cpu upgrade

[tomfmcs]

Hello,

I have a i7 2.66. I am thinking about replacing it with a i7 3.20 or a 3.33.
My question, will I have a large enough speed increase to justify the cost.
The main use of the system is gaming.
Thanks
Tom

System
home brew
mb-- gigabyte ga-ex58-ud4p
cpu i7 2.66
mem- 12gb corsaair ddr3 1600
ps 1000 watt
card gigabyte 6870 ati
os win 7 64bit

[Neon_WA]

you may need to give more info of model you have and ones you are looking at for anyone to be of help

i7 2.66GHz >> i7-850, i7-870S or i7-920
i7 3.20GHz >> i7-960, i7-965 or i7-970 << 970 benchmarks 50% more than 960
i7 3.40GHz >> i7-975 or i7-980 << 980 benchmarks 30%+ more than 975

[tomfmcs]

ok thanks,

Hello,

I have a i7 920 nehalem 2.66 ghz. I am thinking about replacing it with a i7 960 Bloomfield 3.20 ghz or a i7-980 Gulftown 3.33 ghz.
My question, will I have a large enough speed increase to justify the cost.
The main use of the system is gaming.
I am looking for decent speed increase with out the cost of a new build.
Also I am wanting to keep it at $550.00 or less.

Thanks
Tom

System
home brew
mb---- gigabyte ga-ex58-ud4p
cpu-- i7 920 nehalem 2.66 ghz
mem-- 12gb corsair ddr3 1600
ps--- 1000 watt
card---gigabyte 6870 ati
os-- win 7 64bit

[Neon_WA]

a i7 960 will give you about 15 - 20% boost in benchmark for about $200 - 250
a i7 980 will give you about 80% for about $500 - 550 but it is unlikely your games will make use of the extra 2 cores
so you may only get 20 - 30% boost in game play

some of the other guys may have more knowledge about that

[tomfmcs]

Thanks for the info.
Looks like I may have to go with the 980. I'll hang on for a bit longer to see if any gamers may weigh in with some info.

[sdeane82]

Have you done any overclocking before or considering it?

[tomfmcs]

Hello,
I have over clocked some. I never push the cpu to far as I do not want
to have to listen to the larger cooling fan I have had to put on cpu's in the past. So I don't push it to far with the stock fan. I'll load up the gigabyte oc software again and give it another go.
(next day)
Have the cpu oc'ed up to 3.00 ghz any thing more gives me post and boot errors. Now I remember that was one of the issues I was having when I built this system and was oc'ing it with this easy tune software. 35 min into bfbc2 running 3.0ghz I end up with the blue screen of death with the stock fan.

[sdeane82]

Tomfmcs, getting a better heatsink would help with your temps tremendously. Second, the best way to overclock is using the system bios instead of software. What you want to do is only go up in small incriments and then check for stability. If you need help with overclocking in bios pm me.

[Bonsai Bill]

[tomfmcs]

Hi,

Thanks for the info and all.
Have been reading up and experimenting with a few things.
Bought a Noctua NH-U9B CPU Cooler and installed it. Ran it for a couple of months and observed the temps, man this thing cools.
A couple of weeks ago I got into the bios with some instructions from a tweeker that has the same board and cpu I have.
All said and done the i7 2.66 is now oc'ed and running at 4.00 mhz with no cooling issues or stability proplems so far.
Here are the temps and stuff.
Are the temps looking ok.
Any comments about harming the cpu. I would like not to harm the cpu if I can avoid it. Current finances say I can afford the i7960 3.20 if the over clocking numbers do not look good.
Thanks for the help and input.

[Marcin]

Run orthos or prime95 torture test and then see if temps are under 65 centidegrees.

Your OC result is very fine and gives much more performance than i980 at stock speed at 4 core aplications.

[tomfmcs]

Hello,
I ran prime95 for 2 hrs and the core temps were at 62 and 63c. I then ram bf3 and the core temps ran up to 70c for two cores and 68c for the other two cores.
The question I have is do I need to keep the core temps below 65c or the over all cpu temp. As I see from the monitor program the core temps seem to be 4-5c higher than the overall cpu temps.
I dropped it back to stock speed for now till I can get a reply.
Thanks