i7 860 still in daily use with a GTX 1650, maxed out RAM and SSD. Perfectly fine for Office, UA-cam or login in remotely to work. And that with a 15 year old cpu. Now go back another 15 years and you are still in 486 country. Amazing the progress back then and on contrary: amazing how a 15 year old CPU is still so usable.
When this CPU was released in 2009, a 15 year old cpu would have been from 1994, which would be dx2/4 or a p75 or something, which could barely run windows 98 from 5 years later, but now a 15 year old processor can run the latest version of windows perfectly fine and only really struggles when you use heavy programs and the latest aaa games.
@@josephnorris4095 heck yeah it is. I'm almost 40 so I remember opening task manager in windows 98...there's a lot more things in there now. That's the tip of the iceberg. The newer Linux is pretty bloated too which is pretty sad, newer hardware does a lot better with Linux if you want to open firefox and have a smooth experience.
An i7 in general did feel prestigious for quite a while like "I don't care that there's an i5 that benches similarly in games...I just want one". Kind of similar to the desire to own a 1080 ti
@@elu9780 Backlash over DEI quotas would be my guess, maybe related to the practice of hiring consultancy firms like Sweet Baby Inc and alienating potential audiences in the process of doing so.
These cpu's the I7 920 Nehalem a thing with it's AVX though. That Francisco intel engineer guy deleted my comments & posts on a tech forum, cause I proved it from PDF's they've hid & later removed the PDF after words. Anyways this cpu could take parts of it's SSE 2/3 4.1/4..2 code & use it to feed parts of it's AVX FP unit to speed things up. I found this in intel patens that's how Intel was gaining a 15% increase in IPC over AMD at the time. It wasn't true pure IPC, it was pseudo bullshit hack speed up. Image if you could get that speed up from Zen 5 from AVX512 unit from Zen 4 AVX2 code. If you are wonder why we don't this with SSE code & AVX. It's not supposed to be doing it at all, because it's causes a rounding function error that's why it's not supposed to do it.
AVX requirements in some newer games got patched out post launch. Also, Lynnfield CPUs probably can't run games with hard AVX requirements that well anyway. They can however run 4-5 yo AAA games like RDR2 pretty well. I paired one with a RX570 and the GPU is the bottleneck iirc.
1. The Core i7 920, 940, and 965 came out almost a year before the 800 series came out, in November 2008. 2. The Nehalem architecture was far more than just a core 2 quad with modernizations. It was the first Intel chip to get the integrated memory controller. It got hyperthreading. It was the first to get QPI. It got SSE 4.2. It was a ground up redesign over the Core 2 Quad. Overall, it got a 20% IPC boost over the Penryn cores of the Core 2 series, with lower power consumption, despite being on the same 45nm production process.
@@dangingerich2559 Yeah. It really was the architecture that did set the new standard with IMC. Sandy Bridge just optimized it. Intel was really kickin it back in 2006-2011. AMD could only compete by pricing. X58 still is a solid platform. With some fast DDR3 in triple channel and a 6c/12t CPU, it runs everything pretty smooth, that doesn't require AVX2. If you can utilize the power disipation for space heating, it's even more usable today. Around 100W idle (around 150W if overclocked/not powersaving optimized) is common. :)
I ran a 965 for nearly an entire decade. Won it for free from Intel and so while part of me always sort of regretted not selling it and buying an entire cheaper computer for the $999 MSRP of that CPU, it handle pretty much all that I could throw at it for 1080 gaming. I can't quite remember now which Athlon 64 I was running before it but I do remember entirely skipping DDR2 and going from 1 core up to 4 hyperthreaded core was quite the boost in performance.
Not all new games mind you a lot of engines really don't care that much about AVX and many applications just doesn't use the instructions for compatibility with old office machines
In 2020 I built my brother a $300 PC using a Xeon X3480 (which is essentially the same processor with higher clocks) and it runs a lot of games really well! Elden Ring runs without so much as a drop below 50fps, but the lack of AVX support stops it from even launching Warzone 2.0, which is unfortunate since I'd imagine it would run that game just fine had it supported AVX.
Avx locks you out automaticly from most modern emulators and somecool games like forza horizon 5 -which added avx requirment in an update after a sale mind you-@@fesyuki
@@SouthCoastMudlarks Hello. I have a neighbor who is having financial difficulties and I want to give him an old PC that I haven't used for many years so that his son who started some design and editing courses can hand in his homework at home. The PC has an Intel DH67BL motherboard with Intel Core i5 2130 2.90 GHz (second generation), 16 GB of DDR3 RAM at 1333MHz. A friend is going to donate me a 500GB SSD and I have a 1650 Super that I don't use and I plan to include it in the build. The only money I have available for the build will be to buy a second-hand power supply with a 6-pin connector for the graphics card. My question is, do you know if Illustrator, Photoshop, Corel Draw, Premiere Pro, After Effects can be installed on that processor? It doesn't matter if it takes forever to render. It is for someone who started studying and must do some work probably at 720p or maximum at 1080p. The important thing is that he can hand in his assignments. It is not necessary that the software be in its latest version. If I cannot install that software I will not be able to give them the PC as it will only be a paperweight and I do not want to give them false expectations. I have searched in many places but I find contradictory information, some say that they can install the software and other people say that they cannot. I also read that for some programs something called AVX2 is needed which came out after the sixth generation but the second generation has AVX1. If you can clear up my doubts I would really appreciate it. Excuse my English, I had to use Google translate.
My dad bought one of these in an Alienware in 2009, and it’s still my main desktop today. Got it paired with a GTX 1060 and an SSD and it has ran anything I’ve thrown at it, except Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order for some reason. Even can capably run VR. I’ve considered upgrading, but I have a Steam Deck that can run most things well too and the combo gets me by pretty well.
It's amazing how cheap laptops and handhelds nowadays have much much more power than top of the line 15 year old parts. And all that using like a measly % of energy!
@@Nordlicht05 not really. Moore's law already died. What has improved is distributed computing with the "cloud" and efficiency but general consumer computing has at most come 50x this last 15 years.
I know someone who still dailies a system with a 1st gen i7, I recently did some maintenence for them aka clean out the dust and new thermal paste, but the machine itself runs as well as ever
Guy that used to own a computer shop 20~ minutes from me, was running a dual xeon system on the same socket with a 2080 last i heard, but he went out of business and moved out of state.
Same I know someone who dailies a i7 860. It had a 750Ti until it died and now it's a 1050Ti. He desperately needs a new CPU he can't play anything that isn't a 2D indie platformer.
My 2nd gen i3 handles computing just as well with an ssd. Yeah, it can't play games or stream online videos in 1080 seamlessly, but for everything else works just as fine.
Wow, seeing this video is wild. In Indonesia we still have people selling a 'brand-new' full PC build with this for as low as 150 bucks, and an upwards of 300 BUCKS! Sure, it comes with cool RGB case or 'dedicated GPU for gaming' alongside all the peripherals you need for a computer, but none of them are new and they're just hodgepodge of used parts with only 30days of warranty mostly. Oh and that 'dGPU'? GT 730, yep. Lots of cases where sellers justified the i7 as 'what matter is that its a Core i7!' and making bold claims like its way better than a 13th Gen i3 or something.
To be fair, the bold claims exist worldwide. When these were still brand new and I was upgrading to Phenom II, I had one other bloke in my infotech class bragging about his "Core i7 x6 Black Edition". Dude literally just combined the best of AMD and Intel circa 2010-2011 into one imaginary platform.
Another fun fact: the "k" tag on the end of processor names didn't start until Sandy bridge. I've heard that all first gen i5s & i7s can be overclocked. Some UA-camrs have pushed them far enough that these CPUs can rub elbows with processors that came out generations later.
There was the i7-875K which is multiplier unlocked. But like you said all first gen Core i CPUs can be overclocked by upping the BCLK without having to touch the multiplier. BCLK overclocking pretty much died with Sandy Bridge except for some exceptions. For example there is some modern boards with an external clock gen that can be used to overclock 12th gen locked CPUs.
@@Lurch-Bot Again with the misinformation. First gen Core i7s were routinely overclocked to 4.2-4.4Ghz with relatively normal cooling such as the ThermalRight Ultra Extreme. Heck, I think the venerable NH-D14 first came out around this era...
@@Pasi123 there's an unlocked Pentium Dual core, the E6500K. The first generation of cpus being mostly locked with the exception of the very top chips, which were unlocked, was with P4 130nm with the gallatin core, being called the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.4Ghz. Another example of bclk overclocking would be skylake / 6th gen Edit: the 4th gen had a funny oversight in the H/B 80 series chipsets that allowed overclocking unlocked chips on such lowend boards (this is the G3258 era btw).
Others already mentioned the 875K; I have two of them, it's an interesting chip, allows for individual bin levels based on active core count, something that didn't become normalised until many years later, and now is baked into CPU designs by default. Getting the most out of an 875K though really depended on having a good mbd. I've tried a great many P55s, the best I found was the ASUS P7P55 WS Supercomputer (one of the very few that can manage high RAM speeds at the same time as a high CPU clock), with which I bagged most of the 3DMark records for the P55 platform using 2x 1080 Ti (lost a couple recently to someone who used a 3080 IIRC; hoping to bag them back as I never oc'd the 1080 Tis). Note this ASUS board has PCIe switches, so it supports x16/x16 or x8/x8/x8/x8, or 3-way SLI, CF, etc. Alas my 1080 Tis are too wide to try for some 3-way benchmarks. Also interesting in the S1156 space is the i5 680, because it's likely one of the oldest Core CPUs that can run above 5GHz (which would help older games of that era, including Crysis), due to having such a high base clock & multipler, and a high thermal socket budget per core; as it is, even an i3 550 can run at 4.7GHz on a lesser board like the Asrock P55 Deluxe which was an excellent board (I have seven of them). Not gotten round to trying the 680 yet, still messing about with a 4.3GHz i7 870 and other stuff. I would include bench links but YT hates web refs in posts. The interesting thing about P55 was the onchip IMC meant it had significantly lower latency than X58; this, combined with the higher clocks of Lynnfield, meant that a P55 setup could easily provide better gaming performance than X58 at a lower cost (I had a friend with an ASUS X58/920 setup, we tested with the same GPUs, stock and oc'd), though of course P55 was a full year later than X58. One fun thing about these old chipsets is some NVMe devices have an onboard boot ROM, so one doesn't have to rely on BIOS support to be able to use them as boot drives, at least for Win7 anyway (not tried it with Win10 yet). The best example way back was the Samsung 950 Pro, but sadly Samsung removed this feature for the 960 series. Intel had a PCIe SSD product with onboard boot support. I could talk about performance, but there's too much nuance involved; it depends so heavily on the game, resolution, settings, RAM speed, OS, driver version, GPU, etc. Some very interesting results though. Sometimes these old systems behave a lot better than most would likely assume, especially at higher resolutions.
I still have an i7920 running at 4ghz to this day on a 360 Corsair AIO and an EVGA X58 Classified board with 12gb of 1866 Corsair Dominator DDR3. It rarely sees 60c. Paired it with a 1660 Super and I use it as my HTPC. Still runs really well. Does everything I need it to. I play Genshin Impact, Wuthering Waves, Honkai Star Rail and a bunch of retro stuff no problem at 1080p. It doesn't like 4K. I built a whole new rig for that.
out of curiosity did you play wuwa at launch? I remember ppl with top of the line systems struggling with optimization but it seemed to be almost random. it did just fine on my ryzen 5 with 3060 laptop, but with all the complaints I saw before it got patched I'm wondering how it ran for you back then.
Old/light enough retro & indie games should run well enough. For example, Dread Templar & GRID run at smooth & steady 60fps @4k (4xDSR with 1080p display) on my i7-920 w/1050ti.
@@0v_x0 I'm not OP but I'd except it was playable but with some frame drops. But definitely not 60fps at least based on my testing with an i7-950 @ 4.0GHz + GTX 970 (even at low resolution to eliminate GPU bottleneck) in Wuwa 1.1 For 1.0 I only tested the i7-950 at stock and with a much slower GTX 660. In combat it usually dropped below 30fps but other than that it was mostly above 30fps and GPU bound
Many people actually thought the "Core i7" naming scheme was really stupid when it came out (the article even mentions it at 1:22). The numbers were in odd increments so they didn't signify the number of cores (whereas "Core 2" and "Core 2 Quad" kind of did), and the "i" moniker was a dumb marketing trend of the late 2000's that copied Apple products like the iPod, iPhone, iMac, etc. But the Core i7 name spent enough time on flagship products to become highly regarded and everyone eventually forgot it was a stupid name.
It was weird, AMD did x2 4 6 etc so intel just added 1 (bigger number more better) and ran with it. The advantage to intel I guess, being marketing segmentation is separate from a key fact about the CPU. Prior AMD had always done Xn and intel solo, duo, quad. It blows people’s minds when you tell them that desktop i3's can outperform mobile and old i7s quite handily, but if the name was tired to P core count, most i7 and i5 laptops todays would be core i2’s... Thanks to the more abstract naming scheme you can have a high-end badge (and price) on a U sku CPU. I reckon the reason we talk about quad cores but not hexacore’s or octacore’s is down to the core i scheme. Quad core was intel speak, and because they stopping using the core count in names long before 6 cores was mainstream, references to hexacore processes seem weird.
