What is enough of an upgrade for you to open your wallets?

[chengbin]

For CPU, how much faster does it have to be for you to justify an upgrade?

For me, a CPU has to be 5 times faster than what I have right now to justify an upgrade. It used to be 3 times faster before, when the computers are still catching up in speed. But now computers are fast enough for basic tasks, so it takes a lot more to get me to upgrade.

 

[andy5174]

35%+ faster for me and 100% if my last upgrade is less than 2 years ago.

 

[chengbin]

..you just posted that you are looking for a CPU 2x as fast as a Q6600 for you to upgrade, in your previous post...

also, I'm glad to the good people at Intel and AMD have made CPUs capable of performing basic tasks....I knew there was a reason why the i7 is so popular...I can finally run the Microsoft calculator program

Just curious on people's upgraditis bug severity.

By basic I mean programs like web browsing and snappiness. I can browse the web as fast as my mouse can move on my Q6600, but on my P4 it takes a few seconds to load each page and open programs.

 

[fazers_on_stun]

Just curious on people's upgraditis bug severity.

By basic I mean programs like web browsing and snappiness. I can browse the web as fast as my mouse can move on my Q6600, but on my P4 it takes a few seconds to load each page and open programs.

LOL - unless you make your living opening web pages, I wouldn't upgrade on that basis ...

Anyway, Anantech has a Gulftown i7-980 EE review plus an update on overclocking, and in the original article they compare it to a P4 EE since they both were introduced at the $999 price point. In various tests, the Gulftown ranges from 250% to 700% faster than the P4. Heck, in the update article they get the Gulftown up to 4.1GHz and in x264 HD video encoding, 2nd pass, it's about 260% faster than a Phenom 2 965 at 3.4GHz.

Personally I think I'll wait and see how much Intel wants for the non-extreme version, the i7-970 Gulftown, which is due out next quarter (hopefully April)...

 

[jonpaul37]

I'm not sure about what it would take fo me to upgrade my CPU. I have been on the LGA 775 bandwagon for a little while now. Currently i use an ASUS P5Q Pro motherboard, 4 GB of DDR2-800 RAM & a Q6600 @ 3.6

Is it really worth it to upgrade to an i7 920 which means new motherboard & RAM & spending lots of $$$ when the Q6600 is already doing the job nicely for gaming and other tasks?

In my opinion, GPU's are the ones that take bigger leaps with every generation, Example: the 5870 is almost as powerful as 2 x 4870's... I WISH CPU's could take that leap every generation, then, maybe the prices would be justified.

I'll stick with my Q6600 untill i see performance start to degrade, as for now, it's working more than enough for what i need.

 

[maximiza]

CPU is important but its the other factors, PCIE-3.0, SATA III or IV, DDR4 or 5, USB 3.0 etc etc,

 

[fazers_on_stun]

I'm not sure about what it would take fo me to upgrade my CPU. I have been on the LGA 775 bandwagon for a little while now. Currently i use an ASUS P5Q Pro motherboard, 4 GB of DDR2-800 RAM & a Q6600 @ 3.6

Is it really worth it to upgrade to an i7 920 which means new motherboard & RAM & spending lots of $$$ when the Q6600 is already doing the job nicely for gaming and other tasks?

In my opinion, GPU's are the ones that take bigger leaps with every generation, Example: the 5870 is almost as powerful as 2 x 4870's... I WISH CPU's could take that leap every generation, then, maybe the prices would be justified.

I'll stick with my Q6600 untill i see performance start to degrade, as for now, it's working more than enough for what i need.

That about describes me as well, with my Q6700, 4GG 1066 & an EVGA 690 rig that I built in over 3 years ago. When I saw all the trouble getting that nVidia chipset mobo to overclock the memory with a quad-core, I was all hot to replace it by building an i7-920 D0 rig early last summer, but then decided to wait & see how the i5's panned out. I decided I'd get the most bang per buck by upgrading my ancient 8800GTX card to something newer, but then thought I'd wait & see how the latest AMD & NV cards would pan out.

Anyway, my backup DT rig (P4 Northwood @ 2.4 GHz) just crapped out on me, so now I do have some sorta excuse to uipgrade - at least that's what I tell my wife ...

 

[Scotteq]

I upgrade when the itch gets to be too much not to scratch... Generally this works out to around 3 years, but when I build I don't cheap out, either. In between major builds, I usually replace the GPU.

 

[C00lIT]

+1

I personally upgrade when my current PC can no longer perform tasks or games up to an above average standard.

