was looking at something like this:

Intel Core i5-2400 3.10GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £149.99
(£124.99) £149.99
(£124.99)
MSI P67A-GD55 Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - (Sandybridge) MSI P67A-GD55 Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - (Sandybridge) £134.99
(£112.49) £134.99
(£112.49)
GeIL 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz VALUE PLUS Triple Channel (GVP36GB1600C9TC) GeIL 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz VALUE PLUS Triple Channel (GVP36GB1600C9TC) £49.99
(£41.66) £49.99
(£41.66)
Total : £346.37

Would still possibly need a nvidia graphics card, if I do decide to sell my ATI 6870.

I have absolutely no interest in overclocking at all with the i5-2500k cpu, hence reason for choosing the i5-2400. Unless there is something amazing about the i5-2500k that makes it great out of the box, that I haven't heard, then I can't really justify spending extra for it.

ryu · 19 Jan 2011 at 18:22

Sandybridge is dual channel ddr3 and not tripple channel so you'd have to change to either a 2x2gb or 2x4gb set

Secret_Window · 19 Jan 2011 at 18:26

Right, so 4GB or 8GB. Do you think in my case, 8GB is worth the extra over 4GB in terms of video editing, or could I get away with a decent performance using 4GB? I am not really sure, at what point 4GB would start to struggle.

shadow_boxer · 19 Jan 2011 at 18:29

Right, little bit over budget.

Your basket
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor with FREE Lost Planet 2 PC Game - Retail £199.99
(£166.66) £199.99
(£166.66)
Foxconn P67A-S Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - (Sandybridge) £99.98
(£83.32) £99.98
(£83.32)
GeIL 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz VALUE PLUS Dual Channel (GVP38GB1600C9DC) £79.99
(£66.66) £79.99
(£66.66)
Gelid Tranquillo CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/AM2+/AM3/LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366) £26.53
(£22.11) £26.53
(£22.11)
Sub Total : £338.75
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £9.50
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £69.65
Total : £417.90

PS knock £9.50 off as you get free shipping anyway.

The motherboard will allow you to Crossfire another 6870 when the time comes too. Plenty of RAM there and the i5 2500K with a P67 board (& cooler) will allow you to overclock it easily to 4.5GHz.

Did you overclock your Q6600? This chip is still very good, especially when overclocked.

Secret_Window said:
Right, so 4GB or 8GB. Do you think in my case, 8GB is worth the extra over 4GB in terms of video editing, or could I get away with a decent performance using 4GB? I am not really sure, at what point 4GB would start to struggle.

With RAM prices how they are at the moment, just makes sense to get 8GB especially of encoding or video editing.

ryu · 19 Jan 2011 at 18:32

well the cheaper corsair or geil will be just fine, so you can always buy 4gb initially to fit within your budget. if you feel you would benefit from another 4gb then it will be a cheapish upgrade when you can afford it.

Secret_Window · 19 Jan 2011 at 18:36

shadow_boxer said:
Right, little bit over budget.

Your basket
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor with FREE Lost Planet 2 PC Game - Retail £199.99
(£166.66) £199.99
(£166.66)
Foxconn P67A-S Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard - (Sandybridge) £99.98
(£83.32) £99.98
(£83.32)
GeIL 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz VALUE PLUS Dual Channel (GVP38GB1600C9DC) £79.99
(£66.66) £79.99
(£66.66)
Gelid Tranquillo CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940/AM2/AM2+/AM3/LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366) £26.53
(£22.11) £26.53
(£22.11)
Sub Total : £338.75
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £9.50
VAT is being charged at 20.00% VAT : £69.65
Total : £417.90

The motherboard will allow you to Crossfire another 6870 when the time comes too. Plenty of RAM there and the i5 2500K with a P67 board (& cooler) will allow you to overclock it easily to 4.5GHz.

Did you overclock your Q6600? This chip is still very good, especially when overclocked.

With RAM prices how they are at the moment, just makes sense to get 8GB especially of encoding or video editing.

That's a good spec. Although I am not so keen about overclocking, as I am looking for performance straight out of the box. This is why I would choose a i5-2400 over the 2500k and why I am also looking at the older i7's.

Yeah my Q6600 is OC to 3ghz at the moment. It will go higher but my motherboard has really had it at the moment, and I don't really want to kill it.

The Q6600 is a good processor but at 3ghz it just isn't good enough for what I am doing at the moment, and the cost of buying another motherboard to overclock it even more, just seems dumb replacing old technology with old technology. I think it's time to call it a day with the Skt 775 stuff.

ryu · 19 Jan 2011 at 18:55

if you have no intention of overclocking, then it might be an option to buy a h67 motherboard, and utilise the integrated gfx chip of the sandybridge, its supposedly great for video encoding?

but, im not sure how well it fairs in games, particularly demanding ones like crysis, not very good id imagine. you could always swap betweem the integrated and your ati but im not sure how much of a hassle it will be.

shadow_boxer · 19 Jan 2011 at 18:59

Fair enough about not wanting to overclock it.

