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I7-870 vs i7-950 big difference?

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Those processors are very close to each other in performance, almost dead even. The 950 benefits from triple channel RAM and a motherboard with more PCIe lanes, while the 870 uses less power, generally uses less expensive motherboards and has a more aggressive turbo boost meaning it will always have an edge on single or dual core apps

However there is no higher upgrade available on the 1156 Lynnfield socket (i7 870) whereas with a i7 950 you can upgrade to a hexacore later on if you want (i7 970, 980x)

Personally I'd go with the i7 870, but that's just a matter of taste. You won't notice much of a performance difference between the two

Like I always say, Intel has too many SKUs with different features. I can't keep up with QPI vs. quad channel vs. HT vs. RAM speeds vs. mobo support.

It's a real pain.


Not to mention i3 vs. i5 vs. i7 vs. 5xx vs 7xx vs. 8xx vs. 9xx

bearclaw99 said:
Those processors are very close to each other in performance, almost dead even. The 950 benefits from triple channel RAM and a motherboard with more PCIe lanes, while the 870 uses less power, generally uses less expensive motherboards and has a more aggressive turbo boost meaning it will always have an edge on single or dual core apps

However there is no higher upgrade available on the 1156 Lynnfield socket (i7 870) whereas with a i7 950 you can upgrade to a hexacore later on if you want (i7 970, 980x)

Personally I'd go with the i7 870, but that's just a matter of taste. You won't notice much of a performance difference between the two


thanks for the advice. does triple channel make much of a difference? all that is going to be done is photo editing and movies. some gaming
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http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/107?vs=100

They're nearly identical, and these benches would be run with double vs triple RAM too.

So no triple doesn't make much difference over dual channel.

The only real reason to get X58 (950) instead of P55 (870) is for the PCIe lanes. It lets you do a little more - either have SATA 3 if you have some crazy high end SSD or else add more GPUs, because two run at 16/16 while on P55 two run at 8/8. Still, a 5870 is only about 4-5% slower on 8 lanes vs 16 so unless you want to SLI/CF even higher end cards P55 is fine.
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npowers86 said:
thanks for the advice. does triple channel make much of a difference? all that is going to be done is photo editing and movies. some gaming


Not so much no when you factor in overall performance. I would only suggest the i7 950 if you want to use 3 video cards
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