This video is actually horrifying in a way. The hardware was always capable, yet people still need to upgrade and throw these out because they dont know how to change out the hdd for a ssd or deinstall bloatware that slows them down. Most of the time they say the problem is because their hardware is "old"
The problem with modern GPU is, that they require UEFI. Some motherboards got updates, if their UEFI was "not good enough" and newer GPUs started to work on them. Some GPUs got firmware updates to play nice with older motherboards. If both did not get an according update, they will not work together. Besides of that, the Radeon R9 did decrease performance. The architecture and drivers had been so bad, that some games would create enough drawing calls to oversaturate 1 core and drop performance by 70% . If I recall correctly the devs of Assetto Corsa 1 detected this issue and asked AMD for help. To make it a fair test, you would need to use a RX480. Vega 56 and 64 are out, because they share the same problems the older Radeons have and Navi GPUs need a "good enough UEFI" too.
I'm curious to know just where the cutoff line is. Intel 70 series chipset boards from 2012 fully supported UEFI because of Windows 8, so these cards should go that far back without issues, in theory. 60 series was transitional, as their UEFI was in the weird transition phase. 50 series was early UEFI that looked and behaved like traditional BIOS.
If it's over saturating 1 core that's a game engine problem technically not the gpu's problem or the cpu's problem. Just means that their code for the game didn't spawn thread properly at what the driver called for. Most likely due to latency penalties for syncing threads. game engines brain dead solution: Well if we don't use more threads, we don't need to sync Genuis!!! THROW IT ALL ONE CORE.... game engine algorithms can be so stupid sometimes smh
Have had no issue running 30 series cards on SNB or IVB. Used such hardware to build mining rigs but, come on, I'm gonna play around with gaming on them at least a little. Running games from the past 5 years on a 2500K with a 3060 is...interesting, to say the least. You might see 40% utilization on the GPU in the best possible scenario but it is possible to get games running smoothly. You have to use a frame cap to keep from completely overwhelming the CPU and getting a stutterfest. But that just means you get to crank the graphics settings to the max. Had a memorable session last year playing Wonderlands on such a combo.
>The problem with modern GPU is, that they require UEFI. This is entirely up to the AIB vendor. Some are UEFI only, some are universal and work on both BIOS and UEFI systems. Technically they don't need to conform to either, they could write their own firmware for a non-x86 platform and it wouldn't be either BIOS or UEFI. This was common back in the PowerPC Apple days, you needed a custom PowerPC ROM for the card to work on those systems. There are also motherboards with UEFI that don't support legacy option ROMs, so BIOS based video cards won't work at all without enabling CSM support in the motherboards firmware. HP was notorious for this, and to further be dicks, they had some models where you had to reboot and enter a code in a dialog box to "confirm" you wanted to enable/disable CSM mode. This dialog box was broken on some machines, so you could never toggle CSM and get your hardware to work. I had a few 4th gen Intel HP systems with this bug and ended up sending them off to eWaste because BIOS based video cards and PCI cards wouldn't work on them, and HP never released any firmware updates to fix the problem.
boy that first round of nehalem reviews were so exciting. even the i7-920 had just bonkers performance and headroom. i’m still running an i7-990x too! …in a retro rig, but still.
Heh... my 14yo i7-980x is still up and running (for all 14 years at an all core 4.14GHz OC... on standard voltages!). It's one of those machines that was far too cool to scrap. While I had to work around the installer nonsense, it's runs Windows 11 23H2 very nicely. LGA1366 for life.
@@smakfu1375 Still running my 775 and X79 xeon rigs. Somehow I skipped that generation because the jump from core 2 quad to i7 wasn't as big as it seemed. And those i7's were FREAKING EXPENSIVE back then. The 2008 crysis made them basically unottainable. It is funny how you can get them almost dime for a dozen nowadays!
@thetechfromheaven I actually upgraded back then from a Q6600 overclocked.to an i7 920 overclocked... difference at the time wasn't as big but as newer gpus came along it showed just how much more.powerful 1366 was. Even up to the 8700k the trippe channel memory meant it matched DDR4 speeds so games that wanted that memory speed it could handle fine. Eventually ended up with a lapped Xeon 5675 in there hitting 4.7ghz on water 24gb ram and multiple ssds in raid 0 and stopped caring about voltage at this point 6 core xeons were very very cheap. That ended its life with a 1080ti. I then went Z390 9900k which I'm still running now, but next year it's getting an upgrade. Waiting to see about the AMD 9000 series X3D cpus.
@@yonumpty i had my Azus P6T with Deluxe V2 modded bios, i7 920 then upgraded to x5650, when it blew up at 5.2GHz i bought the x5680 and i put it at 4.2. I had a GTX970 but that didn't keep up even with 300W mod, so i bought a RTX3060 12GB for it. Beats the hell out of my 6600k at 4.6ghz lol, 7700k don't have much of a chance hahaha I neded 240mm watercooler i built myself for it, and 2 power supply's were burned down the way until i went with Seasonic I coundn't get ram speeds higher than 1800+- with 6 stick's
I still have my i7-920 system that I got back in 2009. It originally came with Windows Vista and managed to get free upgrades to Windows 7, 10 and 11. I replaced it in 2016 with an i7-6800K system but still use the old one today to play around with from time to time. The replacement computer is still holding up well after 8 years.
only issue with these first gen core series, is that they are missing some instruction sets that are needed to play some of the newer games, for example COD.
Unfortunately the lack of AVX2 instruction set means that some modern games straight up refuse to run on these CPU's. And in the case that they do run, then they have severe performance issues.
These earned me so much money, sold loads from discarded office dells. Nowadays, you can barely sell them at all anymore. Big issue is the lack of instruction sets that even less intensive newer games require. Also the much better performing 2nd gen is getting dirt cheap, and 1156 motherboards are getting a bit scarce
They still do get u very much cash lol cause you can name your office pc for ebay then a i7 pc (which is Bad, dont do that guys) like many shops and sell em for 120
Haswell is the sweet spot for older hardware because it supports AVX2 and can run Windows 11 24H2. You can have a MB and i7 for $50-60 and I think everyone should have a Haswell i7 rig for playing older and vintage games on modern digital game platforms. I put a GTX 670SC in mine, overclocked the CPU and it can run games at 1440p from well into the 2010s. I paid just $25 for a MSI Z87-G43 a few months ago. I made it a sleeper build, putting it in a case that pre-dates the Haswell i7 it by almost 15 years. Planning to install 24H2 on it sometime soon. I also think intel should have pulled out a totally clean sheet of paper after Haswell. They could have beat AMD to the punch with a fully modern CPU and something actually worthy of the name, 'Core Ultra'. Instead, they proceeded to be cheap and greedy and this is why the last couple of generations of intel CPUs have been total dumpster fires. It wasn't a choice to abandon HT; they were forced to do it so their CPUs don't self-destruct. This is why there is zero generational uplift over 14th gen, just lower power consumption. They're still horribly inefficient CPUs compared to Ryzen. A 5700X3D performs about like a 14700K in gaming but uses a fifth of the power to do it. It will perform about the same as the new Core Ultra 265K, at a third of the power consumption. AMD can bunt with the 9800X3D and still have the best gaming CPU in the world.
Over here in Poland i7s from the Sandy Bridge onward hold ridiculous price to performance ratio. Their price is so ridiculous that it's more economic to switch to newer gen and change the MB and it's like that for all higher end Intel lineup. That' s cause they are desired by shady "Allegro prebuilds" makers due to their i7 name. Non knowledgeable folks, like parents buying rigs for kids, don't bother to look at the exact model of the hardware inside but just see Intel and Nvidia names in the build but don't know that the hardware they are about to be scalp is often more that 10 years old.
Something interesting about first gen i7 laptop processors is that the dual core versions had hd integrated graphics while the quad core versions had no graphics at all. Laptops with the quad cores were usually the high performance work station that had dedicated graphics, and so they didn't get good battery life since it used the dedicated graphics all the time.
Most nehalem era dual cores were 32nm based with a separate chip for graphics (codename clarkdale). Socket 1156 boards never got a 32nm quad core and the laptop variants ended up similarly, with the quads being 45nm based single die. EDIT: only socket 1366 got the 32nm high core count variants (codename Westmere for the i7 chips).
The reasoning that some boards supported the RTX cards and others didn't is due to the fact that those boards had UEFI bio support and when you use the UEF bio support the cards work
I remember this chip. I wanted one so much when it came out, but could not afford it. I had a Q6600 back then. Later I got my hands on a Q9650 and kept it until 2014 when I upgraded to the 4790k. P.S. Get well soon!
This is exactly how I rolled. Q6600 + 9800gtx, then later 4790k with 560gtx Ti, because I ran out of money for a higher end GPU. Remember CoD4 demo running running so smoothly that I was in awe, but soon the newer i7 processors kept dunking on it.
Intel processors stagnated because they had no competition and thus no incentive to improve performance of consumer desktop CPUs. We were stuck on quad cores for the better part of a decade until AMD pulled the rug out from under Intel with Ryzen in 2017.
@@BudgetBuildsOfficial At the time it was 25-30%, but when the huge CPU vulnerability issues started cropping up, all of that performance was erased and then quite a bit more. The Specter and Meltdown mitigations cumulatively reduced performance by 50-90% on older processors, depending on workload and if HT was enabled or not. I remember it causing a big uproar in the professional and server communities because their recent expensive hardware purchases were effectively crippled to pedestrian levels of performance. Intel's reputation took a big hit once the wheels fell off of their operation of cutting corners came to light.
I daily drive an i7-3770 w/ GTX 980 which I got reacently but only 6 months ago I was using a core 2 quad q8200 w/ GT640. I only upgraded because beamNG didn't run great with many vehicles on it. The core 2 quad is now a machine that I use as server/dvd ripper/vhs recorder. I've honestly never used a computer above 4th gen aside from school computers and friends computers, because there just isn't any need to upgrade to them for 99% of situations. My current setup maxs out every game I play and its 12 years old...
Every game you play must be from before this decade, lol. Also, 'maxing out' doesn't really say much. I can max out Cyberpunk at 1440p on a RX6600 and get about 12FPS.
Same here i7 3770, it never does bottleneck in games if your target is 60fps. I do 4k video editing with it using filmora and it's rocket fast. You don't really need a new gen CPU.
@@Lurch-Bot Yes you aren't wrong, I play beamNG, GTA V, portal, portal 2, hl2, halo CE, splitgate etc. I run at 1600x1200 resolution which is the same as 1080p but in a 4:3 aspect ratio. I have looked at getting newer stuff though and the PC could stuff run them at 30fps on low settings.
@@Lurch-Bot I upgraded my gpu first to rtx 2060 for a while which at the time i had i5-3470 and my gpu was rx 560, before fully upgrading to i3 12100f, and i WAS certainly maxing out Cyberpunk wtih Psycho settings (raster, not RT) at 1080p 40-50 fps, no upscaling and frame gen (frame gen didn't exist at the time)
I still use my i7-4790K for my main PC / workstation. CPUs haven't grown as much as they used to, however that does mean this purchase wasn't a waste back then.
Considering that new, unoriginal games are becoming less necessary for many, justifying a new PC is no longer essential. The biggest win today is making an old machine work. The majority of the games we have now, with a lot of players, are free-to-play, and most of them can be run on the PC you showcased today without any problems. Awesome review and coverage on this topic!
The worst part of the state of game development currently isn't even the poor optimization. That can be somewhat mitigated by technologies like X3D, dynamic resolution scaling and frame generation. It is the complete lack of innovation that is the biggest problem. IDK, maybe gaming has just plateaued. I am cautiously optimistic that AI and eventually quantum computing will allow for some substantial evolution of gameplay mechanics over the next several years. As far as graphics go, they are already far better than I could have imagined they'd get over the course of 3 decades. And I think even younger people are getting bored with eye candy. As much as I enjoy playing Cyberpunk, it is a visually loud, over-stimulating game environment with a lot of processing power just wasted on fluff you only really notice when you're trying to. If you're just playing the game, you really don't pay attention to all the bells and whistles. RT? I don't mess with it anymore in Cyberpunk. Would rather have a high native framerate in the triple digits. I'll use it in something like FC6, FH5 or AC Mirage because that embellishment comes quite cheaply in those games. I played AC Mirage at launch on a 3060 12GB at 1440p Ultra with RT on and got a solid experience at a 90fps cap, running with an overclocked Ryzen 2600. And 90fps is enough for me to be competitive in an online shooter. Similar results are to be had in FC6 and FH5. Back in the '90s, there was a reason to pay the equivalent of $97 in late 2024 dollars for a new release game. Especially when talking about games like Tomb Raider, Fallout and GTA. They sold far fewer copies of games back then and they were almost always pretty much flawless out of the box. You can argue they were simpler games than we have today but modern games really don't take that much more work to complete and doing things like motion capture and voice capture are far cheaper and easier these days. Today, you barely even have to write any code. The original DOOM was an infinitely greater technological marvel than DOOM 2016. It was also perfectly optimized. Whatever framerate your PC could manage, it was going to run extremely consistently. The only way a modern game can do that is if you do some benchmark and play testing and set a framerate cap at the lowest point it could ever drop in the game. You can't run modern games unlocked and get a consistent frame pacing like you could in the '90s. The amount of money charged for new release games these days is simply a crime. It violates the laws of supply and demand and is anti-capitalist and monopolistic. If I gotta run DLSS and frame gen just to hit 1080p60, I'm just not going to buy that game. When you get to be my age, FOMO and hype just really don't influence you.
