Conclusion
Source: Tom's Hardware US – Keywords: core, i7, overclock
Conclusion
This month's SBM was a lot of fun, as I was very interested in seeing how a $1,200 Core 2 Duo system would stand against a similarly priced Core i7 system. The lower price of the Core 2 Duo system allowed us to be able to afford the most powerful video card available, while the Core i7 system had to settle for second best.
Before going into specifics, let's look at an average performance summary:
From this chart you'd assume it was a clean sweep for the Core i7, wouldn't you? But the numbers are a bit misleading as the gaming benchmarks contain the Unreal Tournament 3 results, which skew extremely high in favor of the Core i7. In reality, the E8500 and 4870 X2 combo were much more compelling components for a gaming machine, because they afforded very playable frame rates in UT3, but held the lead in all of the real difficult titles (Crysis and Supreme Commander to be specific). A difference of 10 FPS makes a huge difference when your frame rates are as low as 20 or 30 FPS, and that's where the 4870 X2 delivered.
For productivity software like encoding, rendering, and general use applications, the Core i7 was the obvious winner. Why? Because it either lost to the E8500 by a small margin or beat it by leaps and bounds. The i7 920 also really strutted its stuff in some of the benchmarks.
But once again, are we being mislead by the numbers? It seems likely that the cases where the Core i7 920 really pull ahead are greatly affected by the software's ability to take advantage of quad-core architecture. We have to wonder how the i7 920 would fare against the Core 2 Quad Q9550, which has a slightly higher stock speed. It costs $20 or more, but the motherboard could be much cheaper. Maybe we'll select this CPU in our next SBM for comparative purposes. Let us know your feedback in the comments section below.
In any case, our conclusion is that the i7 920 is a great CPU to build a PC around, and that serious gamers who have to choose one or the other should favor putting money into the video card instead of the CPU and settle on the cheap-but-fast E8500 to run their rig.
Ideally, if you could have your cake and eat it too, a Core i7 920 paired with a Radeon 4870 X2 would make a formidable system indeed.
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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.