CPU - I7 or I5 (ivy bridge)

[Zed]

So looking at the new rig I cannot decide if i go for an I5 - 3750 or an I7 - 3770 or similar.

I keep seeing that for gaming its irrelevant, and since I have my Macbook Pro for normal day to day stuff is it worth going for the I7 over the I5 or should i save the money and throw it at a 2GB 670 (im struggling to get to the 670 if i stick with an I7)

 

[Dart]

The I7 has slightly higher clock speed and Hyperthreading the I5 doesnt.

If your not doing lots of graphic/video work the I7 isnt worth the extra for just gaming. Id go for the I5 and the better GPU. Im going for the 680 though

Im looking at a new rig, pritty much decided on everything, but cant decide on which motherboard to get.

What motherboard are you getting m8?

 

[Agravaine]

Out of the two, I'd go for the I5.

Then again, if it were me and given that we're almost in August, I'd wait for the Haswell processors next year.

 

[Kelger]

The better graphics card will have more impact for your games than the difference between the i5 and i7.

Sounds pretty similar to the rig I've just built.

I went with the ASRock Z77 Extreme 4 mobo wise.

Got my i5 3750 overclocked to 4.5GHz on it using air cooling without any difficulty.

 

[Zed]

Re the machine: im likely to just get a Scan XS machine as recommended by Mr Rochdale. So likely to stick with what ever mobo they recommend. Was just pondering on the processor.

I would love to wait but im finding that my humble dell has met its match in TSW quite significantly. Im only running 32bit and run out of memory regularly ... contemplating updating to 64bit in the meantime and hoping the extra 1/2gb ram im not touching will help it along a little

 

[Dart]

Lol i didnt get sandy bridge cuz i was waiting for ivy bridge now you say wait till next year?! lol

 

[Artanix]

i5 3750k definately. the extra power of the i7 would be pointless for gaming tbh.

 

[Agravaine]

Ivy Bridge is a die shrink of Sandy Bridge with some extra bits tacked on.

Haswell is a new microarchitecture with a new socket.

I guess it depends how often you're thinking of upgrading. If it's every 2 years or so then I think it's worth waiting for Haswell and then moving to Skylake after a couple of years.

If you're not going to upgrade again for a few years then maybe it's worth going with Ivy Bridge now and then moving to Skymont or its successor in 4-5 years.

Dart, I didn't say you should, just that I would

 

[Zed]

My last PC was 2008 so im looking at a 4 yr cycle with probably an FX upgrade in the middle.

 

[Dart]

Will Haswell have DDR4, SATA4?

Cuz im upgrading from Kentsfield, so I need to completely replace everything if I want Sandybridge

 

[Gottaa]

Which Scan XS one you looking at Zed, I've been looking there as well after find Roch recommend them in an older thread, but unsure where to draw the line, and accept I can't really afford SSD, which is a shame as from all the things at work SSD has made huge differences to the servers

 

[Zed]

this one (i think) with a few tweaks

http://3xs.scan.co.uk/ShowSystem.asp?SystemID=1430

 

[Rochdale]

If you can't afford a bigger SSD you'll probably see a decent performance increase with an SSD cache drive like this http://www.scan.co.uk/products/64gb...orce-2281-mlc-flash-read-550mb-s-write-490mb-

They're not that expensive, you don't see them as a drive but they cache the most used data, so OS or the game you're playing most I guess.

You could even add it later on without having to reinstall your OS.

 

[Gottaa]

I did see the SSD cache options, but is it worked out for you, or is it just a drive you can install things onto ? (confused)

And that's a little over my budget on things, and I've always avoided overclocking (mainly off 10+ year ofl experience of friends always having problems with overclocked machines)

I was looking at:
http://3xs.scan.co.uk/ShowSystem.asp?SystemID=1346

But just upgrade the video card (recommendations welcome)
And maybe money allowing get the 120GB SSD to install the OS on ? (don't see SSD cache drive as an option, I guess that's only on more expensive one's

Edit: Is Overclocking a safe bet now ? (4-6 years life)

 

[Zed]

i think it does it for you - so it doesnt appear as a drive

 

[Dart]

The biggest performance boost you can give a PC atm is an SSD and there really cheep now. A 128GB drive will cover OS and a selection of games

 

[Rochdale]

I've got a 256GB SSD and I just use it for OS and apps, while I do have a few things most won't like development apps and photoshop I've only got Mass Effect 3 and Diablo 3 on it and it's at 119GB - they're quick but you can't keep your steam library on there.

You can fart about with symbolic links and stuff but I can't be arsed, games are fast enough off my striped magnetic disks, these days most software is bloatware and an SSD is no good for that. I think those cache drives look pretty good, they're invisible and cache whatever you're using most at the time. If I didn't already have an SSD I'd probably go with one of those.

 

[Bertyr]

I've had a 60GB SSD for a long time now, don't find it hard to keep the OS and a game or two on it and still have 10-15GB left after running crap cleaner once a month or so. (Only other drive is an 8-9 year old 74GB 10k Raptor (one recently died so no more RAID0 but that only holds WoW & D3 with 20GB left over! Everything else goes on the 3TB WHS
16GB RAM is dirt cheap atm too so may as well have that