I bought an LGA-1366 motherboard and i7-950 in 2010. Was able to upgrade the CPU to a Xeon in 2018 and it was then as powerful as the current i7-7700. I used the platform until the end of last year. Incredible platform.
it's so cool to see tech this old performing this well at... Everything. It's such a shame graphics cards are priced like they were human organs in here, because the performance this thing is indeed jawdropping. What'd be really hilarious is seeing it run that ps4 emulator thing tho
I bought an i7 just after launch to replace an aging socket 939 Athlon 64. I upgraded it after a couple of years to a total of 20 GB Ram and a SATA SSD which gave it another couple of years until I finally decomissioned the system after 10 years. And that was because I wanted something new, I could have used it for another 2 or 3 years if I wanted to.
I had a 920. The 1366's were absolute beasts. They had 40 PCIe lanes in what was left of the North Bridge and in multi GPU setups, they could throw an insane amount of weight around, even compared to their descendants. I've been running a 5820k for the past decade, and with modest GPU and SSD upgrades over time, it's been keeping pace with damn near everything I've thrown at it.
With prices so out of my budget for modern hardware, My PC history revolved around prior gen 2nd hand/refurbished parts. I now have 5 working systems (3 unused) and 4 processors without motherboards. My current daily driver is a Xeon E3 1270 V2(I7 3770k base equivalent), and my oldest equipment is a Pentium 4 640 system and a Phenom x4 9850 processor which is rather hard to find a mobo nowadays, being a 125w TDP processor. Videos that feature older hardware in use nowadays are a highlight for me to watch in YT. Keep up the good work keeping the old flames of burning passion alight for crusty older folks like me! 😊😊😊
Same here! My daily driver laptop is an HP Probook 4430s, has an i7 2630qm, 16gb ram, and runs an SSD/HDD combination for the OS and data storage. Works great, even with Windows 11. I also use a Dell Optiplex 790 USFF with an i5 2400s, (same drive and RAM configuration) as a secondary desktop, though it is a bit more limited as it doesn't have any expansion slots. Would have been much happier finding a regular SFF unit, but that one was a dumpster find and cost me $0, so I won't complain. I'm also running a server with an AMD A8-3870K running an 8-drive RAID system, though in terms of processing power even my laptop can outrun it. Old hardware rocks
Damn that's impressive! I'm still running a 2600k @4.4ghz, still going strong unless I want high refresh rate gaming, but wouldn't have thought the first gen would still be so okay to use.
My first i7 was an 860. I built that PC in 2010 for about €1600, crazy amount of money at that time just for a PC - and it came with just 4GB of RAM and no SSDs. It ran Windows 7 without issues for that time, and I even tested it with an XP at very first day. I upgraded the RAM in 2012 to 12GB and put a 500GB SSD in 2015. Then in 2016 I got a really sweet deal for a i7 2600 with Z68 mainboard, so I put that one in. There was an apparent improvement of performance, and the thermals improved very much. Later on, I swapped the original AMD HD 6950 1GB GPU with GeForce 1060 6GB, which was day and night difference. I ran that setup (i7 2600) till 2024 - actually till just 2 weeks ago, when I got a really nice deal on a whole computer with i7 6700K, 32GB DDR4 memory and MSI gaming motherboard - all that for just €30, as it was seemingly broken, which turned out to be just a bad CMOS battery. I added a 1TB nvme SSD and it runs Windows 10 really happily. Interestingly the only thing that remained from the 2010 is the PC case and a case fan. Every other thing got replaced or upgraded. I am considering at one point to restore that PC to the original 2010 spec (i7 860), as I still own all the original hardware and use it as a retro rig, as it can run XP, Vista, 7 and 10 with no issues.
Awesome processor. My dad asked me to build him a high performance configuration around 2010. And I chose this processor specifically. The configuration is still working and is still an awesome piece of hardware.
I remember playing Empire Total War on release and the intro screens kept taunting me to upgrade to this CPU. I was on a Q6600 which wasn't too bad at all.
The Q6600 was a legendary CPU. It was the gaming CPU to get back in 2007/2008. I remember a lot of people wanting to play Crysis would get that CPU paired with a GeForce 8800 GT or 8800 Ultra. Good times.
The i7 920 was the best PC component I have ever bought and I'm dealing with PCs since 1991 (IBM & Win 3.1). It ran 4.2Ghz for 10 years until I retired it. I kept it (along side with the ASUS X58-UD5), for sentimental reasons. That's how good of an impression the good'ol i7 left on me.
I recently booted up an old computer that my nan gave me and it had an i7-860 in it, I... WAS... SHOCKED at just how good it was to use! Imagine buying one of those old systems with one of these chips, it would still be perfectly useable to this day!
The supported limit of graphic cards for this platform is Vega and GTX series. I'm running Xeon X 3460 that is equivalent to that I7 and it is running just fine today!
Ivy Bridge forever baby. I had an Ivy Bridge 3770, 32GB RAM, and GTX 680 in 2012. Upgraded to an R9 380X in 2016, and Vega 56 in 2019. If not for Cyberpunk in 2020 (which I had been planning a build for since it was first announced in 2012), I would probably still be rocking that Ivy Bridge build to this day (though with an R9 590 instead of the Vega, as the Vega bottlenecked every now and then). As with the exception of Cyberpunk, I could run all the games I enjoyed playing at 1080p60 just fine (though some would have to be dropped down to 900p to get 60). Yeah, it was a SHIT TON of money upfront, but got 8 years out of it, before gifting it to my ex-fiancee's son for his birthday in 2020 after I did my Ryzen RTX build for Cyberpunk. I definitely got my money's worth long term. I miss it so much, and want to build another one again (this time Haswell due to AVX2 support).
My first desktop I bought for myself was an I5 650, 8GB of ram, and a 750 ti. It was an HP desktop that I added a GPU and more storage to. I later upgraded to an I7 875K, which was my first I7. It lasted a long time, and I remember I was able to later over clock it to 4.2GHz stable with a scythe cooler, asrock motherboard, and a cheap $25 case. Lasted me till I finally pulled the trigger on a ryzen 1600x.
I built an i7 950 rig in 2014, i.e right in the middle of the Intel stagnation, and it was massively great value for the money. It also performed more like a Sandy Bridge machine with 1600 MHz DDR3 (which was dirt cheap by then) as fast RAM boosted Nehalem like crazy. Something important was clearly tied to it.
Still have an i7 875k build that I gave to my father in 2020; is delidded (the i5s and i7s use paste inbetween the IHS and die), has 32gb of ram, ssd and an rtx 3060 using Linux Mint. Does everything he wants and runs fine.
I'm watching this video on a i7 920 PC that I got for free some years ago. Two decades ago a PC that was more than 2 years old felt slow, however this PC still feels fast enough for every day use.
I used an Intel i7 920 since launch up until like 2 years ago as a daily. That CPU is still alive in another desktop to this day. Its an absolute unit with alot of room and stability for overclocking which I had stable all the way up to 5.0 GHz at the expense of some pretty impressive heat, but for years of gaming on several generations of GPU from a few before , 700 series, a 980, and a 1080 Strix it survived and kept up with all of them. It had obvious signs of age, yes, but it still done really well for most tasks.
The laptop i use to made my university homeworks (programming, use web browsers, some office programs like word and excel, and of course linux), its a Toshiba with a first gen i7 720qm, 8gb ddr3 ram and a dedicated nvidia gpu with 1.5GB of vram (i don't remember the model), honestly all of these paired with a SSD, my laptop stills running everything i need smoothly and without struggling, even being able to use Wallpaper engine in a Windows 11 installation, Worth to mention that my laptop is a 2009 Toshiba satellite a305, so my hinges still intact and without any damage or crackling sounds when i open the laptop. 😊
I'm running an Hp Probook 4430s from 2011, does everything I need it to as well. Had an i5-2540m, 8gb ram, and the standard 500gb HDD. Bought it used in 2016 and ran it like that until 2023, when I refurbished it and decided to max out the hardware it has. Currently running an i7-2630qm, 16gb DDR3, a 256gb SSD for my OS and some light games, and a 750gb HDD I swapped into the optical bay for mass data storage. Still gets around 3 hours on the original battery even with the hotrod cpu installed. If I can find a way to beef up the cooling system, that thing will keep trooping for years to come.
My friend offered me a system with a broken motherboard. They were nowhere to find here, most of the people stayed on core 2 quads until Sandy Bridge arrived. Price of motherboard i could find costed more than 2600k with motherboard. I now rocking i7 too, 11800H to be precise. It's single core performance could rival this whole thing.
I ran an i7 875k from 2010 to 2017 and I only upgraded when a friend got me a once in a lifetime deal on a new gaming pc. I‘ve been thinking of building a system around it using a modern GPU and an AIO to see how high I can overclock it. I think you’ve inspired me to do that!
I had Intel Desktop Board DH55TC, it was terrible and I trowed it away. It was too picky for memmory, graphics card and even USB drives, it didn't liked my 64GB SanDisk USB 3.1 flasdrive. I don't recomend using Intel Desktop Boards. They are the same shit as these Foxconn borads, just under Intel name.😂
When I first built my i7 950 system, it was a jump from an AMD 5600+ and really where I felt it in 2009 was multitasking which made it feel like the future. That feeling kept going for that system for a long while and I only ever replaced the whole thing in 2020 when the Ryzens really started to hit their stride. That system is still in use by a friend! Though recent gaming requirements are making them spec out their own Ryzen build.
I had an original i7 860 -> i7 4770k -> Ryzen 9 3900X (Yes i waited along time..... to upgrade that 4th gen i7) Now i have a Ryzen 7 5800X3D or Ryzen 9 7945HX3d depending on if im on my desktop or laptop PC
My Core i7-860 in a Dell XPS 8100 just got a new video card yesterday, the 1GB GTS 450. Also upgraded the ram from 8-16GB since I had some spare parts laying around. Just one of the many old PC's I have and play with from time to time. 😁
It's the quad coreness of it that makes it feel so smooth. Software threading optimization has since really made these old shunned multi core cpus shine much better. I've got my original Core 2 Duo E7500 and it's dog slow with Windows 10 and modern Linux but drop a Q9550 into that same board and it screams. I have a tablet with an old quad core Atom from like 2014 and if it had an actually reasonable amount of ram and fast ssd storage instead of emmc it would still slam today. When it's not hitting the emmc for swap due to 1gb of ram you can catch glimpses of how fast the tiny 10w chip can be.
@GodEmperorofmankind1 Yeah, that really surprised me, too. I've never played RDR2, but I've seen hundreds of benchmark videos, and this first-generation I7 impressed the hell out of me. I run an E3 1230v2 (I7 3770-ish) processor even today, and I love its performance with an rx580 8gb.
@@thomaswest2583 Resolution is only to emphasize the maximum capabilities of the processor in the game by decreasing the burden from the GPU. If it can get 60fps at 720P, it can get 60 fps at 4k.
not a desktop build, but for the longest time, i was dailying an x201, but when quarantine rolled around, i needed something with a webcam and a bigger screen, so i managed to find a precision m4800, and ive been in love ever since. now i have 2 of them, alongside with a precision 5560 with a xeon 11855, since i need raw power for simulations, but my 4800 is my daily. running a 4810mq with 16 gigs of ram, and the upgraded display panel. couldnt ask for a better tank than this tbh.
I recently started using Windows Vista x64 on my Xeon W3565 LGA1366, 24GB (6x 4GB) DDR3 1600, Nice Gigabyte GA-X58-UD3R motherboard, 512GB SATS SSD, GeForce GTX 980Ti and 1,6kW Superflower Leadex Titanium powersupply. The Windows Vista is working just so smoothly, and so stable with my hardware configuration.
With those specs, Vista would indeed run smooth as hell, benefitted as well by having very mature drivers by this point for the hardware. So much of Vista's bad rep came from seriously underpowered hardware at the time of release plus horrible drivers.
Are you still using Vista? I had it on my Phenom rig as it was the original configuration since around 2011, but when all died I decided to "upgrade" that machine to Windows 7. Its good to have such for backwards compability. Or in the case I want to run old games and don't get them working on my main PC.
@voyagerdeepspaceexploratio5023 If your reply was meant for me, the answer is no, I'm not still running Vista. I haven't run Vista since maybe 2010, once 7 was out there was very little reason to stick with Vista as 7 offered all of the under the hood improvements but with more speed and more reliability at the time.
We just replaced our last batch of i7-960 (Hexacore) based PCs in our Simulation Lab (they had been relegated to power inefficient PowerPoint machines when they'd arrived as high-end simulation PCs).
Recently upgraded my 4th 4770 non k, it worked great, gave it to a friend that was an upgrade for them, using a gtx1080, the gpu kinda felt like it was being held back, recommend DayZ as a good benchmark, great job as always!
