C2D vs i5 vs PhII

[*Rage*]

Hi,

 

LOFC 2.0 has sparked my interest once more. Looking to upgrade. Ghz is king it would seem for LOFC and more then 2 cores is unnecessary (for me at least).

 

OcUK have some great preoverclocked bundles (CPU/MB/RAM/HS)

 

£279 for Ph II at 3.6Ghz 4Gb ram

 

£339 for I5 750 at 3.6Ghz 4 Gb ram

 

Which will run LOFC faster. Will either be significantly (>25%) faster then a C2D @ 3Ghz (or even overclocked to 3.6)?

 

Thanks.

[gigz-on]

Phenom's better, I think/

Because I have it..;)

[Distiler]

Wich C2D do you have?

 

Wich operating system do you have?

 

Also wich graphic card?

Edited November 20, 2009 by Distiler

[Pilotasso]

State your current system and the one you plan to buy.

[*Rage*]

Wich C2D do you have?

 

Wich operating system do you have?

 

Also wich graphic card?

 

C2D E6850..but im not very confident overclocking. I have a GTX 260 216...BUT I run a 30" widescreen at 2560x1600.

 

Im waiting to see what Nvdia do to counter the 5870. Due to my resolution and graphics settings im not entirely CPU restricted so a Gfx upgrade is due at some point.

[Distiler]

Not really a bad cpu for lockon 2.0/DCS. A cpu with more caché per core would be nice (E8400, Q9550 without changing your motherboard), but don't expect any magic.

 

And wich OS? if you're running XP then you are lucky, expect a 30-50% fps increase moving to Vista/W7 (at least in DCS, and I think lockon 2.0 use the same engine)

Edited November 20, 2009 by Distiler

[Pilotasso]

Dont do the wayting game once you set things in motion. :)

 

Get the most strong CPU as it might be challenged by the new grass and trees details.

 

the downside of buying I5's is that they arent much faster than high end C2D's. Better aim it for the full blown I7's. for SIM's forget AMD. They are only competitive in FPS's.

 

Lucid's hydra (bout to be launched it seems and gives good multi GPU scaling) might enable you to buy a single GFX now and get a stronger one later and pair both for a large boost.

[*Rage*]

Dont do the wayting game once you set things in motion. :)

 

Get the most strong CPU as it might be challenged by the new grass and trees details.

 

the downside of buying I5's is that they arent much faster than high end C2D's. Better aim it for the full blown I7's. for SIM's forget AMD. They are only competitive in FPS's.

 

Lucid's hydra (bout to be launched it seems and gives good multi GPU scaling) might enable you to buy a single GFX now and get a stronger one later and pair both for a large boost.

 

The I5 seems just as fast (practically) as the I7 in gaming though. Especially when already overclocked to 3.6Ghz wherease an i7 costs me £200 (oem chip alone) with no guarantee of a stable oveclock.

 

My concern is that I go through all this to find im only 10-15% faster than my C2D clock for clock:doh:

[Pilotasso]

Yep...thats why I find I7's so uninteresting today, Going to skip them all.

[EtherealN]

My own personal advice would be that if you are planning to purchase a new system, first overclock your own. If you aren't confident with doing it yourself that would be the ideal time to try it out - since if it goes bad you can just proceed with the original plan of purchasing a new system. :)

 

But as long as you have a solid motherboard the risks aren't big. Here's a very good guide on how to do it on a C2D: http://techreport.com/articles.x/13815

 

As long as you have a good aftermarket cooler and do things in small steps you'll just get regular bluescreens before there's any risk of damage to your components. Most important aspect really is to verify that you can unlink the memory clock, since they can otherwise be a bottleneck - and constantly re-doing timings manually is no fun. Much better to just unlink them and let the CPU clock be the only thing affected by upping the FSB.

 

If you don't want to go that route, though, I don't know. I'm not personally very impressed with the i7's when it comes to bang-for-buck, but I have seen some absolutely fantastic overclocks of the i7 920.

[*Rage*]

And wich OS? if you're running XP then you are lucky, expect a 30-50% fps increase moving to Vista/W7 (at least in DCS, and I think lockon 2.0 use the same engine)

 

Im running Vista 32bit.

