is the i7 920 still a good CPU?

[glitchmaster0001]

Hi so recently i acquired an ASUS P6T X58 Motherboard at my local goodwill for $20, now i am going to pair it with a Xeon W3520 that i bought for $6 (essentially an i7 920) and im wondering if the i7 920 is still a good CPU. i know about the E5640s and the X5650s being good and affordable CPUs but im wondering if i OC the W3520 a little bit like 3.3GHz or something small, will it be enough to do gaming provided that i pair it with a good GPU. i know the X58 platform is old to today's standards but ive heard alot of good things about it even to this day and also looking at eBay the prices of X58 motherboards are just insane... 

[ltguy]

I still have an i7-950 @ 4.0ghz and it runs great. Sure its not going to keep up skylake, but as long as you have reasonable exceptions for performance, it'll do just fine. Still on par with basically anything AMD sells (burn). (fingers crossed for zen)

 

[1Cup1Tea]

Going by this, yes it's still great.

 

 

[Leadneck]

While I don't have any benchmarks or hard numbers for you as of right now, I can tell you that I have a machine with an i7-960 in it that is used for testing.

 

It has an i7-960 at stock speeds paired with 2x Radeon HD 7970s in Crossfire and 16GB RAM. It can run newer titles like Gears of War Ultimate Edition with no performance issues at 1920x1080.

 

So yeah, I would say that it is a perfectly acceptable platform, especially at that price!

[Curufinwe_wins]

13 minutes ago, 1Cup1Tea said:

Going by this, yes it's still great.

 

I don't know how you would possible call that great based on it being a super hard cpu bottleneck (even with the 960 on the 4790k system), but it will certainly be good enough to keep over 60 fps (overclocked) if you don't plan on going high refresh rate.

 

I certainly would never touch a 920 non-oc'd. Just like a Q6600.

 

The biggest issues IMHO are connectivity losses, like no usb 3.1 (or even 3.0), limited sata6 support, etc. But most of those can be addressed with add-in cards if you want.

[PlayStation 2]

I can barely find decent VHS tapes at a fucking Goodwill and you're over here finding fucking obscure motherboards at yours.

 

Don't expect it to beat Skylake or even Sandy Bridge, but it's not horrible at all.

[1Cup1Tea]

Just now, Curufinwe_wins said:

I don't know how you would possible call that great based on it being a super hard cpu bottleneck (even with the 960 on the 4790k system), but it will certainly be good enough to keep over 60 fps (overclocked) if you don't plan on going high refresh rate.

 

I certainly would never touch a 920 non-oc'd. Just like a Q6600.

 

The biggest issues IMHO are connectivity losses, like no usb 3.1 (or even 3.0), limited sata6 support, etc. But most of those can be addressed with add-in cards if you want.

2008 CPU, price. = GREAT.

[Curufinwe_wins]

Just now, 1Cup1Tea said:

2008 CPU, price. = GREAT.

power consumption (particularly mobo inefficiency) = bad, performance = poor to bad, connectivity = abysmal

 

But sure the value is fantastic.

[1Cup1Tea]

Just now, Curufinwe_wins said:

power consumption (particularly mobo inefficiency) = bad, performance = poor to bad, connectivity = abysmal

 

But sure the value is fantastic.

i7 920 won by a large gap in Crysis 3.

You just told everyone here that an i5 4460 is a poor performing CPU since the 920 beats it in all games overclocked. If we calculate price, the 4460 is way worse than the 920.

[Curufinwe_wins]

2 minutes ago, 1Cup1Tea said:

i7 920 won by a large gap in Crysis 3.

You just told everyone here that an i5 4460 is a poor performing CPU since the 920 beats it in all games overclocked. If we calculate price, the 4460 is way worse than the 920.

1. Crysis 3 was THE ONLY game it won at. Yay for specific devs actually implementing multi-threaded calls.

2. No I didn't call the 4460 bad, I explicitly stated I wouldn't touch a 920 non-overclocked, and the OC done here is MUCH higher than the OP intends (shown 4GHz, OP aims for 3.3).

4. A 40-60% loss in single threaded performance from a 4460 to a 920 is a VERY big deal for many applications you wouldn't even consider that demanding normally (like emulators or high speed file transfers).

5. I explicitly said value was great.

6. power consumption is god awful on x58 compared to h97 so efficiency is abysmal, as I stated.

7. Connectivity is IMHO the biggest issue to overcome (as stated before), and while pcie add-in cards aren't that expensive, they still add to cost and complexity.

8. Newer instruction set support is a big deal for getting the most out of specific applications, and you will miss that. Things like encoding/decoding video will be much less efficient. The 920 might blatantly fail at some of them (like 4k HEVC decodes)

 

9. I AM NOT SAYING (and will not say) HE SHOULDN'T HAVE BOUGHT IT. Just pointing out that there are a crap load of improvements since then, and there are consequences as a result.

