New computer

[rextar]

I'm looking for a new CPU gottta get rid of this p4 even though it handles a10 pretty well help!!

[Boberro]

Well used and good is Intel i7 920 and higher. If I were you I would only start looking for i7 CPU :)

[rextar]

Any idea on cost of an i7 ? Thx

[EtherealN]

If you upgrade from p4 to i7 you'll also need new mobo and new RAM. For the three parts I'd say you are looking at someplace around €500. Obviously, you'd have to check your local retailers to get prices that are in your currency and includes your VAT/tariff situations. (Unfortunately I don't know of any good online store for your territory.)

[RSharpe]

Might want to hold off for just a few more weeks to see how the new Sandy Bridge i7s perform before jumping on the old 1366 or 1156 socket processors.

[revalence]

I would go along with everyone else. Get a i7 with a LGA1366 socket, however, because these have better tech support (then LGA 1156), is ugradeable, and has up to date drivers provided by Intel. I have a i7-870 at 2.93GhZ and that gives me enough performance for A-10C. That cost around.... $250. But if you want a similiar performance, get the i7-950 or i7-920 ($200). Plus, if you want to optimize it more, you sould get DDR3 RAM (1333) and at least 4 GB. And don't forget to get the right socket in the motherboard. But from past experience, DCS A-10C and FC2 are much more reliant on the GPU then on the CPU. You don't need two overclocked i7-980 Extreme when you have a Nvidia 6600. I would even it out, and go with your gut (oops, Gaming) instinct.

 

-Cheers

Andrew (Revalence)

 

P.S. Oh, and on the Sandy Bridge socket, they look promising, so you could try that out. But even if they were great performers, the best of them would be a very large price for about a half a year from the release date, just like the i7 two years ago.

Edited December 31, 2010 by revalence

[EtherealN]

But from past experience, DCS A-10C and FC2 are much more reliant on the GPU then on the CPU.

 

*squirts new years wine through the nose*

 

That's not correct. Unless the GPU in question is truly ancient, the CPU is the bottleneck even if you run an i7 950. This is evidenced by the fact that excepting some arcane graphics settings (such as forcing SSAA through driver and so on) you get direct scaling in performance when you OC the CPU. A-10C is a borderline case for my machine (see signature) when I ramp up the graphics settings real high, but the difference when I tweak the processor between stock and OC is almost exactly linear.

 

For FC2 even my old 9800 can run everything at max with AA and AF forced through driver with zero FPS impact.

 

It all depends on what you have in the PCIe socket. If it's a GeForce 9200, then yeah - any CPU upgrade you ever do won't get you anything. If it's an Intel GMA965 on the mobo, then you'd end up being happy if you can even run it. But for 9800 and newer you need to be inventive to bottleneck at the GPU. (Unless you are cramming it way full of textures and only have 256MB vRAM or something like that, forcing it to use RAM as vRAM with overtasked northbridge as a result.)