Best current i7 for Overclocking

[Gavatron]

Hi all,

After a long time of hugging my q6600 I thought it time to upgrade.

Which current i7 cpu would you guys recommend for the purpose of overclocking ?

I found my B stepping G0 Revision q6600 to be the best overclocker in the old quad days and was wondering if the same kind of rules applied to the new i7 range. E.g could I purchase 1 chip and find another at roughly the same price overclocks far better just due to its revision/stepping.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

[amk-aka-Phantom]

Apparently, the best overclocker right now is Core i5-2500K. It has 6MB L3 cache and runs at 3.3 GHz by default and can be overclocked via unlocked multiplier up to 4.6-4.8 GHz on air in average. It costs about $210, as far as I remember =) If you want a Core i7, the best overclocker there is i7-2600K, which has 8MB cache and runs at 3.4 GHz by default and overclocks a bit higher than i5-2500K. It also has hyperthreading, which i5-2500K doesn't have, which is good for video encoding and 3D design (if you have applications that benefit from hyperthreading!), but useless for gaming. 2600k costs about $100 more than i5-2500K. If you're planning to do just gaming, go with i5-2500K, if you plan to do more professional work as well, go with i7-2600K.

 

[Gavatron]

Thanks for the advice, time to pick up a p67 board and an i5 I guess

 

[amk-aka-Phantom]

^ If you have the money, go for Z68 board... allows overclocking AND allows onboard graphics (in case your graphics card fails) and has new SSD caching tech.

 

[Gavatron]

ah cool, arent they dual channel boards ?

 

[amk-aka-Phantom]

Yes, both P67 and Z68 are. The only triple-channel recent chipset is X58 (the one with Core i7-9xx series), and while it's a good chipset, the older Core i7/i5 aren't as good as Sandy Bridge.