Technical > PC Hardware Discussion/Reviews > Is i7 920/930 a waste of money compared to an i5 750 ?

Is i7 920/930 a waste of money compared to an i5 750 ?

depends
imo if you want a great chip but dont want or need SLi Crossfire
the i7 860 is great if you want a full i7 with HT if you dont think you need HT i5 750 is an amazing CPU for the money
comes down to what you need
do you NEED Crossfire or SLi?
do you NEED Hyperthreading?
do you NEED 6GB of ram?

i was no,yes and no so i got the i7 860

reply to Bandito

reply to Bandito
"like to get a mobo that can handle SATA 6 Gbps without any restriction on the PCIe 2x slot. Something that at all Gigabyte mobos have at this time.
...
I am not into gaming "

You are referring to the fact that the gigabyte 1156 boards take pci-e lanes from the graphics card to support sata 6 and usb 3.

Since you aren't gaming this isn't an issue for you. Running one low end graphics card x8 isn't going to be a problem in any way.
I don't think there are going to be non-graphics cards that will need a second x16 slot, especially in the next few years.
Keep in mind intel chipsets aren't going to be supporting these things until 2011. In 2-3 years you aren't going to be running into problems with either choice.

reply to Bandito
"In 2-3 years you aren't going to be running into problems with either choice."

I was referring here to the platform choice and your concerns about sata 6 /usb 3 on 1156.

Whether you want to spend for a 920 or 860(hyperthreading) vs. the 750 is a different question. It would be best to analyze this question looking at specific benchmarks for the video application you are using, if available.

reply to Bandito
I have both a Core i7 920 and a Core i7 860. Personally I don’t notice mush difference between the two but the Core i7 860 did seem a hair faster when I first built it. The Core i7 920 was already about a year old by that point though so its not really a fair comparison to contrast a fresh build / OS install.

I don’t think there will be much difference between the Core i7 920 and 930. The Core i5 750 is also a fast part so I think you’re looking at four horses that are in a close race.

For the average user, in a blind taste test, I don’t think they would see much difference.

future proofing isn’t really clear to me either way. Sandy Bridge may or may not wean users off of the current platforms but Gulftown will likely be costly.

reply to Bandito

reply to asdfdfdfdfdf

reply to Bandito
Whatever you do just don’t buy one of these:

»hardocp.com/article/2010/03/05/n···tel_cpus

Wow. Woa. WTF. Gee whiz! Dag! Are they from China like so many counterfeits? I hope someone pays big time for this wherever they came from! If they were really fabbed it would be good to close down the fab and sell off the equipment so it doesn't happen again!

...Or, were they non functioning? This is going to hurt newegg.
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Join Teams Helix and Discovery. Put that fancy computer to good use helping to find a cure, your mom will love you for it. »Team Helix »Team Discovery Please pray for Colin.

reply to Octavean
I heard about the counterfeit CPUS. I wonder how they perform and how much cheaper are they compared to the real thing?

reply to signmeuptoo

But will they replace the mainboards these things fried too?

I know that they couldn't reproduce a genuine, or anything close to it, but I was wondering if these were test chips that escaped the field. Or, a truck shipment that was hijacked by gangs. I remember when working in San Jose hearing about such things, it actually made me nervous because I worked in the industry and I didn't want to get jumped or something.

I imagine Intel uses armored transport or something now?
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Join Teams Helix and Discovery. Put that fancy computer to good use helping to find a cure, your mom will love you for it. »Team Helix »Team Discovery Please pray for Colin.

They probably would but damn how dumb would you have to be to put that in a mobo and power it up?

Did you look at the bottom? They only replicated the top the bottom doesn't even have metal pins on it.

Not to mention you'd have a tough time installing that cooling fan... (or you'd be colossally stupid to ignore the foam fan and install the fake cpu with a 3rd part cooler).

I doubt Intel (or any electronics company whose truckload of goods would have similar value) worries that much about security. Those kind of hijackings are harder to get away with these days. Most likely this swap was an inside job.

reply to signmeuptoo

reply to pnjunction
Oh, I didn't see that, them not having pins. So it wasn't even a real attempt at anything. Not even some rudimentry fab with circuitry to hide how fake. Something that fake should not have taken so long to catch. Newegg must have been asleep at the wheel. Or maybe they didn't believe the first 200 complaints? Man I'd hate to get stuck with something as tight as money is!
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Join Teams Helix and Discovery. Put that fancy computer to good use helping to find a cure, your mom will love you for it. »Team Helix »Team Discovery Please pray for Colin.

So they could actually ship 300 or more in a day? Woa! The founders of newegg must be loaded.

reply to Bandito
300 bad chips at roughly ~$300 a pop equates to about ~$90,000 USD. Not a small sum to lose, not a small some at all.

Now I know how Microscenter sells their Core i7 920 chips so cheap,…they must have fallen off the back of a truck and landed in their warehouse

Seriously though I don’t think there is much for us to worry about but actually going into a store and buying a chip there would help weed out this extremely unlikely event. If you have a Microcenter nearby you can certainly save a lot on any one of the four above chips.