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Upgrade for I7 920

Moorron

Moorron

Moorron

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Joined
12 Aug 2004
Posts
825
Location
Telford, UK
Sorry for having to ask an upgrade post.

I have had for the last 5 years my nice 920 @ 3.4 and I was doing fine with it until I went and bought an oculus rift last month. Because of this I quickly upgraded my 970 Gpu for a 1080ti just for the better VR experience as I only have a 1080p monitor, but feel I might as well upgrade the rest of my system to something much newer.

I don't really have an idea what has come since my 920 platform and would like to make It a worthwhile upgrade, would I notice a huge improvement going to the I7 7700K even at stock? or is this just too much of a leap and I could save some money and go for something older? I understand AMD has just released their new CPU and Intel are about to do the same, will the above drop much in price if I buy now or best to wait?

I have about £800 for a CPU, mobo and ram but can stretch more if something is close.

I only game and do a little bit of video editing hence why my 920 was doing alright.

Any suggestions for a worthwhile jump?
 
Swap the 920 for a x5650 6 core
They are around £40 at the moment and give the old platform a very nice bump when overclocked
 
I would also get a x5650 a new cooler see how you get on with that first. You will get all your money back if you decide to sell in a few months
 
ubersonic said:
Not trying to be funny, but how is swapping his 4c8t CPU for a 6c12t one of the same gen supposed to improve his single threaded performance? Gulftown isn't any faster than Nehalem clock for clock.
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Not trying to be funny but the OP didn't mention single core performance once.

On a side note though, Westmere-EP tends to clock a lot better than Nehalem so you would improve single-threaded performance when overclocking.
 
DragonQ said:
Not trying to be funny but the OP didn't mention single core performance once.
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He asked for gaming and video editing, two things known to see noticeable improvement from upgrading from 9 year old CPUs. Sidegrading from his 8 year old CPU to a 7 year old one which is a die shrink of the same architecture may save money but it is not going to provide noticeable improvements in either and will still bottleneck his 1080ti.
 
AMD 1700, mobo and fast ram is my call for your budget. I understand why they are saying the 6 core but if he has the budget already then get him the latest setup. The 8 core 1700 is a huge improvement on the 920, it's not even in the same ball park, the difference will be like night and day.
 
ubersonic said:
He asked for gaming and video editing, two things known to see noticeable improvement from upgrading from 9 year old CPUs. Sidegrading from his 8 year old CPU to a 7 year old one which is a die shrink of the same architecture may save money but it is not going to provide noticeable improvements in either and will still bottleneck his 1080ti.
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Disagree. It'd bring a small-to-decent improvement in gaming (depending on the games and how mutlithreaded they are) and a decent-to-large improvement in video editing (since various aspects of video editing are heavily multithreaded). Upgrading to Ryzen or X99 would be even better, of course, but it'd also cost a lot more. It's worth a try to see if it will extend the lifetime of the system, certainly for the sake of less than £20 all-in (if he sells his current CPU).

If you have the money and want a bigger performance jump then I'd go R7 1700. The other option is X99 but you'd trade 4 virtual cores and longevity for a minor single-threaded improvement (which, for games, will get even smaller over time).

Also, do you have any evidence of X58 bottlenecking a 1080 Ti at a particular resolution? I can see anecdotal reports of it both being absolutely fine and heavily bottlenecking but no actual numbers showing the latter. I've seen that a 1070 is maybe 5% slower on X58 compared to with i7-6700K (both overclocked) so I can't imagine it's that big of a deal.
 
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i managed 4.6ghz out of my x5650 i had, was a great bump from the 920.
as above the upgrade will cost you pennies and worth having a blast at.
 
If you've got £800, move to Ryzen.

Quite aside from the massive improvement in IPC, a new chipset (SATA6g, M2, USB-C) and a socket that's good for a few Zen iterations should persuade you.

