If your a gamer, what's the point in upgrading to Sandy Bridge?

[Peter450]

Well i'm running a Q9650 quad, so will upgrade to the higher end sandybridge probably in 18 months

 

[Randomface74]

There is no point

[/ENDTHREAD]

 

[Bane]

Won't the release of sandy bridge push down i3/i5/i7 prices though?

Core2Duo prices are still pretty high for E8*00 range. More than what I paid two years ago. So I imagine i* range will keep their price.

 

[muon]

Asus P8P67 Pro is £149.99 with the regual P8P67 being cheaper than this. If the 2500k is anything like the i5 760 then you may just get your sub £300 depending on your choice of mobo.

Yep hoping to get £150+ from my current cpu/mobo/RAM as well (already sold q9300 for ~£80 after del+fees).

I think the upgrade for £150-£200 will be worth it, even if it is because I'm just bored with my quite old setup (2+ years now).

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Sandy Bridge offers no real improvement for a gamer on the budget ATM. In most cases it looks like an overclocked Core i3 540 will be better for gaming than the Core i3 2100 with its 6% overclock. On top of this a Core i3 540 based build will probably be cheaper too.

 

[drunkenmaster]

is wait for bulldozer an option?

I said in the other thread, I'm surprised the "high end" versions aren't out till the end of the year, I was expecting them to be a month or two behind and I even found that strange.

This year could be AMD's year, Bulldozer with probably higher than current i7 IPC performance, lower than Sandy but octo cores and out potentially 6 months before Intel's top end stuff, but it will likely be priced against Intel's new quad cores but offer potentially a lot better performance(as 8 slightly slower cores should honestly smash 4 marginally better ones).

Assuming the performance gap between Intel/AMD does drop significantly AMD will have some quite ridiculously good high end/midrange chips and available a LONG time before Intel has theres out.

Even then an octo core Bulldozer could be a real match and maybe still beat a hexcore sandybridge by a decent amount, in which case AMD will have done fantastically.

I really made a lot of assumptions about Sandybridge as well, new hardware is normally so damn predictable, I thought the high end parts weren't far off and also assumed there would be 8/6/4core parts coming all in Q1/Q2. But from a quick glance of reviews its only 6/4 core high end stuff and not till Q4?

I really can't understand why Intel have given AMD such a huge opportunity to release Bulldozer which will, well, it will have to monumentally screw up for their octo core to not beat the 2600k comftably. Its very unlike Intel, to both release the midrange first(much like AMD and the 6870 before the 6970) and to be seemingly so late with a proper high end part.

Thing is though, Bulldozer and, whatever the heck the 6/4 core high end Intel chips will have at the end of the year will pretty much suck for gaming. Bulldozer will probably offer a significant increase vs old AMD chips in things like minimum framerates but average framerates any old quad you can buy now will match whatever AMD/Intel bring out.


However, power wise the 2600k is pretty awesome, Anandtech showed system power use under load was what, 230W or so for a overclocked/overvolted 2600k system that quite easily beat 340-380W Intel/amd hexcore current systems.

 

[Wucked]

I admire the optimism for bulldozer, I don't share it though. I'm not a fanboy either way but Intel have been ahead on the technology curve for a few years now. AMD will really need to get their act sorted in order to close the gap at the high end of the market.

With a focus on gaming, personally I predict SB will still be the better purchase performance wise. Multi threading across more than 4 cores is still the domain of professional software only atm, and I don't see that changing much for at least a couple of years. Probably not until 6 months + after the next console refresh.

 

[Uriel]

There might be be a point at which it becomes an attractive upgrade I suppose. That will be the same as my last few platform upgrades. Once platforms are EOL and get scarce the prices of associated equipment go up (at least with CPUs and RAM). Meanwhile prices of production hardware go down. I've upgraded platform a couple of times because it was effectively free or would leave me with extra cash in hand to get similarly performing or better hardware on the new platform. I benefited from inflated prices on DDR, 939 X2 CPUs and AGP graphics cards.

Give it a while and the best CPUs for each socket will get pricey. DDR2 is going up and DDR3 is coming down.

If I could get a free upgrade to Sandy Bridge I'd take it now.

 

[scubes]

after reading some the sandy bridge reviews im not as eager to upgrade now besides my bundle(krypton exetreme @ 4.20) will do me for a right few months maybe years to come only other piece of kit for me to get would be maybe 2 new gpu,s when the new kepler comes along my pc is mainly for gaming and a bit of encoding and for what ive seen of these new cpus it doesnt warrent enough performance on the gaming front for me to upgrade. ill wait and see what happends...

 

[chris_uk333]

How much better for gaming would a 2500k be than an AMD 1055t guys?

 

[Redmint]

Quite a lot better.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/...core-i7-2600k-i5-2500k-core-i3-2100-tested/20

Doesn't include the 1055t but the 1100t black edition is included in some of those tests so you can take a guess as to where the 1055 would be.

 

[chris_uk333]

Quite a lot better.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/...core-i7-2600k-i5-2500k-core-i3-2100-tested/20

Doesn't include the 1055t but the 1100t black edition is included in some of those tests so you can take a guess as to where the 1055 would be.

Cheers mate

 

[kmufc77]

Some big gains there over the i7 920,i must admit i wasnt expecting a big gain with SB for gaming,but it looks like there is a big gain.

Im surprised.

 

[Redmint]

Some big gains there over the i7 920,i must admit i wasnt expecting a big gain with SB for gaming,but it looks like there is a big gain.

Im surprised.

Isn't really a suprise.

Base clock of one is 2.66GHz, other is 3.3GHz. Stick the 920 at 3.3GHz and I feel the results would be pretty close... Clock for clock there's a bit of an improvement and the top end overclock is a bit higher, however any i5/i7 quad over 3.6GHz won't really be the bottleneck in games.

 

[Bradmax57]

i almost hit add to basket before, but my i7 860 at 4ghz is more than enough for me think ill just get a better gpu for now......

 

[easyrider]

Some big gains there over the i7 920,i must admit i wasnt expecting a big gain with SB for gaming,but it looks like there is a big gain.

Im surprised.

Linky?

I can'r see it?

 

[Wucked]

Isn't really a suprise.

Base clock of one is 2.66GHz, other is 3.3GHz. Stick the 920 at 3.3GHz and I feel the results would be pretty close... Clock for clock there's a bit of an improvement and the top end overclock is a bit higher, however any i5/i7 quad over 3.6GHz won't really be the bottleneck in games.

This.

I might consider SB again in about a year when the high end parts start arriving. But for any gamer already on a decent CPU (especially LGA1366) then its not really worth it right now.

 

[muon]

Asus P8P67 Pro is £149.99 with the regual P8P67 being cheaper than this. If the 2500k is anything like the i5 760 then you may just get your sub £300 depending on your choice of mobo.

£150 + £180 + £60. Too pricey for me.

 

[roadie]

Sandy Bridge will offer me 2 more cores, ~900 more Mhz and something like a 50% increase in IPC. It will be of massive benefit to me in most games.

 

[Calabi]

Sandy Bridge will offer me 2 more cores, ~900 more Mhz and something like a 50% increase in IPC. It will be of massive benefit to me in most games.

Surely anything over sixty frames a second isnt going to gain you anything, its just wasted.