I think regarding out of the box performace wise the i7 950 and i5 2400 will be pretty comparable. Found this review of the i5 2400. Agree with the point you make about having to buy a new motherboard. Sometimes its just time to call it day. Should be able to recoup over a £100 for the Q6600 & 8800GTX tho. i5 2400 would make more sense to me as its on the newer generation boards but if the applications your Q6600 struggles with can make use of hyperthreading then it may be worth looking back at i7 1366 route.

Which reminds me of this bundle I saw earler,

Intel Core i7 950 Bloomfield 45nm, 3.06 GHz, QPI 4.8GT/s, 8MB Cache, 23x Ratio, 130W, Retail
Asus Sabertooth TUF X58, Intel X58, S1366, PCI-E 2.0, DDR3 1866MHz, USB3/SATA 6Gb/s, SATA RAID, ATX + 6GB (3x2GB)
Corsair XMS3, DDR3 PC3-12800 (1600) Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 9-9-9-24, 1.65V

for £413.99 which I thought wasn't bad at all.

ryu · 19 Jan 2011 at 19:16

i nearlly opted for a i7 950 bundle, it just didnt make much sense (for me) to spend more on a 2nd hand, less energy efficient and older technology setup. so i went brand new sandybridge for cheaper (albeit with not as good components).

Secret_Window · 19 Jan 2011 at 21:58

ryu said:
if you have no intention of overclocking, then it might be an option to buy a h67 motherboard, and utilise the integrated gfx chip of the sandybridge, its supposedly great for video encoding?

but, im not sure how well it fairs in games, particularly demanding ones like crysis, not very good id imagine. you could always swap betweem the integrated and your ati but im not sure how much of a hassle it will be.

Yeah I did wonder whether it was possible to switch to the Sandy Bridge GPU for video encoding and then the ATI 6870 for gaming. Still, I am not sure whether the Sandy Bridge GPU is better than Nvidia's CUDA though - need to find some info on that.

shadow_boxer said:
Fair enough about not wanting to overclock it.

I think regarding out of the box performace wise the i7 950 and i5 2400 will be pretty comparable. Found this review of the i5 2400. Agree with the point you make about having to buy a new motherboard. Sometimes its just time to call it day. Should be able to recoup over a £100 for the Q6600 & 8800GTX tho. i5 2400 would make more sense to me as its on the newer generation boards but if the applications your Q6600 struggles with can make use of hyperthreading then it may be worth looking back at i7 1366 route.

Which reminds me of this bundle I saw earler,

Intel Core i7 950 Bloomfield 45nm, 3.06 GHz, QPI 4.8GT/s, 8MB Cache, 23x Ratio, 130W, Retail
Asus Sabertooth TUF X58, Intel X58, S1366, PCI-E 2.0, DDR3 1866MHz, USB3/SATA 6Gb/s, SATA RAID, ATX + 6GB (3x2GB)
Corsair XMS3, DDR3 PC3-12800 (1600) Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 9-9-9-24, 1.65V

for £413.99 which I thought wasn't bad at all.

Yeah I saw that, but I would never want to spend that much on second hand hardware. Although saying that, if a good offer presented itself I would probably still consider it.

The thing which you rightly mention, is whether hyperthreading in the software I use, is going to give me big enough performance gains over the i5 sandy bridge, but I have yet to see a benchmark that does this fairly.

I thought, that if I sold my ATI 6870, I could buy a really cheap Nvidia GTX 460 and use the rest of the money to go towards a sandy bridge i7 such as the non K 2600 version.

Secret_Window · 24 Jan 2011 at 15:31

Going back to this again - as still haven't made a decision.

Would I be better off for the applications that I use and the games that I play, to simply just throw in some more ram and get a new SKT 775 motherboard? I know I said previously that replacing old with old is a bit tiresome, but I'd like to think the money I save doing it would allow for something like an SSD which might be more worthwhile. I don't know.. I have no idea how an overclocked Q6600 compares with an Sandy Bridge i5...

Maybe someone who has recently done the upgrade from an SKT 775 quad to Sandy Bridge can explain the difference or benefits.

ashatron · 24 Jan 2011 at 15:46

Secret_Window said:
I don't know.. I have no idea how an overclocked Q6600 compares with an Sandy Bridge i5...

the q6600 was an excellent overclocker, it really set a standard,

However the new i5 2500k is no slouch, it can overclock from 3.3ghz to 4.4ghz stable - on air. They are apparently very very easy to overclock and do it without getting too hot at all.

It probably is the best value for money at the moment.

The only extra cost you may incur, would be a more expensive motherboard capable of overclocking. the £150 mobos (asus, msi etc) seem to be the ones to go for at the mo.

HazardO · 24 Jan 2011 at 15:58

Clock for clock SB will be noticeably quicker than your Q6600, and it will clock higher if you want.

As far as 1366 is concerned, if you aren't interested in a 6 core CPU, then go SB, a good board will do 2 way SLI/crossfire well enough.