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Wofldale to Sandy Bridge, how much hardware can I reuse?

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Looking to upgrade my E5200 because: (1) the virtual machines I'm running are a bit sluggish, (2) I need the VT-x instruction set to run certain OSes in the VM. I could:

1) swap my CPU with my wife's Q8400
2) buy an upgrade for this MB (say, a E6800 for $100)
3) upgrade to Sandy Bridge (i5)

The i5 upgrade will cost me around 500 bones (2500K, BIOSTAR TP67XE, CORSAIR 8GB DDR3). Ouch.

My question: if I get the new CPU/MB/RAM, can I reuse my old case and power supply (both Antec, 550W PS), or have those changed?


Also open to any other advice. Is the i5 a big enough upgrade over a Q8400 that I should desire it (mostly consider with VM performance, and maybe build speeds and Vim/VS snappiness ^_^)? Should I wait for 22nm?

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CPUs Master

I don't see why you can't reuse all of that. Lets look at each:

Case:

The case standard for a PC hasn't changed much in the past 10 years. Its been ATX standard and most every mobo is either ATX, mATX or another variant of ATX. Intel tried BTX which put the CPU towards the front of the case but it didn't go so we still have ATX.

PSU:

The CPU you have is 45nm so its ver efficient. But SB is 32nm and is a more refined version. It uses less power than 32nm LGA1156 Core i5 dual core (see here: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sandy-bridge-effici... ) when considering its a quad core with quite a bite more transistors. So this CPU will probably note need more power but probably less power.

And yes, the Core i5 2400 or 2500/2500K will be a large boost over a Q8400. The Q8400 was about 20% slower than Core i5/i7 Nehalem based CPUs and those same CPUs are about 20% slower than SB.

But if you want much snappier VM, then you also want more memory. I would go with at least 4GB but 8Gb would be better.

You could wait for 22nm but that wont see the light of day until the same time next year and will probably use less power and increase performance a bit but in honesty, upgrading now would be a huge boost for your productivity.
CPUs Expert

If you plan on running lots of VMs you may want to stay away from the K edition Sandy Bridge CPUs because they do not support IO Virtualization (VT-d). They do still support VT-x and so unless you run lots of VMs in a extremely IO heavy environment that won't be any issue. All other Sandy Bridge CPUs I've seen support both VT-x and VT-d, but for some reason Intel removed VT-d support from the K edition SKUs.
CPUs Expert

Also, ^+1 for Sandy Bridge. Probably about 3X the performance given twice as many cores along with the integrated memory controller, greater instructions per clock and other improvements over Wolfdale.
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CPUs Master

The removal of I/O VT might be due to the overclocking ability. Whos to say really. But either way I think SB will be a better move and as well VM still likes more memory so don't be stingy on the memory.

jprahman said:
If you plan on running lots of VMs you may want to stay away from the K edition Sandy Bridge CPUs because they do not support IO Virtualization (VT-d).


Hmmm... now I'm torn.

I don't know if the VM solutions I use (VMWare, VirtualBox) support VT-d, but it's one of those things I could be kicking myself for not getting. According to one thing I read from Intel, the primary advantage of VT-d is reduced CPU overhead (throughput is the same, latency differs by only a millisecond), which I could make up by overclocking the CPU, right? :) 

I'm also torn between P67, so I can overclock, or H67, so I can give my current graphics card to my kid then use the onboard graphics until Diablo III comes out.

Why must you make me choose, Intel? :( 
CPUs Expert

Sandy Bridge CPUs are really good but I have to agree with you. There are so many things about Sandy Bridge like integrated graphics and overclocking being mutually exclusive that force you to chose between features.

VT-d probably wouldn't make a big difference unless you have a bunch of VMs doing lots of disk and network IO so you can probably get away without it.

Sandy Bridge overclocks quite well, so if you go the P67 route and get a K edition CPU you could see a overclock in the 4.5GHz range, but you obviously lose onboard graphics. Although you can get a very capable graphics card these days for only about $100-$200.

Reportedly Intel is supposed to release the Z68 chipset later this year that will support using the onboard graphics and overclocking, but that may not be released for a while.

OK, I'm thinking I don't really need VT-d (mostly for enterprise). To save money in the short term, I get H67 and use integrated graphics for now. I'll get the 2500K, which has better integrated graphics (HD Graphics 3000). Later, when the Z67 boards come out, I swap boards, get a nice video card, and I ca

I'm looking at this machine:

$224.99 - Intel Core i5-2500K Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz
$134.99 - GIGABYTE GA-H67A-UD3H LGA 1155 Intel H67
$94.99 - CORSAIR XMS3 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333
$79.99 - Antec BP550 Plus 550W Continuous Power
$69.99 - Antec Three Hundred Illusion
$589.95

The motherboard is the only full sized H67 board I could find.

Everything else look OK? I'm thinking of eventually getting a GTX 460 video card. No SLI plans. Will 550 watts will do me?

EricTetz said:
Hmmm... now I'm torn.

I don't know if the VM solutions I use (VMWare, VirtualBox) support VT-d, but it's one of those things I could be kicking myself for not getting. According to one thing I read from Intel, the primary advantage of VT-d is reduced CPU overhead (throughput is the same, latency differs by only a millisecond), which I could make up by overclocking the CPU, right? :) 

I'm also torn between P67, so I can overclock, or H67, so I can give my current graphics card to my kid then use the onboard graphics until Diablo III comes out.

Why must you make me choose, Intel? :( 


very late answer, but for those interested, as there is very few info about this, I'm using an Asus H67 based motherboard at work, with an i3-2100 CPU, and although this cpu offers VT-x virtualization, the motherboard doesn't support it (no VT-x virtualization = probably a limitation of the H67 chipset) : "Intel virtualization" is greyed out (inactive) and can't be set to active in the BIOS. Using VirtualBox on the work OS (I use Linux as guest OS on the Win7 host), I can't install a (virtualized) Windows 8 preview, as this one requires VT-x to run...
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