Changing processors

[Deleted]

Hey everyone!
So i was thinking about upgrading my computer and i wanna get a new processor, changing my i5 -> i7.
In order to do this i had to get a new Mainboard to make sure the i7 would fit, i have the mainboard.

My question here is:
Can i replace my i5 with the new i7 "just like that" or do i have to reinstall my windows 7 or something like that? What will happend?

Thanks for your help!

[This name sucks]

Be more specific than i5 > i7.

And why do you need an i7, you know it doesn't affect gaming whatsoever right?

Only stuff like video editing, encoding, heavy Photoshop work, compiling code, etc right?


But assuming you're going from a 2500k to a 2600k for example they both use lga 1155 socket so there would be no difference. But if one of them used lga 2011 then you would need a new board.

You do not need to reinstall windows/drivers. If anything you could play around with the voltage/clock settings.

[IRunSoFarAway]

Be more specific than i5 > i7.

And why do you need an i7, you know doesn't affect gaming whatsoever right?

Only stuff like video editing, encoding, heavy Photoshop work, compiling code, etc right?


But assuming you're going from a 2500k to a 2600k for example they both use lga 1155 socket so there would be no difference. But if one of them used lga 2011 then you would need a new board.

You do not need to reinstall windows/drivers. If anything you could play around with the voltage/clock settings.

I don't think suggesting he play with voltages and settings is a good idea if he thinks he needs to reinstall windows after changing processors.

If you have everything you can just throw the new processor in there and everything should adjust, you won't see much of a difference though unless you're doing some really intense stuff.

[This name sucks]

I don't think suggesting he play with voltages and settings is a good idea if he thinks he needs to reinstall windows after changing processors.

If you have everything you can just throw the new processor in there and everything should adjust, you won't see much of a difference though unless you're doing some really intense stuff.

Yeah you're probably right...

Just make sure you do the thermal paste right. Wouldn't want to overheat or anything now.

[Blackmist]

There's a lot of i5s and a lot of i7s.

Since you've had to swap motherboard, I'll assume you got the same i5 I did (i5-750) which used a socket (1156) that they immediately fucking discontinued. Thanks Intel. ¬_¬

There's a chance that you can swap the motherboard and it will all be fine. There's also a chance that you'll need to reinstall Windows. So make sure you've got copies of all your important stuff in case you swap it over and get immediate blue-screens. Try and get things in the same places they are now. If you have multiple drives, then get them in the same order in the new motherboard. If it does bluescreen, try safemode. Things shouldn't have changed too much since you got your old one, so the chances aren't bad. Only way to know for sure is to try it. Win 7 copes better with this than XP, which failed the last time I tried this, but that was in an 7 year old PC and going from Intel to AMD.

Good luck.

[vesseblah]

In order to do this i had to get a new Mainboard to make sure the i7 would fit, i have the mainboard.

Can i replace my i5 with the new i7 "just like that" or do i have to reinstall my windows 7 or something like that? What will happend?

You will need to reinstall windows when you change motherboard. In theory it's not 100% required, but in practice it's always good idea to prevent any kind of driver conflicts.

Whole another question is: why? i7 is not big upgrade over i5 in games unless you're attempting 1080p streaming, and even then it's around 20% only unless you're going from i5-750 to i7-3770K.

[Deleted]

Hey everyone!
So i was thinking about upgrading my computer and i wanna get a new processor, changing my i5 -> i7.
In order to do this i had to get a new Mainboard to make sure the i7 would fit, i have the mainboard.

My question here is:
Can i replace my i5 with the new i7 "just like that" or do i have to reinstall my windows 7 or something like that? What will happend?

Thanks for your help!

While the proposed upgrade is entirely your choice, if you're only gaming, and not going to be doing any heavy 3D rendering/ video editing, then just stick with the i5 (.....w/e it is).

But, if you do want to change the i5 out for an i7 then the motherboard may, or may not need changing . The i7 CPU must be obviously not be a LGA 2011/ Sandy bridge enthusiast (SB-E) as the chip slot would be different to the LGA 1155/ LGA 1156 slot of your current i5 chip. So, if you didn't want to buy a new motherboard then the new i7 CPU would have to match the previous chipset of your current motherboard i.e. LGA 1155 or 1156.

