New Core I7 build...

[peanutpc]

Built new gaming rig for a friend/customer 2 weeks ago and he hasn't picked it up yet so I'm still playing around with it.

Core I7 rig spec:

Intel Core I7 920 (stock cooler)
Asus P6T Deluxe MB (first ordered Intel X58 but got blue screen of death, so returned & got Asus board)
CORSAIR XMS3 6GB (3 x 2GB) DDR3 1333 memory
1TB WD Hard Drive
SAPPHIRE 4850 in CF
Cooler Mast HAF full tower case with Hiper 880w PSU
LG BluRay/HD DVD drive
Vista x64

Frankly speaking, I'm not that impressed with the Core I7. Don't get me wrong... Its fast but compair to my AMD X4 9950/790FX(@ 3Ghz) setup and my other friend's Q6600/P45 (above 3.2Ghz) setup, I thought that I7 would really out-perform but with the gaming we do (Crysis, Fallout 3...) and general computing, we really can't notice the big difference.

If you're not in to serious gaming, save your money and get the Intel Q6600 & AMD 9950. You could save up to $500 on a rig.

 

[adomas32]

I think that it's fairly clear that gaming won't benefit for now. I'm hoping to cut my vray render times in half by upgrading from my terribly old pentium D 805

 

[roadrunner197069]

You obviously dont know how to build a i7 rig to take full adavantage of the i7 cpu.

i7s are greatly bottlenecked by slow hard drives like the one you picked.

OC that puppy to 3.8-4.0 and throw in some raptors in raid 0 or even better throw in some ssds in raid 0, and then that baby will show you what she has.

I got 4 30g OC SSDs paired with my i7 and this baby stomps some serious ass compared to my e8400 @ 4.0 with 2 western Digital 640s in raid 0. And lets not forget that my e8400 @ 4.0 is faster at gaming then your Phenom and your friends 3.2 q6600.

Lets not forget your i7 buddy can go with ATI or Nvidia, anytime he wants, and you will have to buy a motherboard if a better GPU comes out in a flavor your mobo dont support.

 

[peanutpc]

As of now... after playing with the new i7 system for 2 weeks, im happy with my amd x4...

 

[peanutpc]

You obviously dont know how to build a i7 rig to take full adavantage of the i7 cpu.

i7s are greatly bottlenecked by slow hard drives like the one you picked.

OC that puppy to 3.8-4.0 and throw in some raptors in raid 0 or even better throw in some ssds in raid 0, and then that baby will show you what she has.

I got 4 30g OC SSDs paired with my i7 and this baby stomps some serious ass compared to my e8400 @ 4.0 with 2 western Digital 640s in raid 0. And lets not forget that my e8400 @ 4.0 is faster at gaming then your Phenom and your friends 3.2 q6600.

Lets not forget your i7 buddy can go with ATI or Nvidia, anytime he wants, and you will have to buy a motherboard if a better GPU comes out in a flavor your mobo dont support.

first, i was just pointing out the it not a right time to upgrade to i7 if you already have intel & amd quad cores. it doesn't make sence to spend $800+ on cpu/mb/ram to get little performance out of it...

second, i didn't pick out the hdd, my friend did. he didn't wanna spend $300~400 on a hdd.

 

[Shadow703793]

^ The OCZ SSD roadrunner is talking about is only $60 each, so 2*30GB SSDs = $120. Put them on RAID and install the OS on it. Get 2*640GB WDs for storage possible in RAID too.

See benches here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/forum2.php?config=tomshardwareus.inc&cat=32&post=247646&page=1&p=1&sondage=0&owntopic=3&trash=0&trash_post=0&print=0&numreponse=0&quote_only=0&new=0&nojs=0

The benches speak for themselves.

 

[geofelt]

If your application is gaming, why in the world would you go cheap on a 4850 for a vga card with a cpu that is that capable?

 

[Shadow703793]

^ Good point. OP can get a E8400 + board for the same cost as the i7 920.

