• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

i7 950, time for an upgrade?

Associate
Joined
12 Jan 2010
Posts
541
Location
Cornwall
Hi all,

I currently have an i7 950 3GHZ in my PC, OC'd to 3.7. I'm wondering if it's now time to upgrade, my performance in some games is not what I'd like, (Far Cry 3, Watch_Dogs, Wolfenstein etc) If so what would be a good jump?

For reference the rest of my PC is:

Rampage II Extreme Motherboard
12GB 1600mhz RAM
2x 7970 3GBs
1TB HDD
60 GB SSD
Window 8.1

Is it my processor holding me back?
 
I don't know much (anything) about your processor but 2x7970s give better performance than a 780ti according to a thread in the graphics card section, so they really should be holding up decent frame rates in those games.

Have you tried OCing the processor any more? A lot of people seem to love that series of processor on here
 
I've tried but anything past 3.7 seems to make it very unstable.

I thought the GPUs should be enough, but I recall people saying games like Far Cry 3 and Asssassin's Creed 3 are quite CPU bound, making me think it was down to my CPU.
 
What are you cooling it with? I would invest in cooling and push for 4.0 or 4.2GHz 24/7 stable as it will give you more than enough boost compared to 3.7GHz and will negate most of the effect an eventual upgrade will have. As all 950s are D0 I see no reason why it couldn't go even further if cooled properly. Get yourself a high end cooler with a lot of pipes or a high end AIO and overclock the hell out of it, your motherboard is more than good enough. :)
 
i will be upgrading from my i7 950. My overclock is a bitch to keep stable, I think my PSU is on the out, either that or the IMC is.

So will be upgrading everything cept the graphics card which I already have a tri-x 290.

Question is wait for 5820k or go for the 4790k, not sure yet!
 
If you can afford the 6 core, I think there is no context. It will last you 5 more years. :D Invest in a nice PSU like the Super Flower Leadex Gold 650W or any other high quality PSU by Corsair, Seasonic, EVGA, Enermax, Silverstone, or Cooler Master. And you will definitely need a better cooler for the 6 core.
 
Last edited:
I am in the same boat as op except that i have 1 7970 ghz edition instead (spec in sig).

i7 950 is (or was for a fair bit of time) a beast of a processor and to be honest i have yet to play a game where i would say that yes my system is slowing down. I was planning to upgrade cpu/ram//mobo for watch dogs but after reading the pc reviews i opted to get it on ps4 instead and wait for the refresh cpus. Even now im in two minds whether to upgrade since i really have not seen a game on pc this year that requires a change.

As others have said, oc it, mine is at 4ghz stable for 3 years now, i managed to get it to 4.2ghz but some bsods were frequent in some games. The temperatures are spiking more nowadays for me and i do get a oc fail sometimes but that's due to extra heat and my inability to clean my pc often :D.

You do need a good cooler, i would suggest something like the h100i as it would last you on the next cpu upgrade as well.

1 7970 is still a cracking card 2 will probably last you a fair bit more i would say.
 
Back
Top Bottom