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i7 920 - what to upgrade to?

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18 Oct 2005
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661
So it's that time to upgrade (specs in sig) this processor has served me brilliantly over the years, but it's beginning to show it's age a little and its time to upgrade (since I also want a new case etc).

What sort of improvement am I going to see going to the 4790k or one of the new 6 cores? I'm still torn between both of them. I mostly game but also do some encoding and would like to twitch stream at times as well, so I'm thinking 6 cores would make that a better experience?

thoughts appreciated.
 
So far as good as or better than my previously held 4670K, both @ 4GHz. That's just opinion, I have no benchmarks to back that up. :)

Wow this is amazing. Thanks! Just ordered one for £65 shipped! I may still get a new case and cooler though, but considering i was ready to spend £1k, spending a couple of hundred is much better :)
 
So far as good as or better than my previously held 4670K, both @ 4GHz. That's just opinion, I have no benchmarks to back that up. :)

Cinebench and threaded apps the 5650 is around the same as the 4790k, not the 4670.

I've seen a 5670 or whatever they're called (the next one up from the 5650) bench at 4.6ghz and was 100 points behind my 3970x @ 4.6ghz.

They're awesome chips. In fact, they'd be every bit as good as any other Intel hex core apart from the clock defacit they have. 4.2 is a good clock to get :)
 
Cinebench and threaded apps the 5650 is around the same as the 4790k, not the 4670.

I've seen a 5670 or whatever they're called (the next one up from the 5650) bench at 4.6ghz and was 100 points behind my 3970x @ 4.6ghz.

They're awesome chips. In fact, they'd be every bit as good as any other Intel hex core apart from the clock defacit they have. 4.2 is a good clock to get :)

Going to aim for 4.2 minimum. The higher multi on the 5675 should help with that. Just hope my motherboard is compatible
 
I went from i7 920 to 4790k, very happy with it. This was before Haswell E was released.

The 5650 is a very good chip, but I didn't know if I'd use 6 cores, and it seemed to me that IPC would be lower with the older chip, and given that I'd hit higher clocks with the 4790k, I'd get better performance.

I also wanted native SATA3, which on my board I didn't have, I had to use a PCIe x1 card for my SSDs to get a bit more speed over SATA2.

That said, it turned a £65 upgrade into a £500 odd upgrade by the time I'd replaced RAM as well (didn't want to downgrade from 12gb, and only had 4 dimm slots on z97.) I'm not sure if it was that much better that it was worth it.

If I had my time again, I'd probably have held out for Haswell-E and x99. Not for more cores, but for more PCIe lanes. I kind of want to go to 3 way SLi but can't without some stupidly expensive z97 board with a PCIe bridge chip. Also, my £240 of DDR3 won't last me through my next couple of upgrades as we'll probably see DDR4 with Skylake.

5650 is a very good choice I think.
 
I went from i7 920 to 4790k, very happy with it. This was before Haswell E was released.

The 5650 is a very good chip, but I didn't know if I'd use 6 cores, and it seemed to me that IPC would be lower with the older chip, and given that I'd hit higher clocks with the 4790k, I'd get better performance.

I also wanted native SATA3, which on my board I didn't have, I had to use a PCIe x1 card for my SSDs to get a bit more speed over SATA2.

That said, it turned a £65 upgrade into a £500 odd upgrade by the time I'd replaced RAM as well (didn't want to downgrade from 12gb, and only had 4 dimm slots on z97.) I'm not sure if it was that much better that it was worth it.

If I had my time again, I'd probably have held out for Haswell-E and x99. Not for more cores, but for more PCIe lanes. I kind of want to go to 3 way SLi but can't without some stupidly expensive z97 board with a PCIe bridge chip. Also, my £240 of DDR3 won't last me through my next couple of upgrades as we'll probably see DDR4 with Skylake.

5650 is a very good choice I think.

I'm hoping that with the 5675's higher multiplier I'll be able to get 4.2-4.4 ghz, this should give me a nice boost obver me 3.8ghz 920. This boost may be enough to keep me going for another year and for a lot less money, then I can save up for a porper upgrade in a year's time.
 
I'm hoping that with the 5675's higher multiplier I'll be able to get 4.2-4.4 ghz, this should give me a nice boost obver me 3.8ghz 920. This boost may be enough to keep me going for another year and for a lot less money, then I can save up for a porper upgrade in a year's time.

And it's only a 95W TDP rather than the 130W of your 920 @ 2.66ghz.

That's quite impressive, and should make cooling it easier.

At 32nm, I think I remember there being some extra instructions over the original 45nm core of the 920, so you might see some slight IPC boost too, seems like a good buy.
 
And it's only a 95W TDP rather than the 130W of your 920 @ 2.66ghz.

That's quite impressive, and should make cooling it easier.

At 32nm, I think I remember there being some extra instructions over the original 45nm core of the 920, so you might see some slight IPC boost too, seems like a good buy.
I have done that with my i7 920 and my new x5650, to be honest I was expecting to see at least 2% higher IPC, but sadly it was exactly the same.
btw I only tested Cinebench R15 and wPrime.
 
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