Well any I7's are good for you. As long as for the 9xx series, it is the D0 stepping and not the C0 you'll be fine (C0 were only in the early 920's and was all the way through the 940/960's.) D0 can overclock a little bit higher as the they ran a little cooler than the C0's.
Now this is some really key information, thank you. I'll keep that in mind when choosing.
A very very high % of the i7's can reach the 4Ghz range with ease on some good cpu cooling.
I'd definately would like to get to 4Ghz, this is a good goal.
What socket Motherboard are you chosing? Core i7 8xx's are on the LGA 1156
Core i7 9xx's are on the LGA 1336
Good question. I want future expandability so I'd imagine the 1366 would be the better choice. It's been about 4 years since my last upgrade, so that gives you an idea of the longevitiy I'm looking for. My current system is (I better edit my sig so I don't have to keep retyping this lol): C2D E6600, 2GB Corsair, Asus P5W-DH Deluxe, 2x 320GB WD 7.2ks, nVidia 8800 GT 768mb, Antec case, newly purchased CoolerMaster 650W. I will be giong with Gigabyte 460s in SLI for the next system. With an SSD boot drive and Win7. That's really my only solid goals so far.
How much do you want to spend? $300, $600, $1K, ect?
Between $300-$450 for a CPU. Flexible.
Last is how easy do you want it to be to overclock the cpu?
most CPU intel has have locked multiplers but there are some with unlocked multipliers.
Easy enough I guess, but I'm alright with researching best voltages and settings to be able to OC my CPU if that's what you mean. I've overclocked for a while now even was lucky enought o have a good ol' 300A celly to 500 back in the day. Hell, it's still running at a buddy's basement lol. Japanese imported heatsink haha, good ol' days. But yeah, I do like the sport. I've just been out of it for a few years now, and of course everything has changed.
The EE (extreme edition) I7 (only on the LGA 1336) is a $1k but it's the fastest cpu and for that price, you could get a 6 core cpu that can overclock to the 4GHz range. (it also has a better cooling HSF that can handle overclocked cpu's much better than the normal lga 1336 stock HSF can handle.)
That's a little over my budget lol.
Then there the K series cpu. (only on the LGA 1156 that im aware of ATM) and 1 of them happen to be the Core i7 875k
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116368&cm_re=core_i7_875k-_-19-116-368-_-Product
Only $329.99 from neweggs.
I can afford to go a little higher than that, but nice option.
If you dont need an unlock cpu, then i would recommend getting the core i7 950 (3.06 GHz) as its price has been drop to $299.99 or if you got a microcenter near you...
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0331303
Core i7 930 (2.8GHz) @ $199.99
I don't *think* I need the unlocked multiplier. But that price and performance looks really good.
-----------------------------------
So you know my goal, it's to basically have a machine that can run StarCraft 2 perfectly (I don't think that's too much to ask). And to hold me over for 3+ years without being left in the dust. I don't think I'll neede anything over a dual core for it or anything else I normally do. Email, browsing, and so on. I'm picky about games, so StarCraft 2 is really all I have on my machine. Maybe Diablo 3 in the future.
Thank you for all your time Warmon6.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram