Should I upgrade from E8400 to I7 860

Sharpedge · 17 Sep 2009 at 13:32

The main use for my PC is gaming. FSX, COD 4 ARMAII. I do occasionally do a bit of video encoding but this done via the GPU. Will it be worth the £500 -600 to replace the MB, RAM, CPU and waterblock, will the change be that noticeable?

jak731 · 17 Sep 2009 at 13:35

Might make a fairly big difference in FSX, I doubt you will notice much difference in COD 4 especially if your E8400 is oced, not sure about ARMAII.

It's your money at the end of the day, it will probably be beneficial for new releases.

Clairvoyant · 17 Sep 2009 at 13:39

ArmaII does get an increase in FPS for Quads.

If you have the money burning a hole in your pocket, why not upgrade.

If not wait a few more months. Yes your 775 kit will be worth a bit less. But its your choice.

fizzle-187 · 17 Sep 2009 at 13:51

If you got money to blow go for it.

madindehead · 17 Sep 2009 at 14:04

Yeah. Buy if you can afford to. Don't if you can't. Otherwise the next thing comes out and then you are always left lagging behind.

lbcliff · 17 Sep 2009 at 21:00

For me, once I'm tempted, I'll get it. So it's better to sell the old rig earlier when it's worth something.

MrMuz · 18 Sep 2009 at 14:16

I am in the exact same predicament. I've resisted my initial urges and I'm going to make incremental upgrades until the new socket prices settle a bit.. Going to get an SSD and 58## card in October for my windows 7 rebuild... I game on a 22" monitor with 1680 X 1050 resolution and everything I play except Crysis runs on max settings so I can't really justify the upgrade just yet...

Vir · 18 Sep 2009 at 14:29

I wouldn't do it. Look at some benchmarks and stuff. I'd say it's not worth the 500 quid. It's not like your E8400 is to slow or anything

philstanbridge · 19 Sep 2009 at 18:31

I have just upgraded from an E8400 to a Core i5 750 and the differences are significant for me, so I would say an upgrade to i7 is definitely worth the money.

paininlife · 19 Sep 2009 at 18:34

yes , def u wil see a perfomance diff in ARMA II, as 2 cores will effect game play, in cod4 wont se any big diff, in FSX yes its a heavy and u will def find increase

mjones1 · 19 Sep 2009 at 18:38

Clock your e8400 to 4ghz (not that hard) and see if he games get a higher fps.

McstylisT · 20 Sep 2009 at 10:24

Sharpedge said:
The main use for my PC is gaming. FSX, COD 4 ARMAII. I do occasionally do a bit of video encoding but this done via the GPU. Will it be worth the £500 -600 to replace the MB, RAM, CPU and waterblock, will the change be that noticeable?

Hi ,

In games not particularly no. You might get pretty much the same fps or slightly higher but nothing huge.
However overall pc would be much better and quicker in every other department. If your mainly a gamer and are looking quad then why not consider the i5 750. Save yourself a few £££ and have a new quad system in the process. Maybe leaving you some left over funds to save for a ATI 5800 series on release. Matched with a i5 ,, its going to be impressive.

Just my thoughts

Best of luck buddy.

McT

AlexTrickle · 20 Sep 2009 at 11:41

Similar situation to OP, i have an E8600 and am thinking of switching to the i5 750 however my budget is <£500 (so couldn't afford an ATi 58xx and i5) so my question is which would give me the most significant increase for games:

E8600 (not overclocked) -> i5 750 (with Corsair H50)
GTX260 -> ATi 5870

gurusan · 20 Sep 2009 at 12:02

i would just get a q9550 e0

setter · 20 Sep 2009 at 12:05

+1 for a q9550 EO stepping, particularly a second hand one as theyre still quite pricey new.

miker1 · 25 Sep 2009 at 19:34

If you ARE going to splash the dosh, would not an I720 be better?

D13 · 25 Sep 2009 at 21:34

Basically it depens upon the gpu you are going to use and the screen resolution.

I am using an e8500 clocked at 3.6 (my mobo limits me in this area)
When combined with a 4870 x2 I was noticing significant gains in fps when increasing the cpu clock to (unstable) 3.6-4.0ghz. (this is at 1680x1050)
So my cpu was deffinate bottleneck at that resolution.

Overall if you game at 1680x1050 or lower, the fastest gpu I think a stock e8400 would handle is perhaps a gtx 280/85/4890. Anything faster and your cpu will hold you back I think.
If you game at a higher res I think it will matter less and you could go for 4870x2/crossfire 4890's etc.....

Shakeel · 27 Sep 2009 at 15:10

id get the quad. its better for the future

feeddagoat · 27 Sep 2009 at 15:58

Shakeel said:
id get the quad. its better for the future

By the time something comes out that a slow quad would beat a OC'd dual core we'll be onto 32nm. I still don't buy the argument of "future proofing".

Unless you get a bundle package LGA1156 isn't worth it atm. I would wait for a price drop and like ive said on other posts, go for the i7 920. Its not that much extra. If you do want to go LGA1156 route then the i5 750 seems to be the best bang for buck if you manually overclock it. If you don't want to overclock then turbo mode makes the i7 860 the better buy over the i7 920. The only problem with going the 860 route is you can pick up the LGA1366 route for cheaper.

fizzle-187 · 27 Sep 2009 at 21:58

I'm running on a i7 860 platform. The CPU is very impressive I would recommend it, however, I'm running problems with vista 32bit atm, which does not fulfill the potential of my rig besides overclocking.