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Core i7 920 system VS Q9550 system - only £100 difference

Cyphizer

Cyphizer

Cyphizer

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14 Oct 2008
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Right first off, a disclaimer!!
I understand that most people feel that the Core i7 systems are over-priced atm, with the new mobos, ddr3 ram and processors all reaching to the £200 mark for each part.

However, from what I can see from putting together 2 different build specs that I'm considering between the Q9550 and i7 920, the price difference is only about £50.

I'll show you my 2 specs, lemme know what you think would be better!! Just so ya know, I do a lot of multi-track music production (up to 32 tracks) and recording (only up to 4 tracks) a fair bit of graphic design, gaming and I use my PC as my multimedia center, especially for music.

Q9550 spec:

Intel Q9550 LGA775 2.83GHz 12MB-cache (1333FSB) - £262.01
Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 4870 1024MB GDDR5 - £211.49
Asus P5Q Deluxe Intel P45 PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard - £152.74
WD VelociRaptor 150GB 10000RPM SATA-II 16MB Cache -£143.34
Corsair 4GB DDR2 XMS2 Dominator PC2-8500C5 TwinX (2x2GB) - £93.99
Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - £79.89
Corsair TX 650W ATX2.2 SLi Compliant PSU - £75.19
Antec 300 Three Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case - £43.46
Akasa AK-967 Nero Direct Contact Heatpipe CPU Cooler - £35.24
Samsung20x DVD±RW IDE Dual Layer Lightscribe ReWriter - £17.61

Total: £1114.96 (not inc delivery)

Core i7 920 spec:

I'm actualy gonna put the OC Ultima Extreme Accelerator system down here:

Intel Core i7 920 2.66Ghz (Nehalem) (Socket LGA1366)
Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 4870 1024MB GDDR5
Asus P6T Deluxe Intel X58 (Socket 1366) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard
Kingston 3GB PC3-14400C8 HyperX Intel XMP 1800C8 (3x1GB) Trip Chan DDR3
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache
Pioneer DVR-216DBK 20x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter
Corsair TX 650W ATX2.2 SLI Compliant PSU
Antec 300 Three Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case
1yr Onsite Collect & Return Warranty

I also have a 15,000rpm SAS 146gb HD which I would put in as the bootable drive in the i7 system. Both would be running a 24" HD monitor.

Total: £1147.95 (not inc delivery)

Any opinions/thoughts at all on which build is better would be appreciated as I'm behind on the i7 tech atm!!
 
For what you do you need more RAM, 4GB minimum. But don't know if the i7 920 would be (much) better.
 
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Well I'd say the Core i7 purely because of futureproofing, RAM can be added at any time and it'll get cheaper eventually
 
1) Not enough memory, 4Gb is pretty minimum spec these days and 8Gb is easily affordable provided you don't want bleeding edge performance memory :)

2) You choose a X58 board that doesn't support SLI. Theres less point in getting one that doesn't, it's possibly the only reason to go with the i7 atm in my opinion - SLI on the Intel platform rather that Nvidia chipsets.

3) The Core2 spec is top end, the only reason your price is so close if you picked expensive components for a P45 setup. You could knock £100 off that price with just a change of memory and motherboard alone.
 
Are you trying to convince your self to get the core i7 system?:p

Cause I reckon you could knock around £250 off the Core2 spec. As stonedofmoo said you could get a cheaper mobo and ram. You could also boot the VelociRaptor 150GB as not included in the core i7 spec.

I would go for the core2 system with the changes above. But if you want to have the latest tech then go for the core i7 setup.
 
Heya!

Thanks for the responses guys. With the two different systems, I took the Q9550 build I had planned a month ago, which I took to be as close as I could get performance wise to the i7 build listed here.

I'm also pretty sure the Asus P6T deluxe supports both sli and crossfire (though I'm not a gamer so not too important to me) I chucked the velocirapter in to measure up against being able to use my 15,000rpm SAS HD with the i7 system.

I'm really interested in being able to knock £250 off the Q9550 system though!! :D If you think it's poss without losing performance than if you could spec me that system I would love ya forever.

Also, with regards to the RAM, is it better to have more RAM (8gb) or better performance RAM (4gb) as I seem to be getting mixed answers for this!

Cheers
 
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