Is it worth upgrading from a Q9550 to a i7 920?

Greetings all! I've been 5 boxing for quite some time on my Q9550 with 8GB RAM, GTX280...and all that fun stuff. I am a huge fan of playing AV, WG, and other random battlegrounds. When I play in places like AV, my FPS gets down to about 15-20 or so when lots of animations are occuring. As expected, I have all of my 5 WoWs playing on all 4 cores and each core gets maxed out when all of animations are going on. I was wondering if anyone upgraded from a similar spec to an i7 920 with 12GB RAM...and if so, did you notice a big difference in game play. I'm on the fence waiting for the next i7 to go to 32nm, but if there is a large difference in game play I may want to move up my schedule a bit.

Thanks much!

Iv'e never used your current chip, but I can tell you my i7 is a beast and begs for more even with 5 clients running.

I use the I7 extreme with 12 gigs of ram and it eats up 5x wow. My Cores usually only run around 7 to 11% and the RAM only gets into the 60% range when in Dalaran.

The I7s are some monster systems just make sure you match up the RAM correctly.

Yeah I forgot to mention that. I'm also using 12 gigs of corsairs 1600 DDR3, the new XMS3 which is identical to the dominator series but without the massive heat sinks. For an i7 the faster the ram the better becuase it really makes good use of it.

Thanks for the feedback guys. Very interesting...I am tempted to check my bank account now to see if there are enough funds available!

One more question. Personally I don't see a need to change my video card from my GTX280 to a GTX 285...unless anyone can offer a reason to do so.

Thanks again!

Between the 280 and 285 I don't think its worth spending the money to buy a whole new card. The 280 is very close to the 285. I went with a 285 sc edition just cause I had a little extra cash that week lol.

Great, that's what I was thinking. Now I believe it's time to start price shopping!



Thanks all for the great feedback! :thumbup:

Check out HardOcp.com they have an excellent CPU scaling article that was written yesterday. Bottom line is you aren't going to see much value in purchasing a Core i7 chip, especially if you throw in the new mobo/DDR3 memory you're going to have to purchase, for such a minimal performance gain. My QX9770 overclocked provides me with similar performance metrics in comparison to the Core i7 architecture.

Bear in mind that you will see significant performance gains in other areas aside from gaming performance.

Your current CPU is good enougth, it wont woth it for you to upgrade to an i7 sins you have to switch ram and motherbord also, just buy a zalman cooler and overclock your current cpu to 3.6Ghz and ud be fine enougth untill lich king is over and till that time you can get a better cpu than the i7

Unless you've somehow fried your CPU/Mobo, I don't think it's worth it. However, if you wanted to make another computer and use the Q9550 for your main and the i7 for your slaves. Even that wouldn't really be worth it.