[SLAYR]

41 minutes ago, glitchmaster0001 said:

Hi so recently i acquired an ASUS P6T X58 Motherboard at my local goodwill for $20, now i am going to pair it with a Xeon W3520 that i bought for $6 (essentially and i7 920) and im wondering if the i7 920 is still a good CPU. i know about the E5640s and the X5650s being good and affordable CPUs but im wondering if i OC the W3520 a little bit like 3.3GHz or something small, will it be enough to do gaming provided that i pair it with a good GPU. i know the X58 platform is old to today's standards but ive heard alot of good things about it even to this day and also looking at eBay the prices of X58 motherboards are just insane... 

For $26 that is an amazing deal and will be on par with cpus like the 860k at stock speeds.

 

http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/AMD-Athlon-II-X4-860K-vs-Intel-Xeon-W3520/3265vsm3585

[1Cup1Tea]

2 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

1. Crysis 3 was THE ONLY game it won at. Yay for specific devs actually implementing multi-threaded calls.

2. No I didn't call the 4460 bad, I explicitly stated I wouldn't touch a 920 non-overclocked, and the OC done here is MUCH higher than the OP intends (shown 4GHz, OP aims for 3.3).

4. A 40-60% loss in single threaded performance from a 4460 to a 920 is a VERY big deal for many applications you wouldn't even consider that demanding normally (like emulators or high speed file transfers).

5. I explicitly said value was great.

6. power consumption is god awful on x58 compared to h97 so efficiency is abysmal, as I stated.

7. Connectivity is IMHO the biggest issue to overcome (as stated before), and while pcie add-in cards aren't that expensive, they still add to cost and complexity.

8. Newer instruction set support is a big deal for getting the most out of specific applications, and you will miss that. Things like encoding/decoding video will be much less efficient. The 920 might blatantly fail at some of them (like 4k HEVC decodes)

 

9. I AM NOT SAYING (and will not say) HE SHOULDN'T HAVE BOUGHT IT. Just pointing out that there are a crap load of improvements since then, and there are consequences as a result.

 

[Curufinwe_wins]

12 minutes ago, 1Cup1Tea said:

snip

Good job missing the point of the comment (just a random fringe example a user of the platform might see in the future). Youtube uses VP9. VP9 (like h264 before it) is a MUCH easier file codec to encode and decode than HEVC.

 

The advantage of HEVC is its nigh unparalleled size efficiency at high quality/detail (as a replacement to the high quality h.264 codec). AKA it has the best compression ratios of codecs today (VP9 comes close, but it never retains as much detail as HEVC does unfortunately). 

 

Sadly, this comes with the price of encoding and decoding power required for the video. HEVC encoding is about 3-10x slower than H.264 encoding, and HEVC decodes require about 2-3x more CPU power than H.264.

 

The good news for people running older hardware (not necessarily slower hardware) is that HEVC growth in the market place has crawled to a snails pace due to some really bone-headed decisions on licensing requirements, so unless you own a NAS and want HEVC for the storage efficiency (a HEVC file of the same quality takes up less than 1/2 to 1/3 of the size of the same H.264 video) you probably won't run into that issue.

 

Also as a side comment, it is clearly visible from that youtube link he is playing a 4k 30hz video. I LEGITIMATELY DON'T KNOW if it would or would not have issues with a 4k 60hz one.

 

15 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

8. Newer instruction set support is a big deal for getting the most out of specific applications, and you will miss that. Things like encoding/decoding video will be much less efficient. The 920 might blatantly fail at some of them (like 4k HEVC decodes)

 

[1Cup1Tea]

Just now, Curufinwe_wins said:

Good job missing the point of the comment. Youtube uses VP9. VP9 (like h264 before it) is a MUCH easier file codec to encode and decode than HEVC.

 

The advantage of HEVC is its nigh unparalleled size efficiency at high quality/detail (as a replacement to the high quality h.264 codec). AKA it has the best compression ratios of codecs today (VP9 comes close, but it never retains as much detail as HEVC does unfortunately). 

 

Sadly, this comes with the price of encoding and decoding power required for the video. HEVC encoding is about 3-10x slower than H.264 encoding, and HEVC decodes require about 2-3x more CPU power than H.264.

 

The good news for people running older hardware (not necessarily slower hardware) is that HEVC growth in the market place has crawled to a snails pace due to some really bone-headed decisions on licensing requirements, so unless you own a NAS and want HEVC for the storage efficiency (a HEVC file of the same quality takes up less than 1/2 to 1/3 of the size of the same H.264 video) you probably won't run into that issue.

 

Also as a side comment, it is clearly visible from that youtube link he is playing a 4k 30hz video. I LEGITIMATELY DON'T KNOW if it would or would not have issues with a 4k 60hz one.

