I7... or i5 ?

[riepdiep]

Hello,
I'm going to make myself a new build.
First i thought about AMD Phenom II 955.
But now i thought: I want peformance... why not getting a i7 920 for the 100 Euro's more...
So i was looking for some motherboards and i thought i buy a Asus p6t Deluxe v2.
But than... i read about an Intel i5 Cpu... and i was like what is this weird thing ?
And cpu with intergrated graphics... ? well its all kinda weird for me...
So now my question is: Does that i7 beats i5 in games (talking about the 920 because of the price)
Or should i wait for that i5 ?
And if you all suggest that i7... is it still an option ? becuase intel already annouched it as EoL... ?
Or is there maybe going to be some other i7 cpu's that are going to be affordable for when ever i break my i7 920.. ?
Ow.. and can i run duel channel ddr 3 in that Asus p6t Deluxe v2 ? because i already bought myself 2x 2gb ddr3 1333 ram from corsair...

Already Thanks!
I hope this can make the i7/i5 story a bit clear because im so damn confused right now

 

[miocene]

The i5 doesn't have integrated graphics it has an integrated graphics controller... there's a difference.
The i5 will probs not be as fast as the i7 but it will offer great performance for the money and mobos and RAM will be cheaper (dual channel rather than triple).
Not all i7s are being discontinued - only those that compete with the i5.

I would go with i5 if you can be bothered to wait, that's what I'm doing... but you can still get a great i7 system that will last a while

You can run dual channel memory for i7 but will suffer a significant performance loss, if u go i7 buy a third stick of DDR3

 

[xyzionz]

Difference between i7 and i5 is the memory controller
i7 - Triple channel
i5 - Dual
but that doesn't really affect performance maybe 1~2% advantage against dual
and socket LGA1366 and LGA1156 or 1160 i don't know
once u get i5 and u have no way to upgrade to i7 and the future 6 core nehalem
the rest is more or less the same

 

[xyzionz]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/Intel-Core-i7-Nehalem,2057-13.html

just to show that triple vs dual doesn't affect performance that much

 

[M3d]

Dual vs. triple channel memory in gaming is negligible on an i7 system.
Read up on an early version of Lynnfield (i5) on a motherboard with a premature bios at Anandtech and see if you think the socket LGA1156 might be right for you in terms of price/performance. From the looks of it you might get i920 performance at a cheaper price but you can't really know for sure until it actually ships.

http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3570

 

[Griffolion]

On paper triple beats dual for obvious reasons, but the timings on DDR3 RAM atm aren't half as quick as DDR2's timings.

In this case, you may have that extra third channel in DDR3, but the data is being sent down at much slower intervals than DDR2.

Imagine DDR3 as a 3-lane motorway with a 40mph speed limit and DDR2 as a 2-lane motorway with an 80mph speed limit.. see where i'm going here.

Back on topic, DDR3 tech won't be viable until early 2010 so unless you really feel like spashing out, I5 with a decent set of DDR2 RAM is the sensible choice.

 

[logainofhades]

i7 will be better than i5 in multi card setups due to the fewer pci-e lanes for i5. PhII in games is comparable to i7. If all you care about is gaming save some money and go with the PhII and a nice 790gx or 790fx AM3 board and use the money saved for better graphics card. i7 is not EOL AFAIK. They are just axing the lower end models to make room for i5. Also there are some Xeons that will work in current i7 motherboards much like the X3220 was a Q6600 with a server badge. Single processor Xeon Nehalem based cpus should work in current boards even if such support is not listed. I believe i7 will still work in Dual Channel if you want to still go that route.

 

[wuzy]

On paper triple beats dual for obvious reasons, but the timings on DDR3 RAM atm aren't half as quick as DDR2's timings.

In this case, you may have that extra third channel in DDR3, but the data is being sent down at much slower intervals than DDR2.

Imagine DDR3 as a 3-lane motorway with a 40mph speed limit and DDR2 as a 2-lane motorway with an 80mph speed limit.. see where i'm going here.

Back on topic, DDR3 tech won't be viable until early 2010 so unless you really feel like spashing out, I5 with a decent set of DDR2 RAM is the sensible choice.

Timing and latency are two separate (but mutually related) things when it comes to determining performance. This will clear things up.
As regard to bandwidth, the IMC of Nahalem architecture simply has too much for your average gaming or multimedia app to take advantage of even with just dual-channel and utilising 4cores. Scientific/mathematic calculation related apps is where all that triple-channel bandwidth shines.

[EDITED]This is just all desktop/workstation usage of course. LGA1336 with its triple-channel was mainly designed for multi-processor scaling in mind for servers, the performance gain we got from desktop usage compared to Core2s are really just bonus.

 

[cjl]

i7 will only be better than i5 for more than 2 GPUs. Dual 8 lane PCIE-2.0 slots will be more than adequate for a pair of 4890s or GTX285s. Unless you want to run tri or quad SLI/CFX, they should be identical or i5 might even have a slight advantage due to the lower latency on die PCI-E controller.

