Blogs Is LGA1366 the most future-proof choice?

http://www.bit-tech.net/blog/2009/07/16/is-lga1366-the-most-future-proof-choice/

 

intel have F*d up the transition here
especially with the P H and Q varients of the 55 chipset
which support on Cpu IGP's which do not.

however to be honest my building style is not to upgrade i merely buy a new system when i need / want one therefore whether a platform has a future or not is irrelevant to me so long as it can do on day one what i want it to do then i'm happy.

what i'm saying is i do not understand those that transitioned from q6600 to q9550 or 8800gt to 9800gt when your basically paying £250 for what maybe 5-10% at most

my theory is that the £250 would be better off in savings ready for when you have amounted that to £750 - £1000 giving you a brand new system.

(of course this does not take into account those that sell parts on second hand)

 

the article didn't mention about pricing of future LGA1366 chips.i understand that if you buy 1366 i7 now, you'd probably have to pay for future CPU with your limbs.

so, waiting for LGA1156 now is the best solution. since future CPU probably won't cost you a limb.

 

My old PC (Pentium4) died a month ago, so I had to buy a new PC - I had this longevity dilemma.. The only option was either to go with AM3, which didn't seem like it's going to get it's CPU performance as high as I might like it to be, or to go with S1366 (Which I'm using for half a month).
It really is a strange thing.. only 1 platform that can appeal to me at this point in time.

 

When people think Core i7 LGA1366, they opt for the 920 due to its affordable price.
IMAO future LGA1366 CPUs will never have 920's price point to avoid competition with LGA1156 CPUs.
Therefore, I won't buy a LGA1366 system, because I will never afford to upgrade it.

 

I got my QX6850 almost 2 years ago now (and i managed to get it for £299! ) and its still going strong, in fact i've only ever seen it hit 100% load for 3 seconds last summer some time... altho my mate rendering his final year project offered to burn it for me haha

the point here is that unless you are really doing CPU intensive stuff then core 2 is really gonna last you a few more years anyway and so your upgrade path with this socket won't make much difference in a couple of years.

eveyone is different but i'll be waiting for the DX11 cards or cheap performance SSDs for a next upgrade. My CPU is still spot on for me. (unless it explodes and i'll eat my words)

 

interesting point

if you have a 920 the only upgrade option for you may be a £500 CPU in a few months which renders the point moot anyway

 

I don't think I've done a drop-in processor upgrade since the Super Socket 7 days... no, no, I tell a lie; I did a drop in upgrade on my Socket A Athlon rig when the processor died. Since then, however, if I've upgraded, one thing or another has meant I've needed a whole platform shift. SDRAM -> DDR RAM meant a platform shift (Socket A to... Socket A). Single core to dual core meant a platform shift (Socket A to Socket 939). DDR to DDR2 and dual core to quad core meant a platform shift (Socket 939 to LGA775). DDR2 to DDR3 meant a platform shift (LGA775 to LGA1366).

The chance of Intel still using DDR3 by the time I really need to upgrade this Core i7 920 system is slim to nil, so it'd involve a whole platform shift again... so that negates the difficulties or expense of drop-in upgrades. But introduces the expense of a platform shift. So it's swings and roundabouts, really.

 

same here. the only drop-in-upgrade i did the last years were gfx-cards. i'm pretty sure i will be happy quite a while with my current i7 configuration.

 

My upgrade approach is the opposite: I do incremental upgrades, which in the case of LGA 775 was easy to do:
I had a Pentium D -> replaced motherboard with one compatible with Core 2 (with DDR and DDR2 support) -> replaced CPU -> replaced memory.
All this in a two or three year time-frame IIRC. More expensive if you sum everything, I know, but it's impossible for me to make the investment of a full PC each time. So the idea is to split the investment in phases that will also allow an improvement in terms of performance in each phase.

So, IMAO, I don't think LGA1366 will allow me to do this... But a LGA1156 system probably will... Only time will tell

 

I'm another incremental upgrader, i came all the way from P4 to E4300 to E8400 to Q6600 to Qx6850 to QX9770. I realised i've reached a dead-end now on s775, but that's fine.
At the moment, i'm counting om the QX9770 i got on the cheap to last me until Intel or AMD's next architecture.
AM3 is useless to me, as it would actually be a step back, not forward, and i really do not like the socket-split in Intel's lineup at the moment. The devide between s1156 and s1366 is preventing me to buy into either platform at all, since i simply do not know which path to take.

This means i'll just spend my cash on SSDs, GPUs and some watercooling kit for now, and ride it out to whatever comes next.

 

Some excellent discussion here - I probably agree that if future Core i7 CPUs are priced at £400+ then even LGA1366 isn't particularly attractive as a long-term bet, but more interesting is people's attitude to upgradability in terms of longevity of a CPU socket.

