best intel gaming processor?

mythrandyr · 13 Mar 2009 at 20:08

Hi guys,

ok, i need to update my current processor which is an E8500. I know these things fly when it comes to games that don't use multicore processor's because of their faster clock speeds but the one thing that lets it down (and this is just a small, small.... almost insignificant little niggle of mine) is that it only scores 5.7 in windows vista.

I have noticed a slight bit of bottlenecking in gaming (and thats just really crappy games like sniper elite) but i don't know if i can blame the processor on it's own. The graphics card is an Asus ATI 4870 512MB graphics card so that should be ok.

So the real question is what processor should i upgrade to? I have heard that the I7 takes the performance crown for general multitasking but pretty much falls flat on its face when compared to the Q9650 when it comes to gaming (which is what i am aiming my rig at), also it will mean that i will have to change out the motherboard if i do change over to the I7.

But i am tempted to wait and see what comes out over the next 6 months or so on the I5 front. The trouble is that no one seems to know too much about this chipset other than it is going to be based on the nehalem architecture but will use dual channel ddr3 instead of triple channel.

Either way, between the I5 and the I7 i'm gonna have to spend quite a bit of cash updating the system (which i'll have do to sooner or later anyway) but their is just something holding me back from buying the Q9650 and i don't know what.

what do you guys think?

mythrandyr · 13 Mar 2009 at 21:54

well, i don't overclock my systems, i never have and i never will. I've never believed in the ethics of overclocking systems and have always tried to achieve high performance using stock settings. If i was going to overclock anything i would have just bought an AMD Phenom 2 720, they're s'posed to overclock like mad.

a lot of the games that i have ran lately seem to be under performing, i've tried red alert 3, sniper elite and dead space at the minute. Occassionally they seem to bottleneck every now and again.

I don't know if i can blame all of the slow down on the shoulders of the processor alone, i'm wondering if the drives that i am using are in some way responsible since the main system drives are raided samsung solid state drives.

and to be honest, i don't know how you get a 5.9 rating in vista on a stock E8500? my system's told me every time that i have had vista running on it that the processor rates 5.7.

I've just been reading some threads on google regarding the 5.7 vista rating for the E8500, apparently that's normal since it is not a Quad Core processor. Apparently it's perfectly normal for the E8500+ processors to get 5.7 because of their frequency/archetecture (since they are not quad core).

mythrandyr · 13 Mar 2009 at 22:27

i've always thought that overclocking systems does more damage to the components than is neccessary, i don't know if that's entirely true or not though since as i say, i don't overclock but i have had trouble with the mainboard that i have now trying to run 1600mhz memory that had to be wound down to 1333mhz through the bios and if the stability that i witnessed then (prior to changing the memory) is anything to go by then i'd rather keep thing's running smoothly at stock level without all of the extra stress/pressure being put onto the individual components.

I've always thought it better to have a processor that performs as well at stock speeds as a processor that has to be overclocked to achieve the same results. And if an overclocked system is more vulnerable to being cooked due to inadequate cooling/improper settings/system stability is'nt it better to have a processor that will last several years rather than months if you don't know how to overclock properly?

sorry but i just don't believe in overclocking systems to get the performance that you want, to me overclocking a processor feels like, for examples sake, the government releasing national statistics that they've doctored in order to blag people into believing that things are better than they actually are.

mythrandyr · 13 Mar 2009 at 22:42

thats fair enough but the problem for me is that overclocking to 4.5ghz is'nt the same as owning a processor which is 4.5ghz at stock speed (which does'nt look likely at the minute but it will probably happen sooner or later) and a dual core is still only going to be dual core, no ammount of overclocking can change that.

see, i can understand people overclocking the I7 920 2.66mhz to 3.20mhz, i really can given the price ratio and chip architecture, but overclocking to 3.20Mhz is'nt like actually owning the I7 965.

mythrandyr · 13 Mar 2009 at 22:47

gurusan said:
Ehh? What does taking an E8500 from 3.16ghz to 4.5ghz have anything to do with government conspiracies?

i think you missunderstood what i meant.

