Can you game on an 8 year old i7?

[j889]

I've a question: I've ASUS P6t deluxe, i7 950, can my system run gtx 980ti??? or GTX 980, 970???

I tried to run the new 1060 1070, but motherboard won't recognize the graphic cards.

 

Thank you.

[kidroc666]

x58 hell yes they game very well just oc it past 4.0 and have at it bro!!

[LukeSavenije]

wait... you have a x58?

 

boy you got lucky, get a nice xeon for it

[Guest]

Did you update your bios to the last version? that is pretty critical! I had a standard p6t that both recognized a 1050Ti and a 1060 3gb 

p.s. it is almost 11 years ago for the cpu  
 

[Guest]

you need to download the upper file and place it on a usb drive...

https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/P6T_Deluxe/HelpDesk_BIOS/

restart your p.c. …. look in your bios for the flash bios function ( there are multiple YouTube tutorial available if the bios is unknown territory ) 
upgrade and voila 9xx series and 10xx Nvidia series should work on your system

[Pasi123]

You could upgrade the i7 to a cheap 6 core 12 thread Xeon. I've had an overclocked Xeon X5670 on my main PC since 2016.

 

Even the i7-950 should be able to run most games just fine with a 980/1060 or something. Have you overclocked the i7?

[bimmerman]

TL;DR Yes, you can game on it, just may need to update the bios to recognize newer cards and CPUs.

 

I still use the Gigabyte motherboard that I bought with my i7-950, brand new, back in 2010. I currently run a 1080ti without issue, along with an NVMe boot drive in a PCIe slot (Samsung 950 Pro is the only one that allows this to work, FWIW).

 

I bought a Xeon X5675 to replace the i7-950 purely for overclocking and extra threads/cores, for a whopping $50 on ebay. I used the i7-950 until 2017, without overclocking much, and it was totally fine for gaming. The Xeon is definitely an upgrade you would notice IF you A) update bios with the i7 to the latest version and B) plan on overclocking.

 

To be pretty blunt though, without overclocking there is very little point to using the X58 platform nowadays, as the stock performance is quite poor. These chips are competitive-enough when overclocked---we're talking +50% overclocks on average (for the Xeons), not the ~10% as the 8700/9900k will do. However, you pretty much need to OC that much to hang with the newer stuff, and that involves significant heat output and power consumption.

 

Numbers:

My i7-950 was stock at 3 GHz; best OC it ever did, stably, was 4.0 GHz. That's a 33% improvement in all-core OC.

My Xeon X5675 was stock at 3 GHz; best OC I've tried for daily use, with stability, is 4.7 GHz. That's a 56% improvement in all-core OC. I bet it can go higher.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, bimmerman said:

TL;DR Yes, you can game on it, just may need to update the bios to recognize newer cards and CPUs.

 

I still use the Gigabyte motherboard that I bought with my i7-950, brand new, back in 2010. I currently run a 1080ti without issue, along with an NVMe boot drive in a PCIe slot (Samsung 950 Pro is the only one that allows this to work, FWIW).

 

I bought a Xeon X5675 to replace the i7-950 purely for overclocking and extra threads/cores, for a whopping $50 on ebay. I used the i7-950 until 2017, without overclocking much, and it was totally fine for gaming. The Xeon is definitely an upgrade you would notice IF you A) update bios with the i7 to the latest version and B) plan on overclocking.

 

To be pretty blunt though, without overclocking there is very little point to using the X58 platform nowadays, as the stock performance is quite poor. These chips are competitive-enough when overclocked---we're talking +50% overclocks on average (for the Xeons), not the ~10% as the 8700/9900k will do. However, you pretty much need to OC that much to hang with the newer stuff, and that involves significant heat output and power consumption.

 

Numbers:

My i7-950 was stock at 3 GHz; best OC it ever did, stably, was 4.0 GHz. That's a 33% improvement in all-core OC.

My Xeon X5675 was stock at 3 GHz; best OC it does, stably, is 4.7 GHz. That's a 56% improvement in all-core OC.

