Curse

bhavv · Nov 23, 2008, 12:57 AM // 00:57

Are you kidding me or didnt you bother reading your own links before posting them? In the review I read, excuse me for forgetting which one, the X58 was the only board not gaining a benefit from crossfire in oblivion, Core 2 duo and X48 were outperforming it by almost double. So if I use crossfire, and play oblivion, why exactly should I rush out to upgrade? If you are building a PC just for games, you are far better off just getting an E8400 and cheap DDR2 ram instead of spending 2-3 times as much on an X58 setup.

Oh, and BTW, people who have already built X58 PCs on XtremeSystems are all agreeing that the extra bandwidth makes too small a difference in games, and the difference between triple channel DDR3 1066 Mhz and 2000 Mhz is completely unnoticeable outside of memory benchmarks.

DDR3 ram over 1333 Mhz is hardly worth recommending for a gaming PC, the only advantage that faster memory has right now is in benchmarking.

Evil Genius · Nov 23, 2008, 01:59 AM // 01:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by bhavv

Are you kidding me or didnt you bother reading your own links before posting them? In the review I read, excuse me for forgetting which one, the X58 was the only board not gaining a benefit from crossfire in oblivion, Core 2 duo and X48 were outperforming it by almost double.

I am not denying that the oblivion performance wasn't as good for Core i7 and X58 as it was for X48. I am just saying its irrelvent.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bhavv

So if I use crossfire, and play oblivion, why exactly should I rush out to upgrade? If you are building a PC just for games, you are far better off just getting an E8400 and cheap DDR2 ram instead of spending 2-3 times as much on an X58 setup.

Yes I agree with that. But maybe Core i7 is targeted at people who play games over two years old? Like I said before, a single 4870 should tear up Oblivion anyway.

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/1...1853/17394.png
Keep in mind you need a 30inch monitor to run that res. (Thats a pre Nehalem test rig)

Quote:

Originally Posted by bhavv

Oh, and BTW, people who have already built X58 PCs on XtremeSystems are all agreeing that the extra bandwidth makes too small a difference in games, and the difference between triple channel DDR3 1066 Mhz and 2000 Mhz is completely unnoticeable outside of memory benchmarks.

DDR3 ram over 1333 Mhz is hardly worth recommending for a gaming PC, the only advantage that faster memory has right now is in benchmarking.

Is there anything wrong with that? People just wanting an computer capable of 8 threads for video encoding, SLI/Crossfire etc can get 1333Mhz RAM knowing that they would receive no tangible benefits if they spend more and get 16000/2000Mhz RAM. The benchmarkers can get the faster DDR3 RAM. Non one if forcing you to spend more and get the fastest DDR3 RAM. In fact, non benchmarkers may notice Intel only officially supports up to DDR3 1066.

This graph shows that Core i7 does provide benefits in multi-GPU setups. Just no in a 2 1/2 year old game - Oblivion.

moriz · Nov 23, 2008, 02:20 AM // 02:20

i've always wondered why core i7 will give such a big boost to SLI... perhaps it's because SLI tends to be CPU bound (yes i know, makes very little sense, but that's actually true apparently), and putting in a very fast CPU will make it perform a lot better.

bhavv · Nov 23, 2008, 10:50 AM // 10:50

I realise that Core I7 is good for the absolute high end and people who do a lot more then play video games, but this is a very small number of PC users, people just wanting to buy a home PC to surf the web and play games on are not going to see any benefit from spending so much more money on Core I7. Trust me, I was very optimistic about the new platform and was planning to upgrade in a few months - I even upgraded to cheap1333 MHZ DDR3 for this with the idea of buying one more module with the upgrade. But after seeing the benchmarks and reviews, my optimism is gone as a new X58 board and Core I7 are not worth paying £450 over a current Core 2 based system if all you do is play games.

It is worthwhile to wait for the die shrink instead, I did this with my core 2 duo build - I was using a S939 system but wasnt tempted to upgrade untill I saw the E8400 reviews. 32 nm Core I7's should have a similar impact - lower prices and better overclockers.