[Zenoth]

Worth it?

Perhaps i7 920? I skipped the Quad-Core technology, and just recently I've started working on Photoshop and I'm doing some (not a lot) video editing and encoding. There's also gaming, of course, but most of my games (around 30+ out of the 40'ish I have) are all games from the Single-Core era, some of them are supposed to gain advantages from a second or more Cores (UT3, Crysis, Company of Heroes, Fallout 3, are the ones I own that come to my mind).

Generally speaking, would it be worth it? Is there any reviews out there comparing high-end Dual-Cores to i7's? Most of the reviews I've seen are comparing them to the still quite expensive Quad-Cores, but that doesn't help me determine what kind of advantage I'd be seeing. Although one thing is for sure is that I won't upgrade to the current Quad-Core of the Core architecture, I think that if I want "real" multi-core effectiveness I'd rather go with i7 or just wait for the next architecture perhaps.

There may be another thing I'd have to consider (maybe), and it is the fact that I will get my GTX 285 very soon (in a few days), and I was wondering if even an E8400 over-clocked to 3.75Ghz would potentially choke (bottleneck) a GTX 285, would it? Or is it alright? Is there anyone out there who upgraded from a Dual-Core to an i7? If so what are your observations? Was it really worth it or just some impulsive purchase which you now somehow regret? Please let me know.

Thanks.

[Shiggity]

I'd do it. An overclock I7 920 will be a top chip for a long time. It will also continue to scale better with more advanced software optimizations.

[HDCHOPPER]

been wondering this myself
got a almost perfect system now (just what eye always wanted too)
but the lure of the new got me thinkinggggggggg

like really it gonna be hard to NEED more than what eye got

but folding is a different question alltogather I7 & 920 would be a great folder !!!

[jason4207]

The GTX 285 will not run any better on i7. Only when you go to multi-GPU solutions does i7 benefit. Iirc a highly OC'd C2D will still be slightly faster in gaming than an OC'd i7 w/ only a single gfx card.

Any kind of video-encoding will be faster on i7, but if you can use some of the software out there that allows you to use your gfx card to encode then you will smoke an i7 CPU if you use the GTX285 to encode.