Intel's First Core i7...Is it Obsolete?

This is the workspace dilemma - because there was always some power... that no one needed... But now...

Here in Australia (on eBay at least), the 860 is $30 AUD or about 15 pounds, so that's really high

G'day BBO,
I like what you said here about for some people having older components like these is plenty for their gaming needs, so often people tell me my relevant to content PC I comment about isn't good enough for gaming "because... " & not always CPU or GPU like this week after I left a comment about my Gaming PC having a 128GB M.2 for the OS, 2TB Gen4 M.2 for Game Installs + 3TB HDD for Retro Games & other stuff like music someone had to tell me that my 128GB OS Drive isn't big enough & I should have a 240GB for the OS even though W10 + Drivers + Afterburner, CPU-Z, GPU-Z, HWMon, etc... doesn't even get me to 100GB, So WTF do I need another 120GB 🤷‍♂???

While the i7-860 was easy as you could see CPU-Z Spec in the photo...
😲I think I got a Perfect hit with Mobo + GPU "🤔i7-860, ASUS P7H55D-M PRO & Sapphire Dual-X R9 285" in the "This week on Budget Builds…. A Legend Revisited." community Post

Old but still worth for basic application use...

my first i7 was a 2600 non k. those actually still hold up for 1080p old gaming.

Maybe try sandybridge as you can overclock them to the moon.

I got lucky at a goodwill computer center last week. Saw a HAF 912, turns out it was a full system minus storage and cpu cooler. Asus Rampage ii gene x58 board with an i7-920 and a gtx 460. Price for what would have been a high end system 15 years ago? $20, it worked just fine, threw a cheap sata ssd at it and got my new home theater PC.

I almost daily use my Q9550 oced to 3.4GHz, the performance in WindowsXP and Windows7 is solid with a GTX760 2GB, i use it more often than my Ryzen5 1600 PC ❤ thanks for the video

you forgot to mention one essential thing about the 860. its insane overclocking potential.
the cpu only had a 2.8ghz base clock, but im running mine, for 15 years now, with 4.2ghz. and thats basically with the auto overclock function of the ASUS P7P55D-E im using, with a few tweaks you can find how to do them with a quick google search and a mid class air cooler. i remember a couple of years ago i tested the 860 with a water cooler and got it up to i think it was 4.6ghz or maybe even 4.8ghz but it ran a lil unstable so i switched it back to 4.2ghz with the air cooler.
if you want to overclock dont go for a cheap mainboard, go for something like the ASUS P7P55D-E. you can get them for under 50$, often even with a cpu and ram included.

never tried the system with windows 10. its still running with its original windows 7 installation back from 2010, no reinstall needed since then.
the best graphics card to pair the cpu with is imho the 1060 6gb or a 1070ti if u need more vram for games.
the only bigger upgrades i did with the system were the graphics cards over time and in 2015 the switch from hdd to sata ssd, cloning the original windows 7 installation.

even after getting a newer i7 3770k system back in 2012 and switching from intel to ryzen in 2017, i was still using the then old 860 for many gaming sessions and programs i had running under windows 7. and even now in 2024 im still using it from time to time for some retro gaming.

the only problem you will have are the missing instruction sets more modern cpus have, but for retroish games the system is still a beast, if overclocked.

I had an i7-920 that I used until 2016-2017 because the motherboard had IDE and SATA slots(had a bunch of old HDDs. The last 4-5 years it served as a server until the motherboard died.

I think you sufficiently answered your own question about new cards not working.

It's the quad coreness of it that makes it feel so smooth. Software threading optimization has since really made these old shunned multi core cpus shine much better. I've got my original Core 2 Duo E7500 and it's dog slow with Windows 10 and modern Linux but drop a Q9550 into that same board and it screams. I have a tablet with an old quad core Atom from like 2014 and if it had an actually reasonable amount of ram and fast ssd storage instead of emmc it would still slam today. When it's not hitting the emmc for swap due to 1gb of ram you can catch glimpses of how fast the tiny 10w chip can be.

Yes because power efficiency is a thing.

