Upgrading i7 920 to fx 8350/9590, worth it?

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Tralebus

Honorable
Nov 8, 2013
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10,510
Hello,

im thinking about upgrading my trusty i7 920 to an FX processor. And i plan on overclocking that fx as high as it could go, probably anywhere from 4.6 to 5.2ghz depending on the chip's OC capabilities.

Im currently running a 4.4ghz i7 920, would it be much of an upgrade? Is it worth it? I would need a new motherboard and a new cpu, i already have ram from the intel setup so i ll just use it.

Current build
Case: Corsair 300r
CPU: i7 920 4.4ghz
Motherboard: rampage 2 gene
Cooler: Noctua nhd14
Ram: 12gigs triple channel 3x4 corsair
psu: corsair 1000watt
gpu: r9 290x

At this point i should say that i plan on getting another 290x for crossfire, or maybe sell the 290x and get 2 of the new amd cards when they are available in the next coming weeks/months.

Would the 920 fair better than the fx 8350/9590 in such a setup, or should i upgrade? Gaming and streaming matter to me, as well as raw processing power.

Thank you!
 
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I don't think there would be much of a performance advantage getting an 8 core FX model over a quad core Nehalem i7 when overclocking is involved. Per core, they'd be about the same assuming the FX has a somewhat higher frequency, and the FX would have a considerable advantage when all eight cores are fully utilized, but that's a lot of money to spend for not much gains, especially since you'd have an odd memory configuration if you used 3 sticks in a dual channel system.
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blazorthon

Glorious
Sep 24, 2010
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I don't think there would be much of a performance advantage getting an 8 core FX model over a quad core Nehalem i7 when overclocking is involved. Per core, they'd be about the same assuming the FX has a somewhat higher frequency, and the FX would have a considerable advantage when all eight cores are fully utilized, but that's a lot of money to spend for not much gains, especially since you'd have an odd memory configuration if you used 3 sticks in a dual channel system.
 
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Tralebus

Honorable
Nov 8, 2013
21
0
10,510
Thanks for the quick feedback people!

A core i7 920 at 2.6ghz has about the same single core performance as a 4.0ghz fx 8350 from benchmarks that i've seen. Saying that my 920 is at 4.4ghz, how much of an overclock are we talking about for the fx in order to reach same single core performance? We should take into consideration that the 920 has a higher IPC so overclocking it by 1.8ghz (i think) is giving more gains than i would get by ocing that 8350 by 1.8ghz, so am i right to assume than a 5.8ghz 8350 would fall behind in single core performance, still?

The multithreaded advantages of the 8350 is something that interests me. Not very sure if 4 cores 8 threads would be much worse than 8 (weaker) cores though.

If finally, the upgrade to fx is not worth it. Should i start thinking on upgrading to a 4790k? I know it will require somewhat more money, but i would still not need memory, i would grab another 4gb stick and use it as 16gb i think. Another option would be to wait a few months and go to skylake?

Sata 3 interests me as well, but not as much as raw cpu power does. Sata 3 would be a nice addition nevertheless.
 
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blazorthon

Glorious
Sep 24, 2010
14,022
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2.6GHz nehalem might equal 4GHz Bulldozer per core, but even that's a bit of a stretch. it'd be more like 3GHz nehalem according to what I've seen to equal 4GHz Bulldozer. Piledriver like the 8350 is even a bit better than Bulldozer. To truly equal that huge of an overclock from the i7-920, you'd need more than what the 8350 is capable of, I was only saying it'd be fairly close if you were at like 4.7GHz on the 8350. I don't think the multicore advantages would be enough to warrant an upgrade to it.

The 4790K would be more of an upgrade, especially per core. However, if you can ohld off until the next CPU series from Intel, that would probably be more reasonable. A 4.4GHz i7-920 is still a strong CPU.
 
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Tralebus

Honorable
Nov 8, 2013
21
0
10,510
I was able to get and test an 8350 along with a gigabyte board for about a week. The cpu/mobo combo came overclocked (4.8ghz) from the store of a friend and i was able to test it in several things. While there was a minor boost in some heavily multithreaded applications, i can say that overall performance was decreased compare to my i7 920 4.4ghz, especially in single threaded games and MMOrpg games.

That being said, i think haswell would be a boost, i can't say with certainty how much of a boost it would be, but it certainly wouldnt be a boost worth my 500 dollars for a new cpu and mobo. I ll hold off until skylake then. And if skylake is also not much of a boost, then i ll wait it out and go to the next best thing after skylake. Thanks for the help guys!
 
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