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I7 950 2 Sandybridge

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I have the chance to upgrade my current system I7 950@4ghz 12gb ram XMS, to a Sandybridge...basically the upgrade wouldn't cost me anything personally (long story).. Is it worth the hassle to re-install all my software etc, I know this might seem a strange question, but with photoshop lightroom gaming etc is it going to make any difference...hdd and GPU's don't really come in to the equation as they will not be changed only MB, CPU,

So the question is would you do it???
 
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I have the chance to upgrade my current system I7 950@4ghz 12gb ram XMS, to a Sandybridge...basically the upgrade wouldn't cost me anything personally (long story).. Is it worth the hassle to re-install all my software etc, I know this might seem a strange question, but with photoshop lightroom gaming etc is it going to make any difference...hdd and GPU's don't really come in to the equation as they will not be changed only MB, CPU,

So the question is would you do it???


You dont need to reinstall your os\software if you are using windows 7, just make sure your harddrives are set to microsofts default sata driver (standard achi 1.0 Serial ATA Controller) and then shut down, swap your hardware and windows will reboot and install new mobo drivers fine.I just went from a 1055t to a 2600k with this method, didnt reinstall windows and not even a hitch.Windows 7 really is a godsend.
 
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If it's free (you say wont cost anything) then go for it. You won't see any massive improvement but you should see a little.

I would do it, as reinstalling a few programs is not really any hassle these days.
 
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Would you be willing to put the time in to OC the SandyBridge?
At 4GHz & 12GB an X58 build does take some beating. It Also depends on the RAM you're going to put with the SB, if you fall back to 8GB then you might even end up going backward depending on how reliant photoshop is on RAM (I'm not too sure).
 
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Would you be willing to put the time in to OC the SandyBridge?
At 4GHz & 12GB an X58 build does take some beating. It Also depends on the RAM you're going to put with the SB, if you fall back to 8GB then you might even end up going backward depending on how reliant photoshop is on RAM (I'm not too sure).

How much effort do you need to put into overclocking Sandy Bridge?

4.4-4.5GHz can be achieved in a matter of minutes. Seconds if using the auto overclocking features on some motherboards.
 
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How much effort do you need to put into overclocking Sandy Bridge?

4.4-4.5GHz can be achieved in a matter of minutes. Seconds if using the auto overclocking features on some motherboards.

I thought the Sb were easier to overclock, also think the SB is more furture proof too.
 
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Depends what chip it is, if it's the 2600k then yes do it, if it's the 2500k then no as it does not support hyperthreading that your 950 does. Hyperthreading gives some impressive gains in the apps you're running.
 
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How much effort do you need to put into overclocking Sandy Bridge?

4.4-4.5GHz can be achieved in a matter of minutes. Seconds if using the auto overclocking features on some motherboards.

Was just thinking that he obviously knows how to OC on x58 but that doesn't mean he knows anything about OCing SB. Yes it is easier in theory, but that's always dependent on past knowledge :)
I personally still find OCing x58 easier than the SB given that I've OC'd about six x58 and only two SB.

Edit: I should say, I don't trust auto OC programs since they fryed my good old E6600 a while back. Much prefer to do it properly & manually.
 
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Was just thinking that he obviously knows how to OC on x58 but that doesn't mean he knows anything about OCing SB. Yes it is easier in theory, but that's always dependent on past knowledge :)
I personally still find OCing x58 easier than the SB given that I've OC'd about six x58 and only two SB.

Edit: I should say, I don't trust auto OC programs since they fryed my good old E6600 a while back. Much prefer to do it properly & manually.

Don't make excuses for your rash statement.

The vast majority of people on this forum didn't know how to overclock Sandy Bridge when they bought it but they've managed to overclock to 4.5GHz+ without much effort.
 
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Don't make excuses for your rash statement.

The vast majority of people on this forum didn't know how to overclock Sandy Bridge when they bought it but they've managed to overclock to 4.5GHz+ without much effort.

I'm not making any excuses buddy. Just my honest opinion, you can disagree, that's your opinion. Doesn't matter.

I tried to help by putting forward my experiences and views, that is all. Many can OC SB easilly. There will also be a few who found it tricky and ended up having issues as a result. I'm just trying to help the fella make an informed descision by giving him some food for thought. If he reads how to OC SB and then feels confident that's fine. But if he bought one assuming it would be easy and then it goes wrong he probably wouldn't be too happy.
 
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Thanks for all the comments guys, I appreciate what your all saying...I suppose what I was trying to ask was...would i notice any difference in performance? Another point is, as it's not costing me anything is it worth the small effort in swapping components etc....

I know it might all sound a bit odd..but as my current system is rock solid with 12gb ram....what i am gaining if i swap to SB?

Without going into too much detail..I'm currently running a 500GB hybrid drive +others which i really like and works well for me, I have read about motherboards using an SSD to act as a cache for the HDD and the reviews I've read says this works well... SSD's are just too small and costly at the mount so the idea is to run as system as mentioned, anyone have any experience of this configuration?
 
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In gaming the main difference is the GPU, an i7 @ 4GHz isn't going to be a bottle neck so I doubt you'd see much (if any) change there.
Looking up the specs for Photoshop lightroom they seem to be a Pentium 4 & 2GB of RAM(? correct me if I'm wrong.) In which case I also doubt you'll see any noticable change in performance there too. The only thing I would say is the larger the amount of RAM the quicker I'd have thought thumbnails would render, but I don't really know 8GB should be plenty.
The only thing is if you want to do it just for the sake of it to have a more up to date machine. But IMHO for Gaming & Photoshop Lightroom the difference will probably be minimal if noticable at all.

Not sure on the drives I'm afraid.
 
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A quick google search came up with this.

"Wow....my RAM useage has gone through the roof w/ LR3. I just checked my CPU meter and I was at 79% constant RAM use, with peaks in the mid 80s. Never saw that number over 40% before. I have 8gb now, looks like it is time for more!"

Obviously take this with a fist full of salt. I persoanly have no experience with LR but it might be good to see how much RAM it really needs before changing to an 8GB SB system. (If you are indeed going to 8GB, if you're moving to 16GB then happy days).
 
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personally i would go for it. it would only take you max 1 or 2 hours to install it (depending on rig, experience etc). sandy bridge can clock higher and has higher IPC as well.

you may not notice the difference in current games/apps but in a year or two when the CPU becomes the bottlneck (assuming a GPU upgrade at some point), then the difference will be pretty big.

given it's free.... bit of a no brainer surely?
 
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13 Feb 2011
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Thanks for all the replies, everything should arrive Friday, so I'll let you know how it goes. I've ordered a 64gig SSD as i'm interested to see how the drive caching works on these boards. I've used a hybrid drive for some time and really love it and they only have 4gig so 64 should be interesting.
 
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Everything arrived as agreed with OC, the swap was straight forward and getting the SSD cache drive was painless enough.

My previous I7 950 was overclocked to 4ghz and was rock solid, it displayed in windows properties as 4ghz and when the machine was booting. I have the 2600k running at 4.8ghz according to the Asus utility, speed step is still enabled but no matter what i do the cpu wont go higher than 3.4ghz, even when opening loads of apps or running bf3 beta or other games, so i'm thinking something not right???
 
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