Forecasting... i7 or hold out?

First of all, hey guys long time no see! It's good to see some familiar faces!

Second of all, I'm sure you don't recall, but I am currently deployed to Afghanistan. My deployment is drawing to a close (thank god) and I will be looking to build a new computer (as I gave my wife the old one when I left).

Its been a few years since I paid much attention to the market, so I really have a steep learning curve to figure out what I want to get. They tricky part is that I wont be building this rig until October or November.

I've been reading up on i7, and according to the charts over on Tom's hardware the i7 920 is basically pwning the E8600 (which is what I was GOING to get until I heard about the i7. The two are close enough in price, so is there any reason not to go with the i7? I know its a whole new chipset, etc... but I honestly haven't dug up to much info on the X58 yet.

Is there any reason to hold out for the i5?

I guess it would help to know what I am wanting to upgrade for. I do a lot of gaming, but I don't really feel the need to "squeeze out every last FPS" anymore like I used to. I dunno, blame it on getting married. lol. But it should handle all current games at about max settings, I also do some photoshopping, ripping and burning of DVDs, encoding Xvid, and other random nerdy tasks.

I do however want this investment to last a while (like everyone), so I am worried about going with an older technology like the E8600.

FYI - The reason I am asking about this months in advance is so I can start hunting great deals through newegg, slickdeals, Fry's, etc... I'll be making a post in PC Hardware once I start to piece together all the rest of the components.

Thanks guys,

If I were you, I'd go with the i7 in October, the price should have come down by then (I've heard rumors of a 6-core nahalem coming) so you should be able to get it for a decent price.

Keep in mind though, that if you go with an i7, you'll need a board that supports it (can be expensive) and you'll want triple channel DDR3 (also more expensive).

thanks for the info. I had thought about the considerations for a board and ram as well... Basically using 3 1GB sticks is the only option if I stick with the 32bit OS (which I most likely will to save headaches with software incompatibilities.

That basically confirms my idea. I will go for the i7 and wait for some good deals to come along... It's nice when time is actually on your side, lol.

Well we all know i7 was not to be the replacement for LGA 775...merely a 1p xeon playground at best. The i7 platform is without a doubt the fastest 1p option out there, but its also the most expensive...and one could always argue that LGA 775 or AM2+/AM3 alternatives at a cheaper price are much better value.

But heres the stick in the mud, it seems Intel may be dropping the low end i7 (920) and launch 1-2 new higher end models without adjusting the price bracket. This will basically mean you will have i5 offerings scaling along side LGA 775 pricing, and the top i5 models will end up cheaper than the cheapest i7. Now according to preliminary results gathered from ES models, i5 is clock for clock just shy of i7 performance. If the current ES models are an indication of performance and there is no more cache cutting in its future, then i5 will probably be the ideal platform given that you save money on the chip, board, and ram and you'll probably have similar or better scaling. You should read the Anandtech Lynnfield preview to get a better idea of whats in store.

Personally I'd wait for i5 as it will likely be a much cheaper platform to maintain, as the only new i7 chips to be announced (975 and 950) are only replacing the 965 at $999 and the 940 at $560. If the 920 is being dropped as the entry level i7 chip, and replaced by a 2.66-2.8 ghz i5 at that $280 price point, then i7 becomes even harder to justify. High end i5 will negate the need for a low end i7, so odds are i7 is going to become the "FX" or "premium" level socket, basically targeted at 1p server/workstation markets or the "extreme" gamer.

But the most important thing to keep in mind is buy the power you need now, not what you think you might need later. You cant really predict how far a platform is going to take you, odds are at some point you will see new chipsets required for certain new processors - or at least justified (based on new features and standards). Anything you can buy on this level will be worlds apart from what you have now, unless you are currently running a decent quad core for AM2+/LGA 775..If you are still running something form the A64 or P4 days...well even a modern $40-$50 cpu will be a moderate step up.

For gaming the CPU is pretty much a dead issue because at modern gaming resolutions (1680x1050 is the "gamers" standard today), or higher (1920x1200 or 1080p), the cpu is not holding anything back and the difference between a $999 i7 extreme and a $220 Q9400 is only about 10-15%, a difference of maybe 8-10fps when its all said and done. In the most multi-threaded and cpu demanding games its going to be a bigger increase..but unless the only game you play right now is FarCry 2 then you won't be getting your moneys worth. The GPU is where you need to focus for gaming performance. For everything else you listed the CPU is the focus, but you still may not make up the cost difference in sheer performance, especially when you factor in overclocking.

So yea, tough time to really think this sort of thing through...and though you really might be tired of waiting, if you jump head first into i7 you may end up regretting it..or once we have the official i5 numbers rolling out along with the platform details, maybe you will be able to justify the difference.

good info as always Stang. When are they planning on launching the i5 series? I definitely don't want to go for the 920 if what you say is true, but I didn't thinking buying another 775 would be the right choice for future proofing my investment.

I know my needs are not going to be changing and I always look for cpu's in the $200-300 range. They are more than adequate for my needs and last me several years.

I guess now my debate is between waiting for a well priced i5, or going with a higher-end 775...

Are the i5s going to require the same new chipset (X58 i think) as the i7s? Do you think board prices will come down by then (whenever "then" is)?

well nobody seems to have any official stuff and little information has been leaking out, but my educated guess would be Intel wants to let venders sell of extra inventory of LGA 775 offerings based on the G4x and P4x chipsets in preparation of launching the new i5 P55 chipset. This makes a bit more sense when you factor in some reduced sales of Core 2 systems due to anticipation of the i5 release along with other economic factors. So if you want i5, I would bank on sept-oct as the release date. Intel would really want this as their target given it lets vendors ship i5+win7 systems and it should be enough time to clear out enough core 2 inventory.

The advantage to i5 is going to be pretty clear for most people, you stand to get a chip thats as fast or faster in many applications, and you'll get this with a slightly cheaper cpu price, cheaper motherboard price, and possibly even cheaper memory prices. Expected launch i5 cpus is rumored to be a $199 2.66, $280 2.8, and a $560 2.93. This puts the 2.8ghz i5 up against the i7 920, and you can expect that to be as fast or slightly faster in some cases, than the 920. But clearly that $199 2.66 with a bit of clocking will be an extremely good value.

Personally I would be willing to wait the next 3-4 months before making my decision unless I was in the position that I needed a newer, faster system to get my work done today. Looking forward I would bet that i5 has more longevity than i7, given that i5 is the replacement for LGA 775. i7 will be getting 6-core processors within the first half of 2010, and odds are 8-cores wont be too far off from that. So it is starting to look like i5 will be quad core exclusive for a little while unless Intel wants to release some "value" dual cores for the platform (as opposed to running out the remaining life in LGA 775 as a "value" platform). So the 3 launch chips for i5 will probably turn into several higher and lower clocked versions with prices to match, while i7 becomes a more multicore platform to justify its position in the market. It is going to be a very difficult balancing act to say the least... But its very hard to say that you will see any games that utilize quad cores to any high degree in the near future, so its even less likely that you will be seeing games or consumer applications that can make use of 6 or 8 core chips.

Honestly this is why AMD's current approach is a better way, as AMD learned a while ago that having 2 platforms is hard on your balance sheets, 754 was hard to justify when 939 was getting cheaper every day. And after about a year you may see i5 vs i7 in a similar boat.

hmm, maybe I'm not helping anymore

lol, that is very insightful. I guess I will wait and see what happens with the i5. Like I said, I have time on my side here (for a change) and can afford to wait until end of year. Sep-Oct would be ideal, because that is when I'm coming home.

Thanks,