Hi! Old school newbie here. i7-920 vs 4770k

[themyst]

Hey guys, been around PCs since I was 4 using an old XT clone.

On a whim, I decided to buy new parts to update my aging Dell XPS i7-920, but not sure if it's worth my while.

I can't clock the 920 (C0 stepping) because it's a Dell (yes, dumb move on my part), but I did buy all the components to do a 4770k build.

After doing some research, found that the 4770k has some huge variances in terms of maximum overclock on air, some can crack 5 GHz, others can't hit 4.5, etc.

It's a Costa Rica, Batch# 3331C198. I saw no reports on this particular batch prefix, the closest thing I found was for the 331 batch.

Another part of me was thinking, return all this and go find a X58 mobo and live with a 600-700mhz overclock.

Worth building the 4770k or should I just buy a clock friendly mobo for my 920?

I have some reusable components in my old box, an R9 280x, a 240GB SSD, a 600W bronze PSU, those should work out well.

Sorry for the rambling, but I have many questions. Thanks

 

[jhu]

i7 920 vs. i7 4770k

You're welcome.

 

[frozentundra123456]

If you overclock the 920 to say 3.5 ghz and the 4770k to 4.2, that is a 20 percent increase in clockspeed. Just off the top of my head, I would conservatively estimate a 30 percent increase in ipc as well. So that is about a 55% increase in overall performance. Plus you would have lower power consumption as well.

Whether it is worth it, only you can say. The upgrade becomes easier to justify since you would have to get a new motherboard to overclock the 920, but it depends on how unhappy you are with your current system for your use case.

 

[themyst]

Thanks for the feedback guys.

Yeah, I justified the upgrade since I figure my old dell mobo/cpu/ram is worth around $150 on eBay, plus to buy an X58 mobo and new case, it would cost me around $200 USD so why not build out a real upgrade.

 

[themyst]

Another question (sorry)

is the i7-920 stock bottlenecking an R9 280X?

 

[Mk pt]

Yes, it is.

i7 920 still is a decent cpu, if you don't use heavy software for work or don't have a nice Crossfire/SLI, but only if have a heavy oc. i7 920 @ 3.7/3.8 Ghz will be similiar to an stock [3.3 - 3.4Ghz] i5 2500k, only with a much higher power consumption.

 

[themyst]

Yes, it is.

i7 920 still is a decent cpu, if you don't use heavy software for work or don't have a nice Crossfire/SLI, but only if have a heavy oc. i7 920 @ 3.7/3.8 Ghz will be similiar to an stock [3.3 - 3.4Ghz] i5 2500k, only with a much higher power consumption.

Problem is that i7-920 is connected to a Dell mobo, so I can't even overclock.

 

[Denithor]

An i7-920 at stock clocks (2.66GHz) is pretty weak by today's standards.

You should see nice improvements going to the 4770K even at stock speed (as posted above by jhu), let alone if you then overclock the new CPU.

 

[Revolution 11]

In this case, I would upgrade just for better I/O options such as USB 3, PCI-E 3, etc. The lower power use and better clocks/OC are just icing on the cake.

 

[ElFenix]

Yes, it is.

i7 920 still is a decent cpu, if you don't use heavy software for work or don't have a nice Crossfire/SLI, but only if have a heavy oc. i7 920 @ 3.7/3.8 Ghz will be similiar to an stock [3.3 - 3.4Ghz] i5 2500k, only with a much higher power consumption.

The front page blew up the "SLI requires a top end processor " claim.

And even without an over clock its as fast as an i3 on normal software and beats it handily at most heavy tasks. With a big over clock it'd destroy any i3 and easily be competitive with most i5s.

 

[rgallant]

In this case, I would upgrade just for better I/O options such as USB 3, PCI-E 3, etc. The lower power use and better clocks/OC are just icing on the cake.

this

 

[Headfoot]

Getting anywhere near 5.0 on Haswell is exceedingly uncommon