 

Thats a really interesting question. Will FC2.0 benefit from the DCS dual core vista boost??

[Distiler]

I don't know if original LockOn did not use both cores, but if this is the case, then expect an increase in fps coupled by a decrease of those because graphics will be at DCS level...can't figure if you'll get + or - net fps.

 

If you have DCS and it runs well, then LockOn will perhaps a bit better because the cockpit of Ka-50 eats lots of fps whereas those of LockOn don't (thou LockOn engine will allow for greater visibility range than DCS so a bit of a hit in fps).

 

I don't really know XD

[*Rage*]

For me DCS runs better than LOFC.

 

No micro stutters. No unexplainable slideshow FPS in online play (that was the final straw in giving up on FC). Overall better optimised I think.

 

I really hope FC 2.0 uses the DCS engine.

[Pilotasso]

My own personal advice would be that if you are planning to purchase a new system, first overclock your own.

 

Yes, kill 2 rabits with 1 stone. Get faster or kill your system trying to do it, perfect excuse to upgrade. Its win win situation :D

[*Rage*]

Yeah I guess overclocking is the best option right now.

 

My ram is only 400mhz. I think my FSB is 333mhz x 9 multiplier = 3ghz.

 

With my P5KC motherboard does that mean my maximum overclock is 3.6ghz (FSB upped to 400mhz like the ram) ?

[Pilotasso]

My P5K mobo allows me to down the memory multiplier, so should yours, so your limit is either the MOBO or the CPU.

 

My mobo is at 400Mhz, Yours should be able to do it too.

 

My CPU realy scaled up from 2.83 to 3.4 GHz in perfomance. It scores higher than the quad extreme at 3.2Ghz by apreciable margin, as you can see by the pic below.

[EtherealN]

Yeah, Rage, the point of my note about unlinking memory is that through unlinking it from the FSB (most often it actually means that you set a clock - say, 800MHz if that's your sticks standard speed, which would be 400MHz on DDR2 RAM for 800MHz effective - and the BIOS will figure out the closest match). So with unlinked RAM the only thing that is affected by you tweaking the FSB is the FSB itself and as a secondary effect the CPU clock speed.

 

My own FSB is at 333 on standard (times 9.5 on the CPU multiplier), but after unlinking I quickly bumped it up to 4GHz before I had any kind of issues, and I haven't even done any manual overvolting which means both my FSB and CPU should be able to take some more with the cooling I have on it. Right now my FSB runs at 425MHz, giving my CPU 4GHz. And after the unlinking there is no longer a limit imposed by my RAMsticks - it'll just set another ratio to achieve close to my setting (setting it to 1100MHz ends up at 1092, as per my signature).

 

Basically, the investment to bring my e8500 from 3.16GHz to 4GHz, with room to spare, was a 50 dollar aftermarket cooler. That is real nice value for money, and doing stuff like that is a great way to learn how your system works deep down.

[SAM77]

Wow FC 2.0

 

I'm goin the EtherealN way (BANG for BUCK)

 

I just bought an E8500 with P45 mobo and 4Gb ddr2 ram just waiting on the aftermarket cooler that EtherealN mentioned earlier and a new case.

 

 

I had been waiting a very long time (6months) for the socket 1156 release to build new rig (for DCS). Athlon 3700+ :(

 

While it was tempting the voice of reason won out and told me to go bang for buck.

 

The performance didnt justify the extra 20% in cost for a 1156 platform and even though the power consumption is great that wasnt enuff.

 

Add the issues with the sockets (foxconn and i have read a lotes has also failed) and that pretty much dictated that i go with the proven lga775.

 

Socket 1366 was also tempting but i dont want to kill the planet just for gaming.

 

Hopefully i7 930 is 32nm and then 1366 becomes real attractive especially for a certain ww2 flight sim slated for release late 2010 (Oleg????)

 

 

However my res is 1280 x 1024 so I can go a bit easy

[EtherealN]

Sounds like you'll have a sweet project for an evening then, sam. :)

 

If it's your first time, just make sure to read that article I linked (and possibly google for more articles) and always take it slow. Remember that the FSB is what Intel calls "quadpumped" - meaning a 333MHz FSB is effectively at 1333MHz. But it's still the original 333 number that matters, which on some motherboards can be confusing. Then you basically just up the FSB real slow, and take care to restart and test it every time - I like a freeware application called Orthos since it can really stress the machine and thereby hopefully help you detect issues with time to spare. I typically ran Orthos for 5 to 15 minutes on each step.