Many of you are saying that it's really not important whether there'll be new CPUs for your socket of choice a year of two down the line - you buy the best you can afford now and will likely junk it all in favour of the best you can afford whenever that becomes too slow.

Perhaps more surprising is that no-one has complained that I've practically dismissed Socket AM3 as a long-term option despite it being the newest of the three sockets I've discussed - I'd expected a few complaints at least!

Again, this probably goes back to the attitude outlined above - AM3 is a decent choice for now, and you're prepared that you might just have to chuck it in a year or two's time for whatever seems like a good option at that time. Very interesting stuff for us to know when forming our opinions of CPUs and motherboards - please keep posting!

 

The article also didn't mention that Intel's upcoming 32nm 6-core chip called Gulftown will only be an Extreme Edition chip. Sure, socket LGA 1366 will live on but will only find itself appealing to the enthusiast market niche.

 

The thing about AM3 is that it cannot offer performance close to that of LGA 1366 at the moment, so cannot compete on that front. It's more likely competitor will be LGA 1156, which sounds like it will blow it out the water from the early buzz. I'd wait for that if I was planning for a new PC, or go LGA 1366 for the performance you get now.

 

What is CCL's Bit-Tech's fascination with the Q9650? An i7 920 and X58 UD3R can be had for the same price as the aforementioned CPU and single PCI-E P45 UD3R, oh the ddr3 ram is £30 more than its dd2 cousin, but for that you get 2 GB more. It is like somebody has a warehouse full of expensive Core 2 Quads, that no sane person wants, the link or was that a shotgun wedding with CCL has damaging Bit-Tech's impartiality IMO.

Oh, isn't the upcoming 1366 socket sexa-core, an extreme edition only part, so unless you have a cool 900 ish pounds to blow on upgrading your 920, what other options would there be?

 

feel the same way xtrafresh.. I just buy stuff like more storage- heck if you can play every game maxed out with aa except crysis.. encode with it if you want- ssd's might be a good investment over a new socket

 

Well, I'm sure if one is an overclocker, there is no real need for a drop-in upgrade as we/they tend to buy the CPU with the most potential to OC (generally the least expensive) and end up getting it to where it competes with the higher end CPU's... The only thing to upgrade for the long haul is the GPU.

 

This.

This is the advice I've ever given anyone who's ever asked what computer/components they should buy or upgrade to - even when I worked in systems & components retailing (I was a nice guy in a computer shop, who wouldn't fleece you with an overpriced heap of tat, or flog the latest and greatest at you - suffice it to say that I didn't work for any company that has TV adverts!).

The chances are that when the time comes that you want something faster, you'll need to replace pretty much everything. As far as CPUs & motherboards go, I tend to stick with the same thing for a while and get every last penny of value from it. I will sometimes buy incremental upgrades to the RAM or graphics cards, but by the time it comes to getting a new CPU, the chances are that the platform or socket I'm using is out of date and I'll need a new board too. Often, this also means new RAM as well.

Of course the average bit-tech reader is probably a little more enthusiastic than most, and far more prepared to spend money on upgrades.

What this rambling means is that, longevity in a CPU socket for me means what value for money I get and what overclocking performance I can obtain. Hence why I went for the LGA775-based E5200, based on bit-tech's advice in the buyer's guides. I'm only using the stock Intel cooler, averagely-priced RAM and a modest motherboard, yet I've already got it running at 3GHz - this is before I've bought the planned watercooling setup and higher spec'ed RAM.

 

those talking about moving away from ddr3 - I have my doubts that we will see this soon. currently the i7 platform is so far in excess of bandwidth with tri-channel that a move to ddr4 will be unwarranted for quite some time.

 

Sandy Bridge is Intel's next major architectural upgrade, so in 2011 the 1156 will become old-hat, ironically Intel may even switch back to 1366 sockets, as triple channel memory may be necessary by then (Statement based on pure hot air!)

Given that Lynnfield doesn't increase clock for clock performance over the i7, and that talk of 5 GHz overclocks seem unlikely, especially as D0 stepping i7s can go over 4 GHz on air, then an I7 would be my choice.

The rationale behind my decision is one, the triple PCI-E x16 slots on the slightly more expensive i7 boards will allow gamers greater freedom to choose GPU set-ups. Two, the cheapest Lynnfield is supposed to retail at $284 and the motherboards, as mentioned by Bindi will not be cheap. Therefore, the total cost of an i5 vs a 1366 i7 build should be very close, as the i7 has been in the market long enough, so that discounting has started to have a noticeable effect. Three, 1366 i7s will mark you out as the hardcore, too cool for school, my momma no fool main man