Hi folks,
This is just for info really, but wanted to share recent experience of upgrading an 920 (oc to 4.1 GHz) to a 2700k. Well, I've been busy advising people on these very boards for some months now not to bother upgrading to SB if you have a decent Nehalem generation chip. If you have (for example) a D0 stepping i7 920, just overclock it to 4GHz plus, which it should do easily. So the argument goes: the performance difference (while measurable) will in most situations not be noticeable - a 920 is plenty fast enough. My main uses are games, plus video editing and conversion (plus of course the usual browsing and MS office). My original plan was to wait for Ivy. (And were it not for a recent mishap, I had fully intended to keep to this).
(Background: I recently decided to rehouse my PC in a new HAF X case, but in the process, somehow managed to kill the motherboard. Since I can't live without my PC for 2+ months before Ivy is released, I decided to take the plunge now and get an i7 2700k. I currently run it at 4.7GHz as a safe overclock given my status as a SB newbie. Will try to push it harder when I get my head round the ins and outs of doing so.)
The difference? None at all. The vast majority of games are either GPU bottlenecked or already run so fast on a decent SLI setup that you cannot see the improvement. Battlefield 3 falls into the former category - I would like to run it on ultra but my GPU setup simply isn't up to the job. As expected, the 2700k makes zero difference to this situation. Mass Effect 3 on the other hand, falls into the latter category. Video rendering in Premiere Pro is certainly faster, but a 60 minute render now takes about 50 minutes. A useful difference but hardly earth shattering.
So yes, the advice stands: if you have a decent Core i7 920 or 930 and are considering upgrading to Sandy Bridge, my experience corroborates what I and countless other have been saying here for some time: it's really not worth it.
The HAF X on the other hand was an inspired choice. The problem with my previous case was that it wasn't tall enough to put GPU 2 in the lowest slot. Consequently, it was sitting right next to GPU 1 with no gap between them at all. GPU 1 would typically reach temps of 90+ at stock settings when at 100% load. This strikes me as too much. But with enough space between the GPUs in a case designed for decent airflow, I've yet to see it hit 60, even under a heavy overclock.
(Rest of my system: 2*GTX 560 Ti, 16GB, 1080p)
This is just for info really, but wanted to share recent experience of upgrading an 920 (oc to 4.1 GHz) to a 2700k. Well, I've been busy advising people on these very boards for some months now not to bother upgrading to SB if you have a decent Nehalem generation chip. If you have (for example) a D0 stepping i7 920, just overclock it to 4GHz plus, which it should do easily. So the argument goes: the performance difference (while measurable) will in most situations not be noticeable - a 920 is plenty fast enough. My main uses are games, plus video editing and conversion (plus of course the usual browsing and MS office). My original plan was to wait for Ivy. (And were it not for a recent mishap, I had fully intended to keep to this).
(Background: I recently decided to rehouse my PC in a new HAF X case, but in the process, somehow managed to kill the motherboard. Since I can't live without my PC for 2+ months before Ivy is released, I decided to take the plunge now and get an i7 2700k. I currently run it at 4.7GHz as a safe overclock given my status as a SB newbie. Will try to push it harder when I get my head round the ins and outs of doing so.)
The difference? None at all. The vast majority of games are either GPU bottlenecked or already run so fast on a decent SLI setup that you cannot see the improvement. Battlefield 3 falls into the former category - I would like to run it on ultra but my GPU setup simply isn't up to the job. As expected, the 2700k makes zero difference to this situation. Mass Effect 3 on the other hand, falls into the latter category. Video rendering in Premiere Pro is certainly faster, but a 60 minute render now takes about 50 minutes. A useful difference but hardly earth shattering.
So yes, the advice stands: if you have a decent Core i7 920 or 930 and are considering upgrading to Sandy Bridge, my experience corroborates what I and countless other have been saying here for some time: it's really not worth it.
The HAF X on the other hand was an inspired choice. The problem with my previous case was that it wasn't tall enough to put GPU 2 in the lowest slot. Consequently, it was sitting right next to GPU 1 with no gap between them at all. GPU 1 would typically reach temps of 90+ at stock settings when at 100% load. This strikes me as too much. But with enough space between the GPUs in a case designed for decent airflow, I've yet to see it hit 60, even under a heavy overclock.
(Rest of my system: 2*GTX 560 Ti, 16GB, 1080p)
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