good afternoon everyone. having a big debate in our office about this, so my query today is into the new i3, i5 and i7 cpus. what does everyone know about the performance of these new chips? i currently own a intel core 2 extreme quad QX6850 3.0 ghz socket 775. is there any point in changing this to one of the new CPUS? if any performance increase be worth it? thanks
Yes, the i-series chips ARE faster than their previous generation counterparts. However, the question is whether you need that extra performance, the QX6850 is certainly no slouch. Another question would be whether or not you've overclocked that CPU yet, and whether or not you have an aftermarket cooler to make it more viable. Bear in mind that if you were to buy a new i-series chip you'd have to get a new motherboard and RAM to go with it, which also makes overclocking worthwhile (and a whole lot cheaper!).
Everything that EvilMerc said. A QX6850? That must've set you back around £800? I'd definitely hold onto it until the next generation of Intel CPUs are released. Hopefully you've already overclocked it to ~3.6GHz by now. Maybe try a bit harder and push to 4GHz with a new cooler.
I'd always opt to get a new cpu as they are faster, use less power and generate less heat than their older counter parts. However, it's up to you whether it's financially viable for you to splash out £1000+ on a new high spec computer when you might not need the added performance.
It all comes down to weather you need the extra power? What do you use your pc for? The QX chips are mean little overclockers and are more than enough for modern games if coupled with a half-decent gfx card. I'd personally wait for the new intel sockets next year and get a good gfx card for now; something in the order of a 5870. (But all i do is game.)
cheers for the replies guys. yeah the chip wasnt realy that cheap, in the 700quid range. id expect the new chips to be faster, but does anyone know how much faster? on reviews i havnt seen any that compare an i cpu against mine. my setup at the moment is pretty adequate for most things i suppose, but ive noticed it is slowing down on various thing, some games for example and general windows usage, well slower than youd think for what ive got. i tend to be the sort of guy where if something stutters and slows down i start thinkin its time to upgrade. perhaps an upgrade in another aspect might improve performance? perhaps a SSD for example? or maybe its time for a clean install of windows? im currently using 64bit vista. ive never been that impressed with it to be honest, always found 64bit to run slower than 32bit, lol perhaps im doing something wrong. lol i had it overclocked to 3.6 but found it wasnt really stable so reduced it to 3.4
I've got the same chip in my XFX 780i system and got it to 3.6 and stable with just the multi, Still a fast chip. You can pick them up for around £200 now. According to that chart my i7 chip is around 3.5 times faster than my QX6850
if that thing is slowing down, then its some other aspect of your pc that's causing it. that chip has more than enough grunt to run anything out these days. other than e-peen benchies, there is absolutely no reason to upgrade.
A clean install would probably get your PC running smoothly again. However, a clean install of 7 instead of Vista would certainly speed things up even more. I have nothing against Vista, it's just 7 runs so much more smoothly and boots up pretty quick. An SSD would help even more with that. What cooler have you got on the CPU?
ill have to have alook into how much windows 7 is to get a copy. although if you think it would help id prob go into purchasing a SSD then first. i use a XSPC delta v3 water cooling block.
