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I7 920

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Guest bekfreak

Is the i7 920 worth it even if it is not OC for FSX? Seeing I've held out so long and waited it's looking to be the better end.Thermaltake M9 w/ windowCorsair TX 650WIntel Core i7 Processor i7-920 2.66GHz 8MBGIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD5Super Talent DDR3-1333 3GB (3x1G CL8Western Digital WD6400AAKS 640GB SATA2 7200rpm 16MBSamsung SH-S223F 22X Dual Layer DVD+/-RW SATA DriveEVGA nVidia GeForce 9800GTX+ or GTX 260Microsoft Vista Home Premium 64-bit (64-bit OS Required for 4GB and more RAM)

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Guest Alphahawk3
Is the i7 920 worth it even if it is not OC for FSX?
Hard question to answer. I own one so if I say no then I guess that would mean I made a mistake in buying it. I was going to do a build no matter what. My mind was set on a Q6600. I was going to be out around 800 bucks. Keep in mind I was buying all new...case...M/B..everything. I had really no clue the i7 series was coming out. I spent days and days reading all I could about the Q6600 and then the 920...and believe me they wrote a lot on it. They meaning different web sites who you usually find doing test on new CPU's and other hardware. Benchmarks are one thing but FSX is something else. You can find all the web sites I found and read the same articles and make your own conclusions about what the experts say. Read many articles that say "Why buy a 965 when you can clock a 920 and save yourself 1000 bucks". I did not believe that when I read it and I don't believe it now. There is more to those chips than speed. My 920 is clocked to 3.4 and is doing very good. Keep in mind that I was using a P4 3ghz with 2gig ram. NickN wrote a good piece about upgrading to the different i7 models. I was where he suggested if I was going to upgrade that a step to an 920 would be beneficial to one...ie coming off an old system. If you already had a good dual core or quad core it would not be advisable. I have never seen FSX run on anything other than my P4 and now this i7 920. So I can't say what it would have looked like on an Q6600 or E8600. All I know is I am very satisfied with the performance. This is my first build in ten years. Used to clock a lot and would go new every 6 or 7 months. Can't do that anymore and thought long and hard before clocking this 920. On this Asus P6T Deluxe M/B an idiot can clock. I also have 6gig of Corsair DDR3 1600 ram for when and if I go to Vista and or a new i7 CPU. A lot of folks say they have this clocked on air to 4 ghz. I am not going to try that. I don't have another 300 bucks laying around now to replace my CPU. Depending on what forum you are on and who is writing some say never clock. I will not get into a debate over that but visually I don't know if I see a lot of difference at 3.4 than I do at the stock settings. All I know is that I can fly where I want to now and fly all of my GA aircraft with no problems anywhere. I have the SR 22 with the Avidyne avionics and on my old P4 I could not use it. The hit on FPS was huge. On the P4 I would get 6 or 7 at a nowhere airfield. Have had that plane for a year or better and could not fly it....don't know how to fly it anyway....but now I can have fun learning. Even at Orbx YMML...which is a great airport...but can give you a performance hit with all that is going on there....I have no problems and FPS stay in the 17 to 21 range taking off and go to 30 once in the air and stay there....I have it locked at 30. I read in a thread somewhere that Intel may change the 1366 socket when they come out with their new line of i7's...but that was just one guy talking and I hope he is wrong. So to answer your question even without OC the 920 runs FSX just fine. I have GEX...FEX.....using the SHD clouds.....FTX from Orbx and XGraphics. At all of those web sites about the 920 using it and clocking it...and then comparing it to different games...and a lot of those sites were talking about how it would do with games....most...if not all of them were talking about how games were GPU intensive instead of CPU intensive. Which means they had no experience using FSX. I just know I am one happy FSX user now. Regards

