Will you switch to Intel Core i7 ?

[Kursah]

With everything on Generation 1 phase, I only see those that feel they "need" the next newest and next "best" thing making the jump. While not necessary, I feel a small tug...but considering I can build a good overclocked Core2 gaming rig for the cost of the processor and motherboard of the new platform, bang-per-buck is just flat out not there...for many of us that will be the biggest detracting factor. I waited over a year before I went from Pentium 4 to Core2Duo...I didn't need to back then, but it did help greatly with my gaming and overclocking needs.

I think I will jump in when DDR3 continues it's trend of better affordability, there are more of the new generation chips out and the price point is more realistic, and the motherboards have gone through revisions, bios improvements, etc. I'm sure there are bugs, and I'm not about to dump a grand into a chip, DDR3 and an x58MB only to deal with issues, lacking support, and such...no way. Not saying the new stuff is bad by any means, but for enthusiasts..there is a long road ahead...I feel starting now is a bad decision for mainstream overclockers and gamers, the value is not there, the refinement is not there, the quality is probably there, but not like it will be in a year.

Benchers, and guys that feel the must have the newest of the new, even you guys in need of a new e-peen extension go for it! Keep the industry churning so we can get the next-gen parts at a cost that is more realistic and a better value!

 

[Bigjohn]

Just my 2 cents...
but, this past year I upgraded from an overclocked AMD x2-4800+ to an evga 780i board with E8400.

I can tell you this. AMD's on board memory controllers, and separate per-core cache allows that unit to boot FASTER with exactly the same applications installed as the E8400.

So, the first PHENOM launch blew it. They had issues with the chip.
But, if you have phenom today on 45nm side by side with c2d? Phenom would win.

AMD has some damn good engineering, and some brilliant chip designers. People slam them for the bugs in the first phenom chips... but does no-one remember the issues with Pentiums (or was it pentium 2?) with floating point calculation errors and such.... had to load patches to fix that in SOFTWARE....

I won't typically touch a chip until it's a 2nd revision anyway... and so, the next set of Phenom chips should be just fantastic.

 

[FudFighter]

how about the p4 and xeon chips that had to be microcode patched causing up to like a 20% perf loss, corse today everybody forgets that and just badmouths the first flawed k10's that dont NEED the patch in most cases, people tryed very hard on a bunch of forums to cause the chips to crash, and only one i ever saw managed it and even he admited he was doing stuff he would never do in real life(like runing hardware virtualization as well as video encoding and p95 at same time)

hey BJ shouldnt u change your avatar, the election is over

 

[spearman914]

Probably not. I just bought my rig for 1 and a half months.

 

[Bigjohn]

how about the p4 and xeon chips that had to be microcode patched causing up to like a 20% perf loss, corse today everybody forgets that and just badmouths the first flawed k10's that dont NEED the patch in most cases, people tryed very hard on a bunch of forums to cause the chips to crash, and only one i ever saw managed it and even he admited he was doing stuff he would never do in real life(like runing hardware virtualization as well as video encoding and p95 at same time)

hey BJ shouldnt u change your avatar, the election is over

Still NOBAMA for me... damn socialist.

But On Topic ---

My next box will probably have amd phenom, but it's not going to be for at least 2 year... My next upgrade will be a video card... need to upgrade from 7950gt SLI ...

 

[FudFighter]

Still NOBAMA for me... damn socialist.

But On Topic ---

My next box will probably have amd phenom, but it's not going to be for at least 2 year... My next upgrade will be a video card... need to upgrade from 7950gt SLI ...

meh, socialist or facist we aint gonna see any major changes if history holds true.

ouch 7950......thats old

guessing since your in SLI you will want to go Nvidia........meh I have an 8800gts 512, nice card but still prefer ati

 

[PCpraiser100]

I'm waiting for i7 to be fixed up through steppings and updated southbridges as well as waiting for the price tag to slash, who knows what erratum might linger in the newest release for the 1366 socket.

