i5-760 or i7-950

Well that depends, going with the 950 means getting an X58 and triple channel memory which drives costs up, but you get the advantage of having boards that can do SLI and Crossfire.

the 760 is cheaper, uses dual channel memory and uses a P55/H55 chipset. I think most of the boards are either crossfire or sli, not both but I'm not sure
 
The performance difference from the two CPUs in gaming would be negligible, a 950 is an LGA1366 CPU, slightly higher clocked (760 overclocks higher, though), with Hyperthreading (useless for gaming) with a triple channel memory controller, so the overall platform cost would be more expensive. Going with the cheaper CPU would allow more room for a faster 4GB of RAM and GPU improvements.

For everyday usage, there will be no visible difference. I'd go with the i5 if you haven't already got an X58 board (which I assume you haven't)

Full specs?
 
I may not be answering your question, but I just thought I'd add that, for me, the Intel Core i7 950 is Much noticeably faster than the Intel quad core I built my system around only a few years ago. What took me several minutes to render before with my Core 2 Duo E6600 now takes seconds. True story
 
wow tons of misinformation here...

Well that depends, going with the 950 means getting an X58 and triple channel memory which drives costs up, but you get the advantage of having boards that can do SLI and Crossfire.

the 760 is cheaper, uses dual channel memory and uses a P55/H55 chipset. I think most of the boards are either crossfire or sli, not both but I'm not sure

All p55 boards that support sli also support Xfire

You don't HAVE to use triple chanel memory, a dual kit will work just fine...

(760 overclocks higher, though), with Hyperthreading (useless for gaming) with a triple channel memory controller, so the overall platform cost would be more expensive. Going with the cheaper CPU would allow more room for a faster 4GB of RAM and GPU improvements.

whoa, now you are smoking something to think a 760 overclocks better than a 950. mine runs at 4ghz 1.275v, I;ve never heard of a 760 getting there under 1.30v. Also, I can do 4.4ghz on air (or 4.5 with HT off). My 950 is nothing special, thats how most clock.
Hyper threading is not useless at all. A friend of mine says that in bfbc2 his fps in 10+ better with ht on.


Also, with x58 you have full x16/x16 scaling for sli/xfire. P55's are only x8/x8unless you pay $300 for a board. Anything gtx460 or better gets bottlenecked at x8.
 
If you were using the GIGABYTE GA-H55-USB3 Socket 1156 motherboard and using a single video card with the board would you have a 16-bit lane of communication for the video card?
 
Since the i7 has HT(Hyperthreading) which "simulates extra cores" by increasing perfomance and needs triple channel memory it's a lot more expensive so unless you're not doing a lot of programming and using CPU demanding softwares and mainly browsing, gaming etc. then go with the i5 760 since the overall performance will due and it is cheap. If you're worrying about the gaming part don't. HT which the i7 950 comes with isn't used in it.

i5.
 
Since the i7 has HT(Hyperthreading) which "simulates extra cores" by increasing perfomance and needs triple channel memory it's a lot more expensive so unless you're not doing a lot of programming and using CPU demanding softwares and mainly browsing, gaming etc. then go with the i5 760 since the overall performance will due and it is cheap. If you're worrying about the gaming part don't. HT which the i7 950 comes with isn't used in it.

i5.
i7 doesn't need to run on triple channel memory. It's preferred however.
 
Yes the performance of the I5 760 will ''do'' but he wants future upgradeability and thats not going to be anything 1156.
 
The i7 is more furture proof and the total is only few hundred more and i wont overclock with i7 and ill add sli and i wouldnt do that with i5
 
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Well... think of it this way: If you want the performance of a i7 but the lower costs of an i5, get an i7 8xx. (870 or 875k) You will have the same performance, but you can spend a little bit less on a motherboard. Otherwise, I don't see why you can't get away with a i5-760 or 750. They are fast chips :P
 
Wow...once again for like a 4th time, the I5 would be fine for now but there's no upgradeability for socket 1156 plus SLI at x8/x8 is bottlenecked for anything gtx460 or stronger.
 
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