Having moved from an i7-860, to an i7-7700k in 2017 (and i'm still 'stuck' with that system/cpu atm) - I can say that the 860 is not good enough for most modern games, anything with lots of crowds (game AI etc) really take a hit... And honestly, never heard or saw anyone refer to it as a suped up C2Quad
I'm currently still "stuck" with an I7 3770 equivalent Xeon e3 1230v2. It does what I need paired with an rx580 8gb and 16gb ddr3 1600. It may not be impressive to most people, but it impresses me every day.
@@GodSaveTheUnitedStates the 3770 (and similar) was a beast for its time, and is still decent now - unless you're playing heavy AAA titles... I upgraded because it was struggling with the games I was playing at the time, oh, and funds fell at the right time to be able to do it too :)
@Ghozer I feel that. Lol. I will upgrade eventually. Thinking about going with a ryzen 5 3600 core system first and upgrading my rx580 sometime thereafter. Maybe an rtx 3060 would pair well with the 3600. Either way used deals for all the components have gotten quite reasonable (atleast compared to the 2020 to 2022 timeframe) lol.
I have a old Intel Core I7 970 at home with a working Mainboard and 8GB - 2 sticks DDR 3 RAM. But is now for good 4 years out of service, Ty for around good 9 years.
Hey mate, ive noticed you have some interesting cars, ever planing about posting about them? In some older video i saw a e36 that looked super clean and im curious 😅
I actually used an i7-860 for around 2 years to run my UA-cam channel and do some gaming before I bought my current rig with a 7700x. It actually worked surprisingly well and the main thing holding it back was the GPU and the old spinning drive I was using.
I think you have touched upon a point that Microsoft has realized which is why they have attempted to remove compatibility in Windows 11. This seems counter-intuitive to me but then again, I don't work for them. If you have a computer, regardless of age, that works for you... why not continue to use it?
I have an i7 990x, GTX 690 and 24GB RAM somewhere in the attic. My father gifted it to me when I was much younger. Figured it’s just a pile of junk by now, but, after watching this video, maybe I can use it as a small console for my TV.
Up until early 2019, I was using the Xeon X3470, which was basically the i7 870. That thing was an absolute champ. Had 24gb ram with it, and an RX 480. That system took me incredibly far and ran like an absolute treat.
I think I7 4770/4790K will age even better, as they have more modern instruction set making them able to run the latest games in 2024. Imo last great Intel I7. Great video!
"it seems the i7 is not slowing down anytime soon" Intel Core Ultra 7 265K (or the entire 16th gen for that matter): To be honest it is nice to see old hardware still hold their own in the modern day. But when you "keep improving" your lineup and then release something up to 23% slower than last gen is just disappointing from Intel. AMD is no saint either with their 9000 release, but i just hope that when we are 30 years into the future or something that we can look back on the modern day hardware and get basically this same kind of video for what we thought was impressive in the current day.
Yeah, you're gonna want to downgrade ASAP. As soon as MS decides to give you the 24H2 update (which could happen any day now), it is going to install just fine and completely brick your PC when it reboots with endless BSODS. Recently grabbed the wrong flash drive and installed 24H2 on an IVB machine. Haswell was the first year for AVX2 and AVX2 support is necessary to run 24H2. Better to downgrade to 10 and pay for the more reasonably priced third party extended security support than to pause updates forever on 23H2 and never get another security update. Or you could migrate to Linux but I know that isn't for everyone. I also hope you back up important files regularly. Man, your laptop could be downloading the 24H2 update as I am typing this.
@@Lurch-Bot I have no problem with Linux except for the way it handles software, it's kind of a mess. I don't really see any point on paying for extended security support on such an old architecture; it's not like I'm using it for networking purposes. I daily my G14 but I'm thinking the driver issues I've been having with that is due to the AMD iGPU. Seems to be a common theme with that laptop and proof nothing new is built the last anymore. Oh well, at least I still have my tablet or phone to fall back on...
Lol, why didnt you buy X58 with Core i7 920. i7 900-series was the real first Core i7… We have still here one PC with P6T Deluxe and Xeon X5675 on daily use.
Had an i7-940 running at 3.85GHz. Triple channel RAM was helpful, even at the stock 1066MHz clock, but I had 1600MHz RAM and ran it at 1664MHz. All I ever had to do was upgrade my GPU. Absolute powerhouse of a machine.
I currently have a haswell as daily driver. I found a modded bios with NVME support. With a PCIe to M.2 adapter is feels like new even under Windows 11.
I have an exactly same i7 860 CPU, paired with a GTX960 4Gb, running windows 10 and ubuntu dual boot. The CPU needed to be overclocked to keep up these times. My chip was able to run at 4.0 Ghz, but it was hot. I was set it to 3,33 Ghz due to the RAM modules limitations at the end of the procedure. This machine is capable to run older titles very well and it has the same daily using experience as recent hardware. Until trying to run new games and mesh shader. This is my main desktop computer, and I predestinate two-three years more usage, then it starts its second life as NAS server, or something. And yes, it has got Floppy :D
I had an i7 930 PC as my main rig for 5 years, it was great, it overclocked to a perfectly stable 4 GHz with no effort. I wish I still had it to see how it would work with my GTX 1080. The laptop I still use is an i7 640m but that honestly is on the absolute limit of being useful for basic tasks now.
Shortly after the i7-920 came out, I came into a little money. I brought i7-920 desktops and laptops for several family members, gf and myself. Most are still in use for non-gaming purposes. All received upgrades with new power supplies, cpu fans/heat sinks , SSDs, mid level graphics cards and RAM increases to 12GB.
I used an i7 920 (the real first i7) up until several years ago, at which point I upgraded it to an i7 980X for the 2 extra cores. But I only used that for about a year until I decided it was finally time for a new build. The i7 920 was still very usable, but there were some other things holding back performance like low amount of RAM and lack of a SSD, and it didn't seem worth investing any more money in such an old build with limited upgrade paths. Gaming performance was fine, as long as I didn't run out of RAM. Most games don't really tend to be that CPU heavy or heavily multithreaded anyway. Only having 4 cores affected multitasking performance but it was very usable outside of the slow load times due to booting from a HDD. I used it as my main gaming rig for about 9 years (2009-2018), after that it still got a couple more years of use when my brother borrowed it. All i did was put in a small 120 GB SSD I had laying around and my brother seemed happy enough with the performance.
i use the i7 with the "Sandy Bridge" and I've put it through absolute hell! my computer room will often hit 40°c and it use to sound the "over heat" alarm constantly (untill i found out the thermal paste had worn off years ago) but it gave me zero issues every other part of my PC has had issues except the CPU, i went to a highly strung i9 pc build and it crashed with in 3 months, so now I'm back to 'ol trusty' untill its fixed!
The pre sandy bridge i7 really held out for a surprisingly long time. I upgraded my old PC to an i7 990 at one point. Burnt a bunch of cash to give it the shiniest chip that could fit in the socket, and send it off in style. I remember drooling over that chip when it first came out, so it was fun to finally assemble my old dream machine. With an overclock it soldiered on until summer of 2021! Off course by then the lack of AVX support was hurting performance badly in many newer games. I still game on that old computer from time to time. When targeting 60FPS it performs perfectly fine in all the games I regularly play. For many purposes it performs just like a brand new computer.
I re-acquired an HP Pavilion Elite HPE that I sold to a buddy several years ago. i7-950, GT430, 8GB PC3-8500, HP POCKET MEDIA DRIVE!!, card reader, 4 USB 2 and a firewire on the front. It's pretty cool nowadays and I'm cleaning it up to play with. Still has the re-used Win-7 sticker off one of the scrap cases from the recycling center I worked at... LOL!
I have an "i7-2600" (actually is a xeon E3-1270) and when I put windows on the thing, it almost felt as snappy as my 5600x rig, and handles games much better than you would think for a 13 year old chip. That rig also has 8gb of ram running at 1866 MT/s (the sticks can do more, the cpu can't) and an r9 280, so for e-sports and/or older games it does pretty well. Not bad for a 10+ year old system.
I still have two of the higher tier models running in this household. i7-940 on an MSI X58 Platinum with a GTX970, 24GB of cheap ECC server 1333MHz RAM, a 240GB solid state SATA, and a 3TB spin HDD. I built that from eBay parts a few years back just for fun and it's been my son's gaming machine ever since. He's perfectly happy with it. The other WAS an i7-950 on an ASUS Sabertooth X58 with a 1660ti, 12GB of 1600MHz RAM, a 480GB solid state SATA, and a 1.5TB spin HDD. That one was built new in 2009 (after a spilled drink destroyed the original i7-920 and Foxconn Flamingblade), and it's had at least six different GPUs, three cases, and four different power supplies. Make that five, I'm about to put in a Corsair CX650 to replace the Apevia Prestige it's had for four years. That system is my youngest daughter's Roblox machine, it is a few months OLDER than her, and I fully expect it to last through the end of high school, college, and medical school. Now remember I said WAS an i7-950, since I have a Xeon X5675 I plan to put in to give it 6 cores instead of 4. The MSI board in the son's computer does NOT like that chip, so we'll see about a 6 core i7-970 for him. $14 on eBay gets one these days, so that's pretty cheap. Is upgrading a 16 year old CPU considered future-proofing? Maybe for an antique, I guess. Triple Channel DDR3 is amazing stuff, and really keeps the things relevant even today.
i7 860 still in daily use with a GTX 1650, maxed out RAM and SSD. Perfectly fine for Office, UA-cam or login in remotely to work. And that with a 15 year old cpu. Now go back another 15 years and you are still in 486 country. Amazing the progress back then and on contrary: amazing how a 15 year old CPU is still so usable.
I still have a 486 DX2 66 in the loft somewhere, probably next to the Commodore Amiga and Speccy +2
@@djaybeetoowill receive a 486 dx2 66 as gift from a customer in a few weeks, after they upgrade it...
It's still in daily use!
Microsoft and Intel are working on that.
@@LastExile1989 sadly yes. Windows 10 runs absolutely smoothly
Wow. Do you use an abacus as well?
When this CPU was released in 2009, a 15 year old cpu would have been from 1994, which would be dx2/4 or a p75 or something, which could barely run windows 98 from 5 years later, but now a 15 year old processor can run the latest version of windows perfectly fine and only really struggles when you use heavy programs and the latest aaa games.
Well, technology development slowed down.
And yet, some folks will claim Windows is bloated and slow, go figure.
@@josephnorris4095 it is
Pentium 75 could run w98 just fine.
@@josephnorris4095 heck yeah it is. I'm almost 40 so I remember opening task manager in windows 98...there's a lot more things in there now. That's the tip of the iceberg. The newer Linux is pretty bloated too which is pretty sad, newer hardware does a lot better with Linux if you want to open firefox and have a smooth experience.
Maybe the real i7s were the friends we made along the way
Err... No
Maybe the real i7 is the i3 you were able to afford. 😂
Maybe the real i7s are the modded 771, x58/79/99 Xeons we all made along the way
The real i7s were the pentiums we met along the way
An i7 in general did feel prestigious for quite a while like "I don't care that there's an i5 that benches similarly in games...I just want one". Kind of similar to the desire to own a 1080 ti
A wild modern AAA game appears.
Modern AAA game uses AVX instruction set.
It's super effective.
i7-860 faints.
Some AAA games even require AVX2 which was first added on 4th gen / Haswell
@@TheDiner50 what political social nonsense?
@@elu9780 Backlash over DEI quotas would be my guess, maybe related to the practice of hiring consultancy firms like Sweet Baby Inc and alienating potential audiences in the process of doing so.
These cpu's the I7 920 Nehalem a thing with it's AVX though. That Francisco intel engineer guy deleted my comments & posts on a tech forum, cause I proved it from PDF's they've hid & later removed the PDF after words.
Anyways this cpu could take parts of it's SSE 2/3 4.1/4..2 code & use it to feed parts of it's AVX FP unit to speed things up. I found this in intel patens that's how Intel was gaining a 15% increase in IPC over AMD at the time. It wasn't true pure IPC, it was pseudo bullshit hack speed up. Image if you could get that speed up from Zen 5 from AVX512 unit from Zen 4 AVX2 code. If you are wonder why we don't this with SSE code & AVX. It's not supposed to be doing it at all, because it's causes a rounding function error that's why it's not supposed to do it.
AVX requirements in some newer games got patched out post launch. Also, Lynnfield CPUs probably can't run games with hard AVX requirements that well anyway. They can however run 4-5 yo AAA games like RDR2 pretty well. I paired one with a RX570 and the GPU is the bottleneck iirc.
1. The Core i7 920, 940, and 965 came out almost a year before the 800 series came out, in November 2008.
2. The Nehalem architecture was far more than just a core 2 quad with modernizations. It was the first Intel chip to get the integrated memory controller. It got hyperthreading. It was the first to get QPI. It got SSE 4.2. It was a ground up redesign over the Core 2 Quad. Overall, it got a 20% IPC boost over the Penryn cores of the Core 2 series, with lower power consumption, despite being on the same 45nm production process.
cheers for listin some of the other BS - i didnt get past h55 before bailing, choice validated
It was also first consumer platform to get UEFI. Well, technically the very first was Skulltrail, but I hardly can call that consumer pkatform.
It also had a different socket (1366)
@@dangingerich2559 Yeah. It really was the architecture that did set the new standard with IMC. Sandy Bridge just optimized it. Intel was really kickin it back in 2006-2011. AMD could only compete by pricing.
