Sandybridge performance?

[Atom]

Has anybody done any comparisons on the performance difference between last gen i3/i5/i7's compared to Sandybridge? I'm wondering if upgrading my i7 860 @ 4Ghz to a i5 2500k/i7 2600k @ 4.8 or 5Ghz will yield much of a FPS boost?

[KHRZ]

It will give a decent boost, but I've yet to see exact comparisons. Btw, what games is there that you can't max out with that i7 of yours?

[inteGReddy]

uhhh.... upgrading from an 860 to a sandy bridge seems redundant.

[obscured]

If you follow your plan and oc it to 4.8-5ghz just think of it as getting a .8-1ghz faster computer but overall still faster per ghz because of efficiencies made for the cpu. Will you notice a really big difference I doubt it if your are getting 30/60fps max the games run already. I upgraded from a 4.3ghz E8500 so the upgrade was more clear for me.

[polpot]

Did you check the current CPU usage?

I currently have a i5 760@4Ghz on a 64b Seven OS, and if I let all graphic filtering OFF all games run at full speed (60FPS). CPU usage won't get higher than 50-60% (all cores activated/used). My graphic card is a passive 5750. When I activate Anisotropic Filtering, the framerate starts to decrease (depending of the game), and with Antialiasing ON it drops.

I've just tried overclocking my graphic card, 50 extra Mhz on the GPU could let me put 16x Anisotopic filtering on Zelda and keep a 59/60fps, while it was about 45/50 fps before.

That said, I think that your i7 860 @ 4Ghz isn't limiting your current performance on Dolphin

[inteGReddy]

Did you check the current CPU usage?

make sure you have the "lock threads to cores" option on when verifying this.

[polpot]

Is it better or worse to check "lock threads to cores" using a i5/i7/Sandy?

[dannzen]

worse... because windows 7 is really effective in switching cores

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dont forget the 50 windows 7 tasks who can block the dolphin core... which decreases performance if dolphin doesnt change the core

[inteGReddy]

Is it better or worse to check "lock threads to cores" using a i5/i7/Sandy?

it is generally better (imo) to leave this unchecked. the system will route waiting threads to cores which have some idle time thus optimizing processing overall. on my system, it runs much better with this unchecked. on your system, it may be different. try both and see.

if your sandybridge processor has overhead left on each core when using lock to cores, than unlocking them wont make a difference.

if your sandybridge has cores hitting 100% usage, than unlocking them could give your a performance boost.

the reason i said to lock them to cores was so that it could be determined if the cpu is hitting 100%, whereas if they are unlocked it may give the impression that it is only running at 50% on each core, when in actuality the cpu is still causing a bottleneck.

[polpot]

All right, this makes sense. I'll try this to see wether the CPU is a bottleneck. Thanks for the tip