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Guest bekfreak
Hard question to answer. I own one so if I say no then I guess that would mean I made a mistake in buying it. I was going to do a build no matter what. My mind was set on a Q6600. I was going to be out around 800 bucks. Keep in mind I was buying all new...case...M/B..everything. I had really no clue the i7 series was coming out. I spent days and days reading all I could about the Q6600 and then the 920...and believe me they wrote a lot on it. They meaning different web sites who you usually find doing test on new CPU's and other hardware. Benchmarks are one thing but FSX is something else. You can find all the web sites I found and read the same articles and make your own conclusions about what the experts say. Read many articles that say "Why buy a 965 when you can clock a 920 and save yourself 1000 bucks". I did not believe that when I read it and I don't believe it now. There is more to those chips than speed. My 920 is clocked to 3.4 and is doing very good. Keep in mind that I was using a P4 3ghz with 2gig ram. NickN wrote a good piece about upgrading to the different i7 models. I was where he suggested if I was going to upgrade that a step to an 920 would be beneficial to one...ie coming off an old system. If you already had a good dual core or quad core it would not be advisable. I have never seen FSX run on anything other than my P4 and now this i7 920. So I can't say what it would have looked like on an Q6600 or E8600. All I know is I am very satisfied with the performance. This is my first build in ten years. Used to clock a lot and would go new every 6 or 7 months. Can't do that anymore and thought long and hard before clocking this 920. On this Asus P6T Deluxe M/B an idiot can clock. I also have 6gig of Corsair DDR3 1600 ram for when and if I go to Vista and or a new i7 CPU. A lot of folks say they have this clocked on air to 4 ghz. I am not going to try that. I don't have another 300 bucks laying around now to replace my CPU. Depending on what forum you are on and who is writing some say never clock. I will not get into a debate over that but visually I don't know if I see a lot of difference at 3.4 than I do at the stock settings. All I know is that I can fly where I want to now and fly all of my GA aircraft with no problems anywhere. I have the SR 22 with the Avidyne avionics and on my old P4 I could not use it. The hit on FPS was huge. On the P4 I would get 6 or 7 at a nowhere airfield. Have had that plane for a year or better and could not fly it....don't know how to fly it anyway....but now I can have fun learning. Even at Orbx YMML...which is a great airport...but can give you a performance hit with all that is going on there....I have no problems and FPS stay in the 17 to 21 range taking off and go to 30 once in the air and stay there....I have it locked at 30. I read in a thread somewhere that Intel may change the 1366 socket when they come out with their new line of i7's...but that was just one guy talking and I hope he is wrong. So to answer your question even without OC the 920 runs FSX just fine. I have GEX...FEX.....using the SHD clouds.....FTX from Orbx and XGraphics. At all of those web sites about the 920 using it and clocking it...and then comparing it to different games...and a lot of those sites were talking about how it would do with games....most...if not all of them were talking about how games were GPU intensive instead of CPU intensive. Which means they had no experience using FSX. I just know I am one happy FSX user now.The price of the ram and mobos are coming down now that the holiday greed fest is almost over and I think for the long run the i7 will do me good clocked or not. I hear it runs almost equal with the 9550 anyway. I'd fear blowing something up with an OC. I think that in the run of things I'll kick myself if I don't go with the i7. I'll start with the 3gigs and then just toss in another 3 at another time. I'm coming from a P4 2.4ghz with 512mb of RAM so anything will feel better than this now. :( Regards

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Guest Alphahawk3
Is the i7 920 worth it even if it is not OC for FSX? Seeing I've held out so long and waited it's looking to be the better end.Thermaltake M9 w/ windowCorsair TX 650WIntel Core i7 Processor i7-920 2.66GHz 8MBGIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD5Super Talent DDR3-1333 3GB (3x1G CL8Western Digital WD6400AAKS 640GB SATA2 7200rpm 16MBSamsung SH-S223F 22X Dual Layer DVD+/-RW SATA DriveEVGA nVidia GeForce 9800GTX+ or GTX 260Microsoft Vista Home Premium 64-bit (64-bit OS Required for 4GB and more RAM)
Some more info take it for what it is worth. It came from the following site http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/intel_...view/page13.aspWhat

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Guest D17S

From a P4, I'd have to agree the 920 is sure something to consider. Like the Q6600 build (in its heyday), the CPU is $300, ram $200 and the mobo $200. Ram and mobos have a bit to fall yet, but that's 'bout where we are now. At a stock 2.66Ghz, I expect the performance will comparable to a core2 in the low 3Ghz range. That's not bad, but to get any value from this purchase beyond a box at 1/2 the price (a Q66), it's gonna take a CPU overclock. It appears the i7s are still up against that same ol' 4Ghz limit. I expect they will all go there, FSB (Base clock, BCK) willing. Now as then, it's all about the multiplier. The Nehalem is running a 133 MHz BCK (FSB). The 920 gets its speed via 133 x 20 = 2.66Ghz. The value of the 920 might only become available by ramping BCK. It appears that about 175Mhz is the top stable 24/7 speed the BCK can do. So, 175 x 20 = 3.5Ghz. In any case, the 920 will be BCK limited (for we non-uberclockers). At 3.5Ghz, I expect an i7 might preform with a core2 at 4.0Ghz.So here's the value calc. A Q66 system is about 1/2 the price and will run at 3.6Ghz. An i7 is twice the price and will run at a core2 equivalent of 4.0. However an i7 is still - a lot - cheaper than going for a unlocked core2 (QX9775) that'll also happily sit at 4.0 all day long. From a value perspective, it's a tough choice. Is that last 400Mhz worth 2x$ ? The last 10% will always be Very expensive. I think Intel has this wired.