X58 still is a solid platform. With some fast DDR3 in triple channel and a 6c/12t CPU, it runs everything pretty smooth, that doesn't require AVX2. If you can utilize the power disipation for space heating, it's even more usable today. Around 100W idle (around 150W if overclocked/not powersaving optimized) is common. :)
I ran a 965 for nearly an entire decade. Won it for free from Intel and so while part of me always sort of regretted not selling it and buying an entire cheaper computer for the $999 MSRP of that CPU, it handle pretty much all that I could throw at it for 1080 gaming. I can't quite remember now which Athlon 64 I was running before it but I do remember entirely skipping DDR2 and going from 1 core up to 4 hyperthreaded core was quite the boost in performance.
"...only thing limiting these processors really is graphic cards..."
You forgot to mention AVX support, which newer games utilize and require.
Not all new games mind you a lot of engines really don't care that much about AVX and many applications just doesn't use the instructions for compatibility with old office machines
In 2020 I built my brother a $300 PC using a Xeon X3480 (which is essentially the same processor with higher clocks) and it runs a lot of games really well! Elden Ring runs without so much as a drop below 50fps, but the lack of AVX support stops it from even launching Warzone 2.0, which is unfortunate since I'd imagine it would run that game just fine had it supported AVX.
Avx locks you out automaticly from most modern emulators and somecool games like forza horizon 5 -which added avx requirment in an update after a sale mind you-@@fesyuki
@@ElectroFox77 you can emulate AVX or AVX2 instructions and get modern games running.
@@SouthCoastMudlarks Hello. I have a neighbor who is having financial difficulties and I want to give him an old PC that I haven't used for many years so that his son who started some design and editing courses can hand in his homework at home.
The PC has an Intel DH67BL motherboard with Intel Core i5 2130 2.90 GHz (second generation), 16 GB of DDR3 RAM at 1333MHz. A friend is going to donate me a 500GB SSD and I have a 1650 Super that I don't use and I plan to include it in the build. The only money I have available for the build will be to buy a second-hand power supply with a 6-pin connector for the graphics card.
My question is, do you know if Illustrator, Photoshop, Corel Draw, Premiere Pro, After Effects can be installed on that processor? It doesn't matter if it takes forever to render. It is for someone who started studying and must do some work probably at 720p or maximum at 1080p. The important thing is that he can hand in his assignments. It is not necessary that the software be in its latest version.
If I cannot install that software I will not be able to give them the PC as it will only be a paperweight and I do not want to give them false expectations.
I have searched in many places but I find contradictory information, some say that they can install the software and other people say that they cannot. I also read that for some programs something called AVX2 is needed which came out after the sixth generation but the second generation has AVX1.
If you can clear up my doubts I would really appreciate it.
Excuse my English, I had to use Google translate.
My dad bought one of these in an Alienware in 2009, and it’s still my main desktop today. Got it paired with a GTX 1060 and an SSD and it has ran anything I’ve thrown at it, except Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order for some reason. Even can capably run VR.
I’ve considered upgrading, but I have a Steam Deck that can run most things well too and the combo gets me by pretty well.
It's amazing how cheap laptops and handhelds nowadays have much much more power than top of the line 15 year old parts. And all that using like a measly % of energy!
@@thetechfromheaven Steam Deck is much less powerful than 1060.
Cyberpunk??
@@thetechfromheaven date 15 years down from 2009 . Pcs are a quintillion times faster
@@Nordlicht05 not really. Moore's law already died. What has improved is distributed computing with the "cloud" and efficiency but general consumer computing has at most come 50x this last 15 years.
I know someone who still dailies a system with a 1st gen i7, I recently did some maintenence for them aka clean out the dust and new thermal paste, but the machine itself runs as well as ever
Guy that used to own a computer shop 20~ minutes from me, was running a dual xeon system on the same socket with a 2080 last i heard, but he went out of business and moved out of state.
Same I know someone who dailies a i7 860. It had a 750Ti until it died and now it's a 1050Ti. He desperately needs a new CPU he can't play anything that isn't a 2D indie platformer.
Still rocking my i7 2600 non k
Those were made to last. Solid capacitors are a tech miracle that are helping our HW survive a long time.
My 2nd gen i3 handles computing just as well with an ssd. Yeah, it can't play games or stream online videos in 1080 seamlessly, but for everything else works just as fine.
Wow, seeing this video is wild.
In Indonesia we still have people selling a 'brand-new' full PC build with this for as low as 150 bucks, and an upwards of 300 BUCKS! Sure, it comes with cool RGB case or 'dedicated GPU for gaming' alongside all the peripherals you need for a computer, but none of them are new and they're just hodgepodge of used parts with only 30days of warranty mostly. Oh and that 'dGPU'? GT 730, yep. Lots of cases where sellers justified the i7 as 'what matter is that its a Core i7!' and making bold claims like its way better than a 13th Gen i3 or something.
To be fair, the bold claims exist worldwide. When these were still brand new and I was upgrading to Phenom II, I had one other bloke in my infotech class bragging about his "Core i7 x6 Black Edition".
Dude literally just combined the best of AMD and Intel circa 2010-2011 into one imaginary platform.
That kind of dogshit that's made budget builds and budget PCs not so budget friendly anymore for us. Pretty sad actually..
And sadly the term "build your own PC" is not as prevalent yet, making this practice still thrive like madness
In my contry is.the same, Brasil
Another fun fact: the "k" tag on the end of processor names didn't start until Sandy bridge. I've heard that all first gen i5s & i7s can be overclocked. Some UA-camrs have pushed them far enough that these CPUs can rub elbows with processors that came out generations later.
There was the i7-875K which is multiplier unlocked. But like you said all first gen Core i CPUs can be overclocked by upping the BCLK without having to touch the multiplier. BCLK overclocking pretty much died with Sandy Bridge except for some exceptions. For example there is some modern boards with an external clock gen that can be used to overclock 12th gen locked CPUs.
Yeah, with LN2, maybe, lol.
@@Lurch-Bot Again with the misinformation. First gen Core i7s were routinely overclocked to 4.2-4.4Ghz with relatively normal cooling such as the ThermalRight Ultra Extreme. Heck, I think the venerable NH-D14 first came out around this era...
@@Pasi123 there's an unlocked Pentium Dual core, the E6500K. The first generation of cpus being mostly locked with the exception of the very top chips, which were unlocked, was with P4 130nm with the gallatin core, being called the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.4Ghz.
Another example of bclk overclocking would be skylake / 6th gen
Edit: the 4th gen had a funny oversight in the H/B 80 series chipsets that allowed overclocking unlocked chips on such lowend boards (this is the G3258 era btw).
Others already mentioned the 875K; I have two of them, it's an interesting chip, allows for individual bin levels based on active core count, something that didn't become normalised until many years later, and now is baked into CPU designs by default. Getting the most out of an 875K though really depended on having a good mbd. I've tried a great many P55s, the best I found was the ASUS P7P55 WS Supercomputer (one of the very few that can manage high RAM speeds at the same time as a high CPU clock), with which I bagged most of the 3DMark records for the P55 platform using 2x 1080 Ti (lost a couple recently to someone who used a 3080 IIRC; hoping to bag them back as I never oc'd the 1080 Tis). Note this ASUS board has PCIe switches, so it supports x16/x16 or x8/x8/x8/x8, or 3-way SLI, CF, etc. Alas my 1080 Tis are too wide to try for some 3-way benchmarks.
Also interesting in the S1156 space is the i5 680, because it's likely one of the oldest Core CPUs that can run above 5GHz (which would help older games of that era, including Crysis), due to having such a high base clock & multipler, and a high thermal socket budget per core; as it is, even an i3 550 can run at 4.7GHz on a lesser board like the Asrock P55 Deluxe which was an excellent board (I have seven of them). Not gotten round to trying the 680 yet, still messing about with a 4.3GHz i7 870 and other stuff. I would include bench links but YT hates web refs in posts.
The interesting thing about P55 was the onchip IMC meant it had significantly lower latency than X58; this, combined with the higher clocks of Lynnfield, meant that a P55 setup could easily provide better gaming performance than X58 at a lower cost (I had a friend with an ASUS X58/920 setup, we tested with the same GPUs, stock and oc'd), though of course P55 was a full year later than X58.
One fun thing about these old chipsets is some NVMe devices have an onboard boot ROM, so one doesn't have to rely on BIOS support to be able to use them as boot drives, at least for Win7 anyway (not tried it with Win10 yet). The best example way back was the Samsung 950 Pro, but sadly Samsung removed this feature for the 960 series. Intel had a PCIe SSD product with onboard boot support.
I could talk about performance, but there's too much nuance involved; it depends so heavily on the game, resolution, settings, RAM speed, OS, driver version, GPU, etc. Some very interesting results though. Sometimes these old systems behave a lot better than most would likely assume, especially at higher resolutions.
I still have an i7920 running at 4ghz to this day on a 360 Corsair AIO and an EVGA X58 Classified board with 12gb of 1866 Corsair Dominator DDR3. It rarely sees 60c. Paired it with a 1660 Super and I use it as my HTPC. Still runs really well. Does everything I need it to. I play Genshin Impact, Wuthering Waves, Honkai Star Rail and a bunch of retro stuff no problem at 1080p. It doesn't like 4K. I built a whole new rig for that.
have you seen any difference between 1600 and 1866 mt ram?
out of curiosity did you play wuwa at launch? I remember ppl with top of the line systems struggling with optimization but it seemed to be almost random. it did just fine on my ryzen 5 with 3060 laptop, but with all the complaints I saw before it got patched I'm wondering how it ran for you back then.
Old/light enough retro & indie games should run well enough. For example, Dread Templar & GRID run at smooth & steady 60fps @4k (4xDSR with 1080p display) on my i7-920 w/1050ti.
@@0v_x0 I'm not OP but I'd except it was playable but with some frame drops. But definitely not 60fps at least based on my testing with an i7-950 @ 4.0GHz + GTX 970 (even at low resolution to eliminate GPU bottleneck) in Wuwa 1.1
For 1.0 I only tested the i7-950 at stock and with a much slower GTX 660. In combat it usually dropped below 30fps but other than that it was mostly above 30fps and GPU bound
@@Pasi123 cheers, thanks for the reply
Many people actually thought the "Core i7" naming scheme was really stupid when it came out (the article even mentions it at 1:22). The numbers were in odd increments so they didn't signify the number of cores (whereas "Core 2" and "Core 2 Quad" kind of did), and the "i" moniker was a dumb marketing trend of the late 2000's that copied Apple products like the iPod, iPhone, iMac, etc. But the Core i7 name spent enough time on flagship products to become highly regarded and everyone eventually forgot it was a stupid name.
that's a cool tidbit of history thanks for sharing
and now Core Ultra 7 is the stupid one
It was weird, AMD did x2 4 6 etc so intel just added 1 (bigger number more better) and ran with it. The advantage to intel I guess, being marketing segmentation is separate from a key fact about the CPU. Prior AMD had always done Xn and intel solo, duo, quad. It blows people’s minds when you tell them that desktop i3's can outperform mobile and old i7s quite handily, but if the name was tired to P core count, most i7 and i5 laptops todays would be core i2’s... Thanks to the more abstract naming scheme you can have a high-end badge (and price) on a U sku CPU.
I reckon the reason we talk about quad cores but not hexacore’s or octacore’s is down to the core i scheme. Quad core was intel speak, and because they stopping using the core count in names long before 6 cores was mainstream, references to hexacore processes seem weird.
I remember it well. That name was eye rolling when it was announced.
@@mjdevlog Also stupid they killed off hyperthreading.
This video is actually horrifying in a way. The hardware was always capable, yet people still need to upgrade and throw these out because they dont know how to change out the hdd for a ssd or deinstall bloatware that slows them down. Most of the time they say the problem is because their hardware is "old"
Sad
The problem with modern GPU is, that they require UEFI.
Some motherboards got updates, if their UEFI was "not good enough" and newer GPUs started to work on them.
Some GPUs got firmware updates to play nice with older motherboards.
If both did not get an according update, they will not work together.
Besides of that, the Radeon R9 did decrease performance. The architecture and drivers had been so bad,
that some games would create enough drawing calls to oversaturate 1 core and drop performance by 70% .
If I recall correctly the devs of Assetto Corsa 1 detected this issue and asked AMD for help.
To make it a fair test, you would need to use a RX480.
Vega 56 and 64 are out, because they share the same problems the older Radeons have and Navi GPUs
need a "good enough UEFI" too.
I'm curious to know just where the cutoff line is. Intel 70 series chipset boards from 2012 fully supported UEFI because of Windows 8, so these cards should go that far back without issues, in theory. 60 series was transitional, as their UEFI was in the weird transition phase. 50 series was early UEFI that looked and behaved like traditional BIOS.
If it's over saturating 1 core that's a game engine problem
technically not the gpu's problem or the cpu's problem. Just means that their code for the game didn't spawn thread properly at what the driver called for. Most likely due to latency penalties for syncing threads.
game engines brain dead solution: Well if we don't use more threads, we don't need to sync
Genuis!!!
