CPU Core i7 or Core i5

whs said:

Read the customer reviews here...

JonM33 said:

I wouldn't even bother with NewEgg user reviews. Take them with a grain of salt at most.

I agree with both of you.

Just so I don't look completely nuts, here is how I use the reviews AND take them with a grain of salt:

1) Ignore the super-happy people who just got their part(s) in the mail and are soooo excited to have them. Everybody likes their stuff on the way home from the store, wait and see how they feel about their purchase after using it a while.

2) Ignore the people griping about a DOA part. Half of them just haven't yet figured out how to install/configure/use it. (Naturally, this means the items ALL suck.) The other half just had the bad luck to get a dud. If Intel sells 50,000 CPUs, a few of them are bound to be bad. That doesn't mean they all are.

3) Pay attention to the knowledgeable people reviewing the product who have taken the time to set it up properly. They can tell you about any potential pitfalls or unforeseen difficulties you should be aware of.

Bottom Line: If someone tells you something is either great or horrible but doesn't tell you why, what have you really learned about the item? :)

whs said:

Well, as usual, one has to apply some judgement. Granted, there are some trolls submitting reviews. But there are also a lot of people that appear to be very knowlegeable. It any case, it cannot hurt to read the reviews.

That's what I mean when I say, "With a grain of salt."

Grain of salt - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

First you ask me to substantiate that statement and then you agree to it yourself. Odd...

It can't hurt to read the reviews but I wouldn't base the quality of a product upon them. I also wouldn't link to a review for a Core i7-860 when someone asks which is better between a Core i5-750 and Core i7-860. That review will say nothing regarding the difference in performance.

This is simple:

1) LGA 1156 supports x8/x8 PCI-E config

2) LGA 1366 supports x16/x16 PCI-E config

As to Hyperthreading it all depends on the game, personally I would go for Socket AM3. Neither is really "faster", it depends on what you use it for. In Intel's thinking, 1366 is enthusiast, 1156 is mainstream and cheaper.

smarteyeball said:

whs said:

JonM33 said:

I wouldn't even bother with NewEgg user reviews. Take them with a grain of salt at most.

Can you substantiate that. I purchase from NewEgg since years and found the user reviews always right on target and very helpful.

You really do have to wade through a lot of 'fud' comments to find those that are actually beneficial.



As for the OP and his chip choice, it depends on your needs.

again nothing wrong with newegg reviews. reviews are a reflection of customer service, and currently newegg has the best customer service. there is no wading through the reviews. a quick scan will tell who has or has not all ready installed their purchase.

Frostmourne said:

This is simple:

1) LGA 1156 supports x8/x8 PCI-E config

2) LGA 1366 supports x16/x16 PCI-E config

As to Hyperthreading it all depends on the game, personally I would go for Socket AM3. Neither is really "faster", it depends on what you use it for. In Intel's thinking, 1366 is enthusiast, 1156 is mainstream and cheaper.

It depends on the motherboard for the PCIe config. Some LGA1156 motherboards only have a single x16 PCIe slot. Others that have a pair of x16 PCIe slots are actually x16 and x4 physical lanes. Only a select few will do x8 and x8 physical when Crossfire is enabled.

Hyper Threading and Socket AM3? You are confusing HyperTransport with Hyper Threading. They are entirely different. Hyper Threading has 2 logical (virtual) processors per core. The Pentium 4 was the first to use it. It improves performance for processes that benefit from SMT (Simultaneous multithreading).

HyperTransport is basically a link between interfaces and took over the traditional FSB (front side bus) for AMD's architecture.

animex said:

again nothing wrong with newegg reviews. reviews are a reflection of customer service, and currently newegg has the best customer service. there is no wading through the reviews. a quick scan will tell who has or has not all ready installed their purchase.

If you want to review customer service then that would be ResellerRatings.com and not NewEgg product reviews. Reviews should only be based upon the product and NOT your experience with NewEgg's customer service or even shipping of the product (UPS/FedEx delays, etc).

There is everything wrong with NewEgg reviews. There are a disturbing number of people that have no clue how to properly troubleshoot anything even though they know how to plug things together. People will poorly rate a motherboard even though it is a memory compatibility issue. People will poorly rate a graphics card even though they don't install current drivers or fail to use a decent power supply. It's just unreal the number of people that should NOT be touching hardware but are anyway.

JonM33 said:

Frostmourne said:

This is simple:

1) LGA 1156 supports x8/x8 PCI-E config

2) LGA 1366 supports x16/x16 PCI-E config

As to Hyperthreading it all depends on the game, personally I would go for Socket AM3. Neither is really "faster", it depends on what you use it for. In Intel's thinking, 1366 is enthusiast, 1156 is mainstream and cheaper.

It depends on the motherboard for the PCIe config. Some LGA1156 motherboards only have a single x16 PCIe slot. Others that have a pair of x16 PCIe slots are actually x16 and x4 physical lanes. Only a select few will do x8 and x8 physical when Crossfire is enabled.

Hyper Threading and Socket AM3? You are confusing HyperTransport with Hyper Threading. They are entirely different. Hyper Threading has 2 logical (virtual) processors per core. The Pentium 4 was the first to use it. It improves performance for processes that benefit from SMT (Simultaneous multithreading).

HyperTransport is basically a link between interfaces and took over the traditional FSB (front side bus) for AMD's architecture.

I wasn't confusing anything - just saying I would pick AM3 over Intel. As for the lane config, I wasn't referring to cheaper P55 boards that have a limit on PCI-E lanes.