 

[roofus]

what a nice setup. you should have talked your customer into faster drives and a top tier video card for that setup. i understand there was probably a budget involved but it baffles me to see all the awesome parts then a couple of "ok" parts. that thing is so close to being a beast it would be cool if he invested a little more $$ in it to compliment what he already has.

 

[WR]

i7s are greatly bottlenecked by slow hard drives like the one you picked.

OC that puppy to 3.8-4.0 and throw in some raptors in raid 0 or even better throw in some ssds in raid 0, and then that baby will show you what she has.

I got 4 30g OC SSDs paired with my i7 and this baby stomps some serious ass compared to my e8400 @ 4.0 with 2 western Digital 640s in raid 0.

To be fair, upgrading from 2 7200 rpm drives to 4 SSDs without changing the processor should result in a way snappier interface. That could very well be the sole reason you feel the system is much faster.

There are two real reasons to upgrade to an i7. One is that your system is old enough you're building from scratch, and a 775 system would not be as future-proof. The other is that your usage pattern would benefit from i7. Most gaming usage does not qualify - even fast multicard setups can have driver problems negating the advantage of an i7. People who do volume encoding, compression, and other parallelizable processing stand to benefit the most.

 

[EXT64]

Well, gaming is more limited by the GPU. The difference between your other CPUs and the i7 isn't much in games, so the small increase is expected. Now, if you use a program that can fully utilize the i7's abilities, it would be very impressive.

Personally I'd suggest more video. I always go with slow hard drives because during games, I never see them doing much. It seems most of the relevant data is loaded onto the ram before and super fast drives just decrease loading times. But, whatever floats your boat.

 

[roadrunner197069]

Well I personally like a totally optimized system, not just a gaming optimized system. Its annoying when you try to do everyday things and its slow because you made it to be game optimized.

 

[sabot00]

Yeah most games are GPU limited, in the guru3d article they needed an 3xGTX280 setup to see the performence boosts in gaming.
http://www.guru3d.com/article/intel-core-i7-920-and-965-review/

 

[Infinity_Wasted]

CPU's do some work in games, especially ones that are optimized to take advantage of multiple cores. the hard drives don't really matter much. they're fine, and waiting another 7 seconds for things to load compared to the extra money spent for the SSD's is something to think about.

 

[roadrunner197069]

My SSDs were $50 more then a velociraptor and i get 4.5x the performance.

 

[cjl]

I would classify them as ~3x the cost actually, since $/GB is the relevant value IMHO, not dollars in total. A pair of velociraptors gives you 600GB, and I know that I certainly use the extra space.

Of course, if you don't need a lot of space, RAIDed SSDs is certainly an option to look into.

 

[roadrunner197069]

Well 4 SSd and a 640 WD is only $360 and you get the performance and speed over the dual raptors with a total of 660G. Dual raptors is $440.

So raptors loose again.

You can have your 2 raptors running at 190MB/s and I'll take my SSDs running 507MB/s and my WD 640 for storage.

 

[cjl]

Yeah, but all 760GB isn't full speed. Therefore, the benefit is not obtained in the full 640GB. I have a separate 1TB volume in mine as well for extra storage, but I don't count that in the app space, nor do I factor it in to cost per gig of the main volume.
One of my games for example (X-plane 9) takes 60GB by itself, and as it's a flight sim, is constantly streaming data off the disk. That would have to be put on a much slower drive if I just had the SSD RAID setup.

I'm not saying that SSDs are a bad idea, but you do have to consider both the amount of speed and the amount of storage to get the full idea of what is the best for you. In my case, it's something with a minimum of 500 gigs. In your case, it isn't. In both cases, we're happy

 

[WR]

If you look at system memory these days, there are up to 4 layers now - L1, L2, L3, DRAM. Nothing wrong with making your storage 2 layers instead of 1, if you can live with manually deciding what goes into the faster, smaller medium.

That RAID SSD idea has smaller capacity per dollar, but it is also much faster at reads, which would justify a price premium.