THROW IT ALL ONE CORE....
game engine algorithms can be so stupid sometimes
smh
Have had no issue running 30 series cards on SNB or IVB. Used such hardware to build mining rigs but, come on, I'm gonna play around with gaming on them at least a little. Running games from the past 5 years on a 2500K with a 3060 is...interesting, to say the least. You might see 40% utilization on the GPU in the best possible scenario but it is possible to get games running smoothly. You have to use a frame cap to keep from completely overwhelming the CPU and getting a stutterfest. But that just means you get to crank the graphics settings to the max. Had a memorable session last year playing Wonderlands on such a combo.
the R9 was fine. Are you thinking of the Terrascale chips?
>The problem with modern GPU is, that they require UEFI.
This is entirely up to the AIB vendor. Some are UEFI only, some are universal and work on both BIOS and UEFI systems. Technically they don't need to conform to either, they could write their own firmware for a non-x86 platform and it wouldn't be either BIOS or UEFI. This was common back in the PowerPC Apple days, you needed a custom PowerPC ROM for the card to work on those systems.
There are also motherboards with UEFI that don't support legacy option ROMs, so BIOS based video cards won't work at all without enabling CSM support in the motherboards firmware. HP was notorious for this, and to further be dicks, they had some models where you had to reboot and enter a code in a dialog box to "confirm" you wanted to enable/disable CSM mode. This dialog box was broken on some machines, so you could never toggle CSM and get your hardware to work. I had a few 4th gen Intel HP systems with this bug and ended up sending them off to eWaste because BIOS based video cards and PCI cards wouldn't work on them, and HP never released any firmware updates to fix the problem.
boy that first round of nehalem reviews were so exciting. even the i7-920 had just bonkers performance and headroom.
i’m still running an i7-990x too! …in a retro rig, but still.
Heh... my 14yo i7-980x is still up and running (for all 14 years at an all core 4.14GHz OC... on standard voltages!). It's one of those machines that was far too cool to scrap. While I had to work around the installer nonsense, it's runs Windows 11 23H2 very nicely. LGA1366 for life.
@@smakfu1375 Still running my 775 and X79 xeon rigs. Somehow I skipped that generation because the jump from core 2 quad to i7 wasn't as big as it seemed. And those i7's were FREAKING EXPENSIVE back then. The 2008 crysis made them basically unottainable. It is funny how you can get them almost dime for a dozen nowadays!
@thetechfromheaven I actually upgraded back then from a Q6600 overclocked.to an i7 920 overclocked... difference at the time wasn't as big but as newer gpus came along it showed just how much more.powerful 1366 was. Even up to the 8700k the trippe channel memory meant it matched DDR4 speeds so games that wanted that memory speed it could handle fine.
Eventually ended up with a lapped Xeon 5675 in there hitting 4.7ghz on water 24gb ram and multiple ssds in raid 0 and stopped caring about voltage at this point 6 core xeons were very very cheap. That ended its life with a 1080ti. I then went Z390 9900k which I'm still running now, but next year it's getting an upgrade. Waiting to see about the AMD 9000 series X3D cpus.
@@yonumpty i had my Azus P6T with Deluxe V2 modded bios, i7 920 then upgraded to x5650, when it blew up at 5.2GHz i bought the x5680 and i put it at 4.2. I had a GTX970 but that didn't keep up even with 300W mod, so i bought a RTX3060 12GB for it.
Beats the hell out of my 6600k at 4.6ghz lol, 7700k don't have much of a chance hahaha
I neded 240mm watercooler i built myself for it, and 2 power supply's were burned down the way until i went with Seasonic
I coundn't get ram speeds higher than 1800+- with 6 stick's
i am jealous lol i wanted a retro 990x build but instead went with a qx9650 due to the price difference.
The First Core I7 was the i7 960 based on the X58 platform with Triple channel memory, get one of those and test that one
And then change the cpu to a xeon X5690. Excellent system.
I had i7-920 it was wonderfull cpu, overclocked to 3,6GHz. :-) X58 was good, i had Asus Rampage 2 Extreme firstly with 6GB RAM and later 2GB*6 = 12GB.
@@gigadisk Had the I7 975 Extreme Edition. Overclocked it to just over 4.12Ghz (thank god for unlocked multiplier) on an ASUS P6T Deluxe
@@gigadisk i7-920, 12GB DDR3, Sata III SSD here. Works fine, but I'm going to upgrade anyway.
I still have my i7-920 system that I got back in 2009. It originally came with Windows Vista and managed to get free upgrades to Windows 7, 10 and 11. I replaced it in 2016 with an i7-6800K system but still use the old one today to play around with from time to time. The replacement computer is still holding up well after 8 years.
I'm building an old dell workstation right now on the X99 platform it's cool to see that there are many options for it even though it's really old now
only issue with these first gen core series, is that they are missing some instruction sets that are needed to play some of the newer games, for example COD.
Emulate
Unfortunately the lack of AVX2 instruction set means that some modern games straight up refuse to run on these CPU's. And in the case that they do run, then they have severe performance issues.
These earned me so much money, sold loads from discarded office dells. Nowadays, you can barely sell them at all anymore. Big issue is the lack of instruction sets that even less intensive newer games require. Also the much better performing 2nd gen is getting dirt cheap, and 1156 motherboards are getting a bit scarce
They still do get u very much cash lol cause you can name your office pc for ebay then a i7 pc (which is Bad, dont do that guys) like many shops and sell em for 120
Haswell is the sweet spot for older hardware because it supports AVX2 and can run Windows 11 24H2. You can have a MB and i7 for $50-60 and I think everyone should have a Haswell i7 rig for playing older and vintage games on modern digital game platforms. I put a GTX 670SC in mine, overclocked the CPU and it can run games at 1440p from well into the 2010s. I paid just $25 for a MSI Z87-G43 a few months ago. I made it a sleeper build, putting it in a case that pre-dates the Haswell i7 it by almost 15 years. Planning to install 24H2 on it sometime soon.
I also think intel should have pulled out a totally clean sheet of paper after Haswell. They could have beat AMD to the punch with a fully modern CPU and something actually worthy of the name, 'Core Ultra'.
Instead, they proceeded to be cheap and greedy and this is why the last couple of generations of intel CPUs have been total dumpster fires. It wasn't a choice to abandon HT; they were forced to do it so their CPUs don't self-destruct. This is why there is zero generational uplift over 14th gen, just lower power consumption. They're still horribly inefficient CPUs compared to Ryzen. A 5700X3D performs about like a 14700K in gaming but uses a fifth of the power to do it. It will perform about the same as the new Core Ultra 265K, at a third of the power consumption.
AMD can bunt with the 9800X3D and still have the best gaming CPU in the world.
@@Lurch-Bot i use 11800H, it's way better in terms of efficiency, same scores as 11700, but all that with 75w turbo limit.
Over here in Poland i7s from the Sandy Bridge onward hold ridiculous price to performance ratio. Their price is so ridiculous that it's more economic to switch to newer gen and change the MB and it's like that for all higher end Intel lineup. That' s cause they are desired by shady "Allegro prebuilds" makers due to their i7 name. Non knowledgeable folks, like parents buying rigs for kids, don't bother to look at the exact model of the hardware inside but just see Intel and Nvidia names in the build but don't know that the hardware they are about to be scalp is often more that 10 years old.
@@Lurch-Bot haswell is 4th gen?
the shot form 8:10 onwards looks really cozy. You lucky bastard have fun enjoying it
Something interesting about first gen i7 laptop processors is that the dual core versions had hd integrated graphics while the quad core versions had no graphics at all. Laptops with the quad cores were usually the high performance work station that had dedicated graphics, and so they didn't get good battery life since it used the dedicated graphics all the time.
Most nehalem era dual cores were 32nm based with a separate chip for graphics (codename clarkdale). Socket 1156 boards never got a 32nm quad core and the laptop variants ended up similarly, with the quads being 45nm based single die. EDIT: only socket 1366 got the 32nm high core count variants (codename Westmere for the i7 chips).
The reasoning that some boards supported the RTX cards and others didn't is due to the fact that those boards had UEFI bio support and when you use the UEF bio support the cards work
I remember this chip. I wanted one so much when it came out, but could not afford it. I had a Q6600 back then. Later I got my hands on a Q9650 and kept it until 2014 when I upgraded to the 4790k. P.S. Get well soon!
had a 4790k for a short moment, pretty beastly CPu honestly
This is exactly how I rolled. Q6600 + 9800gtx, then later 4790k with 560gtx Ti, because I ran out of money for a higher end GPU.
Remember CoD4 demo running running so smoothly that I was in awe, but soon the newer i7 processors kept dunking on it.
older i7s hold up amazingly well, i have a 13600kf in my main pc and the i7-2600 is still more than usable for me
yaeh the 2600's were OP. i had one for a long time but ended up finally selling it. these days i use a i9 10850k
i7 2600 is GOAT of that time
Agreed. i7-2600
I've an i7 4770 in my desktop (Linux Mint) and an i5-5200U in my "new" laptop (ThinkPad x250) running win10 both perform great
@@jaqian nice, i put some random old nvidia gpu in my 2600 pc and ive been using it with windows 7, surprisingly still supports a ton of stuff
I feel like the I7 and advancements to performance started to slow down at 4th Gen Haswell as from there it was just extra plusses.
The difference from Sandy - Skylake (and all it’s refreshes) is only 25/30% in the real world generally.
Intel processors stagnated because they had no competition and thus no incentive to improve performance of consumer desktop CPUs. We were stuck on quad cores for the better part of a decade until AMD pulled the rug out from under Intel with Ryzen in 2017.
@@BudgetBuildsOfficial At the time it was 25-30%, but when the huge CPU vulnerability issues started cropping up, all of that performance was erased and then quite a bit more. The Specter and Meltdown mitigations cumulatively reduced performance by 50-90% on older processors, depending on workload and if HT was enabled or not.
I remember it causing a big uproar in the professional and server communities because their recent expensive hardware purchases were effectively crippled to pedestrian levels of performance. Intel's reputation took a big hit once the wheels fell off of their operation of cutting corners came to light.
one small correction.... the first i7's were actually LGA 1366 and were the "900" series, sry to "out nerd you" but it is the truth
One can argue that the X58 was the HEDT platform and the P55 was first small socket mainstream i7 platform.
i was using one of those a couple of years ago. i base clock overclocked it to 4ghz... sat at 95oc for 10 years still works
I daily drive an i7-3770 w/ GTX 980 which I got reacently but only 6 months ago I was using a core 2 quad q8200 w/ GT640. I only upgraded because beamNG didn't run great with many vehicles on it. The core 2 quad is now a machine that I use as server/dvd ripper/vhs recorder. I've honestly never used a computer above 4th gen aside from school computers and friends computers, because there just isn't any need to upgrade to them for 99% of situations. My current setup maxs out every game I play and its 12 years old...
Every game you play must be from before this decade, lol. Also, 'maxing out' doesn't really say much. I can max out Cyberpunk at 1440p on a RX6600 and get about 12FPS.
Same here i7 3770, it never does bottleneck in games if your target is 60fps. I do 4k video editing with it using filmora and it's rocket fast. You don't really need a new gen CPU.
@@Lurch-Bot Yes you aren't wrong, I play beamNG, GTA V, portal, portal 2, hl2, halo CE, splitgate etc. I run at 1600x1200 resolution which is the same as 1080p but in a 4:3 aspect ratio. I have looked at getting newer stuff though and the PC could stuff run them at 30fps on low settings.
@@Lurch-Bot I upgraded my gpu first to rtx 2060 for a while which at the time i had i5-3470 and my gpu was rx 560, before fully upgrading to i3 12100f, and i WAS certainly maxing out Cyberpunk wtih Psycho settings (raster, not RT) at 1080p 40-50 fps, no upscaling and frame gen (frame gen didn't exist at the time)
I still use my i7-4790K for my main PC / workstation. CPUs haven't grown as much as they used to, however that does mean this purchase wasn't a waste back then.
Considering that new, unoriginal games are becoming less necessary for many, justifying a new PC is no longer essential. The biggest win today is making an old machine work. The majority of the games we have now, with a lot of players, are free-to-play, and most of them can be run on the PC you showcased today without any problems. Awesome review and coverage on this topic!
Don't forget that most AAA games are terrible
@@tobyzilla2.074 AA max 🤭
@@DanielCardei with me it's indie games
@@tobyzilla2.074 glorified Demo Software 😅
The worst part of the state of game development currently isn't even the poor optimization. That can be somewhat mitigated by technologies like X3D, dynamic resolution scaling and frame generation. It is the complete lack of innovation that is the biggest problem. IDK, maybe gaming has just plateaued. I am cautiously optimistic that AI and eventually quantum computing will allow for some substantial evolution of gameplay mechanics over the next several years. As far as graphics go, they are already far better than I could have imagined they'd get over the course of 3 decades. And I think even younger people are getting bored with eye candy. As much as I enjoy playing Cyberpunk, it is a visually loud, over-stimulating game environment with a lot of processing power just wasted on fluff you only really notice when you're trying to. If you're just playing the game, you really don't pay attention to all the bells and whistles. RT? I don't mess with it anymore in Cyberpunk. Would rather have a high native framerate in the triple digits. I'll use it in something like FC6, FH5 or AC Mirage because that embellishment comes quite cheaply in those games. I played AC Mirage at launch on a 3060 12GB at 1440p Ultra with RT on and got a solid experience at a 90fps cap, running with an overclocked Ryzen 2600. And 90fps is enough for me to be competitive in an online shooter. Similar results are to be had in FC6 and FH5.
