Testing the Intel Core i7-950 with MSI Afterburner

If you had to choose an i7 processor it's not consistently enjoyable but it is playable. MSI afterburner didn't show particularly high cpu usage for the i7 in Eldon Ring, but the game didn't really run very well at all. Perhaps it's the cpu architecture, as neither the processor nor graphics card were maxing out here but the average and percentile figures were pretty poor overall. The game is playable if like me you don't mind 30 fps but it didn't run how I expected it to. I thought it would do a bit better but then again this is a near 13 year old cpu. The i7 did quite well in Far Cry 6 though, we couldn't hit a 60 fps average with settings that would otherwise allow this using the 2080 super and a more modern cpu but things weren't too bad. I took a stroll around the starting island because I haven't actually progressed any further in the game and while causing some carnage wiping out some guards and basically doing the usual, the frame rate stayed fairly solid there were one or two dips here and there but nothing too major.

I'm not sure what the max safe temperatures are for this processor, I think it's somewhere around 67 degrees. But I'm happy to report that with this bulky cooler on top of it, the 950 doesn't exceed 60 degrees let's say it rarely exceeds 60 degrees actually I didn't notice it go above 60 but it may have done over the past couple of days when testing as I made my way around the oasis race course in Forza Horizon 5. I thought to myself wow this chip is doing really well then I hit the brow of this hill and half of Mexico was missing. I've noticed this lately with older cpus as well as ones with a lower core count I don't know if this has always occurred or whether it's something I'm doing or not doing but I'll have to investigate a bit.

This doesn't happen with my four-core i312 300 so I'm assuming it's the low core count combined with the age of the i7 causing this. It actually went away after a couple of minutes which was nice because the game was running quite well with a decent average and okay 1.1 percent lows.

Halo Infinite didn't really care about the age of the cpu, it ran really well with at least 60 frames per second and if I didn't know I was using a first-gen i7 nothing about the performance would have given it away. The fps held steady during my big team battle however there were a couple of visible micro stutters here and there which usually happened when I got wiped out by an enemy player but that's not really anything out of the ordinary.

My advice thus far if you want to put together a socket 1366 intel machine would be to look out for a six-core chip instead or a low-cost xeon as I mentioned before because they can be found for less money than these i7s in both their 4 and 6-core variants. That said don't mistake this advice for a recommendation not until you've watched a few videos regarding ancient xeon performance in 2022, I'll be testing one myself again at some point soon to see if they can steal game.

Finally, let's end with Red Dead Redemption 2. The i7 950 handles this just fine and I'm always glad to see it running well on older hardware because it is one of my favorite games. You could play this through plenty of times and still discover something you've never noticed before it's certainly stolen a few weeks from me in the past with console equivalent settings. You can expect a solid frame rate with dips in the usual places such as busy towns exploring the open plains won't give you any grief with a near constant plus 60 fps though to conclude intel's early enthusiast platform is probably best enjoyed with a more powerful processor and one that has more cores it's more of an enthusiast socket these days in a different way to how it used to be. You'd probably only want to build a first-gen quad-core i7 rig on the 1366 platform for the sake of nostalgia or because you enjoy the older hardware itself. Because from a performance and compatibility standpoint a newer platform certainly makes more sense.

Still, we'll have to see what a six-core chip or xeon can do in 2022 at some point in the near future as for this one then thank you very much for watching let me know if you still use one of these chips down below. A first-generation core i7 or any early intel chip because it's always nice to hear that these old chips are still being used on a daily basis if you enjoyed this one leave a like leave a dislike if you didn't subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already and hopefully I'll see all of you in the next one