 

[Bluescreendeath]

Main difference is the i7 has QPI while the i5 has a much much slower DMI.

I've read that QPI is 8x faster than DMI, but I'm not sure how this translates into benchmarks since i5 is directly connected to the PCI-e, so the advantage is probably negligible.

 

[wuzy]

I've read that QPI is 8x faster than DMI, but I'm not sure how this translates into benchmarks since i5 is directly connected to the PCI-e, so the advantage is probably negligible.

Excerpts from this page answers it all.

If you’ve got a multi-socket system (e.g. dual processor Xeon workstation, or Skulltrail successor) or if you’ve got a lot of high bandwidth PCIe devices (e.g. multi-GPU or lots of Larrabees) then QPI makes a whole lot of sense. However, if you’ve got a single socket system and aren’t running a lot of high bandwidth PCIe devices then QPI is overkill.

Excess bandwidth does not mean faster performance if you can't fully utilise it.

 

[Bluescreendeath]

^ I'm just wondering if i5's DMI will be good enough to be not be bottlenecked by high end GPUs for the next 5-6 years.

QPI has 8x more bandwidth than DMI, and I don't want to go with DMI if PCI-e GPUs that come out in the next couple of years have bandwidth that exceeds what DMI can handle.

 

[wuzy]

Did you not read what miocene and the article said about the integrated 16 PCIe 2.0 lanes on Lynnfield (i5)?

2GB/s provided by DMI is more than enough for stuff like SATA and USB, that's all it needs to provide.
P55 (PCH) is really just a renamed ICHx southbridge to be paired with Lynnfield.

 

[Bluescreendeath]

I'm obviously not talking about USB/SATAs - I am talking about the high end GPUS. Integrated with PCI-e slot doesn't change the fact the connection to the mobo is bottlenecked to 2-4 GB/s whereas QPI is 8x faster.


Various articles specifically addressed the fact that the smaller bandwidth might become problematic in the future.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3570&p=11

"More bandwidth to PCIe slots. I don't see this as a huge advantage today, but there may come a time when having as much bandwidth to your GPUs as possible is important. I'm thinking general purpose GPU computing, DX11, OpenCL sort of stuff. But we're not there yet."

 

[wuzy]

Then that limitation is down to the sixteen PCIe 2.0 lanes inside Lynnfield die and has absolutely nothing to do with DMI linking between Lynnfield and PCH (P55). That is what that quote is talking about.

 

[riepdiep]

Hey, Thanks for all the replys
I guess i will just go pick a i7 920 with that Asus P6T Deluxe v2, and Place my old Geforce 9600GT in this board until i can afford 2x Geforce Gtx 285 (A)
Btw do those run at a cheap 750 watt power supply ?

Greetss ^^

 

[dragonsprayer]

i7 is here now, the 920 should should be bought asap!!!!

do not be fooled by tests showing the i5 better for gaming, turn off the HT and increase the speed on the i7. i7 will have better mobos and faster graphics lanes.


i5 is sept -- if you buing now get i7 do not wait.

triple channel memory!!!!!

 

[Bluescreendeath]

i5 is about $200 cheaper...decisions decisions decisions =(

 

[Twoboxer]

It's all theory until i5's are launched, priced, and benchmarked. Two different "primary" sockets? I think I'll wait a while lol.

 

[Bluescreendeath]

Are the i5 mobos going to be SLi/Xfire compatible? How much will those types be?

 

[logainofhades]

They probably will be but you will be limited on PCI-E lanes compared to i7. I think i5 only has 16 pci-e lanes so you will be limited to 2 x8 slots for graphics.

 

[megamanx00]

I say get a 920 now and overclock the heck out of it. If you plan on leaving things at stock speeds then you may as well wait for an i5.

 

[logainofhades]

Even @ stock an i7 920 is no slouch.

 

[riepdiep]

Well to be honest... i did planned to keep my i7 920 at stock because i'm really to scared to overclock it... since i'm not able to affort a new board and cpu since i've been collecting money for 4 months now xD
And after 1 month i got like 550 euro's so i guess next month i'll get my system

 

[emyyhh]

Well to be honest... i did planned to keep my i7 920 at stock because i'm really to scared to overclock it... since i'm not able to affort a new board and cpu since i've been collecting money for 4 months now xD
And after 1 month i got like 550 euro's so i guess next month i'll get my system

A modest overclock on an i7 920 is very easy and virtually risk free. I have an i7 920 with a rampage 2 extreme board (basically an expensive P6T) and even with the stock cooler and no voltage increase its happy at 3.0Ghz 24/7. Its as simple as going into the bios, increasing the BLCK to 150Mhz and the RAM speed to 1500Mhz (which DDR3 1333 will be happy to do), saving and booting into windows. Then run Prime 95 / superpi and confirm stability. It gives a nice performance boost and takes less than a minute to do.