Intel Phases Out 19 Core-i3, i5, i7 and Pentium CPUs

[mapesdhs]

[citation][nom]aaron88_7[/nom]I'm amazed there are people still buying these outdated, old chips. The writing has been on the wall for well over a year now. Why people keep buying these old chips? I have no idea, but Intel is doing these people a favor by eliminating them from production.[/citation]

Outed & old eh? But they oc like crazy and easily outperform modern CPUs at stock settings at far
lower cost. Ideal for those on a budget. Check toms' results for SB-E for Lame/WinZip, my oc'd i3 550
gives 1m 17s and 2m 58s respectively; excellent performance for a general purpose system, and it's
pretty good for gaming too. Less impressive for multithreaded (no surprise since it's only 2-core with
HT) but it can match or beat a stock Phenom II 980 (1m 11s for 7zip, 1m 25s for Blender, 2m 20s for
WinRAR, 3m 20s for HandBrake). Likewise, my oc'd 870 is pretty decent for threaded stuff (56s for
WinRAR, 35s for 7zip, 49s for Blender, 1m 52s for HandBrake) but not quite as quick as the 550 for
single-threaded tasks. The 550 chip only cost me 50 UKP, mbd was 26, 8GB RAM new was 50, PSU
was 45, new TRUE cooler was 30. See: http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=2093028

It's surprising what one can build with a bit of care. The new products are excellent for those with the
money to burn; if one has more modest resources, there's plenty of scope for putting together some
really good builds using older 1366/1156 parts.

Ian.

 

[amk-aka-Phantom]

Outed & old eh? But they oc like crazy and easily outperform modern CPUs at stock settings at far
lower cost. Ideal for those on a budget.

It's surprising what one can build with a bit of care. The new products are excellent for those with the
money to burn; if one has more modest resources, there's plenty of scope for putting together some
really good builds using older 1366/1156 parts.

Load o'bull. SB is cheaper than 1366 - i7-950 is $270 and i5-2500K is $220; i5-2500k vs i7-950 benchmark. 2500K beats the 950 in pretty much every task, and that's $50 less, cost of 8GB of good RAM. For those on budget, eh? :lol:

LGA1366 is dead for a new buyer. You've got no reason to upgrade to SB if you own LGA1366/1156 setup, but there's absolutely no point to get these old CPUs if you're building a new system, period. My local PC hardware store has some i7-950s on its shelves for months - no one buys. Why spend more on less?

 

[mapesdhs]

amk-aka-Phantom writes:
> Load o'bull. SB is cheaper than 1366 ...

Actually I was really referring to 1156 more than 1366, but the same can apply to a lesser degree to some of the
1366 CPUs if one can bag them used for a decent price (usually not the case; I've been watching for ages,
ended up being easier/cheaper to get a used XEON X5570), but they're nowhere near as good value as used
1156 CPUs. In that regard I agree with you, I don't know why people pay so much for used 920 D0s, etc., when
2500Ks are such a decent price new - afterall, if one is buying a 920 D0, from what would one be upgrading? A C0?

1156 CPUs and systems on the other hand are a completely different proposition. My oc'd 870 gives exactly the same
times for single-threaded tasks as a stock 3960X, while for threaded tasks like Handbrake it sits precisely between
a stock 2600K and 990X. I bought an 875K for 102 UKP a while back (very good price), which because of its totally
custom turbo levels should allow me to get the single-threaded speed of the oc'd 550 (quite a bit better than a stock
3960X) and also the multithreaded speed of the oc'd 870 (plus a better setting for only 2 cores in use).

I've no doubt you'll criticise this, but the numbers speak for themselves. I have the data to prove my rationale.


> ... 2500K beats the 950 in pretty much every task, and that's $50 less, cost of 8GB of good RAM. For those on budget, eh? :lol:

I note how you completely ignored the results I quoted from my own systems. You're right about new 950s, but my
focus was more on 1156.


> LGA1366 is dead for a new buyer. ...

I wasn't referring to buying new, that much should have been obvious.


> ... but there's absolutely no point to get these old CPUs if you're building a new system, period. ...

Unless you can't afford the cost of the current new products, in which case bagging a used 550 or somesuch is
a very cost effective way of sorting out a damn fast system. Check the results I quoted, the 550 I built is a decent bit
faster than a stock 3960X for single-threaded apps, while for games it easily matches much quicker CPUs (high clock
largely makes up for fewer cores), eg. check the individual fps results for 3DMark11 with two 460s SLI:

http://3dmark.com/3dm11/2180979

I could probably run my 550 at 5GHz+ with a different board I obtained, but 4.7 is plenty.

The total cost of my 550 build was 250 UKP (not including gfx, already had those), for a system that's faster than a
stock 3960X for general (lightly threaded) tasks. I call that very impressive. Or I could have just fitted the 4GB
DDR3/1600 kit I won along with the mbd, which would reduce the total to a mere 218 UKP. Re GPUs, used 5850s
are going for as little as 70 UKP now.

If I had the budget, I'd buy the new stuff, but I don't, so I hunt bargains and build fast systems on a shoestring. The
results speak for themselves. Of course, the new CPUs can be oc'd aswell, but that's a different topic.

Ian.

PS. Early today, a 550 on eBay went for 52, Gigabyte GA-P55-UD2H went for 41, both good examples of decent value
used items that can be the basis of a good system.