i7 worth it for gaming?

[petteyg359]

How is buying i7 now going to save you money? Show me the math on that, because it makes no sense... Motherboard and DDR3 prices are still too high for anybody to be saving money by buying them.

 

[wingman99]

No it won't, they hope it will use more than two cores as it is.

Quote:AnandTech

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3507&p=4

The end result of all this is that the future will be more parallel friendly. As two and four core CPUs become more and more popular and 8 and 16 (logical) core CPUs are on the horizon, we need all the help we can get when trying to extract performance from parallelism. This is a good move for DirectX and we hope it will help push game engines to more fully utilize more than two or even four cores when the time comes.

that implies that DX11 is very well capable of more than 2 and 4 cores, and that they hope that the new game engines will come to utilize that ability. that last sentence is aimed more at future engines than at DX11. so that doesn't really support your claim very well.

Yes it does they said hope, all you need to do is read how DX11 works it's not true parallelism it divides the process into 3 steps one step waiting on the other and only as fast as the slowest thread.

AnandTech hope it utilizes more than 2 and 4 core, the word once more is hope.

AnandTech did not say

DX11 is very well capable of more than 2 and 4 cores, and that they hope that the new game engines will come to utilize that ability.

I hate it when people make up things to there liking.

 

[Aztroth]

How is buying i7 now going to save you money? Show me the math on that, because it makes no sense... Motherboard and DDR3 prices are still too high for anybody to be saving money by buying them.

compared to the rest of his options if you look at how long they will last him for the price, i7 is gonna be his largest upfront cost, but his cheapest long run cost, requiring the least investments later on compared to a 775 solution.

right now hes looking at a new mobo and cpu anyways, and considering that the mobo he wants to get is ddr3, it only makes sense to go with the i7 solution to save himself from needing to upgrade later, and not haveing to pay the upgrade costs twice.


also, you aren't any good at actually reading sentences and how they are worded, to figure out exactly what the different components are, are you? I broke down the sentence to say that what you quoted "implied" that, and that it pointed to the game engines. I dont care what the context of that quote was originally, you posted it on here, with no surrounding context, and the wording contradicted what you were saying. thats all I pointed out.

 

[I7_Guru]

No it won't, they hope it will use more than two cores as it is.

Quote:AnandTech

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3507&p=4

The end result of all this is that the future will be more parallel friendly. As two and four core CPUs become more and more popular and 8 and 16 (logical) core CPUs are on the horizon, we need all the help we can get when trying to extract performance from parallelism. This is a good move for DirectX and we hope it will help push game engines to more fully utilize more than two or even four cores when the time comes.

Where you get what you said from the quote which you had quoted beats me. I think you gravely misunderstood it.


To people with the old-school dual core Pentium processors: I understand that coming to the realization that your processors are basically outdated and a whole new build is on the horizon may be difficult to accept. I am not the one to blame though. This is what happens as the times change, and technology continually improves upon itself. This is life as we know it is the computer realm.

I'm sure many of you will try and stay with the old thought of it not making a difference as the resolution is high, but many of the links you would post here to back up your claim will be those which utilized the first unoptimized drivers for the 4800 series ATI cards and GT200 Nvidia cards. Since then, the drivers have been optimized greatly.


God Bless...

 

[ratbuddy]

Where you get what you said from the quote which you had quoted beats me. I think you gravely misunderstood it.


To people with the old-school dual core Pentium processors: I understand that coming to the realization that your processors are basically outdated and a whole new build is on the horizon may be difficult to accept. I am not the one to blame though. This is what happens as the times change, and technology continually improves upon itself. This is life as we know it is the computer realm.

I'm sure many of you will try and stay with the old thought of it not making a difference as the resolution is high, but many of the links you would post here to back up your claim will be those which utilized the first unoptimized drivers for the 4800 series ATI cards and GT200 Nvidia cards. Since then, the drivers have been optimized greatly.


God Bless...

I guess I'll use a condescending tone similar to yours.

Maybe if you understood the way things work, you would actually quote and refute things you disagree with, rather than making baseless statements regarding the performance improvements brought about by driver updates. Even with some sort of amazing 50% performance improvement since launch drivers, CPU is still not going to be the limiting factor on graphics performance at current resolutions.

