920 move to 4820K or wait?

JGBR

JGBR

JGBR

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Joined
18 Mar 2007
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1,838
Hello

My current i7 920 based machine is starting to show it's age. It' been comfortably over clocked for many years and served me well.

I am considering upgrading to something powerful but gives me enough of an improvement.

I have considered waiting for DDR4 to appear but was unsure if any real benefit would be gained.

Current specs are

i7 920 OC to 4.2GHZ
Corsair Dom 1066 Memory (6GB in triple)
Asus P6 Deluxe (something or another)
Nvidia 660ti 2GB OC EVGA

I've been overlooking and build machines for well over a decade but always like to get my 'core components' right, so I can eek out lifetimes. Hence this 920 based machine seems to have done so well.

Will moving to a 4820K be sufficient?

Many thanks.
 
This is the closest comparison I could find, stock 920 vs stock 3820, so of course each one would increase in performance proportionately to the overclock, and you need to add a little bit on to the 3820 so it resembles a 4820.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/47?vs=523

There is quite a sizable performance increase, but why upgrade if you are still happy with how your system performs? How is it showing its age exactly?

Have you considered the 4770K? It appears as though it may come in above the 4820K in terms of performance. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/523?vs=836

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel 4820K 3.70GHz (Ivybridge-E) Socket LGA2011 Processor - Retail (BX80633I74820K) £245.99
1 x Gigabyte X79-UD3 Intel X79 (Socket 2011) DDR3 Motherboard £161.99
1 x Avexir Core White Series 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Memory Kit (AVD3U16000904G-2CIW) - White Light £49.99
Total : £469.37 (includes shipping : £9.50).



YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i7-4770K 3.50GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £259.99
1 x Gigabyte Z87X-D3H Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £119.99
1 x Avexir Core White Series 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Memory Kit (AVD3U16000904G-2CIW) - White Light £49.99
Total : £439.57 (includes shipping : £8.00).



I would be tempted to go with the 4820K spec personally for reasons that I cant quite understand (it just seems more appealing to me :p) but the 4770K setup seems to make more sense if you are not going to use 2011 specific features. :)

~acme
 
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Well I just felt it was now behind the curve now and struggling doing some more modern games, I've considered a GPU change too, but I am unconvinced and felt perhaps going down the route of getting my 'core' components right will stand me in good stead again.
 
I've got both a heavily overclocked 3820 and 920, and to be fair, for the most part they are both as usable as each other (sure, synthetic benchmarks will show one as noticeably faster than the other, but in real-life use, the 920 based system is still more than enough for the kinds of loads I throw at it, including current-gen gaming).

I've only got the X79 rig due to wanting a lot of RAM for virtualization testing. If I were not to have this need, I doubt I'd have upgraded.
 
JGBR said:
Well I just felt it was now behind the curve now and struggling doing some more modern games, I've considered a GPU change too, but I am unconvinced and felt perhaps going down the route of getting my 'core' components right will stand me in good stead again.
Click to expand...

What are the rest of your system specs? And also I edited my above post. :)

~acme
 
Wouldn't waste the cash yet, unless you find a game which is struggling due to cpu, but i suspect your 660ti will conk out first.
 
A new video card and perhaps a clean OS install would be enough really. If you don't have an SSD yet you should get one of those .
 
yashiro said:
A new video card and perhaps a clean OS install would be enough really. If you don't have an SSD yet you should get one of those .
Click to expand...

This may do the trick. I have a 2500K at 4.6GHz at the moment (I run it at 5GHz in winter weather :D) which performs similarly to an i7 920 clock for clock and to be honest I am quite happy with my core system. I upgraded from a GTX660 OC (non TI) to my current GTX670 (clocked up to GTX680 performance levels) and noticed a nice performance boost. :)

I would be tempted to look into getting an HD7970 of some description, though your 660TI is still a very capable card. Have you overclocked it at all?

~acme
 
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I regularly wipe my OS and have literally games on it as it's a gaming rig ONLY.

