Cheap upgrade or will it be a sidegrade?

[Cyber-Mav]

So i currently have a socket 1156 xeon x3470 which is like a i7 870 cpu. I got it clocked up to 3.5ghz with 16gb ddr3 ram 4x4gb.
I do have 2 spare motherboards with cpus. One is a h77m-g43 msi board. Has a pentium dual core in it and has 4 ram slots.
The other board is a h81m with a dual core pentium cpu but has 2 ram slots.

I don't want to drop to 8gb ram so im thinking i could make do with the socket 1155 board but what sort of cpu could i get for it on the cheap that would be fast enough to warrant the effort in changing out my old socket 1156 setup.

I have to use old version of vmware due to my cpu not supporting a feature for newer versions of vmware to work properly.

 

[LePhuronn]

X3470 is Lynnfield, yeah? That was based on Nehalem (X58). Sandy Bridge was a beastly lift over Nehalem, Ivy Bridge was 10% over Sandy (and a good chunk more efficient), Haswell was in turn about 10% over Ivy.

So in tech terms something 4000 series would probably net you a chunky boost over the X3470. In real terms though Haswell still commands a few quid on the 2nd hand market because it can still keep up (by virtue of Intel stagnating with incremental updates; Skylake and Kaybe Lake aren't much more over Haswell, Coffee Lake is just more cores).

I can see the 4770 (non K) on eBay for about £120. Not sure if that qualifies as "cheap" within the scope of your question.

 

[snips86x]

You could easily grab a 4770k/4790k setup on the MM to replace the lot for less than £200

 

[Armageus]

i5-2500k would be the cheapest upgrade imo - can be had for £30 now. Despite not having HT, will still be better for most things than that I7, due to the newer architecture.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Intel-i7-870-vs-Intel-i5-2500K/832vs804

EDIT: just seen it's a H77 board, so no overclocking - that would really just make it a side-grade

 

[Cyber-Mav]

yes the X3470 is lynnfield,

cant H77 board overclock at all? i thought with a K series cpu its just multiplier adjustments to increase.

 

[LePhuronn]

Only Z series allow you multiplier overclocking

 

[LePhuronn]

Oh by the way, the Haswell would drop into the H81 board, not the H77. I misread which board you wanted to use.

 

[Aretak]

You could easily grab a 4770k/4790k setup on the MM to replace the lot for less than £200

You could grab a Ryzen setup with something like a 1600 or 2600 for the same sort of money though, which would be a far better option. I don't really see the point in throwing more money at old platforms that are limited to quad cores. Even buying a CPU for one when the OP only has non-overclocking boards.

Bite the bullet, sell the lot and put it all towards a DDR4-based platform. You can pick up 16GB of 3200MHz DDR4 for ~£65-70 right now and get half that back selling your DDR3.

 

[davida76]

Get yourself a Xeon e3-1240 v2 off t'bay for £50, stick it in the H77 and call it a day, ipc uplift and 8 threads. Then plan a full upgrade when you're ready or xeon is struggling.

 

[Cyber-Mav]

how much faster would the e3-1240 v2 be over my x3470 which is clocked to 3.5ghz? was there a big step up in ipc from nehlem to sandybridge?

 

[Drumroll]

You could grab a Ryzen setup with something like a 1600 or 2600 for the same sort of money though, which would be a far better option. I don't really see the point in throwing more money at old platforms that are limited to quad cores. Even buying a CPU for one when the OP only has non-overclocking boards.

Bite the bullet, sell the lot and put it all towards a DDR4-based platform. You can pick up 16GB of 3200MHz DDR4 for ~£65-70 right now and get half that back selling your DDR3.

Sensible advice here.

 

[davida76]

how much faster would the e3-1240 v2 be over my x3470 which is clocked to 3.5ghz? was there a big step up in ipc from nehlem to sandybridge?

It's ivy bridge, the jump is considerable depending on the task, though obviously with your overclock the gap is smaller but you get newer features such as avx. In this article the xeon e3 would be somewhere between the i7 2700k and the i7 4790k:

https://www.techspot.com/article/1039-ten-years-intel-cpu-compared/page2.html

Though, as the other guys have said if you've got the budget you'd be better off selling the lot and going Ryzen.

 

[Cyber-Mav]

hmm, i wanted features such as usb3 and sata3 but i guess i could just hold out and go ryzen. my case limits me to micro atx boards, i dont think there are any in that size for ryzen.

 

[Armageus]

hmm, i wanted features such as usb3 and sata3 but i guess i could just hold out and go ryzen. my case limits me to micro atx boards, i dont think there are any in that size for ryzen.

Limited choices with "current" X570 chipset boards, but plenty of older boards around:


My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x Asrock X570M Pro4 (AMD AM4) DDR4 X570 Chipset mATX Motherboard= £179.99
• 1 x ASUS TUF B450M-PLUS GAMING (Socket AM4) DDR4 MATX Motherboard= £87.98
• 1 x MSI B450M Mortar MAX (Socket AM4) DDR4 mATX Motherboard= £92.99
• 1 x Gigabyte B450 AORUS M (Socket AM4) DDR4 MATX Motherboard= £83.99

Total: £456.65 (includes shipping: £11.70)​

​

 

[Cyber-Mav]

dont those boards have issues with weak vrm's and in msi's case bios issues due to not enough bios memory.

 

[Armageus]

Mortar has reasonable VRM's from what I've read: https://bit-tech.net/reviews/tech/motherboards/msi-b450m-mortar-review/8/
the above version that OcUK stock is the MAX version which has a larger BIOS so no issues (and likely will work out of the box with a 3rd gen Ryzen)


TUF-B450M-PLUS Gaming also seems more than adequate unless you're going for 3900X/3950X
https://bit-tech.net/reviews/tech/motherboards/asus-tuf-b450m-plus-gaming-review/9/