Shaun

I've used a first gen i7 build (WIN 7) since 2009 as my main work horse, and for a number of reasons have thought about upgrading. This has all been driven recently by the imminent release of Windows 10 (which I'm going to get as soon as it comes out).


I do all and sundry with this PC and it's gets a lot of use.


The spec was:
i7 920 (using a X58 MB) clocked at 4ghz on air
12GB RAM
HD7970
Win7 Ultimate


I have ran 7970's in xfire at 2560x1600 on this rig, but changed last year back to 1080p with a single 7970. It just ran a whole lot better without the xfire issues and additional temps etc. I'm really not bothered about the resolution, especially when all the gfx effects are turned on anyway.


I recently saw a comment from Jura about upgrading to a X5670 6 core processor, still retaining the same X58 motherboard, as these are going very cheap on eBay (and is a path of least resistance for upgrading purposes).


I took the plunge upgrading to the X5670 and a SSD (yeah.... I was behind the times on my primary boot drive tech!).


What a difference it has all made, which has been for a number of reasons:


- Clean install of WIN7 together with the SSD has made a huge boot speed difference. It's amazing how slow my PC had become with 6yrs worth of installations (after most windows updates completed, the PC was taking up to 15mins to get back to the desktop for the initial boot post updates applied). The SSD is just blinding as well.


- The X5670 is pretty awesome, especially for rendering which I do a fair bit of. Lower temps than the 45nm i7 and clocks very easily. I have mine at 4.2ghz on air, with a measured vcore of 1.296v. 6 cores and 12 threads can make quite a bit of difference if you can utilise them.


- The rig is cooler and a damn site quieter now I have all CPU fan dialled in properly with temp management.


- Very cheap upgrade if you're still on the X58 platform, and CPU wise, is comparable to current ranges of quad core chips (benchmark wise). CPU cost me £70!


The X58 platform for me has been unbelievable, with it now being over 6yrs old and I suspect this setup will keep me going for a good few years yet.


I may upgrade to a 980GTX or AMD 390 next, but don't have any GFX performance issues at the moment.

LostUser

Did you not consider installing the Windows 10 technical preview. It's pretty stable, very fast and should be upgradeable to the final version. They release a new build every couple of weeks and it just downloads via Windows update and upgrades the current version without losing any settings or data.