Just been reading a performance review of the new Intel CPU. They seem to have made a monumental leap in performance and makes their previous best performing chips look stupid.

Look at these benchmarks by Custom PC and then consider the cheapest i7 retails around £260 and matches/beats the QX9770 that retails around £1000!!!

I know moving to i7 means a new mobo and ram, however this is now a no brainer surely?



http://movies.custompc.co.uk/cpc/images/corei72.jpg

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The stats below lie. I'm actually much much worse.

Going with an i7 at this stage is a good choice, however the issue with the voltage of the DDR3 memory banks, I'm not sure how this is evolving and if this has a lot of issues, so I think before actually buying such a system, you should take good care with this.

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"Why do it simple, when there is a hard way..."

You have to keep some things in mind:

1) You need new expensive base parts like mobo (around 200 €) and DDR3-RAM (50% more expensive than DDR2).
2) The perfomance increase really, really depends on the software you use. With no optimization a cheap Core 2 Duo can outplay even the biggest i7 in most games. Nevertheless the perfomance of most games depend mainly on the gfxcard and not the CPU. But don't let you fool by synthetic benchmarks.
3) The i7 needs a lot more power so the performance/Watt-ratio got worse. This means more power, more money, more heat, more noise (or better cooling). The chart you linked is quite shitty as it only compares the i7 to C2D Extreme.
That's not that good comparison... Intel's Extreme CPUs were/are waaaaay overprized. They cost 1000$ in the US... £1000 in your country and 1000€ hereover...

I really recommend to read some good articles/reviews, but I only have some reviews in German right now.

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SaintK: I'm completely lost

You talk sense Blackhawk and I'm reading more and more about i7. I don't intend to go the i7 route until January, by which time all the bugs and issues will be clearer, and hopefully solved. However in terms of building a new pc - which I'm doing - I don't think it makes sense to buy an old Core 2 Duo now as I'd have to buy a new mobo anyway (I have AMD cpu at present) so may as well get the best I can afford.

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The stats below lie. I'm actually much much worse.

Reviews I read thusfar about the I7 are quite good.

On the CPU specific benchmarks, the i7 920 scores about 30% faster then the fastest alternative.

And also in games you see performance increases, though the graphic card is the limiter here in most cases. In one review they switched the video card with another one(then replaced a 8800GT with a GT280) in this comparson they had a E6700 and an i7 920 and the i7 core took far more advantage out of the faster video card, then the e6700 did.

Source 1[nl]
Source 2[nl]

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"Why do it simple, when there is a hard way..."

If you can wait, then I'd wait.

Otherwise you should consider an update depending on your current specs.

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SaintK: I'm completely lost

The question is: will I run Mac OS on that shit
Honestly, I was thinking about buildy myself a nice 100% compatible hackintosh with Q9550, but now that intel i7 makes me want to postpone my plans a little bit

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http://about.me/tomekrutkowski

It's a normal x86 compliant processor, so why wouldn't a properly hacked MacOS X run on it if it runs on Core 2 processors?
However, I'd re-think your choice of OS - MacOS isn't what it used to be - it's basically a dumbed down Linux so if you just want to go for the ease of use while retaining functionality (and compatibility!) get yourself a Linux distro and make it look like MacOS X with like two open source programs. ^^
Also, remember that hacked MacOS versions have their share of problems, especially in the hardware driver sector so even if you build yourself a pseudo-Macintosh there's no guarantee how well your hardware will be supported in the future. At least that's my experience from playing with a hacked Leopard...

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War does not determine who is right - only who is left. - Bertrand Russell

Ah, there is a totally different chipset plus no FSB, integrated memory controller and other "minor" differences :)
Linux + open-source crap to attain usability and design of Mac OS? I don't want ubuntu on LSD I want Mac OS :) Linux for me is still nowhere near ease of use of a mac :( It was designed by the programmers fcol!

With new bootloader-132 you can use retail version of Mac OS X and get yourself "almost" 100% legal system :) That also means no problems with updates and so on. Sweet! Now I have AMD system and YES - I had MAC OS on it once but it was to much hassle. Regarding future compatibility - with retail mac os there shouldn't be a problem as whole apple policy is based on backward compatibility.

I'm planning to move on a proper mac in a few years and so now I'd love to have one home-brewed to get use to it.

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http://about.me/tomekrutkowski