 

Also make very certain to have several temperature monitoring applications running while doing this. When I ran Orthos the first time with a slight overclock on my stock cooler it ran nice for a little while and then shot up quickly to and past the 80 degrees celcius - good to know when that happens to be able to halt the operation. :P The stock cooler that Intel ships with the Core2's isn't actually all that bad, but it's a pita to assemble correctly - some people love those plastic push-pin connectors but I loathe them. I never get them right. So I much prefer my 0.7 kilogrammes of copper heatpipes and 0.1mm plates. With that thing an Orthos torture test can run for an hour (which really is the minimum time you should give it when you have decided on a clock ratio - this is basically where you make it DAMN sure that the system is stable and balanced in temperature) or more and only maybe reach 55 degrees C.

 

The only drawback on my part was that it was a bit too easy. :P So at some point next year I'm going to have to find myself a reason to purchase an i7 system so I can re-do the whole dance again. Sadly the only reason I have so far is that overclocking is addictive fun! :D

[SAM77]

Yeah Man!!!

 

Looking forward to getting started sometime later this week. Thanks for that link and the temps info.

 

Will certainly take it easier this time around and just go for a stock voltage oc.

 

I overclocked my 3700+ and used Prime 95 for 24hours on full blend for stability(i tried orthos as well but prefer Prime) Also use Coretemp for my temp monitoring.

 

I wanted a xigmatek dark knight but it would not fit the dfi mobo in a east west config so I had to dish out a bit more $$ for a Noctua

 

FrostyTech is a great site for cooler comparisons if you didnt already know about it. Plus they are so helpful with cooling questions.

 

 

While I enjoyed overclocking my athlon 64 and certainly agree with you on the addiction factor I am hoping that I dont need to OC the E8500 to run DCS at good frames at 1280 x 1024.

 

Summer is here in Sydney and we had a 40C temp today. My room is 35C :) so that Noctua will be working hard lol

[EtherealN]

The e8500 should perform quite nicely even at stock speed, but you do get almost linear benefits and that resolution should help ensure that you don't run into a new bottleneck through the GPU. Memory speed has seemed to be of pretty much no consequence in the tests I've run - no reliable changes in FPS when I flip my sticks between 800 and 1100.

 

The one thing that is a real shame with the Core2's is the whole thing with locked multipliers forcing us to up the FSB, which creates new possible walls to run into when overclocking. I would make the conjecture that part of the reason why we see relatively low-clock i7 920's overclock well past 4GHz for some people is that the old FSB's has been moved on-chip on them. But DCS is so smooth with lots of room to spare that that itself isn't worth the expense for me. But one day I will find a reason.

 

Now just remember to take it real slow with that FSB. 10MHz on the core value (333-340, not 1333-1343, depending on motherboard it may vary if you see the "quadpumped" metric) is the biggest steps I'd really recommend. As long as you take care there and mind your sticks you'll be fine. And if you are ever unsure about something you can always just pause the work, fire up Google and see what you can find. :)

[Pilotasso]

thats why intel has extreme editions, for over 1000$ (converted into euros directly after crossing the pond) you can play with multpliers at will.

 

Of course you have to be rich or dumb to do that because it easely pays for 2 of the next best thing, i.e. buy one non extreme high end CPU now, and another later and get better perfomance than the extreme.

[EtherealN]

Aye, I know the "Extremes" are there but the pricetag is just stupid.

 

Note about direct-to-euro conversions though - as it is also a common gripe on Steam - is that it does often include the 15% EURO-VAT.

[GaryIKILLYOU]

. for SIM's forget AMD. They are only competitive in FPS's.

 

Source please... I have AMD Phenom II X4 955 BE 3.2 GHz and I have no problems with LO AND I DONT HAVE A VID CARD!!!:thumbup::joystick:

[EtherealN]

Gary,

 

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=45931

 

Please. It turned out difficult to get ANY AMD data into that one.