I only retired my i7-950 a couple of years ago. Incredible powerhouse of a chip - and it came right at a time when clock speeds hit a hard plateau in favor of adding more cores.

Ivy Bridge forever baby.

I had an Ivy Bridge 3770, 32GB RAM, and GTX 680 in 2012.

Upgraded to an R9 380X in 2016, and Vega 56 in 2019.

If not for Cyberpunk in 2020 (which I had been planning a build for since it was first announced in 2012), I would probably still be rocking that Ivy Bridge build to this day (though with an R9 590 instead of the Vega, as the Vega bottlenecked every now and then).

As with the exception of Cyberpunk, I could run all the games I enjoyed playing at 1080p60 just fine (though some would have to be dropped down to 900p to get 60).

Yeah, it was a SHIT TON of money upfront, but got 8 years out of it, before gifting it to my ex-fiancee's son for his birthday in 2020 after I did my Ryzen RTX build for Cyberpunk. I definitely got my money's worth long term.

I miss it so much, and want to build another one again (this time Haswell due to AVX2 support).

Technically this is a gen 1.5 i7, as it's a tweaked version of the original one for socket 1366, still on 45 nm but more efficient, and repackaged to fit on socket 1156. These actually came out after the 32 nm dual-core Westmere chips with an on-package iGPU/memory controller that was kind of like a 40 series northbridge. That was a weird intermediate generation. What both had in common was the introduction of a shared L3 cache to the desktop (and mobile), and that was a super big deal. Subjectively, a CPU of this generation always felt quite a bit snappier than a Core 2. They basically were to Sandy Bridge what Vista was to 7.

I used to think I would upgrade to one of these eventually when I was on an E6550, but turns out I never did. Went from a Q9550S-ish Xeon straight to 11th gen. So in an way I did get my fill of weird intermediate generation after all.

BTW, the little Geekom must be poorly configured if it needs 25 W at idle. I'd think a system like that should be able to dip into the sub-10 W region. I got an i7-11700 on a full-sized Z590 board and a be quiet! Straight Power 11 550W to idle at 14.5 W, though it took a while to get my ASPM and C-States sorted out.

I have an i7 990x, GTX 690 and 24GB RAM somewhere in the attic. My father gifted it to me when I was much younger. Figured it’s just a pile of junk by now, but, after watching this video, maybe I can use it as a small console for my TV.

Knew a guy who went from the i9-7900X to the i9-14900KS, first i9 all the way to the last. It’s an end of an era, traditional x86 is now gone with AI everywhere and nothing we can do about it

So Great!

👏👍

i dont think the i7 was talked about as much as the xeon which has a lot more varieties for the socket and perform better for around the same price.

overclock a 6 core from that era and you actually can get by

I only 'upgraded' a year ago from i5 to i7 4770 lol, me and my potato are good to go for few years yet. if x99 cpu's and mobo etc really come down in price, that might be tempting.

For a retro late-2000's gaming PC build, these old i7s are perfect. Right now they are like how Pentium 4s were some years back, before more people started catching on and the prices shot up. It's best to get in now while they are still dirt cheap and readily available, because as that era of games becomes truly "Retro", the hardware will start to be in high demand among enthusiasts.

People here still sell pre-built with this chip but overprice

And micro$oft says fxck you and want you to throw these off by forcing you to have tpm2.0 and those unnecessary bullshxt feature on windows 11 ( home and pro version).
Unless you can get a copy of windows 11 iot ltsc( or non-ltsc after 24h2, which don't require tpm/secure boot/uefi and 4gb ram), you need to waste some time to bypass those system check.

Tech influencers: tries to convince you to upgrade your whole PC every year
Online communities: "NO X3D? NO DDR6 OR PCIE 7? UNPLAYABLE!"
Console gamers: "Lol! Why were PCs even invented?" 🥴
Reality:

On a related note, the Core2 Duo from 2008, still running fine on a PC tower I have. I've changed the hard drives but that's about it. Haven't even changed the thermal paste. Low TDP of about 50 W or so helps.

