DescentBB

I'm planning on upgrading within the next 6 months or so by buying parts here and there. The only thing I'm not dead set on is the CPU.

Should I get the Intel I7 860 2.8ghz or the Intel I7 950 3.03ghz?

The price difference is about 60$ for the entire system.

Are you taking into account the differences in memory configurations? (The 900 chips need multiples of 3 sticks of memory, then 800s only need multiples of 2.)

Also I'd recommend skipping the Intel cooler and going for a big heatpipe tower cooler for any i7 chip, but especially the 900s that are almost all 130 watts. It is also fairly likely that Sandy Bridge chips will hit within 6 months which will change things up a bit, they may even manage a 65 watt quad core on the horizon which could help the cooling troubles.

Yeah I read about the Dual/Triple channel configs. Thanks

At that point it really comes down to which platform you prefer. The 900 series works better with SLI video cards because they are able to supply two full PCIe x16 slots. The 800 series work better with single video cards because they have an integrated PCIe x16 controller right on the CPU which keeps the latency between the GPU, CPU and system RAM lower. Aside from that (which is practically irrelevant outside of some perfect storm synthetic test) performance between the two platforms is pretty much clock for clock the same.

It is also possible if somewhat unlikely that Nvidia could extend Optimus support from laptops on to desktops too, so a discrete nvidia GPU could be completely powered off during normal desktop use in favor of the lower power Intel GPU that is included with many i7 chips. The power savings probably wouldn't be as dramatic as it is in laptops but should still be worth having.

On the heat issues, I recommend an upgraded cooler because I've now seen several cases of stock clocked i7 800 and 900 chips exceeding the thermal throttling temps (100C in most cases) or causing instability in well ventilated cases using properly mounted and greased reference coolers. Although its a lot more effort for seating and removal, I recommend sticking to coolers that use a back brace/plate on the other side of the motherboard just for the extra grip.

IIRC the Sandy Bridge chips (which Intel will supposedly market as the i7-2) require new sockets which will NOT be compatible with existing LGA 1156/1366 motherboards. I think the server versions go even further and will have a 2011 pin socket to push a quad channel memory controller, it wouldn't surprise me if they are adding so many channels to feed the expected demand from CPUs with 8 or more cores...

Thanks for the info. I'm thinking for the price difference I'll go for the 950.

One other 900 series bonus is they are generally easier to overclock than the 800 series. 800s are more limited / touchy because of the integrated PCIe controller.

Oh and just a other little plus on the 900 is it uses the 1366 socket where as the 800 is on the 1156 making your CPU replacement options later on much better because at the time of my research for my upgrade a while back the max CPU for the 1156 was a 870 @ 2.93gHz.

{Edit} ah crap I only just read Krom's second post completely but still the above stands your options will still be better than the 1156

I'm settled on the 950 chip. Better in the long run and less than 70$ diff.