Is an i7 950 still a good choice for gaming.

[unpealableorange]

I'm looking to build a cheap machine to play some games and maybe get a bit of work done p. Light photoshop etc and Ak can pick up the i7 and an msi x58 board for £90. It's a good deal for sure but is the i7 still viable for gaming and how would it compare to an 8350 or i3 (both overclocked)?

 

[Phil923]

The i7 950 is still a great choice and if you can get a good overclock out of it it beats both the 8350 and the i3.

£90 is a great deal for that chip and it still has a decent amount of life in it.

 

[andy_Man]

I think it's a pretty good deal. If you are comparing it to an i3 or an 8350. However, if you can afford a new i5 go for the i5.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-cpu-review-overclock,3106-5.html

 

[The G Rig]

I'm looking to build a cheap machine to play some games and maybe get a bit of work done p. Light photoshop etc and Ak can pick up the i7 and an msi x58 board for £90. It's a good deal for sure but is the i7 still viable for gaming and how would it compare to an 8350 or i3 (both overclocked)?

I have a Core i7 930 at 3.86Ghz, and is still quite good in gaming.

 

[mapesdhs]

A used i5 2500K would be good, but they cost quite a bit more, so 90 for an i7 950 and an X58 board is definitely a good deal.

Certainly oc the CPU though. If you have a large enough case, Scan (on eBay) are doing an excellent price on refurb Corsair H100s (I've bought several; normally I'd suggest the H80, but they're out of those atm). See item 131453059496.

Ian.

 

[unpealableorange]

Do you think there would be any bottleneck if I paired it with a gtx 980 in theory, what I can do is splurge on a graphics card and upgrade later to sky lake or the new Amd CPUs when they come out.

Thank you for all the answers so far btw

 

[andy_Man]

Do you think there would be any bottleneck if I paired it with a gtx 980 in theory, what I can do is splurge on a graphics card and upgrade later to sky lake or the new Amd CPUs when they come out.

Thank you for all the answers so far btw

I would totally do this. Some settings in some games might do better with a better cpu, but not that much better. Things like draw distance, and density of trees/people/buildings/etc are more cpu dependent. However, that is the idea behind directx 12 is to do less draw calls to the cpu. So directx 12 games should have less cpu overhead.

 

[mapesdhs]

Do you think there would be any bottleneck if I paired it with a gtx 980 in theory, what I can do is splurge on a graphics card and upgrade later to sky lake or the new Amd CPUs when they come out.

To a degree, yes, but certainly not as bad as some other CPUs would impose. Thus, getting one now (or rather, after the 390X launches so you can exploit the price drops. 😀) but taking advantage of a platform swap later is a good idea.

As I say, my X5570 is basically the same as an i7 950 (the latter has a slightly higher base clock, but they share the same max Turbo, cache size, etc.), so if you like I can bench it with a 980 and add the data to my site (Unigine, 3DMark, CoJ, etc.) I already have data for much beefier CPUs like a 5GHz 2700K, 3930K, etc.

Ian.

 

[The G Rig]

Do you think there would be any bottleneck if I paired it with a gtx 980 in theory, what I can do is splurge on a graphics card and upgrade later to sky lake or the new Amd CPUs when they come out.

To a degree, yes, but certainly not as bad as some other CPUs would impose. Thus, getting one now (or rather, after the 390X launches so you can exploit the price drops. 😀) but taking advantage of a platform swap later is a good idea.

As I say, my X5570 is basically the same as an i7 950 (the latter has a slightly higher base clock, but they share the same max Turbo, cache size, etc.), so if you like I can bench it with a 980 and add the data to my site (Unigine, 3DMark, CoJ, etc.) I already have data for much beefier CPUs like a 5GHz 2700K, 3930K, etc.

Ian.

Yea, but with Windows 10 coming, which will feature DX12 which solves many problems such as when gaming your GPU will do most of the powering rather than the CPU, unlike with DX11. So a old CPU with a really new GPU isnt such a bad idea, considering the CPU and MOBO is only 90 pounds.

 

[mapesdhs]

Yes indeed; I didn't mention DX12 as andy_Man already covered it nicely.


unpealableorange, if you want any info about suitable coolers, fans, etc., for oc'ing, feel free to PM/email, I've done a lot of builds. And see Miahallen's guide on oc'ing X58 CPUs, it's pretty good.

Note I've done some 980 testing with a P55 board, which should give a reasonable estimate of how 980s would behave with an X58 setup, as long as PCIe bw isn't a factor (and it rarely is). I used a 4.3GHz i7 870, with 1, 2 and 3x 980, currently the fastest P55 setup on 3dmark for various tests. It does lose a bit to using the 980s with a later CPU, but not as much as most people would assume (though P55 has a small advantage over X58 as it's a slightly lower latency platform). Thus, overall, X58 should work rather well, especially given a bundle cost that low. I built a 4.5GHz 2500K system for someone recently, but the CPU cost about that much on its own.

Ian.

 

[Steven Merrell]

I'm looking to build a cheap machine to play some games and maybe get a bit of work done p. Light photoshop etc and Ak can pick up the i7 and an msi x58 board for £90. It's a good deal for sure but is the i7 still viable for gaming and how would it compare to an 8350 or i3 (both overclocked)?

The i7 950 is still a good gaming processor. You just want to back it up with a good Graphics card and at least 8 GB of memory and you'll be set. Gaming doesn't require a massive processor so much as a fair amount of memory and a high quality graphics card.

 

[mapesdhs]

Yup, and thankfully RAM is reasonably priced these days, though I just keep bagging used GSkill 2x4GB 2133MHz kits for about 40 each (lifetime warranty rules! 😀) or sometimes even better wins, eg. this.

Ian.

 

[unpealableorange]

Guys I definitely think I'm going for the i7 now. Thank you all for your great answers!

 

[mapesdhs]

Best wishes! Feel free to post again or PM/email if you run into any issues.

Ian.

 

[unpealableorange]

Quick update if anyone's interested, i've ended up going for an x5650

 

[mapesdhs]

Fascinating! That looks rather like a greatly clock-reduced i7 970, but with the same cache, faster QPI, higher Tcase, larger RAM support and also direct support for 1333MHz RAM which is good (should make it easier to handle configs with all six slots used). How much did it cost? Hard to say how well that will oc, but it should easily reach the same level as an i7 970. Only down side is the difficulty of stretching its single-threaded potential, but in some cases the extra cores will make up for that, perhaps having faster RAM too.

Ian.

 

[unpealableorange]

It only costed £50 which was what surprised me, the 6 core lga1366 Xeons are ridiculously cheap now. It looks like an incredible budget CPU now, far better than a G3258 which I was going to buy. I've scoured forums and from what it seems, it's easily capable of 4.0 GHz which could help with the single threaded stuff. It's Cinebench scores aren't too dissimilar from a 4790k either.

 

[mapesdhs]

Indeed, 50 is good for a CPU like that! I did some hunting, OCN has a XEON owners club, I think I saw someone there with that CPU running at 4.2, looks like a winner for that price! Sure the IPC is lower than a modern chip, but in the meantime the extra threads ought to make up a lot of the difference. Congrats!

Ian.