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Upgrade to i7-860 or wait?

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dja2k

dja2k

Member
​
Joined
Apr 17, 2004
Location
Texas
I don't know if it is a good time to upgrade or should I wait til prices go down. I still have my current setup below working flawless, but just thought maybe its a good time to upgrade. I was going to upgrade to the Q9450 a little after I got my old setup running, but then just waited for the i7's to come out.

dja2k
 
I guess that depends on how much you bought your Q9450 for. If you got it for cheap then I would say you could probably sell a decent Q9450/Mobo/Ram for about 250 at the moment. It would cost you about 300 to do a used i5 750 upgrade and about 350 for a i7 860. If you went i7 920, probably 400-450. Those are all Used prices for Mobo/Chip/Ram (all or portion thereof). So subtract what you could get for you 9450 set up and do the math. Your stuff will only lose its value more until it reaches a point where it will make good replacement parts and then increase a little in value.

That all being said, performance wise from a i5 750 perspective, your not very far behind in speed. In tech (well I believe the Turbo Boost is overhyped for real overclockers), but its nice for those novices that don't want to risk their chips. So for performance sake, don't upgrade unless you really need the horsepower of a i7 920. And I can't say I do anything that would require that much power. I'd hate to recommend upgradeing to something you can never fully utilize and most probably won't for years to come.

I did a upgrade from Q6600 to i5 750 for a 150 dollar price difference after I sold my old stuff. Performance wise, its about a 25-33% gain in speed.
 
An upgrade to for my video card, why? I don't need it for gaming, so it does the job and it has low power consumption and doesn't produce much heat. I read reviews that the Intel q9550 isn't much behind the Intel i7 860. If that is true, maybe I should just buy a q9550 for now as an upgrade, what do you think?

dja2k
 
Well what are you planning to do on it? A dual core 3.0GHz is still a pretty strong chip unless your wanting to use specific quad core programs. You could just wait another year or two then go up to an i7, should be quite a lot cheaper than it is now.
 
dja2k said:
I don't know if it is a good time to upgrade or should I wait til prices go down. I still have my current setup below working flawless, but just thought maybe its a good time to upgrade. I was going to upgrade to the Q9450 a little after I got my old setup running, but then just waited for the i7's to come out.

dja2k
Click to expand...

Don't throw any money into a 775 chip. The 860 is nice but so is the X3440 for 50 dollars less
 
tinymouse2 said:
Well what are you planning to do on it? A dual core 3.0GHz is still a pretty strong chip unless your wanting to use specific quad core programs. You could just wait another year or two then go up to an i7, should be quite a lot cheaper than it is now.
Click to expand...
I do Video Editing/Authoring and also use Photoshop CS4 with plugins (Filters).
Hey Zeus said:
Don't throw any money into a 775 chip. The 860 is nice but so is the X3440 for 50 dollars less
Click to expand...
I don't want to switch boards and memory at the moment that's why I am thinking of going q9550 right now.

dja2k
 
I think I am going for a q9650 for $329 (Yes I know its high) then sell my e8400 for $100 on ebay. I wonder if my current heatsink will hold up and I hope I can hit 4ghz :).

dja2k
 
Dont get the 9650, go for the 9550. It will clock just as high for half the price. I think I saw it on sale for 169 dollars.
 
Brutal-Force said:
Dont get the 9650, go for the 9550. It will clock just as high for half the price. I think I saw it on sale for 169 dollars.
Click to expand...

Yup you did. Micro Center has been running it at that price for a few weeks now. It's a great deal if you have a MC close and your sales tax is low :)
 
I think I am ready to step it up to an i7. Which model do you guys recommend at this point? I will have a look into a new motherboard and memory too.

dja2k
 
dja2k said:
I think I am ready to step it up to an i7. Which model do you guys recommend at this point? I will have a look into a new motherboard and memory too.

dja2k
Click to expand...

2600K is the best value CPU money can buy in that price range.
 
Clock for clock the Sandybridge is around 15% quicker than the Bloomfields (or so I've been told). Oh, and the SB overclocks a lot better as well. Be sure to get the K series with the P67 chipset, or you'll end up in tears if you try to overclock.
 
SMOKEU said:
Clock for clock the Sandybridge is around 15% quicker than the Bloomfields (or so I've been told). Oh, and the SB overclocks a lot better as well. Be sure to get the K series with the P67 chipset, or you'll end up in tears if you try to overclock.
Click to expand...
Any specific brands of microATX motherboard\memory combo you recommend? I look forward to upgrading, but just hate all the options out there and never know what really works out of the box. If someone recommends something that works, at least that is a start. Is your Asus P8P67 a microATX board? Thanks

dja2k
 
Last edited:
dja2k said:
Any specific brands of microATX motherboard\memory combo you recommend? I look forward to upgrading, but just hate all the options out there and never know what really works out of the box. If someone recommends something that works, at least that is a start. Is your Asus P8P67 a microATX board? Thanks

dja2k
Click to expand...

My P8P67 is a standard ATX size. I do believe Asus make a micro ATX version.
 
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