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intel chip £60 - £100

FoxEye

FoxEye

FoxEye

Caporegime
Joined
17 Feb 2006
Posts
29,263
Location
Cornwall
Thinking of upgrading my AMD x3 435.

Looking to spend roughly the same amount (435 was £70, mobo was £70), but will be most likely flying Intel's flag this time.

Just wondering if people here would always buy a brand new Pentium G840/ core i3 for that money, or if a 2nd-hand first-gen core i5/core i7 might be available for a similar price?

What's the biggest reason to go for a new Sandy over the older tech?

What I absolutely cannot do is spend £170 for a new i5 + another £100 for a motherboard, so "save more money" responses will be ignored. Sorry!
 
Cant get an i5 for £100, even a used one... i3 would be your best bet.
SB is no question the best choice you could make in this case.. the fastest.
 
matty15 said:
Cant get an i5 for £100, even a used one... i3 would be your best bet.
SB is no question the best choice you could make in this case.. the fastest.
Click to expand...

I've just seen an i7 920 go for 110 on the fleabay....

and there's a 2500k that went for 100... :o.

I'm searching completed listings so too late for both of those :p
 
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i3 faster than a first gen i7? Didn't realise that :) Guess I should have looked at some comparison benchmarks :p
 
Gonna sell my old AM3 kit soon (Athlon II X4 unlocked to Phenom II) and buy a Z77 board and a i3 2100 or similar, they just seems so much faster per clock speed against anything else and a much better upgrade path also. :)
 
i3 2120 gaming performance is roughly the same as Phenom II X4 at 4.0GHz, but will have full grunt for games that use 2 cores or above, comparing to Phenom II X4 in games that use only 2-3 cores losing 25/50% of the performance.

But I say it's definitely worth stretching a bit to get a 2nd hand i5 2500K for may be just a bit over £100 if possible. It will last much longer than a i3 CPU, considering not only it has two more physical cores, but it can be overclocked by at least 40% on average as well.
 
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Flashheart said:
I3 faster than an I7 920?

You're having a giggle mate :D
Click to expand...

I don't know, I was just going on what Combat Squirrel said (a couple posts above).

I do tend to assume that people here know what they're talking about!!!

So an i3 isn't as fast as an i7 920 then?
 
In single or two threaded games/apps I'm pretty sure the i3 2100 or similar Sandybridge i3 would be faster than an i7 920.

In multi threaded games/apps using 3, 4 more threads the i7 920 would most likely be faster. That's not taking into consideration any overclocking.
 
OK. Is an i5 750 for £80 any good?

Bearing in mind I run my CPU at stock these days. I don't have the money for expensive coolers, and I like to run my PC *silent* as well :p

So we could do a modest OC, but nothing needing extra volts, super-coolers,etc ;)
 
SouthEastBlue said:
In single or two threaded games/apps I'm pretty sure the i3 2100 or similar Sandybridge i3 would be faster than an i7 920.

In multi threaded games/apps using 3, 4 more threads the i7 920 would most likely be faster. That's not taking into consideration any overclocking.
Click to expand...

Don't the i3's have HT enabled? or is that just the SB i3?
 
i5 750 is actually pretty neat, considering I paid £150 for my 760 when it was new and the CPU is very rarely a bottleneck.

Also, I wouldn't really call a £40 cooler "expensive" for a good overclock. My 760 (Pretty much the same, just 1 extra on the max multiplier and 1 extra on the main multiplier. I have mine set to the default 750 multi, so it should be okay) is running 4GHz silent (to my ear) except on 100% load when I can hear the fan. It is overvolted though, so you may not need the same kind of cooler (But it is REALLY quiet!). I'd say buy a quiet cooler after you've got the CPU and mobo, because a good 1156 mobo is quite expensive now. (My mobo is now around £70, from about £50 when I bought mine)

The cooler I have is this
 
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It would obviously make some 'extra' performance over a normal dual core without hyper threading but it won't make up for having two less physical cores against an i5 with 4 physical cores.

Here's the i3 2100 3.1Ghz dual core with HT vs an i5 2400 3.1Ghz quad core without HT.
 
I've got a system with an i3 2120 in it and it doesn't feel much different to my overclocked 2500k really. Only in high end cpu intensive games do you notice the different, or video encoding but then I never do that on the i3. Pair it with a decent SSD and it'll fly.
 
FoxEye said:
I don't know, I was just going on what Combat Squirrel said (a couple posts above).

I do tend to assume that people here know what they're talking about!!!

So an i3 isn't as fast as an i7 920 then?
Click to expand...


Sorry, didnt mean to come across as rude.

I wouldnt settle for anything less than a quad these days.

An I5 750 is a sound choice if you are confident with overclocking, as is the 920. But if you can shoehorn a 2500k in there for the top end of your budget then you should be aiming towards that.

That been said, Ive heard great things about I3's (just a shame they are duelies)
 
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