Sandy or Not??

ChrisLandin · 23 Jan 2011 at 10:12

Howdy.

Since ive been doing this pc building lark ive never actually used bang up to date products. Ive always been a gen or two behind.

Well after biting the bullet and learning about watercooling and installing a dual loop a fair few months back now ive done a deal to snap up another gtx 480 from the MM to run in sli with the other 480 I have.

Now my question is this. After selling on my current 775 setup ( Q9650, 790i mobo and 4gb ddr3 ram ) would I see a huge benefit in moving to the new Sandybridge i5 setup??

I currently game on a full hd tv and my missus uses the pc for all her studies including video and music work, recording etc.

So I guess the question really is do I need to splash the cash or is my current setup still ok? We dont notice massive performance issues at the moment but the new stuff will be quicker right??

Cheers all

Cleeecooo · 23 Jan 2011 at 10:27

I went from Q6600 (something like that) to i7 930 and i noticed a large difference in speed. Going to sandy and overclocking to 5ghz will give your PC a really considerable boost. Maybe getting 8GB RAM will speed it up a bit more if you do a lot of multitasking

Grimley · 23 Jan 2011 at 10:27

After looking on here

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/2

I would say no unless you can afford it.

Cleeecooo · 23 Jan 2011 at 10:28

Grimley said:
After looking on here

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/2

I would say no unless you can afford it.

He'd still notice a difference though

Lemin · 23 Jan 2011 at 10:35

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

Id wait a bit to see what AMD's bulldozer is like.

Marine-RX179 · 23 Jan 2011 at 10:43

Lemin said:
Id wait a bit to see what AMD's bulldozer is like.

Right...it make lots of sense waiting for a few month for AMD to release a product of last gen speed but at a lower price point...like they always do?

hybrid572 · 23 Jan 2011 at 10:47

Current games aren't massively CPU limited. Unless you're trying to run 3D vision or aiming for the full 120Hz on a capable monitor, you really aren't going to see an improvement by upgrading. Note that if your monitor is 60Hz, then any FPS above 60 is wasted. If you're not hitting 60 FPS, then you're probably trying to run Crysis or Metro 2033 on max settings.

So essentially, wait until you actually are CPU limited (this won't be for a couple years yet).

jamesfreddie · 23 Jan 2011 at 11:49

Stay with your current rig.

Marine-RX179 · 23 Jan 2011 at 12:08

I'm amazed at how some people think they know about CPU bottleneck well enough to advice someone that a Q9650 at 3.8GHz won't be a bottleneck for GTX480SLI.

If it was a single GTX480, then the Q9650 at 3.8GHz would be more than fine...but for GTX480SLI, the Q9650 at 3.8GHz wouldn't getting the most of what the cards have to offer.

ChrisLandin · 23 Jan 2011 at 16:48

Marine-RX179 said:
I'm amazed at how some people think they know about CPU bottleneck well enough to advice someone that a Q9650 at 3.8GHz won't be a bottleneck for GTX480SLI.

If it was a single GTX480, then the Q9650 at 3.8GHz would be more than fine...but for GTX480SLI, the Q9650 at 3.8GHz wouldn't getting the most of what the cards have to offer.

Hiya mate. I currently have a gtx 480 and it works just fine, just waiting for my block to incorporate it into my loop. I need to update my sig really as my q9650 is running at 4.0ghz now and my ram is also running at 1600mhz. Would this really bottleneck sli'd 480's at that speed?

Cheers for any advice