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E8400 vs I7 930

Phil2008

Phil2008

Phil2008

Soldato
Joined
17 Dec 2004
Posts
8,825
Ive just build a i7 930 for a guy, and I thought it would have made me upgrade my E8400 but no. All the benchmarks says the i7 is quite a bit faster then my [email protected], but in the real world its not. Windows didnt feel any faster probably slower even, cos of the superfetch thing hadn't kicked in when I was setting it all up. Games were much faster but the i7 has a 3x faster gpu in it. Theres only 1 notible diff and thats loading games, it loads them up quite a few secs faster, but I guess thats down to a newer tech hard drive.

If I got a new hdd and a faster gpu, I think my 27month old e8400 system will be on par with the i7 in the real world. What do you think guys?

Well Im going to be upgrading my 3870 gpu soon,, so it will be as fast or faster then the i7 for games, depending on the gpu I go for.
 
Thats the thing -high-end CPUs hardly affect gaming performance. So long as you have something decent that gets the job done (phenom II, Q6600, E8400) then games will run great and the component bottlenecking performance will be the graphics card.

However, some games these days do use quad cores properly (GTA4, BF:BC2, DA:O) - so in these instances an i7 would perform much better than an E8400, however so would a Q6600 - so the i7 certainly isn't required for gaming.

Thats not to say the i7 is a waste of money - if you have CPU intensive applications to run (rendering, video encoding, image/audio/video editing etc.) then it really flies and should keep pace with modern games for some time to come.
 
Ah yeh gta4 and BC2, they also runs real smooth on my E8400 with the 3870 all set to high at 1280x1024. The main reason I want a faster gpu, is Im going to be buying a 1920x1200/1080 monitor soon, and my good old trusty 3870 wont like running games at that res:mad:
 
e8400 -> q9550 -> i7 920 all showed measurable, real world improvements for me when running code in matlab and possibly imaginary improvements in modelling. Windows XP looks exactly the same and if anything takes longer to turn on, and the few games I play are identical to before.

I guess my point is that you're defining real world performance as equal to gaming performance, and it isn't unless you're playing games.
 
Like I said, I thought building this pc would make me want to upgrade mine, but it didnt. I ran 2 tests,

Super pi at 1mb.. The [email protected] did it just over 1sec faster then the i7, but If the i7 was overclocked to like 3.6 it would easily beat the E8400s 12secs.

Intel burntest at maximum stress... i7 got 38GRops, E8400 got 25-26 GRops. So the E8400 way off the mark there, but the i7 has the extra 2 core advantage.
 
I think the E8400 still does a good job and is still popular. (just look at the price of a new one). But if i was playing games like GTA EFLC at 4.5 the cpu would bottleneck my 4870x2, so if you use the games/apps which use all 4 cores and/or hyperthreading on the I7's I am sure you will notice the difference in speed and smoothness.
 
If you want to really upgrade your PC expereince and not just the tech then I suggest you get yourself a SSD. Boy oh boy does that perk up a system. I have not regretted for one moment shelling out (then they cost a heap more than now) for my first SSD. Every PC in my house now has a SSD running the OS. Even in the kids room, and suddenly that old slow PC was responsive and works like a dream.

Now that they are coming down in price they are even more worth while in my view. So if you have a sluggish system a budget upgrade that makes a real difference is a SSD in my view.

Now before all the graphic card lads jump on my case - yes of course a top end graphic card will improve game experience. :) Not claiming other wise.
 
I went for that exact upgrade and i am happy with it.

You wont notice much difference in Windows as that is massively limited by disk - so as 1Day suggested, go SSD. Buy a pair of small but fast SSDs and raid 0 them (join them together) that way you get double the speed (pretty much) and it will blow you away.

For gaming though, this will just give you quicker load time, no real increase in FPS where as the CPU will.
 
I am tempted to go SSD, but worried a 60 gig SSD (affordable price) will get eaten by Windows after a few months heh heh.
 
Oh I did the same as the title, have not looked back since I got my 920 I7....I also had the 8400 (brilliant chip), but times change and I bit the bullet.
 
I have been using 60GB SSD for OS only on three systems at home now since February this year. And as long as you do not make the mistake I did at first and use the SSD as your download folder :D then it does not get bloated at all. I keep promising myself I would clear out the rubbish I download but never seem to get to it.

The other thing is once I have finished a game I remove it completely. That works well for me, the long and the short of it 9 months down the line I am still sitting with 26GB of free space and loving my SSD experience.
 
1Day, I think you may be missing the point others are making.

Some SSDs (older ones especially) have a sort of half life and if you are hitting them with windows and page files, downloads etc... you will kill it quicker.

60GB is plenty of space for windows, page file and a few progs, as long as you have a 2nd data drive / somewheer to install games. Space is not the issue here.
 
Divide by Zero said:
1Day, I think you may be missing the point others are making.

Some SSDs (older ones especially) have a sort of half life and if you are hitting them with windows and page files, downloads etc... you will kill it quicker.

60GB is plenty of space for windows, page file and a few progs, as long as you have a 2nd data drive / somewheer to install games. Space is not the issue here.
Click to expand...


Think not. More possible that you have not understood what I have said. But that is more my fault than yours since I should have expressed it some what clearer. :cool:

To expand.

First SSD I used I forgot to change my download folder to another hard drive. And as such there was way to much writing to the SSD. Sorted that out rather quickly once I notice. :o With the low cost of hard drives I have tended to get lazy and in the past I had not been as diligent at cleaning up my download folders, especially when you have heaps of 2TB drives in your system.

The point of mentioning that little mistake I made the first time was to illustrate that if you box clever you will have plenty space on your SSD, and that 60GB is a good size. :)


Hope that is clear now.
 
OK, but my point is still valid about the life of the SSD drives.

But yeah, I have a 64gb SSD for windows / program installs, a 74gb Raptor for games and a 1tb for data. My windows disk is about half full - so 60gb is loads of space if you manage files.

I just wish I had gone for 2 40gb SSD drives to RAID 0 them to get double the speed!
 
I'm not sure what you mean about SSD life. It is quite correct that SSDs have a limited number of writes - but that number is so high (in modern SSDs) that for normal usage you can expect it to last for several years. Most of the SSD manufactures offer their SSDs with 3 year warranties too.

Also, if if you are running a single TRIM supported drive in Windows 7 - then the TRIM command will help reduce performance degradation over time.

So my take is that SSDs do have some problems, but these can be mitigated somewhat and the shear performance of SSDs makes them well worth it, if your budget can support one.
 
I have an [email protected] and don't feel the need to upgrade yet as it still plays everything I throw at it fine.

My next upgrade, as other here is going to be a SSD, just waiting for them to drop to the £150 mark for a 128GB model then I buy one.
 
Im thinking of getting a SSD as I posted in the other thread, but still not 100% sure if I would see much of a performance hit, cos all my apps that I use daily run in the memory, so no performance boost to be had there. The boot up time would be noticeable faster, but I always use sleep now.

So how about a SSD for my games drive, cos its the games that take the time to load up?
 
Rather than going for 1 big SSD, I would definately go for 2 smaller ones and joining them in raid 0 to get the performance boost.

If you want a SSD for your games drive that would be cool, but it depends on how much cash you have. Another thing to consider is the enw Raptor drive. Not SSD but fast and big.
 
OK
Firstly no to RAID and SSD as you lose TRIM and TRIM is much better than RAID
Secondly the half life of SSDs, even older ones, ha been calculated to be something like 10-12 years of normal usage
Thirdly, raptors, ewwww, no, not even in same league
 
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