Intel 4th Gen Core - Should you Upgrade ?
So I starting thinking about a replacement for my 5 year old HP Pavilion e9270 CTO desktop. I bought this from HP back on 12/1/2009 for about $1,220.
This device has been my primary computer and sports a 1st Gen Clarkdale Core i7 920 Proc - 8Gb of RAM P55 Express Chipset, a Samsung 830 series 256GB SSD and Seagate 3TB 7200 RPM HDD. It also has a ATI Radeon 4850 GPU with 1024Mb RAM. The Motherboard itself is actually an MSI MS7613 Mini-ATX with a 450W Power supply.
I figured okay we're now at 4th Gen Core family - so maybe I should see how much more performance the new Haswell based designs may get me and for how much.
So from my first round of due diligence the answer is not as much as you'd think...
So let take a look at my current system..
The Intel Core i-7 920 is a 4 Core, 8 Thread proc running at 2.67Ghz with 8M Smart Cache and 4.8 GT/s DMI and supports up to 24GB of DDR3 800/1066 RAM and 25.6 GB/s Throughput. But it is a bit of a power hog @ 130W TDP
The P55 Express Ibex Peak Chipset supports 6 SATA-II (3Gbps) ports with ICH10R Raid - 14 USB 2.0 ports and is PCIe 2.0.
The MSI board itself supports 4 DIMMs and 4 PCI Slots - 1 x x16 Slot for GPU and 3 x1 Slots along with a Mini-PCIe 2.0 x1.
The Radeon 4850 features 1Gb of GDDR3 RAM, 954Mhz Processing power and HDMI or DVI connections. It supports OpenCL and DirectX 11.
Now let's look at something new.
Since I was very happy with the Dell Inspiron SFF (3647) I bought for my granddaughter - I said okay - lets look at the the Mini tower version - the 3847 with Core i7 4790. This machine is around $799 with 8Gb of RAM and a 1TB HD.
So the 4th Gen Core i7-4790 is same 4 Core, 8 Thread, running now at 3.6Ghz with burst to 4Ghz, 8M Smart Cache and 5.0 GT/s DMI2. It supports up to 32Gb of DDR3 1333/1600 RAM at the same 25.6 GB/s Throughput. It is better on Power at only 84W TDP.
The Motherboard of the 3847 supports the Lynx Point H81 chipset. It now supports 2 x SATA-III + 2 x SATA-II connectors (assumed for DVD, etc). It only has 2 DIMM Slots - so 16Gb Max. It has 2 x USB 3.0 and 4 x USB 2.0 Slots. The surprising thing is that is it still PCIe 2.0 with 1 x16 and 2 x1 slots. Video is on board Intel HD4600.
Even if I moved up to the Dell XPS 8700 Tower. All that changes is the move to Z87 Chipset which is still Lynx Point but now has 4 DIMM Slots, 6 all SATA-III Ports and more PCI Slots - but again still 2.0. - This machine is around $899 and includes 12GB of RAM, 1 1TB 7200 RPM HD and an nVidia GT720 1Gb GPU. The GT 720 is actually a slower performer than the HD4850.
So what are you buying... Three things I can see...
First is DDR3 1600 RAM - so in theory 60% faster than the 1066 RAM in my current machine. But for what I'm using my system for - I don't know if I'd really see a dramatic difference.
Second is SATA-III - which is really more of a chipset / motherboard thing than a Processor thing. Sure much quicker supporting SSDs. But I often see 100MB/s + performance today when copying.
Third is USB 3.0 - Which is much faster then USB 2.0. I have a Startech dual port USB 3.0 card in my Pavilion which I have connected to a Seagate 4TB Drive I used for backup. it's night and day over 2.0 in terms of throughput.
What is surprising is that outside of TDP Power the specs on a new 4th Gen Core i7 are really not dramatically greater than 1st Gen. Sure it has a higher clock speed - but overall throughputs are nearly identical.
Also - unless I was willing to spend a lot more on GPU - the GT 720 in the higher end 8700 was actually inferior in performance to my 6 year old Radeon HD 4850 according to several GPU comparison sites.
Bottom line - would I see some performance increases with a new Haswell based PC over my current 1st Gen Core - yes - but more in IO throughput around SATA and USB and faster RAM support.
Is it worth $800 -$900 for me to experience that improvement ? From some of the benchmarks I've seen - not sure yet - so for right now I'm going to hold off and check again when we start to see more DDR4 based machines with SATA M.2 support at 16Gbps.
