Gaming on the Original Intel Core i7... 16 Years Later (i7 940)

[@tallpaul9475]

I had the i7 975 running around 4.8Ghz for a long time. Very good CPUs when those came out. Moved to 4790K later. That lasted longer than it should have (this last 2024 summer) and probably will still perform good. I put that into a PC for grandson, moved myself to the 12400F, very satisfied with that.

[@lanelesic]

4770 and 4790 have avx2 instructions, and its the oldest i7 and 4c8t cpu I would recommend 👍

[@ProYamYamPC]

Nice upgrade there. Haswell has aged like fine wine, especially the K chips. They're still great for budget machines

[@SlowHardware]

Give a xeon 6c a go next with a wee overclock surely 😉 great video bro

[@ProYamYamPC]

I sure will, there's more tutorials on how to OC the Xeons as they were more OC friendly🫡

[@SlowHardware]

@ProYamYamPC hell yeah man I'll be sure to watch! Keep up the great work man

[@ProYamYamPC]

@ thanks brother🙏 I appreciate it🫡

[@JamesSmith-sw3nk]

Good video. I ran a Dell workstation socket 1366 with a stock Xeon 5650 (6c/12t) for about 7yrs. I realized it was a bottleneck when upgraded my video card from a gtx 1060 6gb to a rtx 2060 and my fps didn't change at all in most games. I then upgraded my whole system to a Ryzen 5 3600 and my fps massively increased in some games.

[@ProYamYamPC]

I know that feeling all too well. When I upgraded from my 1080 Ti to my 3080, some games didn't massively jump up in performance (3950X). Upgraded to my 13700K and unlocked around 25% performance on average

[@CompatibilityMadness]

Wish you tried to OC it a bit and see if that helps in worst cases. 3.8-4.1GHz with good cooler should be possible (+ tweaks on UnCore and to RAM speed could net overall +25 or even +30% speed increases).

[@ProYamYamPC]

I tried to OC the RAM but it wasn’t having it. When I get the Xeon, I’m pushing that for sure

[@CompatibilityMadness]

@@ProYamYamPC Just FYI : Some Core i7s of 1-st gen are limited to x10 multiplier on memory (even if board claims it can set higher). In other words, to get over 1333MT/s - you have to overclock BCLK bus to 160MHz minimum. Another pitfall is tRFC which was tweaked for early DDR3, and just isn't loose/high enough to keep high density chips stable. It's best to check JEDEC/XMP profile and manually set timings. Modern XMP profile (for Sandy/Haswell), may not work at all (due to garbage IMC settings, that don't expect Nehalem class CPU).

[@alfredocastro805]

"...if you have an x58 motherboard lying around..." Yes indeed I do and it has served me very well as my main rig since 2008. I'm not a gamer. I will upgrade it to Windows 11 sometime in 2025/26 time frame. 😂 I started with the i7 920 and currently it has the Xeon W3680 with 48 gigs of RAM. I still don't see a need to upgrade just yet.

[@ProYamYamPC]

Solid stuff mate! Glad to see older hardware get used. When I was using this 940 system it felt snappy enough on a Samsung 850 EVO.

[@ABaumstumpf]

The thing this review shows the cleares: CS2 is a broken game with unreasonably high CPU usage for basically no benefits over CS:Go. And the i7: held up pretty decently.

[@ProYamYamPC]

I agree, it’s arbitrarily hard to run for minimal gain in terms of quality/gameplay

[@piotrnikolai]

Great test mate. Missed opportunity to bring it to its knees with some of the worst CPU optimized games, like Dragon's Dogma II or STALKER 2

[@ProYamYamPC]

Judging from RDR2 and CS2, they would have been measured in seconds per frame🤣

[@stevejames9261]

How about a vid with one of the goat? 2500k, cheap as chips now. or even 3770k?

[@ProYamYamPC]

Could be something I can work on in the new year, lots of ideas are floating around🫡

[@R3AL-AIM]

I used a Core 2 Quad Q9400 at 3.2Ghz on a Zalman cooler for a short while in 2015. I did some work (gaming) with a Windforce GTX 660. In all actuality, lowest I'd go in 2024 is a 4th gen i5 (4590 to be exact) and even that would hurt in a few games. Best just stretch for a 4770/90 or a Xeon.

[@HarryRose]

Heard the accent and was so confused. Feels weird seeing a content creator who's from my ends

[@thewhyzer]

I watching this on my gaming PC, featuring an original Intel Core i7-920 and a 1050 ti.

[@ProYamYamPC]

Nice build!

[@thewhyzer]

@ProYamYamPC Thanks!! Right now I'm playing Medal of Honor: Allied Assault Warchest all maxed out, and only encountering frame drops in a few areas! :D

[@charginginprogresss]

Well frame rate is cpu bound, settings are gpu bound, so at the beginning on cyberpunk, you had gpu almost 100% while cpu was just below 90%, with some setting dropped to medium you could've eased that slight gpu bottleneck and maybe squeezed 45-46 fps, maybe even 47, instead of the 40-42 you got

[@ProYamYamPC]

Even then a Haswell Xeon isn't much more and many games would benefit from the Hyperthreading. Haswell is one of Intel's best ever generations

[@SageX85]

No single player story driven linear benchmark?

[@ProYamYamPC]

Erm, Cyberpunk, GTA V, RDR2, The Witcher 3?

[@БоднарРостислав]

I7 2600k aged a lot better than his predessesor, almost the same story with the FX 8xxx prosessors. I still have my 2600k in a second pc with a p8z68 asus motherboard(best there is), because it was a hassle to sell it at least somewhat favorable price even in 2018, so I just kept it.

[@ProYamYamPC]

The 2600K is the goat thats why. God tier CPU🔥

[@rexarn781]

Dude, wasn't the 920 the first i7?

[@ProYamYamPC]

Yeah kinda. That and the 940 launched on the same day. You could make a case for either

[@DJSekuHusky]

@@ProYamYamPC It would be neat to see how it stacks against its own revision, the i7 860, which released the following year (2009). Back then I think I was still running a C2D E6600. I wound up getting a huge deal on a motherboard, CPU and cooler combo back in 2013, and the included CPU was the i7 990X (from 2011). I was keeping up in terms of raw compute power right up until about Kaby Lake (7th Gen), then the gap widened, the missing instructions needed kept growing, and the new chips were more efficient while the little space-heater kept guzzling power. Still, I remember how the 990X absolutely stomped the Phenom II 1100T and the later FX-4350... basically it wasn't until about Zen 2 of the same comparison that AMD began to finally pull away from Intel. X58 was truly ahead of its time... Intel could really use another architectural breakthrough (like X58 was for its time) right about now.

[@zedrathzerathul9132]

you can get the i7 965 for cheap and that's unlocked and does like 4ghz.

[@Noiconnotag]

Instead of x5650 go for x5675, pretty much the same price on AliEx and it has higher clock.

[@iCrab]

let's compare it with i7 980 or 990X

[@apIthletIcc]

I would still be using my 2nd and 3rd gen Core cpus if they didn't have some of the worst vulnerabilities I ever personally had to deal with. Great cpus though still if you don't let em touch the internet.

[@ProYamYamPC]

Are you referring to Spectre? Because the attacker needs physical access to your PC. And if that's the case you've got bigger issues

[@leexy3395]

FIRST!!

[@1_wolfpack409]

NOT TRUE!!! I own the ORIGINAL i7! the i7 890/890x is the true original!

[@ProYamYamPC]

Not true, the i7 920 & 940 launched on the 17th November 2008. The i7 890 launched on the 8th September 2009. You're off by almost a year.