I7-870 motherboard question

[sleepy248]

First time poster, read many of the questions in the forums in the past though when I was looking to upgrade my computer.

I recently upgraded my old dell inspiron 580 with a new cpu, gpu, psu, and memory. I went from an old i3-540 to the I7-870. Upon further research into my motherboard I discovered the Dell 33FF6 motherboard does not have the i7 as one of the processors supported (only has pentium, i3 and i5).

My computer is working fine, but I was wondering if my current motherboard is in some way holding my new processor back. If so, what motherboard would give me better results.

Note: I know the lga 1156 socket is dead, and while i want to game a bit on my computer, I am not a super serious, graphics intense gamer, more of a budget gamer.

My current setup is the i7-870 cpu (w upgraded heatsink), 8 gigs ddr3 1333mhz RAM, GTX 650 1 gig gddr5 gpu, a corsair cx500 500 watt psu, on the afore mentioned Dell 33FF6 mobo.

I apologize if a question similar to this has been answered before, but I could not find it in the forums.

Thanks

 

[twelve25]

I doubt it is "holding you back". It's probably just not listed because Dell never bothered to test it. Even if it is slightly under par, you still would run out of juice on the GTX650 before you did the i7 and it's got to be a heck of a lot faster than your old i3.

You could run something like Geekbench or passmark and compare it to the average ranges for that CPU and see if it's performing like it should.

Honestly if you are going to go through the trouble and expense of a motherboard upgrade, you should be running an Ivy Bridge when you are finished. The whole point of upgrading to the older i7 was to save on motherboard expense, right?

 

[btakrrkw]

The whole point of upgrading to the older i7 was to save on motherboard expense

 

[sleepy248]

Alright, thanks for the info, and yes, the whole point was to try and avoid mainly the expense of a new mobo, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something.