 

[FudFighter]

dont worrie, intel im sure would microcode patch it(and keep it quiet) and hey if u get a 20% perf hit, so what, u got the newist coolist platform anyway

 

[phanbuey]

Just my 2 cents...
but, this past year I upgraded from an overclocked AMD x2-4800+ to an evga 780i board with E8400.

I can tell you this. AMD's on board memory controllers, and separate per-core cache allows that unit to boot FASTER with exactly the same applications installed as the E8400.

So, the first PHENOM launch blew it. They had issues with the chip.
But, if you have phenom today on 45nm side by side with c2d? Phenom would win.

erm... WHAT!?! What planet do you live on?

My OC'd E8500 dual core runs faster than a stock Phenom 9950 (get your E8400 to 4GHz and you will see what i mean). Dont get me wrong, i wish what you said was true, that way intel would have less incetive to start charging organs for their chips, but its not.

Chip-wise you wont notice a difference with ur E8400 because of the 6MB of cache; that *almost* makes up for the fact that it doesnt have an integrated controller.

 

[v-zero]

No, it has been cheaper for me to build a cluster of Phenom PCs to do my rendering and encoding. Cheaper, and faster too!

 

[PaulieG]

the conclusion from this, are that 70% of users are people who hate anything other than whats currently popular.

No, 70% of users go to where they find the highest performance and potential.

 

[Bjorn_Of_Iceland]

On a gamer's perspective, seeing that i7s have good scaling performance in multi-GPU, it really is tempting to score one next year..

But then again, PC Games throttle their processing back to the console technology threshold since developers lean more on multiplatform nowadays... Leaving you with all that horsepower that would only be needed for Xbox 720/PS4 gen applications virtually under-used. Right now, a cheap core 2 would suffice. Clock it @ 4Gz and your good to go until next gen games arrive.

For temporary future proofing? Why would I future proof myself for something that can be scored years later for less the price? its not like China will invade the country and people would go panic buying on i7s.

 

[Mussels]

No, 70% of users go to where they find the highest performance and potential.

no no.

15% of people go to whats currently the highest performance.
50% of people follow them and their advice.
20% of people go a different way, and then get yelled at by the 50%, for daring to chose something other than what they blindly bought.
the remaining 20% realise i cant count, and that i totally made this up.

 

[WhiteLotus]

no no.

15% of people go to whats currently the highest performance.
50% of people follow them and their advice.
20% of people go a different way, and then get yelled at by the 50%, for daring to chose something other than what they blindly bought.
the remaining 20% realise i cant count, and that i totally made this up.

LOL

As stated i have no need for the i7 so i'm not going to waste my money on it. Maybe as a power folding rig, but then i could never justify spending that much on getting a bigger e-peen ppd score!

 

[Ongaku]

I'm happy in AMD land myself I just can't stand how much Intel's motherboards and chips are...if I even had the money to purchase Intel, I'd still buy AMD.

 

[InnocentCriminal]

Could another option of "I'm happy with my current hardware" or something similar be added please? What I mean is, I'm actually quite content with my current set up even though a lot of people would argue it's massively outdated. I actually enjoy spending my time maximising the performance of my components and taking them to their limits within what I decide as safe & comfortable running.

I'd like to upgrade to i7 but I'm not one for adopting new, immature technology and I haven't even installed XP64 yet so I have that to try before even considering purchasing anything. As well as having other financial obligations that are preventing me from jumping on the i7 or even Core 2 bandwagon, I'm happy with how my machine performs now. I'm at a point where my games play respectively at an image quality I'm more than happy with. When I get to a point where I can't get the image quality I want in the games I play, then I'll consider purchasing the components for my next build, and hopefully, by that time the prices of the components I'll want will have matured and the prices come to a reasonable price.

As for now, I'll abstain.

 

[thoughtdisorder]

I'll be staying with the Core 2 for the next several months as that currently meets my needs. Also, I'm curious to see what AMD has coming down the pike....

 

[Bigjohn]

erm... WHAT!?! What planet do you live on?