Take unemployment as an example, if the government says unemployment is up by 35% then their are other factors to consider such as schemes like job seekers allowances, economic migrants etc... so if the government says half the country are out of work, you could say considering afformentioned implications that overall unemployment is say 50% because of all the other factors that they have failed to mention just to make things sound better than they actually are.

thats what i mean with overclocking, because you can reach 4.5Ghz overclocking, you've still only got a 3.16Ghz processor, you have'nt got the true, core statistics because it's a way of making people believe that you're processor can be taken at face value.

i'm terrible at explaining things, but like i said before, having a processor that is capable of 4.5Ghz is'nt actually having a processor that is truly 4.5ghz. only the architecture is the same, not the clock speeds.

The architecture of the two processors is the same, fair enough, both quad core, both 6Mb lvl 2 cache etc... but the core clock speeds just make them feel like entirely different processors. If you overclocked an E8400 to the same speeds as an E8600 which is easily doable, and then bought an E8600 because you like the performance, you'd still try and overclock the beans out of that too. Why not just buy an unlocked AM3 Phenom 2 BE? when the sky is the limit with those things?

mythrandyr · 13 Mar 2009 at 22:58

listen guys, i probably ruffled a few feathers over overclocking and i appologise for my ignorance, like i say, i've never overclocked i never intended to set anyones back up or anything, its just my view. in an way yeah, i am more concearned over the longevity of a processor rather than the price. I just don't want to find myself in a position where i have to buy a new processor in a years time cos i baked the last one due to my own stupidity and i've never had a chip burn out on me, it would be a shame to start now. As i understood it though, or rather what i was told at OC, a majority of the games that were in the pipe line this year would be taking advantage of the multicore processors

mythrandyr · 13 Mar 2009 at 23:06

no bro, check it out on google, other people report seeing the same vista score.

mythrandyr · 13 Mar 2009 at 23:15

to be honest with you gurusan, i don't even like vista. It's just essential at the minute since i need the raid0 setup and i don't have a floppy drive to load XP raid drivers (and can't be bothered to mess around with Nlite).

mythrandyr · 13 Mar 2009 at 23:16

rypt said:
MY E7200 at 3.9 scores 5.9 ... guess you should "upgrade" to id for the awesome Vista score

screw vista lol. If it was'nt for raid, in all honesty, i would give vista a complete miss. would'nt mind trying windows 7 though with touch screen etc... seems to me that the vista score is just another way of trying to blag people (people like me

) into buying unneccesary system upgrades.

mythrandyr · 13 Mar 2009 at 23:24

don't bank on it at the minute i think this recession is going to get worse by the end of the year. $ to the £ is mad at the mo, i registered with a site on the internet a couple of months back now for $10, might as well have been £10 for the difference it made.

But then again prices in this country have always been mad. A part for my pc in this country, say a motherboard for $150 is more or less roughly the same in ££'s even when the exchange rate was at its best of what $2 to the £1.

mythrandyr · 13 Mar 2009 at 23:27

D D Danneh said:
If you still don't want to overclock, then I'll go with what rypt said. Wolfdale C2D now, C2Q/i7 later.

in all honesty i think that is going to be my main plan of attack, i'll probably just end up going straight for I7 by christmas/new year, but i'm still dissapointed with the range of processors that are currently availbale in the I7 range. I'm still interested in seeing what the I5's will be capable of doing though, i think intel might have made a mistake though on not making them 1366 socket compatible.

mythrandyr · 13 Mar 2009 at 23:34

lol, it does identify which parts of the system are poop though, but only from one extreme to the other. would you like to own a system that rates a (1)2.3 vista index score? It certainly would'nt give you braggin rights lol (unless you could brag about owning the worst vista system ever seen by man

if i remember right, even this crappy laptop that i have rates around 4.7).

mythrandyr · 14 Mar 2009 at 00:27

Happy said:
Some people shouldn't be allowed on the internet :/

such as who? and why? because they have an opinion?

mythrandyr · 14 Mar 2009 at 00:45

i guess its true what they say,

"you're either part of the solution or part of the problem" so as far as i'm concearned happy, quit being part of the problem.

