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So, I think I've decided not to upgrade to Haswell, but I was looking around at old i7-980 processors. Looks like they can be had for a little less than $400.

Is this just throwing good money after bad at this point?

I'm kind of thinking that if I'm willing to spend $400 on a processor I should be willing to spend $500 on processor + motherboard, but this has six cores!

I can't think of any legitimate reason that you would want to do this.

Dashak wrote:

I can't think of any legitimate reason that you would want to do this.

Basically this. If you have a legitimate multi-threaded use, sure, but otherwise your single-threaded performance will be capped, overclocked or not. This is where it would kill you, in comparison to Ivy/Haswell.

At that price point you might as well look at SB-E or IB-E (later this year) and X79.

Do you already have a 1366 motherboard? If you're doing some threaded tasks ( Video rendering/3d rendering/workstation tasks) and you want a boost from say a i7 920 you could probably find a second hand i7 970 which will give you that thread boost without the added cost associated with the i7 980. If you have a 1366 motherboard and you're happy enough with what you've got it could give you a nice cheap performance increase for the right price.

You'll lose all the peripheral and i/o advantages of a newer chipset but for ~$300 (secondhand if you can find one) the 970 may be worth it depending what you're doing. $500 is probably a little steep and might be worth saving up until you can afford a better performing newer platform but coming from 1366 you'll have to spend quiet a bit more to get any sizable boost.

The new Haswell reviews on this site will give you a good idea of how older chips perform against the newer options in a variety of tasks, I would start by looking there. What are you doing with your PC now?

I have to agree with Ryu on this. You should be looking at SB-E or Ivy -E when it's released and the X79 chipset.

Ryu Connor wrote:

At that price point you might as well look at SB-E or IB-E (later this year) and X79.

Yeah, that's probably right.

Dashak wrote:

I can't think of any legitimate reason that you would want to do this.

 

kumori wrote:

So, I think I've decided not to upgrade to Haswell, but I was looking around at old i7-980 processors.

What do you have now?

End User wrote:

kumori wrote:

So, I think I've decided not to upgrade to Haswell, but I was looking around at old i7-980 processors.

What do you have now?

I'm also curious.

Well if you need 6 cores I found a i7-970 for $353.00 I have dealt with them in the past 3 times and they have quick delivery. Best place to get older CPUs at good prices. Here is the link http://starmicroinc.net/intel-core-32gh ... -1482.html
A 130 watt 6 core 32nm chip with a 3.2ghz base with a 3.46 turbo plus you can overclock it to 4.0 to 4.6ghz Your mileage will vary:) Those 970s where released at $595 if i recall correctly. Also you will need a good cooler if you want to get over 4.1 ghz if the chip has it in it. At 4.1 ghz with the big intel tower cooler it hit over 85c in the review i read.

They even have some 2600k cpus for $259.......2600-2700k cpus are the same chips, 2700k chips are not binned better then 2600k chips. If you wanted to build a 1155 setup since they run so much cooler then ivy and haswell and most will run at 4.6-5+ ghz with a good cooler. Mine hits 5.1 with 1.5 volts but i do not want to run that kinda voltage with my little 120mm AIO liquid cooler, Plus no need to yet it has plenty of power at 4.5.4.7ghz under 1.35 volts.

If you already have a motherboard that supports the 980 then the 980 makes sense as long as it gives you a decent jump in single/multi core performance over what you have now. If you will need to buy a new motherboard for the 980 then I'd go with the 4770K and OC it.

At stock the 4 core 4770K nearly matches the 6 core 980 in the Cinebench R11.5 multi core test (8.15 vs 8.91) but the 4770K destroys the 980 in single core performance (1.74 vs 1.24). An OC'ed 4770K gets R11.5 scores of 2.08 for single core and 10.25 for multi. A score of 2.08 for a single core is just stunning.

Over 2.0+ points for a single core is awesome in Cinebench

4770k or if you can wait go Ivy-E.

As you can see from my profile, I have an i7-990x, and I was looking around for my friend to see what kind of system he could put together that would perform well but not kill his wallet.

I looked at the likes of the 965x but then looked at the cost - and availability - of motherboards and it was pretty scarce (and expensive).

Going with an I7-980x and an x58 motherboard you would have to forgo a lot of the goodies (or pay quite a lot extra) to get the USB3 and SATA III ports you will want.

So if I were you I would forget the idea of getting a 980x.

You will be better off going for something like a 4770k

Nec_V20 wrote:

Going with an I7-980x and an x58 motherboard you would have to forgo a lot of the goodies (or pay quite a lot extra) to get the USB3 and SATA III ports you will want.

I actually looked into just upgrading my motherboard, but I found that the SATA III and USB 3 implementations on X58 boards are not nearly as fast the later native intel implementations.