Back in the '90s, there was a reason to pay the equivalent of $97 in late 2024 dollars for a new release game. Especially when talking about games like Tomb Raider, Fallout and GTA. They sold far fewer copies of games back then and they were almost always pretty much flawless out of the box. You can argue they were simpler games than we have today but modern games really don't take that much more work to complete and doing things like motion capture and voice capture are far cheaper and easier these days. Today, you barely even have to write any code. The original DOOM was an infinitely greater technological marvel than DOOM 2016. It was also perfectly optimized. Whatever framerate your PC could manage, it was going to run extremely consistently. The only way a modern game can do that is if you do some benchmark and play testing and set a framerate cap at the lowest point it could ever drop in the game. You can't run modern games unlocked and get a consistent frame pacing like you could in the '90s.
The amount of money charged for new release games these days is simply a crime. It violates the laws of supply and demand and is anti-capitalist and monopolistic. If I gotta run DLSS and frame gen just to hit 1080p60, I'm just not going to buy that game. When you get to be my age, FOMO and hype just really don't influence you.
I bought an LGA-1366 motherboard and i7-950 in 2010. Was able to upgrade the CPU to a Xeon in 2018 and it was then as powerful as the current i7-7700. I used the platform until the end of last year. Incredible platform.
it's so cool to see tech this old performing this well at... Everything. It's such a shame graphics cards are priced like they were human organs in here, because the performance this thing is indeed jawdropping. What'd be really hilarious is seeing it run that ps4 emulator thing tho
I bought an i7 just after launch to replace an aging socket 939 Athlon 64. I upgraded it after a couple of years to a total of 20 GB Ram and a SATA SSD which gave it another couple of years until I finally decomissioned the system after 10 years. And that was because I wanted something new, I could have used it for another 2 or 3 years if I wanted to.
I had a 920. The 1366's were absolute beasts. They had 40 PCIe lanes in what was left of the North Bridge and in multi GPU setups, they could throw an insane amount of weight around, even compared to their descendants.
I've been running a 5820k for the past decade, and with modest GPU and SSD upgrades over time, it's been keeping pace with damn near everything I've thrown at it.
With prices so out of my budget for modern hardware, My PC history revolved around prior gen 2nd hand/refurbished parts. I now have 5 working systems (3 unused) and 4 processors without motherboards. My current daily driver is a Xeon E3 1270 V2(I7 3770k base equivalent), and my oldest equipment is a Pentium 4 640 system and a Phenom x4 9850 processor which is rather hard to find a mobo nowadays, being a 125w TDP processor.
Videos that feature older hardware in use nowadays are a highlight for me to watch in YT. Keep up the good work keeping the old flames of burning passion alight for crusty older folks like me! 😊😊😊
Same here! My daily driver laptop is an HP Probook 4430s, has an i7 2630qm, 16gb ram, and runs an SSD/HDD combination for the OS and data storage. Works great, even with Windows 11.
I also use a Dell Optiplex 790 USFF with an i5 2400s, (same drive and RAM configuration) as a secondary desktop, though it is a bit more limited as it doesn't have any expansion slots. Would have been much happier finding a regular SFF unit, but that one was a dumpster find and cost me $0, so I won't complain.
I'm also running a server with an AMD A8-3870K running an 8-drive RAID system, though in terms of processing power even my laptop can outrun it.
Old hardware rocks
My i7 3700K lasted me 8 years.
@@CyberDunk2077 u can run windows 11 on an ivy bride cpu
still using my 3700 here too lol
Under Linux!
I can play CS2 on it no problem, pretty much any game I throw at it.
@@iplyrunescape305What GPU do you have?
@@BREEZYM6015 1050Ti
I've aDell Precision m4700 laptop with an i7 3540m running windows 10 and it is a beast. More of a mobile desktop than laptop lol
Damn that's impressive!
I'm still running a 2600k @4.4ghz, still going strong unless I want high refresh rate gaming, but wouldn't have thought the first gen would still be so okay to use.
My first i7 was an 860. I built that PC in 2010 for about €1600, crazy amount of money at that time just for a PC - and it came with just 4GB of RAM and no SSDs. It ran Windows 7 without issues for that time, and I even tested it with an XP at very first day. I upgraded the RAM in 2012 to 12GB and put a 500GB SSD in 2015. Then in 2016 I got a really sweet deal for a i7 2600 with Z68 mainboard, so I put that one in. There was an apparent improvement of performance, and the thermals improved very much. Later on, I swapped the original AMD HD 6950 1GB GPU with GeForce 1060 6GB, which was day and night difference.
I ran that setup (i7 2600) till 2024 - actually till just 2 weeks ago, when I got a really nice deal on a whole computer with i7 6700K, 32GB DDR4 memory and MSI gaming motherboard - all that for just €30, as it was seemingly broken, which turned out to be just a bad CMOS battery. I added a 1TB nvme SSD and it runs Windows 10 really happily.
Interestingly the only thing that remained from the 2010 is the PC case and a case fan. Every other thing got replaced or upgraded. I am considering at one point to restore that PC to the original 2010 spec (i7 860), as I still own all the original hardware and use it as a retro rig, as it can run XP, Vista, 7 and 10 with no issues.
Awesome processor. My dad asked me to build him a high performance configuration around 2010. And I chose this processor specifically. The configuration is still working and is still an awesome piece of hardware.
Still have an X58 rig as a backup. W3680 rather than 980X, but that Xeon has an unlocked multi and cost me half the price of the Extreme chip.
I remember playing Empire Total War on release and the intro screens kept taunting me to upgrade to this CPU. I was on a Q6600 which wasn't too bad at all.
The Q6600 was a legendary CPU. It was the gaming CPU to get back in 2007/2008. I remember a lot of people wanting to play Crysis would get that CPU paired with a GeForce 8800 GT or 8800 Ultra. Good times.
The i7 920 was the best PC component I have ever bought and I'm dealing with PCs since 1991 (IBM & Win 3.1). It ran 4.2Ghz for 10 years until I retired it. I kept it (along side with the ASUS X58-UD5), for sentimental reasons. That's how good of an impression the good'ol i7 left on me.
I recently booted up an old computer that my nan gave me and it had an i7-860 in it, I... WAS... SHOCKED at just how good it was to use! Imagine buying one of those old systems with one of these chips, it would still be perfectly useable to this day!
The supported limit of graphic cards for this platform is Vega and GTX series. I'm running Xeon X 3460 that is equivalent to that I7 and it is running just fine today!
Im using a X3470
i7 870 user here, this shit still works and does most of what i need it to do, but gotta replace it soon
Ivy Bridge forever baby.
I had an Ivy Bridge 3770, 32GB RAM, and GTX 680 in 2012.
Upgraded to an R9 380X in 2016, and Vega 56 in 2019.
If not for Cyberpunk in 2020 (which I had been planning a build for since it was first announced in 2012), I would probably still be rocking that Ivy Bridge build to this day (though with an R9 590 instead of the Vega, as the Vega bottlenecked every now and then).
As with the exception of Cyberpunk, I could run all the games I enjoyed playing at 1080p60 just fine (though some would have to be dropped down to 900p to get 60).
Yeah, it was a SHIT TON of money upfront, but got 8 years out of it, before gifting it to my ex-fiancee's son for his birthday in 2020 after I did my Ryzen RTX build for Cyberpunk. I definitely got my money's worth long term.
I miss it so much, and want to build another one again (this time Haswell due to AVX2 support).
My first desktop I bought for myself was an I5 650, 8GB of ram, and a 750 ti. It was an HP desktop that I added a GPU and more storage to.
I later upgraded to an I7 875K, which was my first I7. It lasted a long time, and I remember I was able to later over clock it to 4.2GHz stable with a scythe cooler, asrock motherboard, and a cheap $25 case. Lasted me till I finally pulled the trigger on a ryzen 1600x.
I built an i7 950 rig in 2014, i.e right in the middle of the Intel stagnation, and it was massively great value for the money. It also performed more like a Sandy Bridge machine with 1600 MHz DDR3 (which was dirt cheap by then) as fast RAM boosted Nehalem like crazy. Something important was clearly tied to it.
Still have an i7 875k build that I gave to my father in 2020; is delidded (the i5s and i7s use paste inbetween the IHS and die), has 32gb of ram, ssd and an rtx 3060 using Linux Mint. Does everything he wants and runs fine.
I'm watching this video on a i7 920 PC that I got for free some years ago. Two decades ago a PC that was more than 2 years old felt slow, however this PC still feels fast enough for every day use.
I used an Intel i7 920 since launch up until like 2 years ago as a daily. That CPU is still alive in another desktop to this day. Its an absolute unit with alot of room and stability for overclocking which I had stable all the way up to 5.0 GHz at the expense of some pretty impressive heat, but for years of gaming on several generations of GPU from a few before , 700 series, a 980, and a 1080 Strix it survived and kept up with all of them. It had obvious signs of age, yes, but it still done really well for most tasks.
The laptop i use to made my university homeworks (programming, use web browsers, some office programs like word and excel, and of course linux), its a Toshiba with a first gen i7 720qm, 8gb ddr3 ram and a dedicated nvidia gpu with 1.5GB of vram (i don't remember the model), honestly all of these paired with a SSD, my laptop stills running everything i need smoothly and without struggling, even being able to use Wallpaper engine in a Windows 11 installation, Worth to mention that my laptop is a 2009 Toshiba satellite a305, so my hinges still intact and without any damage or crackling sounds when i open the laptop. 😊
I'm running an Hp Probook 4430s from 2011, does everything I need it to as well. Had an i5-2540m, 8gb ram, and the standard 500gb HDD. Bought it used in 2016 and ran it like that until 2023, when I refurbished it and decided to max out the hardware it has. Currently running an i7-2630qm, 16gb DDR3, a 256gb SSD for my OS and some light games, and a 750gb HDD I swapped into the optical bay for mass data storage. Still gets around 3 hours on the original battery even with the hotrod cpu installed. If I can find a way to beef up the cooling system, that thing will keep trooping for years to come.
My friend offered me a system with a broken motherboard. They were nowhere to find here, most of the people stayed on core 2 quads until Sandy Bridge arrived. Price of motherboard i could find costed more than 2600k with motherboard.
I now rocking i7 too, 11800H to be precise. It's single core performance could rival this whole thing.
Love these longer videos! Definitely keep up the good work👍👍
I ran an i7 875k from 2010 to 2017 and I only upgraded when a friend got me a once in a lifetime deal on a new gaming pc. I‘ve been thinking of building a system around it using a modern GPU and an AIO to see how high I can overclock it. I think you’ve inspired me to do that!
Still on socket 1156, 13 years later. From i3 540 to i5 760 on the same chad intel motherboard and dual rank ddr3 ram. 😅
I had Intel Desktop Board DH55TC, it was terrible and I trowed it away. It was too picky for memmory, graphics card and even USB drives, it didn't liked my 64GB SanDisk USB 3.1 flasdrive. I don't recomend using Intel Desktop Boards. They are the same shit as these Foxconn borads, just under Intel name.😂
@@arnislacis9064 13 years and no issues, I can't complain. Lol.
o7
When I first built my i7 950 system, it was a jump from an AMD 5600+ and really where I felt it in 2009 was multitasking which made it feel like the future. That feeling kept going for that system for a long while and I only ever replaced the whole thing in 2020 when the Ryzens really started to hit their stride.
That system is still in use by a friend! Though recent gaming requirements are making them spec out their own Ryzen build.
I had an original i7 860 -> i7 4770k -> Ryzen 9 3900X (Yes i waited along time..... to upgrade that 4th gen i7)
Now i have a Ryzen 7 5800X3D or Ryzen 9 7945HX3d depending on if im on my desktop or laptop PC
Had an OG i7 with a 960 4 gig and was playing most modern games near maxed out. It really outlasted what I expected.
My Core i7-860 in a Dell XPS 8100 just got a new video card yesterday, the 1GB GTS 450. Also upgraded the ram from 8-16GB since I had some spare parts laying around. Just one of the many old PC's I have and play with from time to time. 😁
It's the quad coreness of it that makes it feel so smooth. Software threading optimization has since really made these old shunned multi core cpus shine much better. I've got my original Core 2 Duo E7500 and it's dog slow with Windows 10 and modern Linux but drop a Q9550 into that same board and it screams. I have a tablet with an old quad core Atom from like 2014 and if it had an actually reasonable amount of ram and fast ssd storage instead of emmc it would still slam today. When it's not hitting the emmc for swap due to 1gb of ram you can catch glimpses of how fast the tiny 10w chip can be.
THE FACT A 15 YEARS OLD PROCESSOR WAS ABLE TO PLAY RDR 2 AT 60 FPS.
why are you yelling?
@GodEmperorofmankind1 Yeah, that really surprised me, too. I've never played RDR2, but I've seen hundreds of benchmark videos, and this first-generation I7 impressed the hell out of me. I run an E3 1230v2 (I7 3770-ish) processor even today, and I love its performance with an rx580 8gb.
