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best intel gaming processor?

mythrandyr

mythrandyr

mythrandyr

Associate
Joined
19 Sep 2008
Posts
344
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?
 
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you must be off you head mate! have you overclocked? my 8500 gets 5.9 in vista even at stock...
 
A Wolfdale rig with a 4870 is what many people consider a mid-high end system these days. In which game(s) are you lacking performance exactly?
 
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).
 
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Is it too late to post "CLAIMED!" given the OP has a few posts, and been around a few months?
 
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.
 
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Thing is, if you do know how to overclock properly the CPU will still last you years, and be quicker.

Look at gurusan with his E8500 hitting 4.5GHz with ease ... that thing beats any chip AMD has on the market at the moment, and it's "just" a Wolfdale with only 2 cores.
 
Fair enough mate, if you don't want to overclock, more power to you.

But if I were you, I'd save up for an i5 or i7 system.

If you aren't happy with the performance of your system as it is, and are unwilling to buy an i7 or i5 system, then you can buy a faster processor.
 
Ehh? What does taking an E8500 from 3.16ghz to 4.5ghz have anything to do with government conspiracies?

The chip is perfectly capable of getting an overclock over 4ghz, and it will not reduce it's life (well maybe from a few decades to 10 yrs or so, oh noes).

If you want then go ahead and buy an i7...but they are mucho mucho monies, and it would be a real shame not to overclock one of those if you had it as well.
 
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.
 
Right, is owning an E8500 or owning an E8400 clocked to E8500 speeds the same?

Why yes it is, seeing as plenty of E8400s are binned E8500s

(same for E8600 and so on)
 
gurusan said:
Ehh? What does taking an E8500 from 3.16ghz to 4.5ghz have anything to do with government conspiracies?
Click to expand...

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?
 
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what?

ALL of the CPU specs within a certain family are EXACTLY the same except the stock frequency, when you change this they are exactly the same and will perform as if they were the same chip!

There is no mojo that they put into the higher rated processors to make them magically perform better....


benchmark an E8400 at 4ghz and an E8600 at 4ghz and the numbers will be identical.
 
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K, I give up.

GET YOUR TINFOIL HATS ON!

Right now the best gaming systems are still Wolfdales, however once things start to support more cores it will be between the C2Q and the i7/5.

Game design and threading systems will then come into play, anything that is decision based will be better on C2Q, anything that is based on mathematics will be better on Nehalem.
 
mythrandyr said:
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
Click to expand...

Overclocking does shorten the lifespan of a component slightly, but the computer will be outdated long before the component stops working. An overclocked CPU may last around 6-8 years, as opposed to 10, but by then, you're going to need an upgrade anyway.

mythrandyr said:
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?
Click to expand...

True, it is better to have a CPU that performs the same at stock speeds as an OC'ed CPU, because then you can overclock the stock CPU even higher! :D

The idea of overclocking is to get more performance out of your CPU at no cost. In the case of a C2D Dual core, you can get much more performance by overclocking a cheap chip than you can from keeping the best chip at stock. You are very unlikely to fry your chip, unless you absolutely have no idea what you are trying to do. 30 mins of research can get you up to 60% extra performance out of a CPU (depending what it is, of course), for perhaps the £30 it costs for a better cooler, or none if you already have a good one.

mythrandyr said:
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.
Click to expand...

I don't see a comparison there. Doctoring statistics is a 'fake'. It might appear good, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's better. Overclocking a CPU DOES give it better performance. It's not simply altering a number to make it appear better.

Your E8500 is probably one of the best gaming chips you can get, purely for it's overclocking ability. You can clock it from 3.16GHz to 4, 4.5, sometimes even 5GHz which is a 63.2% increase! You can't tell me that cutting a couple of years off the lifespan of a chip (that will be obselete by then) isn't worth such a huge performance increase?

If you are really worried about a chip not lasting that long, it seems that you are then worried about the price. Consider it this way, would you rather:

a) Buy an i7 920 for £255 and OC it to about 3.8GHz, and have it last 7 years (£36/year)

or

b) Buy an i7 965 for £840 and keep it at 3.2GHz, and have it last 10 years (£84/year for less performance)

Note that by the time the 920 has died, you will most likely need an upgrade anyway.
 
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
 
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