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello everyone and welcome to another video now this is a socket 1366 based intel core i7 950. we tested it the other day as part of a cheap secondhand pre-built pc that i purchased online and found that it was somewhat limited by the nvidia 600 series graphics card it was paired with for this video i've swapped out the aging 660 ti for an rtx 2080 super and replaced the 8 gigs of dual channel memory with 24 gigs of triple channel ddr3 instead the gigabyte x58 board and huge side cooler that came with the pc allowed me to hit a near 3.8 gigahertz overclock without any stability or heat issues and that's the speed we'll stick with today the high-end graphics card will allow our i7 to really stretch its legs and hopefully we can hit some playable frame rate numbers in modern games as far as multi-threaded cpu performance goes i found that the i7 950 at 3.744 gigahertz sits between a third gen i5 3550 and an i7 3770 it's still snappy and responsive under windows 10 and from a daily usage perspective i can't fault it that said it's fair to say that older quad core processors can really struggle in games these days unfortunately this cpu is no exception it's hard to associate the i7 name with anything other than top notch performance and i like many others i'm sure i'm guilty of not wanting to believe that this once high-end offering could possibly struggle the i7 950 will be 13 years old during this year of heartbreak first i have to recommend not buying the gtx 750 ti and now i have to dissuade you from purchasing one of these okay so the 950 will struggle where you'd expect it to i knew going into battlefield 2042 for example here that the frame times wouldn't be pretty no amount of ram or overclocking can make up for the fact that these old cores are tired there are actually a few six core variants of these first gen chips starting with the i7 970 so i'll have to try and get my hands on one of those or better for a future video 1366 socket xeons are also worth looking out for as well some of those six core chips can be found for very little money for now though let's solder on with our aging quad core legend cyberpunk 2077 offers up surprisingly decent performance outside of busier areas that is while downtown night city caused some hefty frame rate dips even with the crowd density option decreased the badlands and zones that were just away from people and traffic didn't often trouble the i7 with a 60 fps plus average being quite easily attainable as i mentioned the inner city areas brought the overall performance metrics down but you could play cyberpunk with a first gen i7 if you had to it's not consistently enjoyable but it is playable msi afterburner didn't show particularly high cpu usage for the i7 in eldon ring but the game didn't really run very well at all perhaps it's the cpu architecture it doesn't like neither the processor or graphics card were maxing out here but the average and percentile figures were pretty poor overall the game is playable if like me you don't mind 30 fps but it didn't run how i expected it to i thought it would do a bit better but then again this is a near 13 year old cpu the i7 did quite well in far cry 6 though we couldn't hit a 60 fps average with settings that would otherwise allow this using the 2080 super and a more modern cpu but things weren't too bad i took a stroll around the starting island because i haven't actually progressed any further in the game and while causing some carnage wiping out some guards and basically doing the usual the frame rate stayed fairly solid there were one or two dips here and there but nothing too major i'm not sure what the max safe temperatures are for this processor i think it's somewhere around 67 degrees but i'm happy to report that with this bulky cooler on top of it the 950 doesn't exceed 60 degrees let's say it rarely exceeds 60 degrees actually i didn't notice it go above 60 but it may have done over the past couple of days when testing as i made my way around the oasis race course in forza horizon 5 i thought to myself wow this chip is doing really well then i hit the brow of this hill and half of mexico was missing i've noticed this lately with older cpus as well as ones with a lower core count i don't know if this has always occurred or whether it's something i'm doing or not doing but i'll have to investigate a bit this doesn't happen with my four core i312 300 so i'm assuming it's the low core count combined with the age of the i7 causing this it actually went away after a couple of minutes which was nice because the game was running quite well with a decent average and okay 1.1 percent lows halo infinite didn't really care about the age of the cpu it ran really well with at least 60 frames per second and if i didn't know i was using a first gen i7 nothing about the performance would have given it away the fps held steady during my big team battle however there were a couple of visible micro stutters here and there which usually happened when i got wiped out by an enemy player but that's not really anything out of the ordinary my advice thus far if you want to put together a socket 1366 intel machine would be to look out for a six core chip instead or a low cost xeon as i mentioned before because they can be found for less money than these i7s in both their 4 and 6 core variants that said don't mistake this advice for a recommendation not until you've watched a few videos regarding ancient xeon performance in 2022 i'll be testing one myself again at some point soon to see if they can steal game finally then let's end this one with red dead redemption 2. the i7 950 handles this just fine and i'm always glad to see it running well on older hardware because it is one of my favorite games you could play this through plenty of times and still discover something you've never noticed before it's certainly stolen a few weeks from me in the past with console equivalent settings you can expect a solid frame rate with dips in the usual places such as busy towns exploring the open plains won't give you any grief with a near constant plus 60 fps though to conclude intel's early enthusiast platform is probably best enjoyed with a more powerful processor and one that has more cores it's more of an enthusiast socket these days in a different way to how it used to be you'd probably only want to build a first gen quad-core i7 rig on the 1366 platform for the sake of nostalgia or because you enjoy the older hardware itself because from a performance and compatibility standpoint a newer platform certainly makes more sense still we'll have to see what a six core chip or xeon can do in 2022 at some point in the near future as for this one then thank you very much for watching let me know if you still use one of these chips down below a first generation core i7 or any early intel chip because it's always nice to hear that these old chips are still being used on a daily basis if you enjoyed this one leave a like leave a dislike if you didn't subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already and hopefully i'll see