My OC'd E8500 dual core runs faster than a stock Phenom 9950 (get your E8400 to 4GHz and you will see what i mean). Dont get me wrong, i wish what you said was true, that way intel would have less incetive to start charging organs for their chips, but its not.

Chip-wise you wont notice a difference with ur E8400 because of the 6MB of cache; that *almost* makes up for the fact that it doesnt have an integrated controller.

My E8400 is clocked to 3.9ghz stable.
My AMD x2-4800+ ran at 2ghz.

Because I load a lot of services and applications at boot time, the "single shared cache" of the C2D is very inefficient.

A PHENOM chip, on the same 45nm process as C2D would be just as efficient as a c2d - remember I said SAME 45nm. When apples are apples and oranges are oranges it's easier to compare their functionality.

When cores share that l1 cache, data not found can result in cache purges... and re-fetches... very inefficient.
It works great when there is only one application executing, but not when loading and running multiple services.

If this were NOT true, they why:

Intel's 45nm 'Nehalem' processor architecture, due for release later this year, will see the chip maker adopt AMD's approach to cache structure: small per-core Level 1 and Level 2 caches connected to a big, shared Level 3 cache.

 

[silkstone]

I'm gonna stick with my plain dual core E2180 (3.3GHz) until the i7 is released. then i'll upgrade to core2 quad. the best peformance/price ratio is the tier below the latest technology and computer hardware depreciates so fast you need to have money to burn to keep up with all the latest gear.

 

[mdm-adph]

It's not a bad chip, but I don't see anything terribly attractive over just a normal Core2 right now.

Now, when a 32nm Core i7 comes out, with eight cores... hell, I might even go over to the dark side, then. That kind of technology is amazing -- however, by that point, AMD'll pobably be either bought by IBM and making weird 22nm Power7 chips or they'll have used that Middle Eastern venture capital to actually make the next Phenoms competitive, so who knows!

 

[50eurouser]

Core I7 ... waste of money yet

Personally I'll stay with my Q6600 for the near future, any user with a Core Duo E6300 and above with a little bit overclocking should be fine. These days VGA power makes the difference. It's unwise to spend 300€ for CPU 300€ for mobo and 230€ for a 3-Channel DDR3 memory. It should be fine to upgrate if u have something like a lazy P4 and some pretty old Athlon Xp/64 but for the majority of the Core Duo users is just a waste of money. Gamers should choose to buy a better VGA, but personally I'd prefer spending cash for christmas gift to my girlfriend, and not a gift to intel!

 

[Wile E]

I think I'll probably go i7 965 at tax return time. The main reason is for the ability to run both Crossfire and SLI on the same mobo, and still keeping my benchmarking competitive.

 

[Mussels]

Crossfire and SLI on the same mobo

thats why i'll be moving over. i'm simply waiting for the P series of mobos, that wont cost me three legs to buy.

 

[eidairaman1]

those who are Running Current Core 2 and A64 machines i say it is not needed to upgrade, those who are on P4, and 754 A64 machines or lower may want to Look at Core i7 and AMDs later stuff, i fit in that later boat.

 

[Darren]

My OC'd E8500 dual core runs faster than a stock Phenom 9950 (get your E8400 to 4GHz and you will see what i mean).

Ah, but is your E8500 @ 4 Ghz faster than a Phenom 9950 @ 3.4 Ghz ?

Thats saying a lot considering in the UK the E8500 costs the same and sometimes more than the 9950.

Edit:

To answer the poll:

I think I'm gong to stick with my Athlon 3800+ X2 @ 2.7 Ghz, it plays my current games with extremely high frame rates and high detail coupled with 8 GBs of DDR2 and a 9600 GT. However next year in June/July 2009 I may decide to purchase a high end AMD such as the Phenom 9950 or see what the Deneb is offering. I have no intension of changing my motherboard to Intels or AM3 because I dont like the idea of changing my ram from DD2 to DDR3 just because Intel/AMD feel like change. Moving to AM3 will be expensive and moving to Intel would be stupidly expensive. I'm staying with AM2 for another 2 years.