I7-950 vs the new sandy bridge cpus?

Since you already have a I7 950 I would hang tight. The performance difference is not worth the money. Would be going from a very good system to Great. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/287?vs=100 some of the difference can be gained by overclocking.

I agree with rolli, the differences are not that big based on the Sandy Bridge review and gaming benchmarks on this site. But if you an sell your current CPU, MB, and RAM, then maybe it will be worth upgrading. I decided to go for the i7-2600K and P8P67 Pro motherboard since I was jumping from a Q6600-based system so the improvements were well worth the $620 it cost me for a new CPU, MB and RAM...

save your money, i7 950 is a great cpu upgrading to sandy bridge wont make a big deference, infact if you overclock your i7 950 it'll be on bar or better than stock sandy bridge, wait till the next generation and spend the money on something els.

Is a sandy bridge better, clock for clock? Yes. Is it worth buying over an i7 950? No.

Be honest here, have you ever thought your CPU just wasn't adequete? Gaming wise, the difference will not be noticeable. Neither CPU will bottleneck any GPU set up. Although I'm pretty sure the X58 still has more PCIe lanes than the P67, so feature wise you'd be downgrading.

But yeah basically it's a waste of cash. I mean, if you're looking for specific performance increase in one area or another you can just upgrade the GPU (if you need more FPS) or buy a 970/980X CPU if you need more performance that way for some reason. Or for a cheaper alternative, overclock.

If I had an i7-950, I would probably not look at a Sandy Bridge twice unless I can sell the old CPU+MB for a good price. If it can make you feel a bit better about not switching, Ivy Bridge will probably be out by the end of this year or the beginning of next year so THAT might be more worth it.

hey rolli-

same situation as person who posed this question.. can you direct me to a cite to overclock i7 950 x58?? is it likely i would need another fan and do you feel i could get this chip up to 3.25??

thanks much