Replace or upgrade?

[KALSTER]

The shock of paying for an i7 vanishes after 3 days of using one

Well ye.. I checked the benchmarks on tomshardware of the i7-950 against the E6850.
the Sisandra calculates foloating point operations per second.
i7: 32
e6850:18

quite a bit of difference in terms of processing power there.

Is that the single threaded test? Because the gap might be even higher in multi threaded tests, i.e. 2 threads vs 8.

[RuadRauFlessa]

Nope that is the multi threaded test. Remember that the E6850 although only 2 threads has a 3GHz clock rate and the i7-950 runs at around 2.5GHz if I am not mistaken. Which in a single threaded battle would actually favour the E6850. One of the reasons I went for it at the time rather than a Q6600 or something in those lines. Games at that time only used 1 or 2 threads for processing. But alas they learned how to actually code something other than GFX.

[KALSTER]

The i7 950 runs at 3.06GHz. Whichever the case may be though, your new CPU is going to kick some serious bottom. I am jealous!

[RuadRauFlessa]

The i7 950 runs at 3.06GHz. Whichever the case may be though, your new CPU is going to kick some serious bottom. I am jealous!

OK I stand corrected then. But even so. That is like a 56% diff in processing power between the two.

[StarBound]

You can only split processing so far before it has a negative impact. Eg WoW with 3 cores = 35fps, 4 cores = 40fps, 8 cores = 30fps and that's while in Dalaran with a huge amount of active players. But I took this test like a year ago when I still messed around with the config settings.

[RuadRauFlessa]

Will have to see. I have noticed some serious changes in the client's processing since the 4.0.1 patch.

[StarBound]

Yes

Ultra settings are now avalible off the bat. No need to adjust foliage, view distance ect anymore. Even so I had a bad experience with 4fps when looking towards the middel of Dalaran around 6pm or there around with everything maxxed out.