Ivy or Sandy?

[Craig M]

As someone who is still using a Lynnfield cpu(i7-860), I've decided that I'll wait and see what Haswell brings to the table. I overclocked to 4.2ghz to tide me over till then and all my games play great. I do get kind of envious of all the peeps sporting their new Ivy Bridge setups, but whenever I compare my benchmarks to theirs, there isn't enough of a discrepancy to justify the cost of upgrading...yet

[ana3mic]

I'm also running a Lynnfield, the i5-760 and don't see a reason to upgrade atm for the same reasons. All the games run great and it takes overclocking like a boss, these chips are built like tanks .

[Craig M]

I'm also running a Lynnfield, the i5-760

That's the cpu I should have got instead of the 860. Hyper threading has been of no real benefit to me.

[crowTrobot]

Yep, it'll be a while before a massive upgrade is really required. Even an i3-540 is pretty beastly for gaming (OC's to 4+GHz on stock fan!)

[Cella]

As someone who is still using a Lynnfield cpu(i7-860), I've decided that I'll wait and see what Haswell brings to the table. I overclocked to 4.2ghz to tide me over till then and all my games play great. I do get kind of envious of all the peeps sporting their new Ivy Bridge setups, but whenever I compare my benchmarks to theirs, there isn't enough of a discrepancy to justify the cost of upgrading...yet

I really had no expectation of any noticeable performance improvements in day to day computing when I "upgraded" from the 870 to Ivy. The only place Ivy noticeably outperformed it is in generating heat. No way is that upgrade worth the cost.

[ana3mic]

I'm also running a Lynnfield, the i5-760

That's the cpu I should have got instead of the 860. Hyper threading has been of no real benefit to me.

Yeah they are like the Lynnfield versions of 2550K and 2600K

[BackDraft]

Upgrade if you have the need, personally I wouldn't until we see what Intel has in-store for next year.
Unless you are going to performance tune the system Ivy consumes less power and runs just a cool as Sandy. When you performance tune it then there is a different story.

[ana3mic]

Unless you are going to performance tune the system Ivy consumes less power and runs just a cool as Sandy. When you performance tune it then there is a different story.

I'd have to totally agree with that.