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Old i3 530 - Clarkdale - Upgrade

Associate
Joined
12 Feb 2010
Posts
49
Hey guys, I've been toying with the idea of either upgrading my 5850 g.card or my old ass i3 530. I think I've decided to wait on the G.card as 5850 is still pretty decent and the 8 series will likely come out soon.

Anywho, obviously I'll have to replace both my mobo and cpu with this upgrade -so I was wondering if you guys think its worth jumping straight to haswell or getting the previous gen at the moment? I know I'm going to likely see an astounding difference either way, so I thought I'd leave it to the experts.

P.S. I'm only likely to go prev. gen i3 or current gen i5 - nothing too heavy (on the wallet ;) )

Cheers in advance!
 
Soldato
Joined
11 Oct 2009
Posts
16,548
Location
Greater London
Don't worry about idle temps, what about max temps? That's the important one to look at :p.

How much are you willing to spend? Since I would imagine it will cost ~£300 for a Haswell CPU + motherboard.
 
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OP
Joined
12 Feb 2010
Posts
49
Since I would imagine it will cost ~£300 for a Haswell CPU + motherboard

we can scrap that then - I was thinking more along the lines of £200 for an immediate purchase - £300 would require a bit of saving I reckon.

No idea on max temps - I'll have a bash at a game a bit later on and take a look.
 
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OP
Joined
12 Feb 2010
Posts
49
OK guys, thanks for the ideas! I think I'll stalk auction sites for a while for a 750, and get an 8850 card whenever they show face. I'm glad to discover that I'm not too far behind the times after plodding along for 3 years :)
 
Associate
Joined
8 Sep 2009
Posts
2,260
Location
Swindon
I had an i3 540 and I swapped that out for an i5 760 which does 3.8Ghz easily and gives me much more performance than I need.

Absolute bargain considering the performance you get.

On air I have even taken mine upto 4.4Ghz for a 32M Super Pi run which matches a 2500K at 4.0Ghz.

So yeah an i5 750/760 or even an 870 will give you plenty of performance for very little money.

I run my i5 760 at 3.6Ghz/4.1Ghz with turbo boost giving me stock 2500K performance.
 
Soldato
Joined
12 May 2011
Posts
6,143
Location
Southampton
My i7 860 which is basically an i5 750 but with hyperthreading still keeps up with games at 3.6GHz. I'm not upgrading just yet. It will be a nice upgrade from an i3 of that gen and really unlock whatever card yourend up getting!
 
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