2011 CPU still good at 2016

[PeteRoy]

It is interesting that in 2016 it is still possible to play all the newest games on a 5-6 year old CPU's

I have a Intel Core i7 990X 6 core which was released in early 2011 and 5 years later it is still not worth upgrading it.

I remember in the past I had a Pentium 3 from the year 2001 and by 2004 it was already obsolete and barely played games released at 2005 which means it was obsolete in 3 years

And in 2016 you can still even use a Core i7 920 from end of 2008 and still play all new games on it 8 years later, unbelievable.

I created a video for my main PC which still use 2010 mainboard and 2011 CPU: https://www.facebook.com/peteroy/videos/1146838018669797/

 

[Makaveli]

Aslong as they are overclocked anything from the Nehalem era is still usable.

Most games are held back by the GPU not CPU.

 

[Sheep221]

I agree! When Intel launched the first i7 in the end of 2008, its unmatched performance rendered everything else obsolete. The C2Qs were overtaken by i7 like nothing. I agree that the core i line of CPUs of any generation are very long lasting. I'm still rocking my i5 like the day I got it.

 

[JeffMD]

Uhhh.. it was a $1000 cpu. even if you consider you didn't need to do 1 or 2 upgrades, you still lost money.

 

[PeteRoy]

Uhhh.. it was a $1000 cpu. even if you consider you didn't need to do 1 or 2 upgrades, you still lost money.

I got it from ebay a year ago to replace a Core i7 920 I had, I paid around 200 USD for it on ebay.

 

[Nhirlathothep]

Uhhh.. it was a $1000 cpu. even if you consider you didn't need to do 1 or 2 upgrades, you still lost money.

it s called "enthusiast".

it s for pple in love with hw. i don t care about games, i buy EE intel cpu because i like hw itself, to test and use it.

it s a gaming forum what you re looking for

 

[JeffMD]

Nhir, you do know enthusiast are usually building PCs to game, right? MOST people buying these super powered chips are looking to build a monster game rig.

MOST people looking to build encoder and computational rigs will simply go multi-CPU. You would build a faster and more capable rig using your cash to buy 3 normal i7's instead of this one.

So yea, gamer CPU. Silly price, shocking performance for such an old cpu, but still a silly price.

 

[Alienwho]

I remember when I built m i7 920 machine in 2011 that I was hoping it would be the last desktop I ever built. Been at 3.6 Ghz ever since and haven't changed anything in the computer except for adding in my friends 680 he gave me when he upgraded to the 980. The computer is still a beast. I may throw a 1080 in it some day but with this new razerblade stealth I just picked up I think my direction in the future is going to be the laptop + core videocard dock.

 

[MrA79]

I feel ya. I put mine together in 2011 or 2012 (i5 3570k etc), only real change I've made since then was putting in an SSD and switching from a 6950 to an R9 280x. I don't play super demanding stuff for the most part, but I've been amazed at how well it's held up.

 

[StrangerGuy]

I got it from ebay a year ago to replace a Core i7 920 I had, I paid around 200 USD for it on ebay.

You could saved that $200, and sold your X58 board for maybe another $200 in the 6-core S1366 Xeon craze and have enough cash to cover a brand new 4790K and a basic mobo that destroys the 990X in anything gaming. I really don't get the general irrationality of X58 owners.

 

[aigomorla]

Uhhh.. it was a $1000 cpu. even if you consider you didn't need to do 1 or 2 upgrades, you still lost money.

Nhir, you do know enthusiast are usually building PCs to game, right? MOST people buying these super powered chips are looking to build a monster game rig.

MOST people looking to build encoder and computational rigs will simply go multi-CPU. You would build a faster and more capable rig using your cash to buy 3 normal i7's instead of this one.

So yea, gamer CPU. Silly price, shocking performance for such an old cpu, but still a silly price.

ok while under most conditions i may agree with you there is an exception to the gulftown line in processors.

What is that exception? it was the only 6 core chip one could buy that would work flawlessly on the x58 chipset.

It didnt require a 2P board, or it being paired.
It was fully unlocked multiplier and QPI and it gave the world some extremely shocking numbers. The Overclock ceiling on these monsters exceeded its quadcore little sisters, by a LOT.

I have had spectacular numbers of 4.6 and even 4.8 on water.
On LN2 i have seen these monsters climb as high as 5.2ghz...
It truely deserved the name "Black Label" for its time.

This indeed was true chip for the enthusiast overclocker.

I have had the fortune to cherry bin my 990X, and infact its still chugging along in another rig.

So looking at the time frame in which the 990X came out, you can not make these blanketed statements. You wont see a "K series" exceed its overclock like how do you do on the new EE chips.

Now the 6950X has me going ... as that is probably the first odd ball intel cpu that has come out, which has no point or purpose... correctly meeting all the statements which you have made.

 

[J30_Uwe]

My son's Q9550 couple with a GTX 960 has been playing ARK and Fallout 4 with no problems which surprised me a bit.

 

[sm625]

In 2008 you could still play games on a P4 from 2003. That's when the 800MHz FSB models with HT came out, which offered a huge boost.

 

[Sheep221]

In 2008 you could still play games on a P4 from 2003. That's when the 800MHz FSB models with HT came out, which offered a huge boost.

Well, if you meant that in 2008 someone played pre-2003 games on P4 from 2003 than I agree. Otherwise I don't really agree. If you wanted to play games with high details, you definitely had to own dual core P4, C2D and 6600GT video card. Yet the P4s started to be good sometime the cedar mill was introduced, it was like this P3->Athlon XP/64->C2D.
If you wanted good gaming rig in 2003 you either sticked with your already 3 year old P3 rig and bought a new video card or upgraded to Athlon 64. In fact 2008 was killer year for older machines because when i7-920 was released, guys from P3 to Athlon 64 FX and C2Q owners all upgraded to i7. Which is still not completely obsolete today, despite the fact there had been 6 newer generations of Intel CPUs since.

