CPU/PC bandwidth question

[fibonacci_rr]

I was wondering, just from a strict number, how much improvement an i7 would be vs my current setup as far as bandwidth (FSB/quickpath) was concerned and I have no idea how to calculate the bandwidth of my current setup. Can someone help calculate my bandwidth, be it in GT/s or GB/s?

I have an E8500 (3.16 GHz, 1333 FSB/(333 MHz x 4)) with 4 gig (dual channel DDR2-667).

I want to compare this number to an i7 920 running at stock speeds.

Thanks!

 

[yomamafor1]

AFAIK, the QPI featured in i7 is about as twice as fast as 1600Mhz FSB. From a strict number, the X58 has 25.6GB/s of memory bandwidth, while the X48 only offers 12.8GB/s. On the latency front, i7's memory access speed is in the low 50ns area,
while Core 2's about high 60ns to high 80ns.

But again, not everything is just simple as black and white. A V8 engine car does not necessarily run faster than a V6 engine car, as there are a lot of other factors that need to be taken in consideration. In the case of CPUs, majority of consumer programs on the market today are not heavily dependent on the bandwidth, and very few of them actually saturated the bandwidth FSB provides.

Therefore before you throw your entire rig out the window in favor of an i7 rig, research on how much improvement you will actually receive by spending the big bucks on i7. Normally under most circumstances, i7 only offers 5~10% performance increase compared to the Core 2 equivalent.