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i7 Upgrade?

icehot666

icehot666

icehot666

Associate
Joined
12 Feb 2007
Posts
372
Location
Bishops Waltham
Normally get a load of vouchers for xmas so I can upgrade my rig... Been thinking about graphics (I have 5870 xfire but there's not currently a worthy upgrade from this), or SSD.. Now looking into whether it's worth going to an i7 950 or maybe the 6 core, I have been thinking for a long time that there's not much point with an overclocked 9650, but now I've heard that i7 adds a lot of extra performance for crossfire/sli setups... So is it now perhaps worth upgrading with this new info??

I know there's Sandybridge coming out, but that won't have anymore than a single 16x pci-e slot so no good as I tend to stick with multi-gpu setups (and I'll be annoyed with something that's not quite as good as what it could be).
 
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Got a 24" monitor 1920x1200 which i'm really happy with (that was last xmas's upgrade!)... and I'm not the biggest gamer in the world, I do like to play though and when I do I like everything to be maxed :)
 
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icehot666 said:
but now I've heard that i7 adds a lot of extra performance for crossfire/sli setups... So is it now perhaps worth upgrading with this new info??
Click to expand...

It doesn't add a lot of extra performance - 16x/16x SLI/X-fire is about 2% faster than 8x/8x - i.e. you wont notice the difference. Lots of tests/benches to show this. Your current setup is not gonna struggle with anything for a long time, at which point there'll be something much better than current i7 to upgrade to. What's your Q9650 running at? Get an SSD - that you will notice.
 
My current setup is running at 4.06GHz with 445FSB - I have 5870 crossfire on a P5E so I have 2 16x slots currently... A lot of people have said SSD, but I'm not sure if I'd do enough on that drive to warrant it, I have 3.5tb of space on my other drives where my docs, pictures, vids, movies, etc are all stored, to make an SSD worth it I'd need a largish one to accomidate windows, all my apps, and games plus maybe some of my documents too... So yeah I'm just not 100% convinced on anything yet trying to see what is worth the upgrade! Most people do say get an SSD though...

Oh also, I have the 600Gb raptor, and I've heard of people not noticing much difference going to SSDs from a raptor...
 
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i7 950 is a pretty good upgrade, but not cheap. SSD is a great upgrade, will improve boot times and some load times. Some SSDs arent noticibly faster than a raptor, but the good ones with trim are. Sticking 2 SSDs in Raid 0 will aslo give you a good boost on top.

May be worth waiting for Sandy Bridge to see what it does to other hardware prices.
 
SSD would be a good upgrade - although you have plenty of storage don't discount the speed at which your PC will boot, apps like Firefox/IE etc will load that you will place on the SSD. They make the whole system feel much more responsive
 
If you're looking at the i7 980x, I assume you have a pretty hefty budget. Personally, with your current rig, I agree that SSD is the best route. Depending on budget, you could stick 2 240gb vertex 2e's in raid 0, for plenty of storage, and ridiculous speeds.

Speaking from experience, you really do notice the difference in day to day tasks. Every program just feels so much more snappy. Chrome/firefox are open instantaneously. Photoshop is ready to go within about 2 seconds, whereas my other, slightly slower pc (i3 system) takes a good 15 seconds to get it ready to work
 
Lol that is pretty unanimous!! Ok I am convinced, just to decide between the 2E and the c300 now, I've read that the c300 with it's newest firmware is the fastest drive, plus you get an extra 16gb which the way I use boot drives will be needed so that is definately the one I'm leaning towards - no RAID 0 though I'd like to have working TRIM, might raid it if and when trim works on raid I can always double up later on... thanks everyone - and merry xmas :)
 
Hi mate, Upgrading to a i7 would provide a decent performance increase, but since SB is close i'd wait for that. The best upgrade would be to get a SSD.
 
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