worth upgrading from an Athlon X4 to I7 920 or 930?

FatFishMonster · 17 Sep 2011 at 12:02

been looking around on fleebay and noticed i7 920's and 930's quite cheap.

have seen that the processors go for £100-£150 and the motherboards £50-70.

so would it be worth upgrading my old athlon x4 640 to either a i7 920 or 930?

IvanDobskey · 17 Sep 2011 at 12:34

You'd be better off spending the cash on an i5 2500K in my opinion.

FatFishMonster · 17 Sep 2011 at 12:36

that would cost like £300 though for a mb and cpu :/

IvanDobskey · 17 Sep 2011 at 12:40

You'd need a new board for the i7 too though. An i5 is around £160 plus a motherboard about £70 so about £230 total.

FatFishMonster · 17 Sep 2011 at 12:42

so really they are the exact same price nearly ?

IvanDobskey · 17 Sep 2011 at 12:45

You said:
"have seen that the processors go for £100-£150 and the motherboards £50-70".

Well if you take £130 for the CPU and £60 for the board as average, that's £190! An i5 for £40 more is well worth it.

That's the price of a console game to have a better CPU that isn't on a dead socket! No brainer to me.

FatFishMonster · 17 Sep 2011 at 12:49

oh right well i hadnt really thought about the 2500k, have to look into its benchmarks and stuff

two00lbwaster · 17 Sep 2011 at 12:52

You'd also need to triple channel your memory for best performance with the i7-9x0 series. You'd definitely see a nice jump in certain situations with either upgrade but maybe more so with the 2500K.

Things to consider i7-9x0 series:
You might get a better/ more feature laden motherboard with the i7-9x0 series.
You may want to triple channel your RAM
HSF with the processor?
HT if you want it/need it
Overclocked/scorched CPU core?
Potentially £150 (+ potentially RAM cost)

Things to consider i5-2x00 series:
New CPU
New or second hand Motherboard?
Reuse your old RAM
Would need to buy a new CPU cooler for overclocking
Potentially over £230

IvanDobskey · 17 Sep 2011 at 12:52

The 2500K is the best all round CPU buy at the moment. No point ploughing cash into a dead socket when for a few extra tenners you can have something with an upgrade path. I'm holding off the urge to go to a 2500K myself. Keep telling myself my 9550 is fast enough.

two00lbwaster · 17 Sep 2011 at 12:55

IvanDobskey said:
That's the price of a console game to have a better CPU that isn't on a dead socket! No brainer to me.

We don't know if the 1155 is or isn't a dead socket itself yet (may need to return the motherboard to get support for Ivy Bridge.)

IvanDobskey · 17 Sep 2011 at 12:57

Personally I will probably hold off until the next socket I think. But if you're buying now the 2500K is the one to go for.

FatFishMonster · 17 Sep 2011 at 13:05

two00lbwaster said:
Things to consider i7-9x0 series:
You might get a better/ more feature laden motherboard with the i7-9x0 series.
You may want to triple channel your RAM
HSF with the processor?
HT if you want it/need it
Overclocked/scorched CPU core?
Potentially £150 (+ potentially RAM cost)

Things to consider i5-2x00 series:
New CPU
New or second hand Motherboard?
Reuse your old RAM
Would need to buy a new CPU cooler for overclocking
Potentially over £230

hmmmm i do have reservations about buying a second hand cpu. my gpu was second hand. i wouldnt have a problem with a second hand MB.

but £150 sounds a lot less hard hitting than £230 as im on a student budget.

i wouldnt need a new processor cooler as i have an artic 7 and that can be used with either sockets.

to be honest the 2500k does sound a bit nicer as its newer tech and stuff.

|Thomas| · 17 Sep 2011 at 15:35

May I ask what do you use your computer for?

The reason being is that for me I didn't notice much real life performance upgrade going from an athlon x4 620 to an i5 2500K. I use my computer for gaming and VMs, nothing massively CPU intensive you see. Clearly if you're encoding a lot then you'll notice a huge improvement, but otherwise I didn't see any change other than extracting files. It certainly wasn't worth the money I paid.

Have you considered an ssd upgrade? I notice your spec doesn't have one. This made a massive difference to my computer.

logi-cat · 17 Sep 2011 at 15:40

You may as well wait for the new AMD bulldozer chip to come out before you decide which one to go for.

FatFishMonster · 18 Sep 2011 at 10:57

i mainly use it for games and also with college work photoshop and the occasional video.
what size SSD would you recommend as i know they are very expensive ?

|Thomas| · 18 Sep 2011 at 12:29

kegz665 said:
i mainly use it for games and also with college work photoshop and the occasional video.
what size SSD would you recommend as i know they are very expensive ?

I don't think an upgrade would be worth it for you then in my opinion, especially as you seem to be money conscious.

As for size of an ssd that's entirely dependent on how many programs you have installed. For me I have all my programs other than games on a 60gb ssd and at the moment I have 17gb free. For some people 60gb might be a squeeze though, take a look at how much you're using now and use that as a guide really.

mickyflinn · 18 Sep 2011 at 12:33

120GB ssd would be about right, i have my apps and games on my ssd and there is a real boost in loading times for games.

FatFishMonster · 18 Sep 2011 at 15:22

is it worth putting my os on a ssd?

Leo101b · 18 Sep 2011 at 16:17

You have an AM3+ board, surely you would be better off just buying a bulldozer processor if/when they come out rather than having to buy a new mobo in addition to a CPU?

StonedPenguin · 18 Sep 2011 at 16:23

2500k is the 1 to go for, I cant see Intel dropping 1155 just yet.