So is a 7 year old X58 system obsolete. Lets get some numbers and see.

[CAPSLOCKSTUCK]

I built one for a friend earlier this year.

E5640
hd6970
8gb ram
MSI pro -e
ssd
hdd

worked out £225.00 all in

Every one is a winner.................

 

[horik]

Will my CPU ( I7 950 ) bottleneck a GTX 1070?

 

[Rincewind]

Will my CPU ( I7 950 ) bottleneck a GTX 1070?

It depends on how you see it. While it's likely the 1070 won't perform at its absolute best, with GTX 980 and 970 SLI setups running fine on X58, I doubt you'll be disappointed by its performance. It's what I'm planning to plant into my X58 once the prices go down a bit and manufacturers throw revised versions into the shelves.

However, you do seem to have a 970, so, on one hand, your current card likely performs better on Haswell-E at least, on the other, I don't really believe the upgrade will blow your mind, but rather smooth things out where they were a bit murky with your current card.

I'm not advocating for you switching platforms or anything, but I'd personally rather jump to something like Haswell Refresh (4790K with a more recent, good and fully featured mobo) before spending on the 1070. The only reason I'm considering 1070 first is that my current card is sensibly weaker than what you have - a 660Ti, which shows its age a bit in Witcher 3, the new Doom and a few other select titles.

 

[dorsetknob]

These poor old workhorses really need to be put out to pasture...

" I'll take them untested unrefurbished unsupported ect " so will @CAPSLOCKSTUCK rather than you landfill them

we still waiting for an answer
We have dog Sanctuary's, cat Sanctuary's Donkey Sanctuary's and two Xeon/x58 Sanctuary's one in wales @CAPSLOCKSTUCK AND ONE IN DORSET @dorsetknob we would home them fettle them and take good care of them in their old age

 

[R-T-B]

we would home them fettle them and take good care of them in their old age

Fettle them? Is it just me or does that sound dirty?

 

[Rincewind]

Fettle them? Is it just me or does that sound dirty?

Only for a dirty mind It only means condition / to condition, but you can twist it to mean dirty stuff

 

[R-T-B]

Only for a dirty mind It only means condition / to condition, but you can twist it to mean dirty stuff

Wow, it actually means something?

Now I feel stupid. Dirty mind though? Don't test me bro.

 

[Dethroy]

Honestly, I see absolutely zero point in upgrading my Xeon E3-1230v2 anytime soon.
But I plan on doing a mini-ITX build in the world's smallest case capable of housing high end GPUs - the DAN Cases A4-SFX (7.25L only) if anyone is interested. If there was a decent LGA 1155 mini-ITX board available, I wouldn't have to part with my beloved Xeon E3-1230v2. Unfortunately, every Skylake CPU, except the i7 6700K, seems to be no more than a sidegrade. Sadly, the i7 5820K's TDP is too high for such a project ...

If you guys don't intend to move to a smaller form factor or desperately need new features, then I see no reason why you should upgrade from those sexy X58 systems.

 

[dorsetknob]

Fettle them? Is it just me or does that sound dirty?

@R-T-B learns a new word
and today's second word gurning

PS there is a World championship in Gurning

 

[silentbogo]

Honestly, I see absolutely zero point in upgrading my Xeon E3-1230v2 anytime soon.
But I plan on doing a mini-ITX build in the world's smallest case capable of housing high end GPUs - the DAN Cases A4-SFX (7.25L only) if anyone is interested. If there was a decent LGA 1155 mini-ITX board available, I wouldn't have to part with my beloved Xeon E3-1230v2. Unfortunately, every Skylake CPU, except the i7 6700K, seems to be no more than a sidegrade. Sadly, the i7 5820K's TDP is too high for such a project ...

If you guys don't intend to move to a smaller form factor or desperately need new features, then I see no reason why you should upgrade from those sexy X58 systems.

There is a nice selection of Z77 ITX boards. I've personally handled a Z77E-ITX from AsRock and and equivalently decent Z77-ITX WiFi from Zotac. Both have a WiFi adapter included. The later one sells for as low as $60-70 (if you can find one, since most are still in use). If you truly want to build an ITX rig with the most compute power - you should consider something with much better airflow. My LianLi Q11B is almost twice the size of DAN, but it fails to be efficient at cooling even my tiny i3-6100. All hot air is blown through the PSU exhaust.

BTW, at one point when I still had my LGA1366 box HSF and an SFF version of MSI GTX750Ti - I did move my Rampage II GENE and X5650 inside a cheap, but functional and good looking SFF case.
Temps were OK, considering I only used it in this configuration for 2 months and never OCed the CPU over 3.6GHz. So, small form factor and x58 are not mutually exclusive.

 

[Recon-UK]

I actually want to down size my PC chassis, this Raven RV02-BW is gigantic...

 

[RejZoR]

Will my CPU ( I7 950 ) bottleneck a GTX 1070?

If it's overclocked to at least 4 or 4.2 GHz, then I'd say no. Nehalems still have quite some grunt when overclocked.

 

[EarthDog]

Will my CPU ( I7 950 ) bottleneck a GTX 1070?

There will be a glass ceiling on some titles because of the cpu, yes. If you sli (not saying you are, more so responding to the guy that replied to you), there will surely be a limit as multi gpu setups scale with overclocking skylake so it will certainly be held back in some capacity with a 6+ year old cpu.