Otherwise you are just upgrading for the sake of upgrading.

Running one of them Phenom 9950's @2.73 with a GTX260 and 4gigs DDR2-800

As much as it would be real cheap for me to jump to a Phenom955... I still see no point besides energie consumption...

Even if my quad is crappy... it still gets the job done.


As soon as Videogames require more it is easy for me to get the former phenom flagship with a Radeon 5850 or 5870 depending on the price at that point.


Funny how not that long ago I had to upgrade every 6 months to keep up.

 

[keithlm]

Heck, in the update article they get the Gulftown up to 4.1GHz and in x264 HD video encoding, 2nd pass, it's about 260% faster than a Phenom 2 965 at 3.4GHz.

In your post you are saying that it only costs 555% more money and needs to be overclocked by 23% just so it can be 260% faster than the stock Phenom II 965?

HOWEVER your percentages are bit off... because going from 20.3 to 48.8 is actually a gain of 240%. Plus if you look around and do some research you can find that a 4.1Ghz PhII will return results on the second pass of that test of about 24.276.

So to using the corrected percentages you are saying that it only costs 555% more money to be about 200% faster on a benchmark that is known to favor multi-tasking.

 

[fazers_on_stun]

In your post you are saying that it only costs 555% more money and needs to be overclocked by 23% just so it can be 260% faster than the stock Phenom II 965?

HOWEVER your percentages are bit off... because going from 20.3 to 48.8 is actually a gain of 240%. Plus if you look around and do some research you can find that a 4.1Ghz PhII will return results on the second pass of that test of about 24.276.

So to using the corrected percentages you are saying that it only costs 555% more money to be about 200% faster on a benchmark that is known to favor multi-tasking.

LOL - sorry for the typo.

However, AT's review had the 980 was at stock frequency, 3.33GHz, whereas the P2-965 was at its stock frequency 3.4GHz. It was in the 2nd review that AT oc'ed the 980 to 4.1GHz.

 

[keithlm]

LOL - sorry for the typo.

However, AT's review had the 980 was at stock frequency, 3.33GHz, whereas the P2-965 was at its stock frequency 3.4GHz. It was in the 2nd review that AT oc'ed the 980 to 4.1GHz.

In the first review, at "stock" settings it shows the i7 980 having 240% of the performance of the stock PhII 965 and 183% of the "stock" i7-920 . (and the i7-920 has 132% of the performance of the PhII 965.)

In the second review the "stock" i7 980 is shown to have 208% of the performance of the stock PhII 965 and 179% of the stock i7-920. AND overclocked to 4.1Ghz the i7 980 has 242% of the performance of the stock PhII 965 and 208% of the performance of the "stock" i7-920. (And the i7-920 has 116% of the performance of the PhII 965.)

Something is a bit off.

EDIT: Changed when I said "faster than" to say "the performance of" since we are using the "performance" metric instead of the "faster than" metric.

 

[randomizer]

So to using the corrected percentages you are saying that it only costs 555% more money to be about 200% faster on a benchmark that is known to favor multi-tasking.

A complete waste of money unless it's what you do for a living, in which case you'll make up the money pretty quick and the extra speed is absolutely worth it.

 

[keithlm]

A complete waste of money unless it's what you do for a living, in which case you'll make up the money pretty quick and the extra speed is absolutely worth it.

Especially since that was only looking at the pass two of that x264 benchmark. If we look at the pass #1 it doesn't do as well.

 

[randomizer]

Pass #1 doesn't seem to be as intensive as pass #2. On my i7 it doesn't load the CPU as much as pass #2. Perhaps pass #1 relies on raw clock speed more than threads. I don't use it enough to have a well-rounded perspective.

EDIT: Typo

 

[chengbin]

x264''s pass 1 with b-adapt 2 is not multithreaded, so first pass doesn't take up every core.

 

[fazers_on_stun]

I upgrade when the itch gets to be too much not to scratch... Generally this works out to around 3 years, but when I build I don't cheap out, either. In between major builds, I usually replace the GPU.

That about describes me as well.

I think most people here wouldn't pay $1K for the 980 unless they had some pressing need for it. However I will be very tempted by the 970 if the price is at the lower end of the speculative range..

It'll be interesting to see the reviews of the 970 vs. Thuban when they are available. IIRC Thuban is supposed to have Turbo-boost as well, but no hyperthreading, so that should eliminate a lot of the "Intel is cheating" complaints ..