Confused about GHz!

[Acid Mayhem]

Hi all,
Seriously thinking about upgrading my very old PC to a new spangly one but am a bit confused with the CPU GHz figures.
Does the speed of the processor mostly come down to the GHz figure?
For instance if I bought a system with an Intel i3 processor overclocked to 4.20 Ghz (as the Overclockers 'Titan Xenomorph') would this be quicker than the Intel i7 processor overclocked to 4.00 GHz (as the 'Titan Onyx').
Mostly be using my PC for games so the faster, the better I guess!
I am not in any immediate rush and have read that prices should be dropping in August. Is this correct?
Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[Troezar]

As with most things and especially technology it's never that simple Try a Google for Tom's Hardware cpu charts. That's a good starting point. The biggest factor is the graphics ability of your PC but the CPU will limit that past a certain point.

Best bet is to list what do you want to play, at what screen resolution e.g. 1920x1080 and what is your budget. People can then assess that for you and advise

 

[iTek]

Like mentioned its not as simple as that, the i7 comes with more cores and larger level 3 cache. This essentially makes it lots quicker for gaming and encoding.

 

['Wes]

CPU speed is what the GHz says, you can increase the speed of your system even more if you want by tweaking ram and other bits and bobs.

 

[sgreat]

I've just upgraded my computer, with the one you see below.. Not being a massive game player. but do use tmpenc for encoding I needed some muscle but not so much to be worthy of great expenditure... I think I got myself an alrounder with a few years of future proving ta boot.. Time will tell I suppose!!

 

[Dark_Angel]

Basically, it comes down to the cache of the chip, the amount of cores that is has, its IPC (Instructions per clock) how "long" its pipelines are / how they're designed, instructions sets on the CPU and a few other factors.

I always say you can only judge speed in the same CPU line, for example you know a 2GHZ Dual Core Conroe is faster than one at 1.8 GHZ, but that isn't the same thing as another CPU.

Put it another way, a P4 overclocked to 4GHZ will be slower than a Q6600 at 2.4GHZ.

Sgreat, your signaure is also over the max of 4 lines, mods will find you!

 

[arknor]

i3 > i5 > i7
phenom 2 are pretty self explanatory
x2 > x3 > x4 > x6

x4 are roughly equiv of i5 and x6 are about the same as an i7 930

 

[Dark_Angel]

Hi all,
Seriously thinking about upgrading my very old PC to a new spangly one but am a bit confused with the CPU GHz figures.
Does the speed of the processor mostly come down to the GHz figure?
For instance if I bought a system with an Intel i3 processor overclocked to 4.20 Ghz (as the Overclockers 'Titan Xenomorph') would this be quicker than the Intel i7 processor overclocked to 4.00 GHz (as the 'Titan Onyx').
Mostly be using my PC for games so the faster, the better I guess!
I am not in any immediate rush and have read that prices should be dropping in August. Is this correct?
Thanks in advance for any help.

Intel ones, yes,

Intel CPU's are a little faster for games at the moment than AMD ones, but it's not going to be so much that you'll really care.

I3's aren't going to be as fast as an I7, though you'll really notice the difference in encoding. I3's are basically more than enough for right now for gaming in general, if you've got a good card - *but* with the new CPU's dipping in price it gives you 2 options.

1. Buy now, then upgrade to the cheaper / latest CPU's if you feel you're struggling.

2. Wait, and see what happens. If you're not in a rush (which it doesn't sound you are) this is possibly the best option. Remember also, that new sockets / cpu's are being released next year... which further adds to the "hmmm, which option is best" factor.

 

[sgreat]

Sgreat, your signaure is also over the max of 4 lines, mods will find you!

Sorted!!

Before I got my O/C bundle from here, I did exhaustive research into best bang for buck..and Intel v AMD was uppermost in my mind at the time.. But at the end of the day I plumed for what appeared to me best value.. A very o/clockable x6 core, on a very o/clockable M/board.. And so far so good!!

 

[Acid Mayhem]

Thanks for all the advice there - very useful.
I checked out the Tom's harware charts and took a look at some of the graphs and now am even more confused! It looks like the FPS score on Left for Dead, that the i5-750 2.66 GHz, DDR3-1333 outperforms the i7-920 2.66 GHz, DDR3-1066!!?

Another couple of questions if you don't mind guys!

1) In the Intel world, does the number after the processor type correspond to the better chip. e.g i7-870 inferior to i7-920 which in turn is inferior to the i7-930?

2) If a game is single threaded would it perform better on a 3 GHz single core chip or a 2.4 GHz muli core chip. Will the game run on the other cores if one is 'full', even if not a multi threaded game?

3) My budget is around the £1200 mark - I was considering the 'Ultima Viper' i7-930 with a Radeon HD 5850 card upgrade and Windows 7 Professional. Do you gamers think the price difference between this and the 'Titan Exodus' i5 750 with same upgrade worth it - £290.51.
The kind of games I will playing on it will be like X3TC, (love X universe games!), Crysis, STALKER, that kind of thing.

Thanks once again.

 

[Redmint]

1) In the Intel world, does the number after the processor type correspond to the better chip.

2) If a game is single threaded would it perform better on a 3 GHz single core chip or a 2.4 GHz muli core chip. Will the game run on the other cores if one is 'full', even if not a multi threaded game?

3) My budget is around the £1200 mark - I was considering the 'Ultima Viper' i7-930 with a Radeon HD 5850 card upgrade and Windows 7 Professional. Do you gamers think the price difference between this and the 'Titan Exodus' i5 750 with same upgrade worth it - £290.51.
The kind of games I will playing on it will be like X3TC, (love X universe games!), Crysis, STALKER, that kind of thing.

1) Sort of, not really. The first number denotes which socket the chip belongs to:

5XX - i3 (dual core with hyperthreading) 1156
6XX - i5 (dual core with hyperthreading) 1156
7XX - i5 (quad core no hyperthreading) 1156
8XX - i7 (quad core with hyperthreading) 1156
9XX - i7 (quad core with hyperthreading) 1366

Any of the 7XX, 8XX and 9XX chips will perform fairly similarly in gaming tbh. Yes people could quote some games where one is 10-20% ahead, but most of the time (especially when they're all overclocked) you won't notice much of a difference between them.

2) Very much depends on the processor arcitecture and various other things. Bad example really using single core CPUs as most single core chips are so old/slow now that even a 2GHz Core 2 Duo would beat a 3GHz Pentium 4 in single threaded games. And single threaded really means single threaded. The game can't (doesn't know how) to use the extra cores even if the first one is 'full'.

3) As mentioned before, you probably wont notice much difference between the 750 and the 920/930 chips when it comes to games.