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Adventures in Computing
vuzedome:
--- Quote from: namaiki on April 05, 2010, 12:56:22 AM ---
--- Quote from: vuzedome on April 05, 2010, 12:53:45 AM ---
--- Quote from: TidusBlade on April 04, 2010, 11:29:42 PM ---Looks pretty awesome though :P
--- End quote ---
TWO?! i7 extremes?! WTF?! OMG awesome server boards!!
I would love to get an i7 but I got an i5 750 as well, but still this bakes cakes a lot faster than the C2Qs, even overclocks better.
--- End quote ---
lol I seem to see the letters 'AMD' in the darkness.
--- End quote ---
Wait... I failed.
kureshii:
--- Quote from: Natheria on April 05, 2010, 01:21:33 AM ---In my book there really is no reason to get anything more than an i5 750 except for E-peen. I have yet to come in contact with anything that this processor can't handle and since the absence of multithreading is the only difference between the 750 and any other i7 Lynnfield than what's the point?
--- End quote ---
I respectfully disagree. With certain applications where the processing pipeline is not fully utilised, having hyperthreading can increase usage of the processor, by fulfilling requests from other threads while the core is waiting on a particular thread (done by duplicating resources logically). In certain applications, this shows a marked improvement in application performance.
Tom's Hardware comparison
iXBT labs comparison
Generally speaking, encoding and rendering apps get the most performance improvement from having HT enabled. If you do either of these 2 on a frequent basis, the additional cost of $100 or less (for an entry i7 over i5-750) is not that great compared to the cost of a new CPU+motherboard anyway (if you're upgrading from an older socket), and gives a significant improvement in performance.
However, I do agree that for the rest of the world, hyperthreading is not that useful.
Firstly, because OSes are not hyperthreading-aware yet, and can't differentiate between logical cores and physical cores yet. For apps that do not benefit from HT (especially those that take a performance hit from HT instead), running on 2 logical cores from the same physical core gives worse performance than running on 2 logical cores from different physical cores.
A hyperthreading-aware OS that is programmed with this difference in mind will be able to assign threads to logical cores more appropriately, depending on how taxed the physical core is. Right now we're not seeing this yet, but since AMD has plans to implement hyperthreading on their processors as well, perhaps we'll see this soon, and hyperthreading users can have their cake and eat it too (let some apps benefit from HT without other apps taking the performance hit).
Secondly, applications that benefit most from hyperthreading are typically encoding and rendering apps - not quite your usual 'normal consumer' applications. Even for some applications that benefit a little from HT (e.g. virus scanners, file archiving programs), the performance increase is barely noticeable for their typical usage scenarios, which are smaller-scale.
For your typical power user, the real benefit of the i7-860 over an i5-750 would be the extra speed bin - hardly worth $100, IMO.
tl;dr If you do lots of encoding or rendering, i7 is worth it. If you don't, i7 is probably not worth it. If you have an i5-750, don't bother upgrading to an i7-860. If you have lots of money to spend anyway or need epeen, buy an i7.
--- Quote from: vuzedome on April 05, 2010, 01:40:40 AM ---
--- Quote from: namaiki on April 05, 2010, 12:56:22 AM ---
--- Quote from: vuzedome on April 05, 2010, 12:53:45 AM ---
--- Quote from: TidusBlade on April 04, 2010, 11:29:42 PM ---Looks pretty awesome though :P
--- End quote ---
TWO?! i7 extremes?! WTF?! OMG awesome server boards!!
I would love to get an i7 but I got an i5 750 as well, but still this bakes cakes a lot faster than the C2Qs, even overclocks better.
--- End quote ---
lol I seem to see the letters 'AMD' in the darkness.
--- End quote ---
Wait... I failed.
--- End quote ---
http://img.xataka.com/2009/02/amd_istanbul_24_cores_500.jpg <-- quad-socket, 6-core Istanbul XD
rathoriel:
--- Quote from: vuzedome on April 05, 2010, 01:40:40 AM ---
--- Quote from: namaiki on April 05, 2010, 12:56:22 AM ---
--- Quote from: vuzedome on April 05, 2010, 12:53:45 AM ---
--- Quote from: TidusBlade on April 04, 2010, 11:29:42 PM ---Looks pretty awesome though :P
--- End quote ---
TWO?! i7 extremes?! WTF?! OMG awesome server boards!!
I would love to get an i7 but I got an i5 750 as well, but still this bakes cakes a lot faster than the C2Qs, even overclocks better.
--- End quote ---
lol I seem to see the letters 'AMD' in the darkness.
--- End quote ---
Wait... I failed.
--- End quote ---
failed how it says AMD not sure what is its but its clear
Micharus:
I thought about getting an i7, seriously I did.
Then I thought 'do I really need need that much power' and the answer was 'NO'.
I did get the top end i5 cpu though.
The motherboard I got DOES support the i7, by a small bit of luck. I may want to 'upgrade' in a couple of years, so that is a useful thing to know.
I had 3 motherboards listed that the place I went to might have had in stock and they picked the best of them.
Oddly it wasn't the most expensive one either.
Compared to what I was running, a 3ghz single core, the i5 750 is mind blastingly fast, even if it is 'only' 2.6ghz.
I have seen the 'Atomic' magazine where they overclock this CPU to 3+ghz using the stock cooler, but I don't think I want to mess with overclocking yet, not until I am *really* sure I'm not going to break it. ;D
sdedalus83:
--- Quote from: Micharus on April 05, 2010, 04:28:26 AM ---The motherboard I got DOES support the i7, by a small bit of luck. I may want to 'upgrade' in a couple of years, so that is a useful thing to know.
--- End quote ---
Any board which supports the i3 and i5 series will also support LGA1156 i7 series chips. If you really want an i7, go all out and get a real one, you know the LGA1366 models with a triple channel memory interface? Otherwise you're just getting an i5 with a bump in clockspeed.
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