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hold off building any 1156/1366 socket system

Well I'm still 'just' running a q9550 @3.6 (a very easy overclock), and its running anything i throw at it. New chips are always just roung the corner, but that will never stop people from buying whats available now. and nor should.

I've upgradged my system once, from 2meg of ram to 4gig, and from an old cor2duo (still one of the biggest leaps in chips that i moved over to) to my current QCore. My next upgrade will be software to Windows 7, then hopefully over to at least one SSD.

Then over to the new platform.

The PC game has always been a constant drive towards the next big thing. That what makes it fun :)
 
arknor said:
i never said lets go amd i said its a bad time to buy high end intel and is.

its never a good time to buy high end when a chipset is at the end of its life
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Why not? Generally cheaper towards the end of it's life anyway and most bios updates make chipsets more stable. This will be true for several monthas into the new chipset's release...

And also, if it's a bad time to go high end intel, who would you be saying to go with other than AMD? Cyrix, they're long gone mate... ;)
 
At the moment, mainly roma victor which is an mmo i play. Whilst playing it i usually have youtube, facebook, and say a forum open in browser. Aswell as mirc running. At the moment im using a dell inspiron 1520 2ghz dual core with a 8600 m gt. It struggles thought and I think its at the end of its life, having quite a bit of trouble with it. I dont know if that sort of use is heavy enough multitasking to warrant a quad or whether a dual would be fine. I was thinking x2 550 with a 5770, then in future i could always upgrade to a newer am3. Would it better to look at intel do you think? Im not sure i could afford to go straight i5 in which case id be looking i3 then a later upgrade and it doesnt seem to make much sense to me buying a £100 cpu then another £150 one a few months later.
 
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Well iv just recently upgrade to I7, even knowing the update is coming next year, all be it sept for the enthusiast socket.

Now i upgraded now as this build just like all my previous ones, are done at a time, to last atleast 2/3 years before i even consider a change, so to me its not a worthless upgrade, iv got more power then i currently need, and will last me from some time.
 
IKMS said:
I heard the 980X was the same chip as the 920 just 4x more expensive and overclocked?
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No. This was basically the case with the i7 975 Extreme Edition CPU, but as sayso points out - the 980X is a very different story.

The i7 920 (and 975) use bloomfield cores, have 4 physical cores, 8 threads, 8MB L3 Cache and are built using the 45nm process.

The i7 980X (and the upcoming 970) use gulftown cores, have 6 physical cores, 12 threads, 12MB L3 Chache and are built using the 32nm process.

So as you can see there are huge differences between the Bloomfield and Gulftown CPUs. In properly multi-threaded software, the Gulftwown chips can be up to 50% faster than the Bloomfield chips at the same clockspeed. In less multicore optimised software the performance boost will be less than 50%, in the worst cases it is just as fast as a bloomfield.

Also, the Gulftown chips tend to run much cooler than the Bloomfield chips and overclock very well due to the 32nm process used.

For most people the price premium does not justify the extra performance, but if you have the money to spend and need the speed, then the Gulftown is a great option.
 
cmndr_andi said:
No. This was basically the case with the i7 975 Extreme Edition CPU, but as sayso points out - the 980X is a very different story.

The i7 920 (and 975) use bloomfield cores, have 4 physical cores, 8 threads, 8MB L3 Cache and are built using the 45nm process.

The i7 980X (and the upcoming 970) use gulftown cores, have 6 physical cores, 12 threads, 12MB L3 Chache and are built using the 32nm process.

So as you can see there are huge differences between the Bloomfield and Gulftown CPUs. In properly multi-threaded software, the Gulftwown chips can be up to 50% faster than the Bloomfield chips at the same clockspeed. In less multicore optimised software the performance boost will be less than 50%, in the worst cases it is just as fast as a bloomfield.

Also, the Gulftown chips tend to run much cooler than the Bloomfield chips and overclock very well due to the 32nm process used.

For most people the price premium does not justify the extra performance, but if you have the money to spend and need the speed, then the Gulftown is a great option.
Click to expand...

and due to aforementioned 32nm process, you can get ~50% more power from the 980x over the 975, whilst still consuming the same amount of power (give or take a few watts)
 
IKMS said:
I heard the 980X was the same chip as the 920 just 4x more expensive and overclocked?
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the person you heard that from is either

A. Incredibly stupid
B. Knows the subtotal of nothing about computer hardware
C. On drugs

or

D. All of the above
 
Rich, can I phone a friend for the answer?

I will be getting the 970 when it comes out and it's going to be £459inc vat @ 17.5% unless the goverment hike vat to 20%
 
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