I can't be that much of an idiot to make comments about people like you have!!

you call me an idiot, you really should learn to keep comments like that to yourself as that is the true sign of idiocity.

mythrandyr · 14 Mar 2009 at 01:03

no actually i am not Happy. I don't belive that you have read the post from the beginning, i suggest that you read the post from the beginning rather than half way through.

if you did, you would realise that i was initially asking about processors, not overclocking, believe it or not i can tell the difference between the two completely unrelated topics and i don't need to be told by you which part of the forum that i should be in.

no **** it's overclockers uk? and there's me thinking it was Pc world... and appart from anything else, if it is overclockersuk which it is, then we are talking about a very valued subject then which is overclocking (veered slightly ofcourse from the original content obviously, which i do realise).

nah, to be honest Dr Who, thanks for the advice but for the minute i think i'll have a more detailed look into oc'ing the equipment that i have but ultimately it will be all upgraded by the end of the year anyway, i think at the minute i am happy enough to run the equipment as is until i've learned more about OC'ing. I was just enquiring about which intel processor was currently best for gaming on.

mythrandyr · 14 Mar 2009 at 01:11

oh well, what a pitty, i feel a great sense of loss there....

mythrandyr · 14 Mar 2009 at 01:31

anyway, i've done a bit of delving around on the internet which os probably what i should have done in the first place admittadly and i have come to a conclusion.

After seeing various related topics here and on toms hardware etc... what i'll do is have a more detailed look into overclocking in the future until i feel a more urgent need to upgrade.

Everything that i have seen on the internet seems to determin what i have already been told umpteen times, and i appologise for my ignorance in past posts, and that is that faster dual cores are much better for gaming than multi core processor at the minute because, currently, their is not much multicore support for gaming, you're posts have helped me to understand that.

Part of my fault's lie in the wealth of components available now, i've been so used to things being black and white that i did'nt understand how multicore processors worked, this is the most advanced rig that i have had since i dropped out of the pc scene for a few years, i've only just started getting back into the swing of things over the last year or so. before multicore processors became readily available(my last PC build was an AMD Athlon) i have had difficulty adapting to the new ranges of hardware available on the market today and have had trouble understanding how the latest generation of processors work and in what environments they work best, in a way, i preferred the old day's when it used to be a very simple choice between the intel pentium or the amd athlon being based more or less purely on clock speed, days before the multicore generation.

anyway, thankyou for you're help guys, i know what i need too now and i understand more than i did before i initially started the post.

my only question now is how well will all of this equipment overclock?

mythrandyr · 14 Mar 2009 at 01:33

feeddagoat said:
I can see where the OP is comming from. After all, wouldn'tyou rather have 3GHz @ stock over 1.6GHz @ stock.QUOTE]

thats all i've been trying to get across since i started out with the thread, i appreciate you're support but i can also see now where the other guys who have posted here are going. I guess that it comes down to personal preferrences at the end of the day and we are all entitled to our own opinions and to do as we see fit.

mythrandyr · 14 Mar 2009 at 01:34

feeddagoat said:
I can see where the OP is comming from. After all, wouldn'tyou rather have 3GHz @ stock over 1.6GHz @ stock.

thats all i've been trying to get across since i started out with the thread, i appreciate you're support but i can also see now where the other guys who have posted here are going. I guess that it comes down to personal preferrences at the end of the day and we are all entitled to our own opinions and to do as we see fit. P.S. sorry for the double post, can a mod delete the one above?

mythrandyr · 14 Mar 2009 at 01:36

rypt said:
Only if that 3GHz stock will let me overclock higher than the 1.6GHz stock chip.

i can't see any reason why it would'nt but then again would'nt that be more dependant on you're motherboard?