Question about graphic card & about directx

[Heliocon]

Originally Posted by kendo65

Just like to point out that in the two UK-based retailers that I usually use for PC components (Scan and OCUK) there are currently NO socket 1366 or 1156 i7s cheaper than the i5-2500K.

Closest was the quad core i7-950 at 188 (pounds) compared to the 2500K at 166.

Cheapest 6-core was i7-970 at 440 pounds.

And the i7-8xx's start at 206, and are considered inferior to the SBs.

Basically to get any better performance than Sandy Bridge you need to spend a huge amount more. And even then it may not be worth it if you don't run highly threaded applications.

Wrong, the older gen i7 quads perform better overall substantially per $ than the newer sandybridge i5s - this is due to the fact that they both can OC to the same level, while i5 has faster architecture because of the shrink, the i7 will "Always" beat it on anything heavily threaded, and often beat it on 4 threaded apps because the i7 uses the extra threads to run the os etc, while the i5 cannot do that (no hyperthreading).