 

 

H.264 requires literally nothing from a CPU in the i7 920's class so 2-3x more CPU power needed, the i7 920 will still do a sterling job lol.

[Curufinwe_wins]

8 minutes ago, 1Cup1Tea said:

H.264 requires literally nothing from a CPU in the i7 920's class so 2-3x more CPU power needed, the i7 920 will still do a sterling job lol.

You say that, and yet a 4k 10b 24hz HEVC decode requires nigh 20% of a 5820k @ 4.5Ghz resources (passmark score of just over 16000), while the stock 920 offers about 30% of that compute throughput. 

 

By quick math the same decode (obviously ignoring instruction set improvements) should take about 68% of the 920's resources. 

 

So yea, it looks doable (for 24hz anyways, which is the most common cinema refresh rate). 

[1Cup1Tea]

Just now, Curufinwe_wins said:

You say that, and yet a 4k 10b 24hz HEVC decode requires nigh 20% of a 5820k @ 4.5Ghz resources (passmark score of just over 16000), while the stock 920 offers about 30% of that compute throughput. 

 

By quick math the same decode (obviously ignoring instruction set improvements) should take about 68% of the 920's resources. 

 

So yea, it looks doable (for 24hz, a very very common cinema refresh rate). 

At stock.

Also a W3520 will be able to hit 3.3 on stock voltage, most D0 920's did that, i had my head stuck in the forums over on OCN for a long time and was participating in the forum clubs, my main entry was a QX9770 though. I think you underestimate what these CPU's can do.

[glitchmaster0001]

42 minutes ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

I can barely find decent VHS tapes at a fucking Goodwill and you're over here finding fucking obscure motherboards at yours.

 

Don't expect it to beat Skylake or even Sandy Bridge, but it's not horrible at all.

lol when i saw an that board with 6 DIMM slots i knew.. oh shit thats a fucking X58 motherboard right there! asked the sales person how much he was like $20 and i was like hell yea! i can see a fun little cheap project coming soon! 

[PlayStation 2]

1 minute ago, glitchmaster0001 said:

lol when i saw an that board with 6 DIMM slots i knew.. oh shit thats a fucking X58 motherboard right there! asked the sales person how much he was like $20 and i was like hell yea! i can see a fun little cheap project coming soon! 

Yep, more power to you for taking advantage of it.

[1Cup1Tea]

1 minute ago, glitchmaster0001 said:

lol when i saw an that board with 6 DIMM slots i knew.. oh shit thats a fucking X58 motherboard right there! asked the sales person how much he was like $20 and i was like hell yea! i can see a fun little cheap project coming soon! 

I'm kinda jealous.

[glitchmaster0001]

29 minutes ago, SLAYR said:

For $26 that is an amazing deal and will be on par with cpus like the 860k at stock speeds.

 

http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/AMD-Athlon-II-X4-860K-vs-Intel-Xeon-W3520/3265vsm3585

what if i put an E5645 or an X5650 in there? those CPUs are like $40 to $55 on ebay right now and i heard lots of good things about OCing them

[1Cup1Tea]

2 minutes ago, glitchmaster0001 said:

what if i put an E5645 or an X5650 in there? those CPUs are like $40 to $55 on ebay right now and i heard lots of good things about OCing them

32nm badasses... left all i7 45nm chips in the dust on OCN, they are kings of the x58 benchies lol.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1489955/official-x58-xeon-club

[Curufinwe_wins]

6 minutes ago, 1Cup1Tea said:

At stock.

Also a W3520 will be able to hit 3.3 on stock voltage, most D0 920's did that, i had my head stuck in the forums over on OCN for a long time and was participating in the forum clubs, my main entry was a QX9770 though. I think you underestimate what these CPU's can do.

Not really, I wouldn't have called a expected 70% load of a relatively reasonable decode (I mean it isn't HDR or 60hz) anything to scoff at.

 

But certainly I see no reason it wouldn't be able to do that having gone through the math.

 

Just looked at the i7-960 benchmarks (fairly similar to the goal 3.3 on a slightly newer process), looks like it did 12-20% better over the 920, so that is not an insignificant boost.

[glitchmaster0001]

3 minutes ago, 1Cup1Tea said:

I'm kinda jealous.

i know i was damn right lucky.. was gonna use my $26 to go hang out with my friends but when i saw the CPU on ebay and the mobo at goodwill i had to cancel my hangout with my friends. PC enthusiast problems lol. I guess no diner for me at olive garden... 

[glitchmaster0001]

4 minutes ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

Yep, more power to you for taking advantage of it.

funny thing is it was in this pinkish anti static bubble wrap and there was sticker on the wrap that said "Tested Working" 

[PlayStation 2]

Just now, glitchmaster0001 said:

funny thing is it was in this pinkish anti static bubble wrap and there was sticker on the wrap that said "Tested Working" 

lol