Upgrade - 1155-2011 - i7 3820 vs 2500k?

squarehead94

squarehead94

squarehead94

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Hey all,
So as I say, my mate wants to buy my mobo, Ram and cpu. £220 seems fair anyways. I was getting a new board anyway due to mine having 2 dead ram bays, so i thought I'd sell the board cpu and ram. I've looked about and I have found the i7 3820. I don't overclock, however I think at the price they go for it is justifyable to go for, because its only £30ish more than the 2600k now. I can get the board for around £160 (recommendations on a board would be good too, I'll obviously shop around before buying one) so by my calculations it will only cost around 170 to do this upgrade after selling my kit.

I've looked at the 3820 because I hear it is much better than the 2500k and half the price of the 3930k, and I don't think I need to overclock that. in the future I could always pick up a 3930k when they reach ~£250.

I am hoping to do this upgrade and leave it for about 2 years before needing to upgrade again, what do you guys think? normally it is a waste of money going for sandy bridge e when i only do basic video editing and gaming, but, considering it will only cost me 170-220 to upgrade, is it worth it?
 
If you mainly game it's not an upgrade at all since they both turbo to the same speed anyway, it's just 4c/4t vs 4c/8T.

Basically you should overclock, it's silly not to when running a water cooling set up since my Current HSF which cost £12 (albeit heavily discounted) will cool a stock 2500k with less noise than a H80 pump, which makes me question why you bought it in the first place!
 
I'm looking at picking up the Evga x79 board from here, on sale at 112, and the i7 3820 for 239, and some quad channel ram for around 75, so the upgrade will only cost me around 180-200ish after selling my components, so I'd just like to reiterate that point when people consider this, its only going to cost an extra 180 to upgrade. Thanks.
 
JonSmith said:
If you mainly game it's not an upgrade at all since they both turbo to the same speed anyway, it's just 4c/4t vs 4c/8T.

Basically you should overclock, it's silly not to when running a water cooling set up since my Current HSF which cost £12 (albeit heavily discounted) will cool a stock 2500k with less noise than a H80 pump, which makes me question why you bought it in the first place!
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I bought it cheap off that auction site, for around £30. then i got a new case which actually is better suited for air cooling anyways. so I'll probably sell the watercooler to him as well if I sell the kit. I'd look at a decent air cooler like a CM hyper 212. that would actually knock the upgrade price down to 170. I want a really powerful rig that I can do everything on, not just game, but video and photo work. I will be doing more of this this year due to my IT A level, Id like to do some good stuff at home using Sony Vegas and CS5.
 
Yes but you're spending £200 to sidegrade into an effectively dead platform. Sure you could upgrade to ivy-e when it comes out but it'll be the same price and performance as sandy-E. You could buy a 3770k right now and it'd fit into your motherboard.

Check these benchmarks:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/523?vs=288

Those CPUs are so close it's ridiculous, the 2500k at 4.5GHz would crap all over the 3820 in games and is sooo close in other productivity applications. The solution is to overclock, not spend £200, your cooler is good enough for some decent clocking.

HINT: I do an Electronic Engineering degree on a Phenom II x4 955 @ 3.9GHz, my 1.3GHz dual core laptop can also run VLSI design tools and can simulate 1000 transistor layouts using SPICE in under 10 minutes. They were running this stuff on mainframes in the 70s.
 
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JonSmith said:
Yes but you're spending £200 to sidegrade into an effectively dead platform. Sure you could upgrade to ivy-e when it comes out but it'll be the same price and performance as sandy-E. You could buy a 3770k right now and it'd fit into your motherboard.

Check these benchmarks:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/523?vs=288

Those CPUs are so close it's ridiculous, the 2500k at 4.5GHz would crap all over the 3820 in games and is sooo close in other productivity applications. The solution is to overclock, not spend £200, your cooler is good enough for some decent clocking.

HINT: I do an Electronic Engineering degree on a Phenom II x4 955 @ 3.9GHz, my 1.3GHz dual core laptop can also run VLSI design tools and can simulate 1000 transistor layouts using SPICE in under 10 minutes. They were running this stuff on mainframes in the 70s.
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Thanks, but sandy e will be the same socket and accept ivy e? and as OCUK proves, the 3820 can be OC'd to 4.2ghz+. you are probably right about the performance increase being small, but i do have the opportunity to upgrade to 3930k later, or even the ivy-e equivelant. I suppose once your sold on something its hard to not get it, but I cant see any reason to definitively not go sandy e considering ivy e isnt out till june-july 2013 and it will be supported anyways. Thanks for the advice though, I really do appreciate it, but I think I will go for the Evga x79 deal. Thanks again.
 
As with Sandybridge P67 mobos can accept Ivybridge Processors I'm sure Sandybridge-E socket 2011 will accept Ivybridge-E Processors, with a Bios update. Dont quote me on that would need some confirmation to be 100% sure. X79 EVGA with a decent IvyB-E CPU would be rather awesome, I wanted something similar but couldn't wait for Ivybridge-E so opted to go with Z77.
 
thanks shaolinDreams, but ive just read a list as long as your arm of complaints about this particular board. they all say to go with Asus, as loads of manufacturers have problems with their x79 boards, hell loads say this board sometimes won't even recognize a i7 3820. Think I'll go for the sabertooth (i had the p67, other than 2 dead ram bays its been good to me) or the p9x79.
Thanks
 
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