 

[FireFox]

X58 systems are maybe out of date/ obsolete but with a decent Graphic card and some overclock you can play a few games, with a decent performance, of course this configuration would work better if you have a setup in single CPU, i have a dual CPU setup with
2 x Xeon X5677 3.46GHz turbo boost 3.73GHz and an Asus 750Ti and i play Titanfall, call of Duty and a few more games without any issue.

 

[Dethroy]

There is a nice selection of Z77 ITX boards. I've personally handled a Z77E-ITX from AsRock and and equivalently decent Z77-ITX WiFi from Zotac. Both have a WiFi adapter included. The later one sells for as low as $60-70 (if you can find one, since most are still in use).

Alright, thanks for the suggestion. I'll look into those.

If youtruly want to build an ITX rig with the most compute power - you should consider something with much better airflow. My LianLi Q11B is almost twice the size of DAN, but it fails to be efficient at cooling even my tiny i3-6100. All hot air is blown through the PSU exhaust.

From what I've read this seems to be a non-issue. This case even handles an i7 5820K when put under stress in Prime 95 (proof). So keeping an i7 6700K cold and quiet shouldn't be much of a problem. The GPU is even less of a concern

 

[Mussels]

surprised to see this thread still going.

thought it was pretty clear these old CPU's still have plenty of balls, they're just hot, sweaty, power hungry balls.

 

[CAPSLOCKSTUCK]

I think this thread will be going for a good while.........just like my Xeons.

 

[Mussels]

i just upgraded a friend from an i7 950 that i sold him last year, to my old i7 2600.

upto 30% better in synthetic benchmarks, zero difference in FPS games (some in CPU bound games like RTS games, or very single threaded games) - but about half the total system wattage, and a lot less heat/noise from his cooling.

i feel that intels really only been dropping the TDP lately, not upping the performance much.

 

[El_Mayo]

I bought my Z97 build in 2014 full intending to be one of these guys. Probably won't get a new CPU until 2019!

 

[EarthDog]

i just upgraded a friend from an i7 950 that i sold him last year, to my old i7 2600.

upto 30% better in synthetic benchmarks, zero difference in FPS games (some in CPU bound games like RTS games, or very single threaded games) - but about half the total system wattage, and a lot less heat/noise from his cooling.

i feel that intels really only been dropping the TDP lately, not upping the performance much.

you may want to look at some techspot game reviews and see. It isn't across all titles of course, but there are many that show a glass ceiling from such a processor. I have mentioned that at least once in this thread.

Just a quick example: http://www.techspot.com/review/615-far-cry-3-performance/page6.html

You see the I7 920 has lost a bit of performance there. Mostly because of the clockspeed, but there is still IPC performance losses. This is a lot more pronounced in CPU limited games.

 

[Mussels]

you may want to look at some techspot game reviews and see. It isn't across all titles of course, but there are many that show a glass ceiling from such a processor. I have mentioned that at least once in this thread.

Just a quick example: http://www.techspot.com/review/615-far-cry-3-performance/page6.html

You see the I7 920 has lost a bit of performance there. Mostly because of the clockspeed, but there is still IPC performance losses. This is a lot more pronounced in CPU limited games.

i did mention no change in FPS games. Those are mostly GPU dependant these days, past a certain minimum threshold.

 

[EarthDog]

Im telling you there is in some FPS titles. The IPC difference between Nehalem and Skylake is on the order of 50%+. GPUs are twice as fast...

Look at the Battlefront results at techspot. There is a 4 FPS difference (4%) from a 2500K and i5 3470 (SB to IB, note). and the 2500K has a 100Mhz more clock.

It isn't a huge deal (can be depending on title), but make no mistake about it, there is a glass ceiling on many titles, including FPS, from Nehalem based chips versus Haswell and Skylake at the same clockspeeds at 1080p.

 

[Tomgang]

Will my CPU ( I7 950 ) bottleneck a GTX 1070?

If your CPU is clokket at 4 GHz+ You are good to go with one GTX 1070. But dont do SLI whit that CPU and two GTX 1070. When the CPU is a bottleneck.
My own I7 920 @ 4 GHz handels two 970 fine in all most every game. I hav tried 2-3 games where the CPU cut not keep gpu´s at 90+ % load and that include GTA V with are known to be CPU intense.

But have tried the new Doom and that for exsample runs freaking great on my old ring.

Well get the CPU to 4 GHz and you are good for one GTX 1070, but two cards is not recomended.

 

[Mussels]

i'm rather tired, so i'll leave it at half complete ponderings.

I ponder how much its related to the performance of the CPU, vs the improvements to the IMC/ram speeds (fallout 4 gets a lot faster with faster ram, for example) and PCI-E speeds.

someone get a skylake and compare with 1066MHz DDR3L at PCI-E 2.0 with their 1080

 

[EarthDog]

The ram speeds have NOTHING to do with it outside of a rare few titles (FO4 being one exception - it sees improvements on skylake from clow DDR4 to fast). You can pick exceptions all day, but that isn't the rule/majority.

There are articles/reviews that show the difference between ram speed and its negligible as its always been (again outside of a title or two or when using iGPU). You also know, as TPU did the testing, PCIe 2.0 16x is as fast as PCIe 3.0 8x... a 1% loss at most.

Really... Nehalem + modern high end GPU @ 1080p = glass ceiling. As I said before, it is still plenty serviceable, but there would be a difference, at the same clocks, between i7 920 at 4GHz and Skylake at 4Ghz/stock for many reasons, most of which being the CPU is too slow to push the GPUs at the 'low' res of 1080 with all the FPS the cards can push out.