The links to Anandtech benches I posted, which you seem not to have read, were performed upon the release of the Phenom 2 processor. Well after the release of any of the GPUs you claim are severely CPU limited. The Nvidia tests used drivers 180.43, a few versions back but still after the last big jump in performance (over 178 series drivers).

You might need a refresher in Intel's processors as well. I don't think anyone is claiming a 'dual core Pentium' processor is a better idea than i7 for gaming. I don't think they've even made those for about 3 years now, assuming you are talking about Pentium D..

God bless? Who sneezed?

 

[Shiggity]

Hi, i want to get a 790i mobo and max it out, get the best 775 quad (Q9770 or something, not getting extreme CPU), 8GB of ram and some nice cards in SLI thinking GTX 300 if theyre as good as theyre rumored to be.

For gaming, should i get an i7 rig or a 775 Quad rig, is there really a difference in gaming?, i mean most games cant even use quads yet, so octo threaded Games seem a bit off.

And if i do get an i7 rig, il spend less on GFX cards etc and probly only get a 920 i7, but if i get a good 775 Quad, i can spend more on GFX cards. and ram etc, so would that be better than an i7 with cheaper GFX cards?

and out of a 4 Ghz i7 and Core 2 Quad, for games wouldnt the Core 2 Quad be better because of the higher FSB?

To be perfectly honest it sounds like you should wait until the end of this year to upgrade. You could get a westmere, windows 7, GT300 cards, cheap X58 and cheap DDR3. That is to say, *cheaper* DDR3 and X58. Westmere will be the 32nm core i7 with better revisions.

 

[iLoki]

can we not hijack the thread please?

anyway, Shiggity has a good idea there, if you can live with your Q6600 and your 8800s then wait until the end of the year.

There is NO GUARANTEE your Q6600 is gonna make any more than 3.4ghz, on any board. I would wait, instead of spending $$$ on a chance that you might get higher.

 

[ratbuddy]

To be perfectly honest it sounds like you should wait until the end of this year to upgrade. You could get a westmere, windows 7, GT300 cards, cheap X58 and cheap DDR3. That is to say, *cheaper* DDR3 and X58. Westmere will be the 32nm core i7 with better revisions.

+1 to that, OP's system is fine for now.

The only thing that might be worth upgrading is the GPUs. 780i to 790i mobo is just chucking cash out the window.

 

[wingman99]

No it won't, they hope it will use more than two cores as it is.

Quote:AnandTech

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3507&p=4

The end result of all this is that the future will be more parallel friendly. As two and four core CPUs become more and more popular and 8 and 16 (logical) core CPUs are on the horizon, we need all the help we can get when trying to extract performance from parallelism. This is a good move for DirectX and we hope it will help push game engines to more fully utilize more than two or even four cores when the time comes.

From this Quote: This is a good move for DirectX and we hope it will help push game engines to more fully utilize more than two or even four cores when the time comes

Where you get what you said from the quote which you had quoted beats me. I think you gravely misunderstood it.

 

[DerekT]

Clearly you know what you want and are informed. So why are you posting such a useless thread?

Just buy what you want and enjoy it and leave the posting for those who are truly seeking information or sharing the information they have.

well a 790i is a pretty nice mobo for OCing quads, from all the reviews ive read.
And if i run my SLI in split screen rendering, would that be a faster SLI mode than Nvidia Recommended?, what about for lower resolutions.

And i really dont see the point in getting a massive screen and paying a few hundred just to slow down your frame rates.

 

[Shiggity]

As an added bonus to waiting you'll be able to save some extra money for a solid state drive.

SSD + I7 = win, everything is instant

 

[Methal]

If you don't wanna get an i7, don't get an i7.

I work for a computer company and build duo, quad and i7 computers. I am getting the i7 not just for gaming, but because it is the fastest and the best by far enough to make up for the higher cost, which is only like 200 bucks over anything close to it.

socket 775 is past its prime, and with intel introducing another 3 i7 chips it appears that 1366 is going to be the new flag ship.

But who knows what the future will bring.

BUT I will say this. i7 is top dog, and its well worth its price. Throw 6gigs of ram, a couple gtx's, a raptor, with a 64 bit os, you wont be waiting for anything. I have stress tested an i7 920 with 8 threads of prime95, with orthos, and 100 loop.bat's running and was still able to do anything I wanted on the computer faster than my dual core 6600 tech computer.

 

[I7_Guru]

I guess I'll use a condescending tone similar to yours.

