News Core i7 a waste of money for gamers, says Nvidia

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2009/04/23/core-i7-waste-of-money-says-nvidia/1

Nvidia describes Intel's claims about Core i7's gaming performance as "disingenuous", and advises PC gamers to build a Core 2 Duo SLI rig instead.

 

Wow... After all of these GTS250's and other stupid name changes, it appears a miracle has taken place..

nVidia have said something that makes SENSE!

(Might also be because nvidia don't have an i7 chipset, but, meh, they can 'win' this time )

 

Yeah but ultimately its all about having teh megahurtz for most enthusiasts.

 

Fair enough. I was thinking about core i7 till I saw the same numbers... realised that my E8500 is absolutely fine and money better spent elsewhere. To base 'gaming performance' on Vantage CPU test is worse than disingenuous, why not call it what it is - a barefaced lie to try and sell more hardware...

 

I'll just grab an Intel mainboard and a single powerful GPU instead of a pair of crappy ones, a slower CPU as the Intel mobo can actually clock, and a smaller PSU, and get even more games. Take that, Nvidia.

 

Well if Intel was as lazy as Nvidia, the I7 would have been a rebadged Pentium D!

 

Ha yes exactly - new GPU bought and intel mainboard on the way. Funny isn't it that this Mr Petersen slags off Intel for this, then himself suggest going nVidia mobo + SLI! All as bad as each other....

 

haha 'Pentium D-1000', and twice the cost

 

Intel can claim impressive performance increases when it comes to Sli and XrossFire scaling, if you head over to Guru3D.com they show an impressive review with SLi and XrossFire scaling using the i7 architecture.

But it is quite lame from Intel to claim gaming improvements when they are not even using a game but a synthetic benchmark.

If I build an 3x Sli or 4x Crossfire rig I would only use an i7 and nothing else!

 

I'd actually go for Core i5 and the best single-gpu VGA i can get xD. But that's cheating i guess, obviously most of us [that are gaming a lot] would go for more GPU juice.

 

"Yeah but ultimately its all about having teh megahurtz for most enthusiasts."
Errr... wrong!
"enthusiasts"? What are those?... Imaginary rich people?
[/sarcasm]

Don't get me wrong... being an enthusiast is great but it's not ultimately about them.
If you remember, there was a shortage of GTX 295... and probably still is... and on part of AMD's side, they don't plan a reference 4890 X2... that'll be up to Sapphire or someone bold enough to do that. Why?... there's no interest.

it's all nice and well... but it's not something they can actually make money of.

And Dick here has a point... the i7 is currently to overpriced for all of us... and we, all of us, is what it's all about!

We like midrange... and if possible... overclock-monster midrange is a plus! Some... and do notice... it's SOME... will go for high end... and if possible... overclock-monster highend is a plus... but stop here.

 

If you have a big screen (talking 24"+) and play games at the higher end of the quality settings I7 is indeed a waste of money as games will simply not be cpu limited.
However, outside of high res gaming I7 rules the world of computing.

 

It's nice to see them saying something straightforward, but I'm sure there's some equally suspect figures in some of the nVidia powerpoints...

 

That's why nVidia's own Dick-head [sorry, I know it's weak but they're getting on my nerves by now wiht all their "Bash me, bash you" crap] talked about a GAMING rig.

Anyways, of course it's overkill for gaming and we all know the absolute max you need for gaming at the moment is a nicely overclocked Core 2 Quad. And let's face it, even that is overkill. As long as there are no games really using multiple cores and lots of CPU power for an AI that actually deserves that name or some unheard-of physics effects no gamer needs i7.
I am more than happy with the gaming performance of my C2D E6600 @ 3.6 GHz.

And I agree with not going the SLI way... yet. Buy a single card, go SLI when that isn't enough anymore.

 

While Nvidia's reasoning for taking potshots at Intel is questionable, their logic is sound.

For all the talk of "CPU Bottlenecks", unless you are running a seriously underpowered chip, the same money spent on a CPU upgrade almost always results in a better performance boost if you instead put it into a better GPU.

 

I agree in terms of gaming the i7 is a waste of money, considering what you pay for, you might as well stick with a high-end ddr2 setup.

 

I've had a fairly significant increase in performance since replacing my first-gen C2D E6600 with an i7 920.
I had the E6600 clocked at 3GHz, matched with a 680i and 4GB of DDR2.
The i7 is clocked at 4GHz and matched with an X58 and 3GB of DDR3.
I'm using the same GPU with the i7 as I was with the C2D, an 8800GTS512.

It's probably quite safe to assume that the difference in performance in my case is attributable to the 1GHz difference in clock speed and maybe also somewhat to the increase in memory bandwidth, but the important thing for me is that the difference is there and noticable.
The thing is, I also use my PC for music/audio production and experimental audio programming, not just for gaming.
If I were using the system solely for gaming, that upgrade probably wouldn't have been justified.

 

Thanks for infusing a dose of reason Nvidia; especially regarding the new "rip off" project from Intel, named Core i5.

 

They didn't mention the I5, the I5 has not even been released, if you are not careful, you will end up, screaming about I5s in a padded cell

 

I rather buy a Phenom II 720BE with am3 gigabyte motherboard and 4gb ram for 300 euro. And get some more juice out of my GT8800 until its acting like a "slide-projector". With the money saved I can then buy the latest and greatest midrange videocard at the end of the year...