Hi,
Looking for some help please. I have this i7 920 and in the back of my mind im thinking sell sell sell go get something like the i3 4330 or event <£150 i5 haswell board and chip....
What do you guys think? My use is very occasional gaming but looking for future proofing.
I am the gadget man!
Decent aftermarket cooler and OC it a bit. Can't see any reason why you'd sell it to get something as significantly inferior as an i3, tbh - that's a huge downgrade. May as well get an AMD A10 at that point - at least that way you get a decent IGP that can handle medium quality 1080p gaming, as well as a reasonable 4 thread CPU. A haswell i5 at < £150? It'll be a lower spec one, barely an upgrade at all in real terms (although you'd get slightly better straight line speed).
With both next gen consoles running semi-custom 8 core AMD APUs, game engines will become increasingly well threaded and will target 8 thread execution. Early BF4 benchmarks have already shown that it loves 8 thread machines. And I don't think there are many games out there that will struggle with an i7 920 in the socket. I don't see any advantage to getting rid.
What motherboard and GPU have you got for it?
The OP already has a Core i7 3820 it seems. Is the Core i7 920 in a secondary PC??
That 920 should get to around 3.8-4Ghz. I would keep it and clock the nuts off it. I went from a i5 760 @4.2Ghz to my 4670k and i am quite disappointed with the "upgrade", especially now it looks like the Haswell refresh will need a new motherboard.
As said the 920 is stronkerer than the i3. I wouldn't upgrade to an i5.
If you're worried about value then sell it and sit on the cash. Funnily enough the 920 is probably nearly as valuable as a x58 motherboard!
I have the i7 920 sitting in my spare PC and it still runs everything I throw at it without a hiccup. My main PC has an i7 3770k.
I'd keep the i7 - why sell it only to get a new board and a CPU that won't perform as well? If you want the features Z87 brings for you, then I can understand but B85 and H87 boards would be pointless to splash out on at the moment. CPUs haven't seen a huge increase in performance since Sandy in my opinion. Keep it, chuck a noctua cooler at it and overclock it to its potential and leave it like that.
The i7 920 is a fantastic CPU. I made the "upgrade" to an i7 4770K and honestly there isn't much a performance increase. I made the upgrade because I wanted the added benefits of USB 3 and SATA III.
The i7 920 once overclocked to 4Ghz will keep you going for a long time if you don't mind missing some features, but it isn't worth going to i3 or i5.
My main PC is still an i7-920. Currently clocked at 3.4. (I've struggled to get it much past 3.6ghz)
Kids have Ivy bridge i5's which in a very unscientific speed test of using Handbrake to transcode DVD to MKV match its speed. My laptop with a Haswell i7 beats it significantly at transcoding a bluray.
Having said that, I'm not planning on upgrading it yet. Its just too expensive to get something that although faster, isn't noticably faster for most day to day tasks. (Visual Studio 2013 still seems to takes AGES to load on any PC...) So another vote here for stick with it and use it for overclocking experiments. Once its let its magic smoke out you have a good excuse to upgrade.
Another vote for sticking with the i7. I have a 920 running at 3.8. Can't get to 4 whilst keeping the temps sensible but with an added USB 3 card and a new 7970 it still does everything any new chip will manage. Only thing I miss is Sata III but its not enough of an issue to warrant the expense. Wait till the chip dies or Skylake comes out.
Me too, unless you go all out for something like a 4770k and get a nice overclocker, the difference won't be huge.Originally Posted by Meatfish
I even keep the power options set to underclock my CPU and it sits around 2.4 for 90% of the time -only speeds up to 3.8 when gaming or using Lightroom/Photoshop. For internet, films etc it is already vastly quicker than needed.
Just keep it. Per clock performance difference between generations seems to be about 2.5-10%, but rather closer to 5%. So unless you upgrade to a new Haswell i7 (what would yield a 20% performance increase in average), rather just keep it and go for overclocking if you need extra performance. If not enjoy it till it dies and goes to silicon heaven :-D
Was contemplating a Haswell upgrade to replace my i5-750 last year but then bottled it in the end to wait and see what AMD Steamroller was going to be like - not worth the wait really by the looks at it
My next target is an 8-core Haswell-E CPU towards Q3 this year - fingers crossed.
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