As for the re-installing Windows 7 issue, i'm not entirely sure. If you do decide to get a new motherboard than the hardware alteration may invalidate the online activation key (if you activated your Windows 7 version this way, which I think it is compulsory with Windows 7 onwards now, isn't it?), however, I think they (Microsoft) offers you the chance to activate using the same key already associated with the OS w/ an automated phone call to prove the validity of your activation key. I think you have to enter an long series of numbered codes (given to you by the automated call operator on the phone) to validate the activation key. Boring - yes, but still required...I think .

[Milkshake86]

You will need to reinstall windows when you change motherboard. In theory it's not 100% required, but in practice it's always good idea to prevent any kind of driver conflicts.

Whole another question is: why? i7 is not big upgrade over i5 in games unless you're attempting 1080p streaming, and even then it's around 20% only unless you're going from i5-750 to i7-3770K.

1 hour of rendering -20% = 48mins rather than 1 hour. Increasing the time only makes it better and better, and more and more applications games included will roll out w/ multiple core/thread usage making an i7 a bit more future proof in most cases.

[vesseblah]

1 hour of rendering -20% = 48mins rather than 1 hour.

Yeah, but the question is: is 12 minutes of my life once per week worth extra $100 when building the computer, and most people will answer "hell no!".

Keep in mind that even people who say they do videos they do it very rarely, even once per week might be optimistic. Only those who are eFamous in youtube are actually doing hours of video rendering per day and their life literally depends on it (or at least income) and for them the 12 minutes is valuable.

Increasing the time only makes it better and better, and more and more applications games included will roll out w/ multiple core/thread usage making an i7 a bit more future proof in most cases.

That's what they've been saying since 2005 when AMD introduced first dualcore processor for home computers. And guess what... After 8 years still most programs run on home computers are single threaded. AMD put all their money hoping/wishing there would be use for more cores and they did all kinds of silly things like 6-core Phenoms and we all know how well that turned out.

There's not gonna be any kind of future proofing potential in buying HT'd i7 over i5 today. The processor will be 100% guaranteed badly outdated before even 50% of all programs sitting on average gamer's HDD will use more than 2 cores.

[Lemmiwink]

Yeah, but the question is: is 12 minutes of my life once per week worth extra $100 when building the computer, and most people will answer "hell no!".

Keep in mind that even people who say they do videos they do it very rarely, even once per week might be optimistic. Only those who are eFamous in youtube are actually doing hours of video rendering per day and their life literally depends on it (or at least income) and for them the 12 minutes is valuable.



That's what they've been saying since 2005 when AMD introduced first dualcore processor for home computers. And guess what... After 8 years still most programs run on home computers are single threaded. AMD put all their money hoping/wishing there would be use for more cores and they did all kinds of silly things like 6-core Phenoms and we all know how well that turned out.

There's not gonna be any kind of future proofing potential in buying HT'd i7 over i5 today. The processor will be 100% guaranteed badly outdated before even 50% of all programs sitting on average gamer's HDD will use more than 2 cores.

Might not be worth 100 extra, but it does outperform i5 on work related tasks. However, i think we will see more multithreaded applications/games sooner rather than later. But, ofc u r right. For gaming i5 is more than enough.

[vesseblah]

Might not be worth 100 extra, but it does outperform i5 on work related tasks.

By 10-20%. If you need to wait the computer for 10 minutes while it does number crunching (not because of slow HDD or LAN but processor time) you'll save whopping one minute. It doesn't make any kind of difference whatsoever because most people would be on a coffee/cigarette/toilet break for 15 minutes to make sure the job is done when they're back. People who actually need more cores ignore the puny HT'd i7 consumer CPU, they buy dual Xeon computers instead.

However, i think we will see more multithreaded applications/games sooner rather than later.

Yeah, that's what they've been saying since 2005 when AMD came up with Athlon X2. I'm currently using fourth CPU since that day, and probably will be ditching 2-3 more until fully multithreaded mainstream programs and games is everyday business. Point is, blowing $100 while wishing for unicorns is plain stupid while SSD would be bigger productivity gain in 99 cases out of 100.