Am I mad to upgrade to Sandybridge?

tommytinkle · 26 Jun 2011 at 23:12

Hey,

I've been there and done this once already, but I'm thinking this may be the last chance I have for quite some time to upgrade the pc due to an upcoming expensive arrival!

I've currently got an i5 760, p55a-ud7, two 5850's in crossfire and 16gb memory.

I'm pondering changing to a 2500k and an asus Z68, or more likely - a gigabyte z68 motherboard. I figured I'd sell my old bits and sell 8gb of memory with it (16gb is pointless, only have it as it came as part of a bundle I purchased many months ago!)

Any advice would be much appreciated

getcarter · 26 Jun 2011 at 23:32

Unless you really really want to you may as well just stay with what you got. All the next-gen bits will be coming out towards the end of the year anyway.

Plec · 27 Jun 2011 at 00:11

tommytinkle said:
>snip<

You have a respectable clock on your i5 i doubt you would really notice any benifit from upgrading.

I would personally wait for the ivybridge release.

panyan · 27 Jun 2011 at 00:13

mad? no - but when i get an itch, it needs to be scratched - so if youve got the itch to upgrade, very little is going to distract you

jax_5 · 27 Jun 2011 at 00:15

Stick to your rig.

Crezzlin · 27 Jun 2011 at 00:20

upgrade. I just did from a x58 setup. Much faster on desktop and games imap. :-)

robin66 · 27 Jun 2011 at 00:36

Plec said:
You have a respectable clock on your i5 i doubt you would really notice any benifit from upgrading.

I would personally wait for the ivybridge release.

I have to agree with Plec. You wont notice the increase for day to day use.

And you already have a nice overclock with your i5 760.

Keep that money in the bank until the end of this year, and see what both Intel and AMD have on offer then.

But make sure the wife doesn't know about it of course.

MagicBoy · 27 Jun 2011 at 00:46

I struggle to see the point myself.

775 to Sandy Bridge is worthwhile. Nehalem to Sandy Bridge for a minor increase in per clock performance whilst having to change the motherboard is not taking into account the cost. In day to day use it's unlikely you'd notice the speed increase apart from peering at FPS counters and benchmark results.

pastymuncher · 27 Jun 2011 at 10:26

Pretty pointless if you ask me. The performance gain compared to the price paid is simply not worth it. Second hand values of 1156 boards and cpu's are pretty pathetic at the moment as well so selling your current components would'nt cover the cost.

Marine-RX179 · 27 Jun 2011 at 10:53

Yea...not much point, unless you really want the extra frame rate on some older games that don't use the extra number cores well and hugely depending on the speed, such as WOW, Crysis 1/Warhead etc.

tommytinkle · 27 Jun 2011 at 12:35

pastymuncher said:
Pretty pointless if you ask me. The performance gain compared to the price paid is simply not worth it. Second hand values of 1156 boards and cpu's are pretty pathetic at the moment as well so selling your current components would'nt cover the cost.

I didnt expect it to cover the cost mate

That'd be like me taking my 2006 car and expecting it to be a direct exchange for a 2010 model!

I'm just feeling the urge to upgrade, the ssd caching appeals to me as do many other things. I wanted a 6gb/s ssd drive but am wondering if the sata 3 controller on my board is up to the task of giving me the maximum benefit provided by the ssd itself

MagicBoy · 27 Jun 2011 at 13:24

Using your car analogy you are looking at a 2010 to 2011 model year swap. The 2011 might have slightly better fuel consumption, but you'll never recoup the 4k you lost in depreciation over the life of the car in fuel savings.