 

[Makaveli]

Well, if you meant that in 2008 someone played pre-2003 games on P4 from 2003 than I agree. Otherwise I don't really agree. If you wanted to play games with high details, you definitely had to own dual core P4, C2D and 6600GT video card. Yet the P4s started to be good sometime the cedar mill was introduced, it was like this P3->Athlon XP/64->C2D.
If you wanted good gaming rig in 2003 you either sticked with your already 3 year old P3 rig and bought a new video card or upgraded to Athlon 64. In fact 2008 was killer year for older machines because when i7-920 was released, guys from P3 to Athlon 64 FX and C2Q owners all upgraded to i7. Which is still not completely obsolete today, despite the fact there had been 6 newer generations of Intel CPUs since.

+1 Agreed!

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

I have 2x X5675s @ 4.2GHz humming along running encode jobs, still the fastest encode rig I have next to the 2x E5-2670s @ stock.

Sad when I sold my 3x i7 920 D0s for a pittance on eBay. Those things OCed well at low Vcore :

 

[StrangerGuy]

Well, if you meant that in 2008 someone played pre-2003 games on P4 from 2003 than I agree. Otherwise I don't really agree. If you wanted to play games with high details, you definitely had to own dual core P4, C2D and 6600GT video card. Yet the P4s started to be good sometime the cedar mill was introduced, it was like this P3->Athlon XP/64->C2D.
If you wanted good gaming rig in 2003 you either sticked with your already 3 year old P3 rig and bought a new video card or upgraded to Athlon 64. In fact 2008 was killer year for older machines because when i7-920 was released, guys from P3 to Athlon 64 FX and C2Q owners all upgraded to i7. Which is still not completely obsolete today, despite the fact there had been 6 newer generations of Intel CPUs since.

I don't really agree with the value proposition of C2D/C2Q to Nehalem. My $183 3GHz OC E6300 from 2006 lasted me all the way until Sandy Bridge in 2011. By no means that is as fast as a Nehalem but even something as CPU-intensive as WoTLK WoW was perfectly playable.

Going back using the same logic a 2002 XP Tbred B/nForce2 @ 2200MHz would have easily lasted until Conroe in 2006, and before that 1998 Celeron 300 @ 450MHz until 2002.

 

[joutlaw]

I have had i3-2100 in a HTPC rig for the past 5 years. I am still impressed by Sandy Bridge even today.

 

[WildW]

I'm using an Ivy Bridge i3 3220 at the moment. I installed GTA 5 at the weekend expecting to convince myself that I need to upgrade to a quad core. I was puzzled when it ran perfectly fine.

 

[LTC8K6]

I'm using an Ivy Bridge i3 3220 at the moment. I installed GTA 5 at the weekend expecting to convince myself that I need to upgrade to a quad core. I was puzzled when it ran perfectly fine.

"ran perfectly fine" covers a hell of a lot of territory, though.

In fact, it doesn't mean much at all unless you clarify what resolution and what settings, etc.

What you consider fine, may be poor for the next guy.

 

[Sheep221]

I don't really agree with the value proposition of C2D/C2Q to Nehalem. My $183 3GHz OC E6300 from 2006 lasted me all the way until Sandy Bridge in 2011. By no means that is as fast as a Nehalem but even something as CPU-intensive as WoTLK WoW was perfectly playable.

Going back using the same logic a 2002 XP Tbred B/nForce2 @ 2200MHz would have easily lasted until Conroe in 2006, and before that 1998 Celeron 300 @ 450MHz until 2002.

I know it was perfectly playable but in the harcore/enthusiast segment many people did upgrade to core i7 because of abolished motherboard north bridge and having 8 threads. IPC difference between C2Q and nehalem is not that big but the HT did its work in terms of pushing i7 to the market at that time.
However I do think that upgrading from Q6700 or Q6600 to i7-920 was worthwhile upgrade, at least more worthwhile than let's say from i7-920 to 6700K. Which was may point in previous post, although generational IPC gains were much higher in the past, let's say the C2Ds offered almost twice the performance over Athlon 64 X2(let's say windsor and conroe which were released like 2 months apart in 2006) with decreased TDP and single core Athlon XPs were still much faster than P3s, but the core i family brought amount of performance that was not yet superseded and since the generational IPC gaps are more or less subtle rather than substantial.

 

[Nhirlathothep]

6yo = likenew 4me

 

[Nhirlathothep]

Nhir, you do know enthusiast are usually building PCs to game, right? MOST people buying these super powered chips are looking to build a monster game rig.

MOST people looking to build encoder and computational rigs will simply go multi-CPU. You would build a faster and more capable rig using your cash to buy 3 normal i7's instead of this one.

So yea, gamer CPU. Silly price, shocking performance for such an old cpu, but still a silly price.

what you say it s obvious!
these cpus are for hw enthusiast, if you think they re expensive, avoid em!

 

[Makaveli]

what you say it s obvious!
these cpus are for hw enthusiast, if you think they re expensive, avoid em!

Agreed there are far more expensive hobbies than computers!

 

[JeffMD]

what you say it s obvious!
these cpus are for hw enthusiast, if you think they re expensive, avoid em!

I don't think they are expensive..they are expensive. My post was related to the cost of then vs now, and that it isn't too much of a surprise a $1k cpu then still can strutt its stuff today while the same could not be said for i5 and maybe even the lowest i7.