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Guest bekfreak
From a P4, I'd have to agree the 920 is sure something to consider. Like the Q6600 build (in its heyday), the CPU is $300, ram $200 and the mobo $200. Ram and mobos have a bit to fall yet, but that's 'bout where we are now. At a stock 2.66Ghz, I expect the performance will comparable to a core2 in the low 3Ghz range. That's not bad, but to get any value from this purchase beyond a box at 1/2 the price (a Q66), it's gonna take a CPU overclock. It appears the i7s are still up against that same ol' 4Ghz limit. I expect they will all go there, FSB (Base clock, BCK) willing. Now as then, it's all about the multiplier. The Nehalem is running a 133 MHz BCK (FSB). The 920 gets its speed via 133 x 20 = 2.66Ghz. The value of the 920 might only become available by ramping BCK. It appears that about 175Mhz is the top stable 24/7 speed the BCK can do. So, 175 x 20 = 3.5Ghz. In any case, the 920 will be BCK limited (for we non-uberclockers). At 3.5Ghz, I expect an i7 might preform with a core2 at 4.0Ghz.So here's the value calc. A Q66 system is about 1/2 the price and will run at 3.6Ghz. An i7 is twice the price and will run at a core2 equivalent of 4.0. However an i7 is still - a lot - cheaper than going for a unlocked core2 (QX9775) that'll also happily sit at 4.0 all day long. From a value perspective, it's a tough choice. Is that last 400Mhz worth 2x$ ? The last 10% will always be Very expensive. I think Intel has this wired.
I'm going to go with the 920 but I'm still stuck on if I should put the GTX 260 with my 1280x1024 monitor or just stay with the 9800 GTX+. By the time I get a second monitor I'm sure the prices of the better cards will come down.

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Guest D17S

Stick with the 9800GTX. Anything beyond an 8800GT will not help FS.

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Guest bekfreak

Does it matter if it's the GTX+ or GTX+ OC? The only thing that would have me consider the 260 is that I would like to get a 25-27 inch monitor sometime next year after I put in a new computer desk and also the possibilty of allowing me not to worry about buying a new video card in the distant future or near future.

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Guest D17S

I've been running a 40"er at 19x10 for over a year with 1st, an 8800GT, then a 9800GTX+. Actually, I've been driving the 40 and a 19 off the same card. I can run FS on either monitor at will. There has been no difference between the cards, or monitor choice (res difference). No difference at all. If you like to play, the "+" will overclock a bit further than the 88 or non-+. However still, that's just for hobby-fun. It'll make no difference in FS . . . even at 19x10.

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Guest bekfreak

Thanks for the imput there. :) I'll put that $50 towards something else. :) Mmm. 3 channel kits are really dropping in price over at newegg and tiger direct. A nice 1 TB HD would be nice. I'm half tempted to see how X-Plane 9 would perform on an i7.

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Guest ThrottleUp

I just ordered a Core i7 system! If like me you are going from a P4 then I think you shouldnt even think twice - skip the E-generation Duos and Q-series quads and get a Nehalem!The price difference I found was so small it was hard to ignore - I had to get the Nehalem. When the 32nm shrink comes along I will get that CPU!

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Guest djt01
I had to get the Nehalem. When the 32nm shrink comes along I will get that CPU!
By the time the 32nm Nehalem

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Guest ThrottleUp
By the time the 32nm Nehalem’s arrive you might be looking at more than a CPU upgrade if you go with X58/LGA-1336. I wouldn’t be surprised if the new 32nm Nehalem ends up being LGA-1156 socket only.
If thats the case I will sell the 45nm Nehalem system and buy a brand new 32nm one. Enough of suffering - time for the latest and the greatest wherever possible hee hee. Saving money & sticking to a monthly budget does wonders :)

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Guest D17S

The big-deal with the 32nm-er will be additional cores. 32 cores is not pie-in-the-sky. Software willing that'll get us a 10X. If a user has at least a core2, that's the one to wait for. From a core2, a $1500 build for 20% is really hard to consider especially for those with more dollars than sense. However I expect an upgrade from even a Nehalem to the 32nm chip will make Good sense.

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