i7 or i5 ? Need your advice.

[ADay2Long]

Hello all,

I am building myself a new rig and I am still debating wether I should go for the i5-P55 road or the i7-X58 road.

From what I see the only real price difference would be $200 ish more to go i7 and I was thinking that maybe it's best to lash out that money right now and be able to keep the system longer.

Other parts are :
CM Storm Sniper
XFX 4890
CM Hyper 212+
Seasonic M12D 750
WD 640GB (prolly raid 0)
RAM ???

Which ever I'm getting I will OC on air for now, so I'm asking for suggestions of CPU-mobo-RAM combinaisons that would work best and if it's worth it to be the $200 premium. Thx guys!

[kendallcschm]

.. i would go with the core i7 just cause i have heard better things about it

[SugarJ]

You're a folder, so LGA1366 is the way to go. My i7 920 is pulling down 22k ppd by itself with the latest VM. Also, the LGA1366 chips are the enthusiast end of the spectrum, LGA1166 and it's assorted chipsets are "mainstream".

[Thund3rball]

If the money isn't a problem then i7 for sure. That's what i5 (and i3) are there for. ;)

[belgolas]

I don't know the 920 isn't as good as the i5 750 as far as gaming is concerned.

[MonsterSound]

Here is what I had posted (below) from a similar discussion/thread (with more opinions which you might be interested in).
btw. I switched to the i7 860 only so I could fold bigadv units which require 8 threads. I was not disappointed at all with the i5 750.

Originally Posted by MonsterSound

Just a couple of thoughts/observations.

I Recently swapped my i5 750 for an i7 860 and the 860 definitely runs hotter w HT on (as martin_metal_88 suggests).

I had the i5 at 3.78ghz (for the 8 weeks I used it) w stock voltage folding 24/7 and temps were never a problem w CM 212+ (never a freeze or BSOD). Did a few benches for fun on the i5 at 4.24ghz with 1.35v stable (IntelBurnTest, Prime95...), and I must say that the i5 is the easiest overclocker I've ever used.
I haven't played around OC'g much yet with the i7 860, but volts and heat are going up for sure and at lower speeds.

I've also noticed a few threads where gaming/benches are shown as improved with HyperThreading turned off (lower heat/volts - higher overclocks). Seems ironic to turn off HT on the 860, as you are then essentially running an expensive i5 750.

The i5 750 may be the econo performance deal after all.
2c

[Thund3rball]

Well what do I know... I was going to get i5 750 but I I'm now going to wait for the i3 540 and save me a chunk of cash (for more games!). :)

[YukonTrooper]

Bench/multi-GPU gaming: i7 triple-channel
Fold/crunch: i7 dual-channel
Single GPU gaming: i5

I crunch and game and have the i7 920. However, I was an early adopter, so if I was buying now I'd likely go for a dual-channel i7 setup to save some dough on the memory bandwidth that I never use with my current system. Overkill, e-peen, etc.

[Jd007]

With up to 2 graphics cards, P55 is fine. Anything more you'll definitely need X58. Look here for details.

[kfcheung]

I'm able to clock i5 @ 4.2ghz on air cooling with less than 80C max temp

so, I would say i7 920 not worth looking unless you are into folding/encoding. i5 clocked this high is too overkill in games already~!

and yea p55 chipset with 2 cards will have up to 4% of performance drop compare to x58.