To be honest with all the hyper over the last few years over Ivy Bridge, Sandy Bridge and Haswell - I was surprised to see how little we have moved forward in the last 5 five years.
This device has been my primary computer and sports a 1st Gen Clarkdale Core i7 920 Proc - 8Gb of RAM P55 Express Chipset, a Samsung 830 series 256GB SSD and Seagate 3TB 7200 RPM HDD. It also has a ATI Radeon 4850 GPU with 1024Mb RAM. The Motherboard itself is actually an MSI MS7613 Mini-ATX with a 450W Power supply.
I figured okay we're now at 4th Gen Core family - so maybe I should see how much more performance the new Haswell based designs may get me and for how much.
So from my first round of due diligence the answer is not as much as you'd think...
So let take a look at my current system..
The Intel Core i-7 920 is a 4 Core, 8 Thread proc running at 2.67Ghz with 8M Smart Cache and 4.8 GT/s DMI and supports up to 24GB of DDR3 800/1066 RAM and 25.6 GB/s Throughput. But it is a bit of a power hog @ 130W TDP
The P55 Express Ibex Peak Chipset supports 6 SATA-II (3Gbps) ports with ICH10R Raid - 14 USB 2.0 ports and is PCIe 2.0.
The MSI board itself supports 4 DIMMs and 4 PCI Slots - 1 x x16 Slot for GPU and 3 x1 Slots along with a Mini-PCIe 2.0 x1.
The Radeon 4850 features 1Gb of GDDR3 RAM, 954Mhz Processing power and HDMI or DVI connections. It supports OpenCL and DirectX 11.
Now let's look at something new.
Since I was very happy with the Dell Inspiron SFF (3647) I bought for my granddaughter - I said okay - lets look at the the Mini tower version - the 3847 with Core i7 4790. This machine is around $799 with 8Gb of RAM and a 1TB HD.
So the 4th Gen Core i7-4790 is same 4 Core, 8 Thread, running now at 3.6Ghz with burst to 4Ghz, 8M Smart Cache and 5.0 GT/s DMI2. It supports up to 32Gb of DDR3 1333/1600 RAM at the same 25.6 GB/s Throughput. It is better on Power at only 84W TDP.
The Motherboard of the 3847 supports the Lynx Point H81 chipset. It now supports 2 x SATA-III + 2 x SATA-II connectors (assumed for DVD, etc). It only has 2 DIMM Slots - so 16Gb Max. It has 2 x USB 3.0 and 4 x USB 2.0 Slots. The surprising thing is that is it still PCIe 2.0 with 1 x16 and 2 x1 slots. Video is on board Intel HD4600.
Even if I moved up to the Dell XPS 8700 Tower. All that changes is the move to Z87 Chipset which is still Lynx Point but now has 4 DIMM Slots, 6 all SATA-III Ports and more PCI Slots - but again still 2.0. - This machine is around $899 and includes 12GB of RAM, 1 1TB 7200 RPM HD and an nVidia GT720 1Gb GPU. The GT 720 is actually a slower performer than the HD4850.
So what are you buying... Three things I can see...
First is DDR3 1600 RAM - so in theory 60% faster than the 1066 RAM in my current machine. But for what I'm using my system for - I don't know if I'd really see a dramatic difference.
Second is SATA-III - which is really more of a chipset / motherboard thing than a Processor thing. Sure much quicker supporting SSDs. But I often see 100MB/s + performance today when copying.
Third is USB 3.0 - Which is much faster then USB 2.0. I have a Startech dual port USB 3.0 card in my Pavilion which I have connected to a Seagate 4TB Drive I used for backup. it's night and day over 2.0 in terms of throughput.
What is surprising is that outside of TDP Power the specs on a new 4th Gen Core i7 are really not dramatically greater than 1st Gen. Sure it has a higher clock speed - but overall throughputs are nearly identical.
Also - unless I was willing to spend a lot more on GPU - the GT 720 in the higher end 8700 was actually inferior in performance to my 6 year old Radeon HD 4850 according to several GPU comparison sites.
Bottom line - would I see some performance increases with a new Haswell based PC over my current 1st Gen Core - yes - but more in IO throughput around SATA and USB and faster RAM support.
Is it worth $800 -$900 for me to experience that improvement ? From some of the benchmarks I've seen - not sure yet - so for right now I'm going to hold off and check again when we start to see more DDR4 based machines with SATA M.2 support at 16Gbps.
To be honest with all the hyper over the last few years over Ivy Bridge, Sandy Bridge and Haswell - I was surprised to see how little we have moved forward in the last 5 five years.
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