all of you in the next onehello everyone and welcome to another video now this is a socket 1366 based intel core i7 950. we tested it the other day as part of a cheap secondhand pre-built pc that i purchased online and found that it was somewhat limited by the nvidia 600 series graphics card it was paired with for this video i've swapped out the aging 660 ti for an rtx 2080 super and replaced the 8 gigs of dual channel memory with 24 gigs of triple channel ddr3 instead the gigabyte x58 board and huge side cooler that came with the pc allowed me to hit a near 3.8 gigahertz overclock without any stability or heat issues and that's the speed we'll stick with today the high-end graphics card will allow our i7 to really stretch its legs and hopefully we can hit some playable frame rate numbers in modern games as far as multi-threaded cpu performance goes i found that the i7 950 at 3.744 gigahertz sits between a third gen i5 3550 and an i7 3770 it's still snappy and responsive under windows 10 and from a daily usage perspective i can't fault it that said it's fair to say that older quad core processors can really struggle in games these days unfortunately this cpu is no exception it's hard to associate the i7 name with anything other than top notch performance and i like many others i'm sure i'm guilty of not wanting to believe that this once high-end offering could possibly struggle the i7 950 will be 13 years old during this year of heartbreak first i have to recommend not buying the gtx 750 ti and now i have to dissuade you from purchasing one of these okay so the 950 will struggle where you'd expect it to i knew going into battlefield 2042 for example here that the frame times wouldn't be pretty no amount of ram or overclocking can make up for the fact that these old cores are tired there are actually a few six core variants of these first gen chips starting with the i7 970 so i'll have to try and get my hands on one of those or better for a future video 1366 socket xeons are also worth looking out for as well some of those six core chips can be found for very little money for now though let's solder on with our aging quad core legend cyberpunk 2077 offers up surprisingly decent performance outside of busier areas that is while downtown night city caused some hefty frame rate dips even with the crowd density option decreased the badlands and zones that were just away from people and traffic didn't often trouble the i7 with a 60 fps plus average being quite easily attainable as i mentioned the inner city areas brought the overall performance metrics down but you could play cyberpunk with a first gen i7 if you had to it's not consistently enjoyable but it is playable msi afterburner didn't show particularly high cpu usage for the i7 in eldon ring but the game didn't really run very well at all perhaps it's the cpu architecture it doesn't like neither the processor or graphics card were maxing out here but the average and percentile figures were pretty poor overall the game is playable if like me you don't mind 30 fps but it didn't run how i expected it to i thought it would do a bit better but then again this is a near 13 year old cpu the i7 did quite well in far cry 6 though we couldn't hit a 60 fps average with settings that would otherwise allow this using the 2080 super and a more modern cpu but things weren't too bad i took a stroll around the starting island because i haven't actually progressed any further in the game and while causing some carnage wiping out some guards and basically doing the usual the frame rate stayed fairly solid there were one or two dips here and there but nothing too major i'm not sure what the max safe temperatures are for this processor i think it's somewhere around 67 degrees but i'm happy to report that with this bulky cooler on top of it the 950 doesn't exceed 60 degrees let's say it rarely exceeds 60 degrees actually i didn't notice it go above 60 but it may have done over the past couple of days when testing as i made my way around the oasis race course in forza horizon 5 i thought to myself wow this chip is doing really well then i hit the brow of this hill and half of mexico was missing i've noticed this lately with older cpus as well as ones with a lower core count i don't know if this has always occurred or whether it's something i'm doing or not doing but i'll have to investigate a bit this doesn't happen with my four core i312 300 so i'm assuming it's the low core count combined with the age of the i7 causing this it actually went away after a couple of minutes which was nice because the game was running quite well with a decent average and okay 1.1 percent lows halo infinite didn't really care about the age of the cpu it ran really well with at least 60 frames per second and if i didn't know i was using a first gen i7 nothing about the performance would have given it away the fps held steady during my big team battle however there were a couple of visible micro stutters here and there which usually happened when i got wiped out by an enemy player but that's not really anything out of the ordinary my advice thus far if you want to put together a socket 1366 intel machine would be to look out for a six core chip instead or a low cost xeon as i mentioned before because they can be found for less money than these i7s in both their 4 and 6 core variants that said don't mistake this advice for a recommendation not until you've watched a few videos regarding ancient xeon performance in 2022 i'll be testing one myself again at some point soon to see if they can steal game finally then let's end this one with red dead redemption 2. the i7 950 handles this just fine and i'm always glad to see it running well on older hardware because it is one of my favorite games you could play this through plenty of times and still discover something you've never noticed before it's certainly stolen a few weeks from me in the past with console equivalent settings you can expect a solid frame rate with dips in the usual places such as busy towns exploring the open plains won't give you any grief with a near constant plus 60 fps though to conclude intel's early enthusiast platform is probably best enjoyed with a more powerful processor and one that has more cores it's more of an enthusiast socket these days in a different way to how it used to be you'd probably only want to build a first gen quad-core i7 rig on the 1366 platform for the sake of nostalgia or because you enjoy the older hardware itself because from a performance and compatibility standpoint a newer platform certainly makes more sense still we'll have to see what a six core chip or xeon can do in 2022 at some point in the near future as for this one then thank you very much for watching let me know if you still use one of these chips down below a first generation core i7 or any early intel chip because it's always nice to hear that these old chips are still being used on a daily basis if you enjoyed this one leave a like leave a dislike if you didn't subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already and hopefully i'll see all of you in the next one\n"