I've got a couple of SSD's (Crucial M4's)

I ended up with the EVGA 660TI OC as my previous EVGA high spec card 500 series conked out and they sent me that as an 'upgrade'.

I used to go down the route of buying X80 GTX's but got fedup with the raising prices, however the cards do seem to last along time.

I've got to say, picking the right kit 5 years ago (i7 920 was launched Q3 2008) has done me proud and lasted 5 years so I felt it was time to choose the right kit this time around with the future in mind.

Do we know much of DDR4 yet too or not really worth waiting for?
 
As it's a gaming rig only, I'd definitely just upgrade the video card for now. The 920, especially overclocked, isn't going to be struggling with games just yet!
 
I found this review of a 780 but the detail is intresting as its the same CPU

ExceptionalBought one from OCuk when it was £625 and 5% off. Now £650! Frightening.
Replaced an HD6970 on an i7 920 O/C system – bit old now.
As an example at 2560x1600 my fps scores went from:
Metro 2033 – 21 or 29 depending on O/C to 57
Heaven 25 to 82
Valley 30 to 65
I’m well pleased. I do like good visuals/pretty in games and this GPU gives it all.
Titan performance with one GPU – my MB does not support SLi. So SLi not an option.
Had a problem with one DVI port on GPU not working but EVGA sorted this out very quickly with a new replacement.
Heard some people find the noise from GTX780’s loud, but this one is quiet. Can not hear it – had to check it was running with my hand underneath. Speeds up when gaming, but so do my twin CPU fans, so I still do not hear it.
Not tried O/C with EVGA Precision yet – concentrating on my i7 O/C.
Quite like the GeForce Experience optimising game settings without a lot of fiddling.
My system from OCuk is four years old (2009) and games were getting sluggish on my old 1920x1600 monitor. Bought a new Dell U3014 two months ago and even with setting turned down 21fps was not really playable. Now this GPU has brought new life to the system. Played Crysis3 last night and the visuals are exceptional.
Can fully recommend this card from EVGA and OCuk.


I'm thinking about waiting out DDR 4 and new CPU's and just upgrade to a 780GTX now?
 
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Anyway to speed up my current system?

my i7 920 is running at 4Ghz now

I've got the highest spec of memory my Mobo version will support and I've got the fastest SSD's and a 780GTX in the post.

Maybe find a i7 960 - this seems difficult and expensive when I could shift to haswell for near the same price
 
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I wouldn't bother touching the CPU, X58 stuff is expensive, and you'll probably notice absolutely no difference between the two. You should be able to get more than 4GHz fro your 920 though (assuming it's a D0). Perhaps look into water cooling it, most of the kit (pump, radiator, gpu block, tubing, res) will be transportable to a new build anyway, and you'll probably be able to eek a few more hundred MHz from the CPU whilst running colder and quieter.
 
X79 is a better platform than X58. The advantages are all fairly specific though. X79 gets you 64gb of ram, which is awesome if you want a lot of ram cheaply, but meaningless if you're happy with 6. You get an extra memory channel - which matters if you're doing a lot of maths, but otherwise not so much. More PCI-E lanes, but X58 is hardly lacking in that area. You can get an extra two processing cores, but there are remarkably few things that benefit from yet more parallelisation.

Haswell-E and DDR4 should be a dramatic improvement on paper, but there's a good chance you still wouldn't see a difference in day to day life.

Computers are really quick relative to Windows and computer games, so there's not much desire to upgrade them if that's all you're doing.
 
So this is the what im thinking:

Intel Core i7-4770K 3.50GHz (Haswell)
Gigabyte Z87X-UD3H Intel Z87 (Socket 1150)
Patriot Viper "Black Mamba" Generation 3 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C10
NH-U14S Ultra-Quiet Slim CPU Cooler
EVGA 780GTX SC

what do you think?
 
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Well I just put my 780GTX into the i7 920 and wow.... I see no reason to upgrade CPU/Mobo etc , everythings smooth. Just tried Rome total war at Ultra with 16XAA and no problems!
 
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