990x Upgrade or Not?

Hello Digital Storm forum-goers, I have a question for you all.

I'll try to keep things short and simple, as I tend to ramble

Through an Intel promotion at a nearby University, I won, no strings attached, an i7 990x processor for free.

I'm currently running an i7 950 at 4Ghz.

My question is, is it worth if for me to upgrade from the 950 to the 990x? I don't do any major rendering, any major CAD work, etc. I do some photoshop image editing, some basic video editing, and some basic sound editing. I also tend to run several programs while working, but nothing insanely intensive. The rig is primarily for gaming at 1920x1200. For detailed specs, see the link in my signature.

I'd like for this rig to be viable for  long as possible, but I don't know if the 990x would actually do anything in regards to that.

So, should I upgrade to the 990x with all its glory (which I got for free), or should I keep the 950 which seems to be working for me, and sell the 990x (Which is worth a pretty penny, though I'm really not in any dire need of the money)?




Edited by Tidgxor - 06 Mar 2011 at 8:44pm

Holy. You won a 990X for free. By all means GET it, lol.

You may/may not be able to hit higher clock speeds with it, but you know what I say? Get it, and sell it somewhere, and hold off with the money for a little bit until the next gen X58-E sandy bridge processors come out later this year. The regular end models should be around what the X58's were, $300 or so, and the money you can get with that 990X should be more than enough to cover that new processor and a new motherboard too. Heck, the leftover money you could just channel to a new graphics card too, lol.


Edited by ablahblah - 06 Mar 2011 at 9:03pm

I say sell it to me for $ 350 please!! Lol

If you plan on skipping the next gen motherboard, then  use 990x. They overclock very well, and can run high speed RAM very easily. You should be able to get around 60% more performance than your 950 has. But, lol if you want to go with the next gen platform, then I would just sell it. The X58 platform is mature, very bug-free, the next platform it will take a little bit to work out all the bugs.  Your choice, but I would use the 990x, they are great CPU's to tinker with.