i5 to i7 or not?

Ok, so Alienware did a really nice thing for me. Because of the issues I had with my i5 (video being stuck in between HDMI and internal display so nothing would display) and having had the screen and the system board replaced, I debated with one of their L2's that I should get a hefty discount because for all intents and purposes, my system is now a refurb.

They agreed that it was now considered a refurb but because I was in my 21 days, they simply set up a system exchange. Well, last week, the order got cancelled and a new one setup, this time with an i7 processor.

Just received the new i7 and sadly, its not as overclock friendly as my i5. Best BIOS overclock I can achieve without a bluescreen is 148.

Here is the delimma, my i5 could handle 166 easily and I was getting ready to use setPll to see how far it could go. Now with the i7, its just not stable. The RAM is the same out of my i5, though I am thinking I might change slots just for kicks.

I am pretty sure I should stick with the i7, due to the full 4 pipes (reporting as a quad core, as opposed to the i5 showing as dual core) but I would like some advice before I decide on Monday.

I quite capable of swapping heatsink compound and am considering that as well. I have access to some very amazing ceramic based thermal paste and might decide to go that route but just wanting opinions.

Also, I did notice that the system wanted to load some drivers, which really should not be an issue, as I just swapped the HDD from one system to the other. Essentially, this was a CPU upgrade and nothing more. Very odd indeed...

 

A lot of overclocking is dependent on your RAM sticks, keep that in mind too.

 

The i7 at 148mhz is similar to the i5 at 170mhz in clockspeed. Both are dual core processors with hyperthreading. Difference between them both is 1MB extra L3 cache and higher Turbo multipliers (14x vs 12x). You could keep the i7 and not miss much speed.

 

Yes, this is why I got the Crucial 1333. Going to swap the sticks into opposite slots and see if that helps any. Its the same RAM that was in the i5 that was at 166.

I think I will keep the i7, if only because of the extra multiplier. Who knows, if the RAM swap doesn't help, switching to the ceramic based thermal compound might allow for a few ticks higher. Overall, I feel I got a better system. Will also play with the GPU overclock and see what that yields. Most games are more dependent on the GPU clock than the CPU so I'm not that heartbroken.

Thanks

 

Ok. Repasting won't help with overclocking here, you're not limited by heat.