I7 950 vs i7 2500 vs i5 2500K vs i5 760

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sizzling_fates

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Hello,
I am actually so confused between all of them, having read reviews some people favour the old i7 950 over i7 2500, but I dont see how i7 950 can bee better when its a £100 cheaper? and the 2500 supports sandy bridge (sorry if im wrong)
I am not really good with hardware, but I really wanna be, I am finishing school in a week, Ive got a job for when i finish school so I am planning to save around £500 in a months time. Maybe I should save up a little bit more and get an i7 2500L? Is it really worth it?
Btw I am saving up for whole system unit, excluding the monitor
 

sizzling_fates

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thanks, that article was actually a lot of help. I dont see why i7 950 is £10 more than i5 2500K,
anyway one more question (sorry to bother you), how do i know if a case supports my motherboard? and is it reallly hard fitting one in? I've never done this before, but i really wanna get into this stuff.
 

sizzling_fates

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thanks, that article was actually a lot of help. I dont see why i7 950 is £10 more than i5 2500K,
anyway one more question (sorry to bother you), how do i know if a case supports my motherboard? and is it reallly hard fitting one in? I've never done this before, but i really wanna get into this stuff.
 

hyrule571

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The i5-2500K is better than the i7-950 sizzling_fates =]!

Price doesn't always matter, trust me! For example, look up the X6800 on google, its a Core 2 Duo Extreme. Its architecture is from technology back from around 2006, but see how its still just as expensive as the i5-2500K? The i5-2500K will beat up that X6800 badly! So the i5-2500K compared to the i7-950, the i5-2500K is better. It has newer architecture and can process things more efficiently and faster, regardless of a little less cache size =]

You can't go and buy the i5-2500K and ultimately expect to fit it inside of your existing motherboard unless if your sure you already have a Socket 1155 motherboard! If you have a motherboard planned to already buy then were okay. If so, post the motherboard you are planning to buy then we can tell you the size of the case you need! =D
 

sizzling_fates

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Thanks,
I know that, I am gonna get a motherboard with socket1155, but when I browse through cases, their specification say that they're compatible with ATX and micro ATX motherboards and I have no idea what that means /.\ I could tell you what motherboard I'm planning to get but then I won't learn how you figure out what case to buy, I wanna do it all on my own, thanks though :)
 

oby20

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It depends on what you use the PC for. since almost all the guys here are average users where gaming is the heaviest load their pc has done, yes The i5-2500K is better for an average user, its faster for people who just surf the net, email, photo viewing editing, and gaming of course, it has higher clockspeed, and the overclocking is an advantage, it will be much faster in non multi thread apps. If using CPU-intensive threaded tasks, such as HD video rendering, and image rendering and animations, that need triple-channel RAM and hyperthreading, the i7-950 that is a good choice because it will run much stable for that usage. believe me thats what i do with my pc.
 

sizzling_fates

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I wanna use it for animations, video editing, movies, and ofc gaming, do you think its worth spending another £50 and getting the i7 2600K instead?
thanks.
 

oby20

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no, its not worth spending, i7 2600k is just like an i5 2500k with hyperthreading. you will be needing a triple channel memory for animations, also its new Turbo mode only works effectively with single threaded applications, or applications that use less than the available cores, so the impact of the Turbo mode in animations will be small. i see sandy bridge as turbo version of the old LGA 1156, a gaming cpu for an average user, but not definitely for an intensive user such as animator and video editing 3D renderers.
i7 950 or i7 960 would be a better choice for that usage.
the main problem with the Sandy Bridge is the CPU may be fast enough, the rest is no more than mediocre at best. the problem with its chipsets, P67, Q67 and H67, is identical to the P55 chipset The lack of PCI-e lanes. This prevents one to use a nVidia MPE capable video card AND a raid controller. For high performance both are needed, but it is impossible on these platforms, due to the lack of PCI-e lanes. In addition only PCI-e 2.0 lanes are supported, not 3.0.The new platforms have the same shortcomings as the P55, making it unsuitable for serious editing. The H.264 test results with software MPE i thisn Tom's Hardware show 20:55 for the 2600K and 26:02 for the i7-950. 24% difference.
The best i7-950 in the PPBM5 benchmark has 93 s in the H.264 test and 127 s for the render test. An overclocked i7-920 has 65 and 73 s respectively. 43% and 74% respectiviely. These tests are incomparable, but the conclusion is clear Sandy Bridge is not faster than an OC'ed i7-920/930/950, still needs a nVidia card and still needs a raid controller, which is impossible. Sandy Bridge has no noticeable benefits over an OC'ed 920 and seriously suffers from the memory architecture for NLE work, combined with an intergrated graphics 'chip' that is unusable.
 

sizzling_fates

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but most applications dont use multi-threading do they? When I said animations, I meant adobe cs5, and thats all. I dont know any other applications as I am busy with school and stuff,
if I play games (such as GTA4, cod etc), edit videos on adobe after effects, record gameplays and such, is i7-950 better than i7 2600K?
 

oby20

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yes absolutely, i7 950 much stable running cs5 and edit videos in after effects, adobe software or any animation software is a core and memory hungry, the more the better.
all sandy bridge only supports dual channel memory and less pcie lanes. Combining 8 PCI-e lanes with the 16 lanes in the Sandy Bridge processors gives a total of just 24 PCI-e lanes, far less than Intel’s X58 which is 40 lanes, its something to consider.
 

compulsivebuilder

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The i7 9xx series are previous generation technology. Yes, they have triple channel RAM, but that's about their only advantage over the latest generation (Sandy Bridge).

For my latest build I bought the i7 2600 instead of the i5 2500 because the price difference wasn't enough to deter me :) If you are on a tight budget, though, you should definitely get the 2500.

BTW: only get the K version if you plan to overclock (or you desperately want the higher version of the integrated video...)

 

oby20

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sizzling_fates

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but you should understand that processors that can have 6c/12t are not much better than the 2600K or not bbetter than the 2600K, even in encoding:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/287?vs=157

also the price difference, i7 970 vs i7 2600K, £120 beetween them. also the 1155 socket still has a lot coming for it, including ivy bridge, unlike X58, which is soon to be replaced with sandy bridge-e, and therefore a dead socket.

Isnt that in favour of the 950 cos its cheaper?
 
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