RDR 2 is 6 years old, so it is not that impressive. Especially considering that this i7 cost arm&leg when it came out.
Yeah at 720p not that impressive
@@thomaswest2583 Resolution is only to emphasize the maximum capabilities of the processor in the game by decreasing the burden from the GPU. If it can get 60fps at 720P, it can get 60 fps at 4k.
not a desktop build, but for the longest time, i was dailying an x201, but when quarantine rolled around, i needed something with a webcam and a bigger screen, so i managed to find a precision m4800, and ive been in love ever since. now i have 2 of them, alongside with a precision 5560 with a xeon 11855, since i need raw power for simulations, but my 4800 is my daily. running a 4810mq with 16 gigs of ram, and the upgraded display panel. couldnt ask for a better tank than this tbh.
I recently started using Windows Vista x64 on my Xeon W3565 LGA1366, 24GB (6x 4GB) DDR3 1600, Nice Gigabyte GA-X58-UD3R motherboard, 512GB SATS SSD, GeForce GTX 980Ti and 1,6kW Superflower Leadex Titanium powersupply. The Windows Vista is working just so smoothly, and so stable with my hardware configuration.
With those specs, Vista would indeed run smooth as hell, benefitted as well by having very mature drivers by this point for the hardware. So much of Vista's bad rep came from seriously underpowered hardware at the time of release plus horrible drivers.
Are you still using Vista? I had it on my Phenom rig as it was the original configuration since around 2011, but when all died I decided to "upgrade" that machine to Windows 7. Its good to have such for backwards compability. Or in the case I want to run old games and don't get them working on my main PC.
@voyagerdeepspaceexploratio5023 If your reply was meant for me, the answer is no, I'm not still running Vista. I haven't run Vista since maybe 2010, once 7 was out there was very little reason to stick with Vista as 7 offered all of the under the hood improvements but with more speed and more reliability at the time.
We just replaced our last batch of i7-960 (Hexacore) based PCs in our Simulation Lab (they had been relegated to power inefficient PowerPoint machines when they'd arrived as high-end simulation PCs).
The i7 marketing was so good that AMD had to counter them with Ryzen 7 ;D
Yeah, with an extra 4 cores. :P
Recently upgraded my 4th 4770 non k, it worked great, gave it to a friend that was an upgrade for them, using a gtx1080, the gpu kinda felt like it was being held back, recommend DayZ as a good benchmark, great job as always!
Having moved from an i7-860, to an i7-7700k in 2017 (and i'm still 'stuck' with that system/cpu atm) - I can say that the 860 is not good enough for most modern games, anything with lots of crowds (game AI etc) really take a hit...
And honestly, never heard or saw anyone refer to it as a suped up C2Quad
I'm currently still "stuck" with an I7 3770 equivalent Xeon e3 1230v2. It does what I need paired with an rx580 8gb and 16gb ddr3 1600. It may not be impressive to most people, but it impresses me every day.
@@GodSaveTheUnitedStates the 3770 (and similar) was a beast for its time, and is still decent now - unless you're playing heavy AAA titles... I upgraded because it was struggling with the games I was playing at the time, oh, and funds fell at the right time to be able to do it too :)
@Ghozer I feel that. Lol. I will upgrade eventually. Thinking about going with a ryzen 5 3600 core system first and upgrading my rx580 sometime thereafter. Maybe an rtx 3060 would pair well with the 3600. Either way used deals for all the components have gotten quite reasonable (atleast compared to the 2020 to 2022 timeframe) lol.
I have a old Intel Core I7 970 at home with a working Mainboard and 8GB - 2 sticks DDR 3 RAM.
But is now for good 4 years out of service, Ty for around good 9 years.
Hey mate, ive noticed you have some interesting cars, ever planing about posting about them? In some older video i saw a e36 that looked super clean and im curious 😅
I may have something planned soon 👍
@@BudgetBuildsOfficial cant wait
I actually used an i7-860 for around 2 years to run my UA-cam channel and do some gaming before I bought my current rig with a 7700x. It actually worked surprisingly well and the main thing holding it back was the GPU and the old spinning drive I was using.
I think you have touched upon a point that Microsoft has realized which is why they have attempted to remove compatibility in Windows 11. This seems counter-intuitive to me but then again, I don't work for them. If you have a computer, regardless of age, that works for you... why not continue to use it?
I have an i7 990x, GTX 690 and 24GB RAM somewhere in the attic. My father gifted it to me when I was much younger. Figured it’s just a pile of junk by now, but, after watching this video, maybe I can use it as a small console for my TV.
man id love to see you do a vid on the tripple channel i7 990x
Up until early 2019, I was using the Xeon X3470, which was basically the i7 870. That thing was an absolute champ. Had 24gb ram with it, and an RX 480. That system took me incredibly far and ran like an absolute treat.
Didn't those overclock like crazy? You could probably easily get over 60fps averaged in those games.
I think I7 4770/4790K will age even better, as they have more modern instruction set making them able to run the latest games in 2024. Imo last great Intel I7. Great video!
I still use it for everything
"it seems the i7 is not slowing down anytime soon"
Intel Core Ultra 7 265K (or the entire 16th gen for that matter):
To be honest it is nice to see old hardware still hold their own in the modern day. But when you "keep improving" your lineup and then release something up to 23% slower than last gen is just disappointing from Intel. AMD is no saint either with their 9000 release, but i just hope that when we are 30 years into the future or something that we can look back on the modern day hardware and get basically this same kind of video for what we thought was impressive in the current day.
It's not as obsolete as you might think. My old ass 720 QM handles Windows 11 well enough. My old ass AMD ATI Mobility 4650, on the other hand...
Yeah, you're gonna want to downgrade ASAP. As soon as MS decides to give you the 24H2 update (which could happen any day now), it is going to install just fine and completely brick your PC when it reboots with endless BSODS. Recently grabbed the wrong flash drive and installed 24H2 on an IVB machine. Haswell was the first year for AVX2 and AVX2 support is necessary to run 24H2. Better to downgrade to 10 and pay for the more reasonably priced third party extended security support than to pause updates forever on 23H2 and never get another security update. Or you could migrate to Linux but I know that isn't for everyone.
I also hope you back up important files regularly. Man, your laptop could be downloading the 24H2 update as I am typing this.
@@Lurch-Bot I have no problem with Linux except for the way it handles software, it's kind of a mess.
I don't really see any point on paying for extended security support on such an old architecture; it's not like I'm using it for networking purposes.
I daily my G14 but I'm thinking the driver issues I've been having with that is due to the AMD iGPU. Seems to be a common theme with that laptop and proof nothing new is built the last anymore.
Oh well, at least I still have my tablet or phone to fall back on...
I retired my I7 860 a long time ago and it has been used to run my UnRaid NAS for YEARS now... FLAWLESSLY!
Lol, why didnt you buy X58 with Core i7 920. i7 900-series was the real first Core i7… We have still here one PC with P6T Deluxe and Xeon X5675 on daily use.
I've got a 920 with a P6T Deluxe, it works perfectly.
Ah yes, the omnipresent P6T deluxe!
Gosh, everyone back then wanted them!
Had an i7-940 running at 3.85GHz. Triple channel RAM was helpful, even at the stock 1066MHz clock, but I had 1600MHz RAM and ran it at 1664MHz. All I ever had to do was upgrade my GPU. Absolute powerhouse of a machine.
I'm a big haswell guy
i put a haswell computer together with spare parts for my brother a couple months ago and im so proud of it, it runs beautifully
i7 4770k lover :)
Using an I7 4790K and still running strong at 4.60GHz!
one of my brothers is still rocking a i7-4790k to this day, used it for 2 weeks when i had to replace his GPU and it's still a beast
I currently have a haswell as daily driver. I found a modded bios with NVME support. With a PCIe to M.2 adapter is feels like new even under Windows 11.
Still rocking an i7 920, OCed to 4GHz from 2.66... What an absolute crazy platform to have lasted 14+ years.
I have an exactly same i7 860 CPU, paired with a GTX960 4Gb, running windows 10 and ubuntu dual boot. The CPU needed to be overclocked to keep up these times. My chip was able to run at 4.0 Ghz, but it was hot. I was set it to 3,33 Ghz due to the RAM modules limitations at the end of the procedure. This machine is capable to run older titles very well and it has the same daily using experience as recent hardware. Until trying to run new games and mesh shader. This is my main desktop computer, and I predestinate two-three years more usage, then it starts its second life as NAS server, or something. And yes, it has got Floppy :D
I had an i7 930 PC as my main rig for 5 years, it was great, it overclocked to a perfectly stable 4 GHz with no effort. I wish I still had it to see how it would work with my GTX 1080.
The laptop I still use is an i7 640m but that honestly is on the absolute limit of being useful for basic tasks now.
Sat here with a 12900k/3080Ti but I still love watching videos about old components.
Shortly after the i7-920 came out, I came into a little money. I brought i7-920 desktops and laptops for several family members, gf and myself. Most are still in use for non-gaming purposes. All received upgrades with new power supplies, cpu fans/heat sinks , SSDs, mid level graphics cards and RAM increases to 12GB.
i7 950 reporting here. Still manages to (decently) run BF 1 and most single-player games pre-2020 paired with a GTX 1060 6GB.
I used an i7 920 (the real first i7) up until several years ago, at which point I upgraded it to an i7 980X for the 2 extra cores. But I only used that for about a year until I decided it was finally time for a new build. The i7 920 was still very usable, but there were some other things holding back performance like low amount of RAM and lack of a SSD, and it didn't seem worth investing any more money in such an old build with limited upgrade paths.
Gaming performance was fine, as long as I didn't run out of RAM. Most games don't really tend to be that CPU heavy or heavily multithreaded anyway. Only having 4 cores affected multitasking performance but it was very usable outside of the slow load times due to booting from a HDD.
I used it as my main gaming rig for about 9 years (2009-2018), after that it still got a couple more years of use when my brother borrowed it. All i did was put in a small 120 GB SSD I had laying around and my brother seemed happy enough with the performance.
i use the i7 with the "Sandy Bridge" and I've put it through absolute hell! my computer room will often hit 40°c and it use to sound the "over heat" alarm constantly (untill i found out the thermal paste had worn off years ago) but it gave me zero issues every other part of my PC has had issues except the CPU, i went to a highly strung i9 pc build and it crashed with in 3 months, so now I'm back to 'ol trusty' untill its fixed!
You need to run inspectre ,, to disable protections patch! Improves performance significantly
The pre sandy bridge i7 really held out for a surprisingly long time. I upgraded my old PC to an i7 990 at one point. Burnt a bunch of cash to give it the shiniest chip that could fit in the socket, and send it off in style. I remember drooling over that chip when it first came out, so it was fun to finally assemble my old dream machine. With an overclock it soldiered on until summer of 2021! Off course by then the lack of AVX support was hurting performance badly in many newer games.
I still game on that old computer from time to time. When targeting 60FPS it performs perfectly fine in all the games I regularly play. For many purposes it performs just like a brand new computer.
I re-acquired an HP Pavilion Elite HPE that I sold to a buddy several years ago. i7-950, GT430, 8GB PC3-8500, HP POCKET MEDIA DRIVE!!, card reader, 4 USB 2 and a firewire on the front. It's pretty cool nowadays and I'm cleaning it up to play with. Still has the re-used Win-7 sticker off one of the scrap cases from the recycling center I worked at... LOL!
I have an "i7-2600" (actually is a xeon E3-1270) and when I put windows on the thing, it almost felt as snappy as my 5600x rig, and handles games much better than you would think for a 13 year old chip. That rig also has 8gb of ram running at 1866 MT/s (the sticks can do more, the cpu can't) and an r9 280, so for e-sports and/or older games it does pretty well. Not bad for a 10+ year old system.
Man, the guy who invested in a premium motherboard with that CPU and good cooling made the best investment one could imagine!
Good content! Thanks again. Voiceover was excellent as always.
I still have two of the higher tier models running in this household. i7-940 on an MSI X58 Platinum with a GTX970, 24GB of cheap ECC server 1333MHz RAM, a 240GB solid state SATA, and a 3TB spin HDD. I built that from eBay parts a few years back just for fun and it's been my son's gaming machine ever since. He's perfectly happy with it. The other WAS an i7-950 on an ASUS Sabertooth X58 with a 1660ti, 12GB of 1600MHz RAM, a 480GB solid state SATA, and a 1.5TB spin HDD. That one was built new in 2009 (after a spilled drink destroyed the original i7-920 and Foxconn Flamingblade), and it's had at least six different GPUs, three cases, and four different power supplies. Make that five, I'm about to put in a Corsair CX650 to replace the Apevia Prestige it's had for four years. That system is my youngest daughter's Roblox machine, it is a few months OLDER than her, and I fully expect it to last through the end of high school, college, and medical school. Now remember I said WAS an i7-950, since I have a Xeon X5675 I plan to put in to give it 6 cores instead of 4. The MSI board in the son's computer does NOT like that chip, so we'll see about a 6 core i7-970 for him. $14 on eBay gets one these days, so that's pretty cheap. Is upgrading a 16 year old CPU considered future-proofing? Maybe for an antique, I guess.
Triple Channel DDR3 is amazing stuff, and really keeps the things relevant even today.