Doing my 2 year upgrade and I have a question in regards to Intel's processors.

What is the difference between the i3, i5, and i7 besides cost? Is it worth expensing the money for a i5 or i7?

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"Creating Havoc and Pie Since 2001!"
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i3 is dual core, the other 2 are quad core.

i5 has 4 threads, i7 has 8 threads. So basically it looks as though an i7 is a 8 core CPU.

That's basically the gist of it.

Thank you, i should have looked at Intels website but it is blocked at work for some odd reason, newegg isnt. haha.

Newegg doesnt give that much detail. I currently have a dual core 3ghz processor so I should be looking at atleast i5's they run find with windows 7 64bit correct?

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"Creating Havoc and Pie Since 2001!"
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They do, yes.

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Finally sdid my two year upgrade, my budget ranges from $400 to $700 depending on what I need to buy. This round I did need to migrate to newer main hard drive as I was still using a ATA133 IDE as my primary drive which now just turned 8 years old!.

Here my list:

• Western Digital Caviar Green 500GB IntelliPower SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
• Intel BOXDH67CLB3 LGA 1155 Intel H67 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
• Intel Core i5-2400 Sandy Bridge 3.1GHz (3.4GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 2000 BX80623I52400
• ZOTAC ZT-40707-10L GeForce GT 440 (Fermi) 2GB 128-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card
• Rosewill Green Series RG530-S12 530W Continuous @40°C, 80 PLUS Certified, Single 12V Rail, Active PFC "Compatible with Core i7,i5" Power Supply
• LG Black Blu-ray Drive SATA Model UH12LS28 OEM LightScribe Support – OEM
• Rosewill RNX-N150PC PCI 2.2 Wireless Adapter
• ADATA Premier Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory Model AD3U1333C4G9-DRH

Total Purchase: $643.17 (Purchased over a 2 month period)

So far I am extremely pleased with the upgrade, my overall Windows 7 performance rating is 6.5 which still rates my new hard drive at the lowest score.

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"Creating Havoc and Pie Since 2001!"
My Website: http://www.anthonyhays.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cakvala

Don't get a green drive as the main hard drive (the one with windows/apps). They spin down and park heads very very very often, causing noticale pauses when it need to access it.

Get a black or a SSD main with green for storage of media. Yes it's more expensive but at least you won't regret not listening to this advice. :)

Edit- Ohhh you already bought it... oh well with the prices of SSD being what it is now I strongly suggest you think about getting one and put windows and a few games/apps on it. You computer will be on a different level it's not even funny.

On the green drive, i did read that it does spins down the heads, when not in use. I did install the software provdied by WD which you can adjust it from spinning the heads down. So far it works well and I havent had any issues with pauses in anything(Yet).

on the SSD mark, I wanted to get a SSD but the sizes need to increase and the cost needs to decrease, probably another year till then.

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"Creating Havoc and Pie Since 2001!"
My Website: http://www.anthonyhays.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cakvala

I just purchased a Corsair Force GT 120gb SSD, it's pretty awesome. My computer was very slow, even with a AMD FX6100 and a Radeon 6870. Now it's about 2-3x faster than before. I used to have a WD (Blue?) 7200rpm drive and it was noisy/slow.

SSD sizes are fine, as long as you know where things are getting installed. My desktop currently has a 240gb SSD and a 2x2tb caviar blacks in a raid 1. I only install windows and a few games to the SSD, along with adobe creative suite and lightroom. Everything else gets installed to the RAID, and I make sure that CS5.5 and Lightroom store their volatile stuff on the hard drive too. My user profile is stored in my core Dropbox folder, and that's also on the RAID.

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

I had a 250gb ATA133 and it was running fine just slow and old, moving to the WD 500gb is a huge improvement, my overall speed of access has tripled. I think later on this year or first part of next year I will migrate to a SSD now that ive perfected the art of cloining hard drives!

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"Creating Havoc and Pie Since 2001!"
My Website: http://www.anthonyhays.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cakvala

I'm not sure you bought enough power supply.

It is on the lower end, I was told to get a 600w =x

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"Creating Havoc and Pie Since 2001!"
My Website: http://www.anthonyhays.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cakvala

Always over buy on the power supply.

I think you have "enough" power supply, but I doubt you'll be able to do so much as add another hard drive ever before you need more.

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

I think I'm running a 900W with similar hardware, but then I leave myself a lot of expansion room because I don't want to buy another power supply for at least 5 years.

the 530 watt is doing great currently, I seem to have 5 Sata ports used, 11 USB slots used. The Video card i bought its a PCI Express x16 but didnt require its own power rail but runs 4 times better than my old video card (Geforce 240)

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"Creating Havoc and Pie Since 2001!"
My Website: http://www.anthonyhays.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cakvala

One thing i need to do its re-organized my 4 TB of data i have, I added a new hard drive and everything feels un-organized now... Don't you hate that feeling? UGH!

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"Creating Havoc and Pie Since 2001!"
My Website: http://www.anthonyhays.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cakvala

That's why all my storage is in an 8 terabyte RAID array.

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

Okay, the difference between our rigs' power draw is probably about all video. My video solution requires two dedicated 12V rails.

And mine requires 4, heh.

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

Goddammit, now I have to upgrade again.

Mine doesn't require any, doesn't run hot and runs 4 times faster (Playing/Using it for 3ds Max 2012, Starcraft, League of Legends, BioShock 2) then my Geforce 240 which had a rail into it.

**boggle**

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"Creating Havoc and Pie Since 2001!"
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Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cakvala