Maybe if you understood the way things work, you would actually quote and refute things you disagree with, rather than making baseless statements regarding the performance improvements brought about by driver updates. Even with some sort of amazing 50% performance improvement since launch drivers, CPU is still not going to be the limiting factor on graphics performance at current resolutions.

The links to Anandtech benches I posted, which you seem not to have read, were performed upon the release of the Phenom 2 processor. Well after the release of any of the GPUs you claim are severely CPU limited. The Nvidia tests used drivers 180.43, a few versions back but still after the last big jump in performance (over 178 series drivers).

You might need a refresher in Intel's processors as well. I don't think anyone is claiming a 'dual core Pentium' processor is a better idea than i7 for gaming. I don't think they've even made those for about 3 years now, assuming you are talking about Pentium D..

God bless? Who sneezed?

I meant the C2D processors. I'm sorry if you mistakenly mistook my tone as that of a condescending one. I also see that maybe because you actually own a C2D that it may be offending to you to hear someone talk so-called negatively about something of which you own. I certainly didn't want to make you upset.

About the God Bless part. That was not funny. When you make of me for that, you are also doing so against God. Take that into consideration and maybe show more respect next time around.

 

[Mr.Guvernment]

you can now get 6G of DDR3 for $130 in some places.

 

[Zetto]

From personal experience: I just assembled i7 rig, and it runs circles around my old e8500 rig. For example, I played GTA4 on both (I know it's a terrible port, still a great game), and i7 920 @ stock provides the same amount of performance as my e8500@4ghz! amazing, imho, totally worth it for games, especially as they become more and more multithreaded.

BTW, I saw 6gb 1600mhz for $95 on sale a few days ago.

 

[RSDXzec]

ok, ive decided to get an 790i rig, and completely MAX it out, no point in i7 rig, octo cores coming out on a new socket anyway, il probly get one of those and the mobo it needs.

 

[Rich'[ard]]

ok, ive decided to get an 790i rig, and completely MAX it out, no point in i7 rig, octo cores coming out on a new socket anyway, il probly get one of those and the mobo it needs.

lol you serious? Ratbuddy already pointed out that upgrading from a 780i to a 790i mobo is chucking money out the window. why get ddr3 anyway? there's no real advantage over ddr2 with socket 775 cpus.

and why do you need to go i7. it's not like a q6600 and 8800GT SLI are gonna lag you in any game...maybe except Crysis.

who cares about bragging rights...(come on, taht's the only reason you want an i7 ).

and to answer your question. a QX9650/QX9770 or something from the higher end Quad core series competes with the i7 920/940. i7 is pretty much only beneficial when you get Quad gpus going. eg 4870X2 crossfire...GTX295 SLI...so on.

 

[KonaKona]

ok, ive decided to get an 790i rig, and completely MAX it out, no point in i7 rig, octo cores coming out on a new socket anyway, il probly get one of those and the mobo it needs.

I'll say once again,

If your going to max out a Q6600, your better off with a P45 motherboard, Unless your running 3x SLI.

EDIT: (thanks to rich for reminding me) Yeah, your gonna need new ram for the 790i. Expensive ram at that.


Also, for all you guys having the fight in the hijacked part, its like this. Like all other computer hardware things, if you can afford the new and expensive hardware, it will outrun the older and cheaper hardware. However, unless you need the speed of the newer hardware, sometimes you are better off with the older and cheaper hardware.

For instance, people will still buy 8800gt's for gaming. Even though they are slower than some of the newer cards, and have been out for a while now, they are still good cards. More importantly, they are quite cheap now.

Now lets all just calm down and see what kind of motherboard OP here is getting.

 

[RSDXzec]

omfg, as i said before
-to richard

ok, just to clear things up here, the only reason im upgrading is because my motherboard doesnt OC well, i was the unlucky one that got the chip that doesnt work properly, apparently it happens to 1 in every 100 or 1000 chips made, also doesnt read my cards for SLI properly sometimes, and doesnt detect my SLI ready memory in the bios.

And thew 790i OC's better for quads.

and i may get a Q9550 ot Q9650 but only in like 1 year and only if i need it

EDIT - and thanks to burebista on the first page for the link to this site

 

[KonaKona]

So what are you upgrading? CPU? Mobo? CPU and Mobo? CPU + Mobo + ram?