I was looking up the latest prices of Intel CPUs on the internet and noticed that the Extreme Editions are ridiculously overpriced compared to the regular Core i7s. I've chatted to several salesmen in the PC mall and they said that the i7 is already for high power users, and those Extreme CPUs are nearly 4 times the price of the normal ones. Are they worth it? What type of people are they intended for?

Just asking.

Note: US$1 = HK$7.78

No becauze i7 920 can be easly overclocked to 4 ghz. Which is way more then 3.3 ghz extreme edition.

Good, then I can just wait till those normal Core i7s drop in price from these insane levels before I build my new PC.

Got the graphics card already.

Which begs the question though, what type of user would even buy those extreme CPUs anyway?

No, because you can easily overclock chips a quarter of the price to those speeds, very nearly risk free. The unlocked multiplier of the EEs isn't that useful as both Intel and AMD chips overclock by 600MHz+ completely reliably just on bus speed changes. AMD does offer some cheaper chips with unlocked mults, like the 720 BE or 965 BE.

That said, Intel will be releasing a 6-core EE part next year, probably $1000, which there will be no lower variant of. AMD will have much cheaper hex-cores then too but the raw performance won't be quite as good.

If you're at all looking for value, do not buy an EE. The price/performance sweet spot for a high-end machine is about $200 - the Core i5 750 or Phenom II X4 965.

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Core i7s are not going to drop in price until Q1 2011 at the earliest. Their roadmap shows a constant price through Q4 2010. Buy a Core i5 or Phenom II X4 at $180-$200. What do you plan to use the computer for anyway? You may not even need to spend that much; you can get a quad-core from AMD for $99 now.

People that buy them are people who think high numbers and paying 10x over what they should for a product is cool and trendy. No one who cares about price at all should buy an EE at the moment.

^Yup, some previous thread seemed to favour i5 over i7.

But if I must insist on an i7, which socket should be used, since there are two.

Edit: Oh, I plan to use my PC to game, type documents, spreadsheets etc. and make some video editing.

Intel's naming system is screwed up.

If you are buying a Lynnfield i7 (i7 8xx) then you want socket LGA1156, P55/P57/H55/H57 chipset. These use dual-channel RAM.

If you are buying a Bloomfield i7 (i7 9xx) then you want socket LGA1366, X58 chipset. These use tri-channel RAM.

But really you should ask yourself whether you need an i7. What will the computer be used for, and what's your budget?

EDIT: You don't need an i7. You don't even need an i5. For 'some video editing' I would go with a midrange quad like the Phenom II X4 945 or Core 2 Quad Q9400, whichever is cheaper since they perform similarly. Games depend far more on the GPU and you should spend preferentially on that if you have the budget. Documents and spreadsheets only need a $60 dual-core really, so don't even affect your choice.

What games, and what resolutions/settings? Have you thought about a graphics card?

Well, the display card has already been bought (XFX ATI Radeon HD 5850), it'll be temporarily be placed in my 3 1/4 year old Dell Core 2 Duo PC, along with a newly bought 600W PSU.

I plan to rip out my 2 DVD drives from that machine for use on the new PC. I saw that a 1TB hard disk, 4GB of PC1600 DDR3 RAM should both be bought with peanuts money, so the only bit that I really have to think about is the CPU.

For the uses, refer to the previous post.

As for the gaming resolution, it's 1600 x 1200. Got to go for now. I'm at the airport and it's nearly boarding time.

5850 is a good choice. OK, are you going to go for the cheaper quad (X4 945/Q9400)? Or still set on an i7?

I don't know dood, I maxed everything out in GTA4 and the Core i5 went up to about 80% at some parts and that really scared the shit out of me lol. oh and that's on a 4890 so it might be a little lower if I had Nvidia.

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article/2008/12/15/grand_theft_auto_iv_gameplay_performance_iq/1

GTA IV is more demanding than Crysis. It's the game that hardest hits the CPU out of all of them. And it is a very poor console port that doesn't scale well when you throw hardware at it. Looking it up, the people who are playing GTA IV with an X4 945 and a GTX 260 [which is inferior to the 4890] have smooth framerates.

Every single game except this and Crysis will have smooth framerates on high resolutions and max settings with the 5850 and an >= an E8400 or X3 720 or X4 630. A Core i5 would get you nominally higher framerates, but when they're already so high you can't tell by looking then it doesn't matter.