Meh LGA1156 is barely faster than overclocked Core2Quads... Sandy Bridge was where the real IPC gains were had... i5-2500K and i7-2600K. There was never also a """budget resurgence""" for LGA1156 either, that was moreso for LGA1366 with the i7-920 and X5650 by 2014...

I use an i7-870, 16GB RAM and a Geforce GTX 960. Works for me and the games I occasionally play.

it's so cool to see tech this old performing this well at... Everything. It's such a shame graphics cards are priced like they were human organs in here, because the performance this thing is indeed jawdropping. What'd be really hilarious is seeing it run that ps4 emulator thing tho

x86 is a beauty. I can't imagine the same about other achtecture. It is just too much hastle and probaly recompiling. x86 just works.

I really think it was overbuilt. Look at its contemporaries: the Bulldozers. Those have not aged nearly as well. The early i7s also benefit greatly from their upgraded chipset (which IIRC supports triple channel ram). They were chips that hold up, similar to how the 4790K is still a competent processor.

The laptop i use to made my university homeworks (programming, use web browsers, some office programs like word and excel, and of course linux), its a Toshiba with a first gen i7 720qm, 8gb ddr3 ram and a dedicated nvidia gpu with 1.5GB of vram (i don't remember the model), honestly all of these paired with a SSD, my laptop stills running everything i need smoothly and without struggling, even being able to use Wallpaper engine in a Windows 11 installation, Worth to mention that my laptop is a 2009 Toshiba satellite a305, so my hinges still intact and without any damage or crackling sounds when i open the laptop. 😊

I7 2nd generation maybe work for APEX. I5 still reach 100 % ussage.

Test the latest games mate. It's always the same games over and over again. Cheers!

Didn't the i7-920 come first? I remember buying one on launch in 2008.

I remember drooling over those i7 CPUs back then.
Had to settle for an i3 530, then, a few weeks later 1155 comes out lol.
Served me well for like 10 years though.

Dude I'm still using a freaking 4th Gen i3

I still have my i7 870 with 16 gigs of Corsair Dominator Platinum (thank you lifetime warranty lol) 1600 DDR3 stuffed into a EVGA P55 Classified 200. Probably the best case for this CPU to live in. Having a bios chip in a socket is amazing to have so soldering isn't needed for repairs. It even has features most high end boards today lack like dedicated power jumpers to remove power from individual PCIe slots for troubleshooting. I ran this until Ryzen came out and I jumped to team red. It still does get used occasionally as a home theater pc with a GTX 690.

Glad to see them still hanging on!

Should have tested some unreal engine 5 games

The original i7 in 1150 socket(correct me if im wrong) are pretty famous to Burnt the cpu holder/ the chipset it self pretty much Like the AMD does todays. Back then, the core i7 are pretty much a Hot boy.

Seen Cases of i7 caise damages to other part near it. Not at Severely as what AMd Has recently.

Nehalem was kinda slow on launch for gamers, most gamers kept the Q9550 extreme Core Quad systems.

Could you please start testing Linux? Now that win 10 is going eol next year, its a much more important question. Linux has a reputation for hardware compatibility, but you test some funky hardware.

I'm not asking you to completely switch all testing immediately - just maybe you pick a distros to run on the same machine, make sure everything thing is running as it should, repeat the tests, and give a subjective and objective opinion on how useful it is for older systems like this.

Edit: and the retro games too! Lutris and wine is a killer combo for anything older you want to run with a bit of trial and error, and projects like OpenMorrowind take out all the guesswork for the more popular games

I still use my 4790k with an rtx 3050 as a living room PC for media, in home streaming and light couch coop games. Old CPUs are fine unless you want to play newer AAA games.

Those chips on the LGA 1156 motherboards were fun to overclock.

Wow this is surprising. So are the few generations after this, 2xxx, 3xxx, actually worse? Or better, but just a tiny bit better?

I had an original i7 860 -> i7 4770k -> Ryzen 9 3900X (Yes i waited along time..... to upgrade that 4th gen i7)

Now i have a Ryzen 7 5800X3D or Ryzen 9 7945HX3d depending on if im on my desktop or laptop PC

I had the 920, was a great cpu.