Should I trade my i3 4150t system for an i7 930 system?

[Virtualmonger]

Hey!
I saw this guy's CraigsList ad, and I offered him my Alienware Alpha ASM100-1580 for his PC.
Here's the link to his Old i7 PC.

My Alienware Alpha is just the base edition:
i3-4150t,
4GB Ram,
GTX 860m OC,
500 GB hdd.

His PC is:
i7 930 2.9GHZ Quad Core (w/ Hyperthreading, can overclock to 3.5ghz)
Corsair Vengeance 8GB (1x8gb) RAM
Hyper 212 EVO CPU Cooler
Gigabyte X58 MoBo
EVGA GTX 570 HD GPU
(x2) WD Velociraptor 320GB 10,000RPM HDD - 640GB (raid 0)
120 GB Patriot Blaze SSD
Corsair TX850 850W PSU
Corsair Carbide 500R Case w/ white LED Lighting in front and sides

What do you think, should I trade my 2012 PC-Console for his old PC?
Just in case it might help, I got my Alpha for only $400 on Best Buy last year.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Anonymous09]

Well, in all honesty I think the trade benefits you more so than him.

For starters, the 570 is still a decent card for gaming. I infact am still running with my msi twinfrozr ii 570 in my main build, along with an ivy bridge. In terms of performance, the 570 and 860m are very closely matched.

The processor in your console is a lot better at single threaded tasks than his. the i7 930 is OLD man, over 6 years old. However, it being an i7 has the core count advantage. So for some games it will benefit, but for most games your cpu is a ton better than his.

Storage solution wise, he is way better off just by the fact he has an ssd, albeit an old one, it still is much faster than your lone hdd. On top of that fact, he has two fairly decent hdd's set up in raid as well.

Lastly, his psu is still great for today, and has plenty of room for expandability if you ever so decide to go down that route.

More importantly to the point of you having the leg up, adding to the already listed reasons, is customization. You don't currently have that with your console, your motherboard is in there for good, no upgrading your cpu or gpu. PERIOD. With his pc, you can swap that old x58 out and put in the latest and greatest intel 100 series if you so wish, or throw in a new Pascal card in a few weeks. That is a powerful perk to have, if not the most important perk for pc gaming. It's one of the, if not the, biggest reasons to switch to pc gaming over console gaming, you have complete control of your system with his build. If it were me, and I was looking for a full on pc to game, and what not, do whatever else, I would take it.

 

[Virtualmonger]

Well, in all honesty I think the trade benefits you more so than him.

For starters, the 570 is still a decent card for gaming. I infact am still running with my msi twinfrozr ii 570 in my main build, along with an ivy bridge. In terms of performance, the 570 and 860m are very closely matched.

The processor in your console is a lot better at single threaded tasks than his. the i7 930 is OLD man, over 6 years old. However, it being an i7 has the core count advantage. So for some games it will benefit, but for most games your cpu is a ton better than his.

Storage solution wise, he is way better off just by the fact he has an ssd, albeit an old one, it still is much faster than your lone hdd. On top of that fact, he has two fairly decent hdd's set up in raid as well.

Lastly, his psu is still great for today, and has plenty of room for expandability if you ever so decide to go down that route.

More importantly to the point of you having the leg up, adding to the already listed reasons, is customization. You don't currently have that with your console, your motherboard is in there for good, no upgrading your cpu or gpu. PERIOD. With his pc, you can swap that old x58 out and put in the latest and greatest intel 100 series if you so wish, or throw in a new Pascal card in a few weeks. That is a powerful perk to have, if not the most important perk for pc gaming. It's one of the, if not the, biggest reasons to switch to pc gaming over console gaming, you have complete control of your system with his build. If it were me, and I was looking for a full on pc to game, and what not, do whatever else, I would take it.

In simple words, our GPUs are almost the same, my CPU is most likely gonna be better in games, and his storage is way better than mine, right?
BTW, I am kinda in a tight budget so I probably couldn't get the latest parts that are being released in 2016. Do you think it would be smarter to just OC the 930 for now? I could get my hands on an H90 cooler for $60.
How do I know if a game runs better on a CPU with more threads?
Thanks

 

[Anonymous09]

They'll tell you, or you can look it up if you don't understand how the game is made. Games made with directx12, for example, have much greater control at utilizing more than 1 or 2 cores of the cpu. Considering though that it's brand spankin new, not many games are out using it, not many at all. Most games are designed to only utilize at most 2 cores, and that means single threaded performance means everything when it comes to gaming benchmarks. But in all honesty, the 930 still has a couple of years of useful life in it. The benchmarks for it on witcher 3 are extremely promising, over 60fps with everything maxed out(albeit coupled with a gtx 970).

Yeah, you could oc the 930 to get some extra performance out of it, but for 95% of the games out there, the current stock speed is capable enough and you'll be able to play with it fine. Why buy the h90, save your money and keep the 212, you can still get some serious oc'ing out of it. If you want to really oc it in the future, save you money up and buy something more expensive. The h90 isn't that bad, but you'd be wasting money on it. If you're going to be buying a new build in the future anyway, buy a really good one when you build that, save your money and leave this build alone for now if you don't have that much money lying around, cause like I said the 212 can get some good oc'ing done in the meantime.