£500 upgrade

[dave_beast]

I have £500 and want to upgrade, for gaming, rendering, video converting, benchmarking etc.

Currently running a Q9400 at 3.6ghz that's ok, but starting to be noticably slower than current chips.

If you we're me would you wait for SB? Either for SB itself or to see where 1156/1366 i7's go?

 

[cmndr_andi]

For your uses I would certainly wait for SB if you can.

It will be more powerful clock-for-clock, clocked higher at stock and (with a K series CPU) overclock very well.

Your £500 should get you a K series i5, a mid-end board and 4GB DDR3 and some money spare to buy a decent graphics card.

May I ask what your current graphics card is?

 

[95thrifles]

but wouldnt an i7 1366 be better than that for his uses Andi? And as SBs replacement for these is Q3/Q4 imo its prob worth doing it now

 

[cmndr_andi]

but wouldnt an i7 1366 be better than that for his uses Andi? And as SBs replacement for these is Q3/Q4 imo its prob worth doing it now

S1366 is really nice (I have it and don't plan on upgrading for a while), but these new chips that come out in January may not be a direct replacement of s1366 - but in terms of pure CPU performance they will put it in its place.

The main benefit that s1336 will have over mainstream SB is features. Things like a PCIE v2.0 x16x16 CF/SLI, triple channel memory and solid overclocking for all 1336 CPUs. If these features are worth more to the OP than the extra CPU performance then certainly go for s1366 - it is a very nice platform and the prices have never been cheaper.

However, in real-world applications dual channel memory is enough, PCIe v2.0 x8x8 SLI/CF is enough (even when using top-end graphics cards) and the s1155 chips will be offered in a K series flavour - with an unlocked multiplier to allow overclocking.

Looking at this overclocking performance - these new chips do look very nice.

 

[dave_beast]

For your uses I would certainly wait for SB if you can.

It will be more powerful clock-for-clock, clocked higher at stock and (with a K series CPU) overclock very well.

Your £500 should get you a K series i5, a mid-end board and 4GB DDR3 and some money spare to buy a decent graphics card.

May I ask what your current graphics card is?

XFX6870 Black Edition, with plans to possibly CFX sometime in the future...

 

[dave_beast]

Am thinking along the lines of the i7 2600k, can add some £ to the cost if needed.