Application Benchmarks: Productivity
Here are the benchmarks that might best represent day-to-day PC activity for the average user. Everybody has a virus scanner (I hope), so let's see how the systems compare when scrutinizing the AVG scan times:
There you have it, an impressive real-world result from the new Core i7 920. Even the highly overclocked E8500 can't touch these numbers. And now, let's see if these results continue when compressing a 334 MB folder with WinRAR:
Another impressive win for the Core i7, which performs the same task in almost half the time. Finally, the other compression utility, WinZIP:
...and by looking at the numbers, it appears that WinZIP is not quad-core optimized like its WinRAR cousin. The E8500's superior clock speed gives it a small margin for the win in this bench.
Next up, of course, are my personal favorites, the always entertaining and informative game benchmarks.
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man are we getting screwed in the UK?! i put this price list together at scan.co.uk and got to £1017,21 excluding delivery!
1 017.21 British pounds = 1 470.07189 U.S. dollars
mmm and in Ireland it adds up to 1101.16 Euros, thats 1554.76 U.S dollars on xe.com. Why is there a .co.uk version of this site when they are obviously exclusively U.S only? What relevance has any of this got to do with the UK? Why is Toms continually ignoring this discrepancy ?
be cool if you did a test using the q9550, very stable processor that can easily do 3.6ghz with air and more!
Finally! An article to help disprove the mythical £1000/€1100/$1200 Core i7 wonder build. Its not just wattage that the i7 eats for breakfast; you need to throw money hand-over-fist at i7 to realize its benefits. The i7-965 is Skulltrail all over again, but even the i7-920 seems more oriented toward protein-folding "trust-fund enthusiasts" than us mainstream gamers.
Its not that i7 is a bad platform, just that it was, is, and will be, an enterprise-oriented platform that only hardened enthisiasts can get the most out of; us mortals should stick with Core2 for a few more months and wait and see how the upcoming mainstream platforms (AMDs AM3 and Intel's LGA1120) shape up, rather than blow €1500-odd on a server platform then go "D'oh!" when we realise it really needed twice as much cash spent on it to make a significant return on investment.
And while I can't explain why the HD4850X2 refused to play ball at stock, its clear that you wouldn't have been able to get the CPU to 3.7GHz stable without the GPU underclock; check out the power consumption. Even the Corsair isn't really up to this, you need a 750W+ PSU if you're thinking about OCing an i7 build with gaming in mind.
The gaming benchmark was a no-brainer, but the i7 does seem to give both SLi and CF (with 2 or more cards, not on a single card)a boost. For the next SBM, i would like to see the i7 920 against the C2Q9550, tested with both single and dual graphiccard setup.
lol, i would like to see fps on GTA4, coz i wonder if even these great systems can play that really badly coded game.
....And while I can't explain why the HD4850X2 refused to play ball at stock, its clear that you wouldn't have been able to get the CPU to 3.7GHz stable without the GPU underclock; check out the power consumption. Even the Corsair isn't really up to this, you need a 750W+ PSU if you're thinking about OCing an i7 build with gaming in mind.
Yeh like +1.
Why are THG advocating a total overloading of a PSU like this... A 650Watt @ 591Watt OC load is crazy. A bet your power figures don't include instantaneous power consumption spikes either...
This article is really rank amateur IMHO. You guys should have stuck to C2D for this build - so that you could spend more money on your powersupply...
Bob
I think these articles are good myself there just doing what we normal pc buying mortals do give ourself a budget and buy a pc in that budget and we mere mortals almost never quiet have enough money to match our ideas and you sometimes make a mistake, like buy a wrong size power supply and a all new flashy cpu. For a extra 20quid i would have got the Q9550 and the 750watt power supply. If i was daft enough to buy now knowing that loads of new stuff coming out in a few months lol.
One thing I don't agree with though is buying everything from one place looking around different stores can save you loads. My last pc saved me 100quid I got my stuff from 3 stores which included 3 different delivery charges and I still saved a hundred and with the extra cash got a better graphics card and power supply just because I shoped around.
But there obviously getting paid advertising by that newegg company.
Exactly , if you had up the Hard Drive , DvD drive , motherboard chipset and power spikes to the 591w OC , is not very recomendable at all.
Plus , dont be surprise if take this configuration to a 2 night LAN party and systems shuts down several times during the even.
Botom line , the I7 should be scrapped from the NEXT SBM and replace with the q9550. But pleace do a comparasion between them , first.