Upgrading from an i7 920

Jobe · 23 May 2015 at 10:45

Hey fellas, firstly my specs are in my sig

Thinking of retiring my core components and getting something newer.

That would be cpu, mobo and ram.

Been a long while since I looked at components and not sure what is decent anymore.

Just game a bit on fps's. Monitor is 19** by 1200.

Had a quick look at the bundles but not sure if z97 or x99 is the way to go.

Also are there any upgrades just around the corner (obi wouldn't do the eternal wait for new stuff) that are worth waiting for?

Any advice welcome, would be building it myself.

Oh and while I think about it, I may well upgrade my single rad cpu closed loop to a double rad one, but which????

Cheers

JB

stulid · 23 May 2015 at 10:49

Hi.

Skylake from Intel (new CPU+boards) is due September time.

AMD 300 series will be out June at around Computex time and Nvidia 980ti is apparently now out next week (i thought it would be closer to AMD launch).

I see you have a M4 SSD, make sure the firmware is upto date on that.

So I guess do you want to wait or buy a CPU+board now? as looking at what you have you could just hold out for a bit longer.

setter · 23 May 2015 at 10:58

Id agree with stulid here, skylake isnt that far off now so i dont see the point of buying into Z97. From looking at a leaked bench of the 980ti, performance should be similair to gtx 780 sli but with more vram, unfortunately theres scant information on amd's new cards.

Jobe · 23 May 2015 at 11:59

I'll have a look at sorting out the firmware thanks

I'm guessing then my cpu still has enough grunt atm.

I was also only looking at cpu( mobo and ram would be dependant on board).

Sept isn't long to wait, may find something decent on mm.

Would the current iteration of Intel cpu's be a step forward or a sideways step?

Also if z97 isn't worth getting into, what is the next gen going to be?

JB

setter · 23 May 2015 at 12:03

I have a similair system to yours that is used as my second pc, from a gaming point i can take one of the 780's from the main system in sig and in games find it hard to see/feel any difference from the 4790k setup.

Kelt · 23 May 2015 at 12:26

If your board supports it, did you think of upgrading to a Xeon x5650?
Cheap as chips (around the £50-70 mark).
I'm running one and it's an absolute beast at 4.4Ghz.
Cool running as well, no cheapo TIM here, just solder!

Tom B · 23 May 2015 at 18:51

Kelt said:
If your board supports it, did you think of upgrading to a Xeon x5650?
Cheap as chips (around the £50-70 mark).
I'm running one and it's an absolute beast at 4.4Ghz.
Cool running as well, no cheapo TIM here, just solder!

This. It's an excellent upgrade path. Running a X5670 here, best £90 upgrade I've ever had

Jobe · 23 May 2015 at 21:56

Kelt said:
If your board supports it, did you think of upgrading to a Xeon x5650?
Cheap as chips (around the £50-70 mark).
I'm running one and it's an absolute beast at 4.4Ghz.
Cool running as well, no cheapo TIM here, just solder!

Would that be from the bay?

Jb

Kelt · 24 May 2015 at 00:05

Jobe said:
Would that be from the bay?

Jb

Yep, there's an X5660 currently sat at £22 with three days to go.

Luckily I got mine from the MM, complete with board and ram.

It really is an excellent series of chip. With a Triton cooling mine, even at 4.4Ghz, I never see it going above 60c in normal use.

ginjaninja · 24 May 2015 at 07:15

What was about your consumer boards that allowed support for these server chips? How would that translate to buying advice now..if in the future we wanted a good chance of putting a server grade chip in?