The jump from a 920 to an x5650 made sense 2 years ago, but no longer. The addition of 2 more comparatively slow cores will not significantly help for VR.
 
I had an i7 920 and got a 5650

It was a good upgrade and cheap at the time but I will be moving to Ryzen 1700 soon as I want a modern motherboard and it looks a decent performance boost

So I'd go that route
 
I've yet to install it, but I've just upgraded from a 3570k to a 1700 Ryzen. My logic was although the 7700k is blisteringly fast and the fastest gaming chip within the same budget as the 1700 Ryzen, I felt like it was a bit short sighted to be upgrading from a 4 core chip to another 4 core chip albeit a 4 core chip with 8 threads.

The Ryzen is a new architecture bringing excellent multi threaded performance down to consumer level pricing. I'm excited to have an 8 core cpu with 16 threads in my PC.

My 3570k lasted 5 years, I imagine as the years role by, the Ryzen chip will start to stretch it's legs further as games become more and more multi threaded.

Also AM4 as a platform AMD have promised to support it for another 3 generations of Ryzen whilst the Intel socket is dead and will require new mobo etc...
 
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Thanks for the replies, I understand both views put forward on the 6 core chip and a new system but I was thinking of a new 'total' upgrade. Looks like the 1700 or higher AMD might be my choice.
 
Sell what you got and go 2600k or haswell will cost next to nothing if buying secondhand
 
ubersonic said:
He asked for gaming and video editing, two things known to see noticeable improvement from upgrading from 9 year old CPUs. Sidegrading from his 8 year old CPU to a 7 year old one which is a die shrink of the same architecture may save money but it is not going to provide noticeable improvements in either and will still bottleneck his 1080ti.
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oh please going from a 4c8t nehalem to a 6c12t west mere is not a 'sidegrade'.

the op does not say but I would say there's a reasonable chance his 920 is the 'c0' stepping chip with his rather conservative oc. Slap a westermere chip in and oc to 4Ghz+ equals a big upgrade for small money. Yes a ryzen (or any modern intel setup) would be faster but for a lot more money.

I should know I went from a 920do at 4Ghz to a westermere hex at 4.4Ghz.

not an upgrade for gaming and video editing?!!! What rubbish!

so op if you want to spend all / most of your money on a new setup buy a ryzen cpu/mobo/ ddr4 setup and oc it. Don't cheap out on the mobo. If you want a cheaper option get a hex westmere chip and maybe 12gb of ram if your currently rocking 6gb or 3gb (if you have 3gb you should definitely seek to upgrade)

of course a newer setup will give you more performance but upgrading on your x58 setup would cost very little (remember to check your mobo supports the cup and update the bios if necessary before you swap out your 920 if you go down that route)
 
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I've moved from 920@4ghz to x5660, computer does feel faster, games as well. I agree with upgrading to one of them, cheap upgrade, wouldn't loose anything trying this option, if performance won't be enough, then you can buy ryzen or intel.
 
Got my XFX GTR RX 480 yesterday and already undervolted and overclocked it slightly. GPU usage is pretty much pegged at 100% in every game I've tried so far (using FreeSync) with no sign of CPU bottlenecking. Westmere-EP is not dead yet. ;)
 
Caracus2k said:
oh please going from a 4c8t nehalem to a 6c12t west mere is not a 'sidegrade'.
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If you read the thread before replying you would see the posts agreeing with me including ones who used to have the CPU he is being advised to buy.

The X5650 was a stonking chip in it's day and a year or so ago was mental value upgrade but going from four obsolete cores to six when you can afford to get a modern setup is silly, especially when you have a 1080ti and want to do VR, it's like telling somebody with a E8200 to get a Q6600 and they will be fine.


Caracus2k said:
get a hex westmere chip and maybe 12gb of ram if your currently rocking 6gb or 3gb (if you have 3gb you should definitely seek to upgrade)
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He has 16GB, this is where reading the thread comes in useful.
 
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