Maybe your forgetting that almost 75% of games released are not really cpu hungry in any way. Think of various group based rpg's for example.. many strategy titles that do require a new gpu but are perfectly playable with the old i7... right up until beginning last year i used the i7 for almost any game released.. with 6gb's of ram ( 3x2 ) and a 770 gtx after that i tried a xeon x5650 for almost 3 quarter of a year and now to end up with a ryzen 5 2600 .. but that info is trailing of the path  

[Zando_]

Just now, Christiaan21-03 said:

Maybe your forgetting that almost 75% of games released are not really cpu hungry in any way. Think of various group based rpg's for example.. many strategy titles that do require a new gpu but are perfectly playable with the old i7... right up until beginning last year i used the i7 for almost any game released.. with 6gb's of ram ( 3x2 ) and a 770 gtx after that i tried a xeon x5650 for almost 3 quarter of a year and now to end up with a ryzen 5 2600 .. but that info is trailing of the path  

My i7 950 at 3.9GHz barely manages to keep up with a 1050 Ti in most games so.... yeah, definitely get a 6c/12t Xeon and OC it to 4.2Ghz, the improvement is massive. At 4.5Ghz my X5675 can keep up pretty well with even a 1080 Ti considering it's age. Defo a bottleneck, but it does 60fps pretty much everywhere. 

[bimmerman]

Just now, Christiaan21-03 said:

Maybe your forgetting that almost 75% of games released are not really cpu hungry in any way. Think of various group based rpg's for example.. many strategy titles that do require a new gpu but are perfectly playable with the old i7... right up until beginning last year i used the i7 for almost any game released.. with 6gb's of ram ( 3x2 ) and a 770 gtx after that i tried a xeon x5650 for almost 3 quarter of a year and now to end up with a ryzen 5 2600 .. but that info is trailing of the path  

Nope, am not forgetting, and I agree -- I ran a non-overclocked i7 just fine with an R9 290 for years. It really depends what sort of games OP wants to play and what GPU/resolution/detail settings they are OK with.

 

So no, you don't need to overclock, but if you have the appropriate gear (and time to fiddle), why not?

[bimmerman]

2 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

My i7 950 at 3.9GHz barely manages to keep up with a 1050 Ti in most games so.... yeah, definitely get a 6c/12t Xeon and OC it to 4.2Ghz, the improvement is massive. At 4.5Ghz my X5675 can keep up pretty well with even a 1080 Ti considering it's age. Defo a bottleneck, but it does 60fps pretty much everywhere. 

Yep. I'm getting a reliable 60fps average in just about anything I care to play at 3440x1440 on a 60Hz monitor. I'm pretty happy.

 

Going from the non-OC'd i7 to the OC'd Xeon was a massive improvement in GPU performance with my R9 290(s). The OC'd i7 was never really stable in my experience and I ended up just not bothering, but man the Xeons are special chips.

[Zando_]

1 minute ago, bimmerman said:

Yep. I'm getting a reliable 60fps average in just about anything I care to play at 3440x1440 on a 60Hz monitor. I'm pretty happy.

 

Going from the non-OC'd i7 to the OC'd Xeon was a massive improvement in GPU performance with my R9 290(s). The OC'd i7 was never really stable in my experience and I ended up just not bothering, but man the Xeons are special chips.

Yeah, by all accounts the 32nm 6c/12t i7s are also amazing. The OG 45nm quads are just eh, they don't perform near as well as the next gen, and they're fussier to OC. Also run really hot and don't usually clock as high. 

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

My i7 950 at 3.9GHz barely manages to keep up with a 1050 Ti in most games so.... yeah, definitely get a 6c/12t Xeon and OC it to 4.2Ghz, the improvement is massive. At 4.5Ghz my X5675 can keep up pretty well with even a 1080 Ti considering it's age. Defo a bottleneck, but it does 60fps pretty much everywhere. 

yea i can concur… with the x5650 on 4 ghz coupled too with a 1050 and a 60 later on improvements made for example in total war warhammer 2 where amazing…. In the end running costs made me upgrade to the much cheaper to use ryzen + system 

[Lenovo1984]

Definitely. I've got an X58 system as well (a nice Dell Precision) that handles pretty much everything I can throw at it. 

[Stefan Payne]

On 3/9/2019 at 7:46 PM, j889 said:

I've a question: I've ASUS P6t deluxe, i7 950, can my system run gtx 980ti??? or GTX 980, 970???

I tried to run the new 1060 1070, but motherboard won't recognize the graphic cards.

 

Thank you.

Yeah, no Problemo.

With that you might want to take a look at a Xeon X5600 Series for example X5640 or 5630 if you already have that with decent memory.

 

With that you get 2 additional cores in a smaller manufacturing process. And in general higher efficiency, lower idle consumption as well.

[LienusLateTips]

Why are we all replying on a post from one month ago?