Turbo Engaged! 860 vs. 920

[inverseSquare]

Hi all,


For single/dual thread situations (which I'd imagine cover most applications at the moment, especially gaming?) is it safe to say that the increased effectiveness of the turbo mode for the i7 860 would mean it out performs the i7 920?



...and one follow-up q - in quad-core setup both would healthily outperform AMD's quad phenomII's, right ?



Thanks

 

[BIGBC]

At stock yes the 860 can out perform the 920. But overclock the 920 (which is unbelievably easy to do) and the 920 will take the lead.

 

[cmndr_andi]

At stock speeds, then yes the the i7 860 is faster than the 920, turbo mode or not. However, when they are both clocked to the same level they perform identically.

As for outperforming a Phenom 2, at stock it would depend on the application. In games, I think the new Phenom 2 X4 965 wins, but in anything that is heavily multithreaded, the i7s win. Also, the i7s run at slower stock frequencies and can be overclocked higher than the phenom 2s, so when max clocked the i7s win everything.

 

[inverseSquare]

Thanks for the info


I've had pc's for years but never overclocked any of them.
How easy would it be? What are the chances of damaging components?

I tend not to upgrade my machines for a while, would over-clocking harm their lifespan?



Thanks.

 

[JonJ678]

If you can follow algorithms it's very easy. Failing that, if you can find guides on google and follow them it's easy.

If you have no time to spend on it and/or just can't get your head around the difference between voltage and temperature, it's probably not for you.

You'll damage components if you feed them ridiculous voltages and run them very hot. Power supply might kick the bucket if its borderline at the moment, as overclocking uses more electricity. Otherwise all is good, lifespan decrease is negligible provided you don't go mad on voltages and temperatures

 

[setter]

Even at stock, im extremely impressed with my 920 do compared to my previous q9550, windows feels a lot more snappier, albeit im only on xp 32 until win 7 goes retail, chip runs nice and cool at stock (wont stay stock for long) i was extremely wary about overclocking till i got an evga 680ia1 mobo, with an e6600 i got 3.7ghz, then i got the bug, bought a q6600, not great in that board, it died, got an asus p5q dlx, 3.8ghz with relative ease with the q6600, then silliness took over, bought a q9550, 3.8ghz on 2-3 notches above stock volts of 1.200, that cpu would probably been good for 4.2ghz plus with the right cooling, then i got the i7 bug.