Simple: it's still useful in a modern build. I'm typing this on my 2011-era Core i7-2600, which is still the fastest CPU I own. I'm not a huge gamer, but if I play remotely modern games (WoT...) my GPU, not my CPU is the bottleneck, even with my 2016-era GTX1060.

If I were to buy a new system, it would be a Ryzen, but given the relative shortage of 2nd hand Ryzen, whenever I build a budget system I sort of end up with So1155 or 1150. Lots of other people do too, so demand is high, ditto prices.

Eh, not long ago Socket 1366 was in high demand. But less and less bother now.

pixel_workbench wrote on 2020-09-24, 23:33:

I noticed that for the last few years, LGA1155 boards have continued to be in demand, and even a mediocre H67 board quickly sells for $60 or more. Did everyone suddenly start building XP retro rigs? It's almost comical watching this stuff sell like hotcakes, so what gives?

I just bought a sub-20 US$ Core I3 3220T for my Asus P8H61-M LE/CSM based XP system with Geforce GTX 750Ti. I found that reasonable . Admittedly, that system's "theme" is low power usage (35W TDP CPU and 60W TDP video card) .
As for boards, at first glance, H61, H67, H77, Z77 all start around the 60 US$ price point, so it does look like this platform is quite popular these days .

This is still cheaper than 100$ decent socket 1366 X58 boards like the Supermicro X8SAX, which also make nice XP setups along with something like a 30$ or so Xeon x5675, although more power hungry . I have such a setup, but currently have Windows 7 and 10 on it .

IMHO, the reason all these board CPU combos are still relatively expensive is because they still make decent setups even for Windows 10 for many people, which means many of them are still in service and, if a board dies, there is a higher chance it will be replaced with a compatible one .

How much power/overkill is necessary for a late XP build is a question that I ask mysellf .

XP games won't use more than 2 cores, so overclocked Core 2 Wolfdale with P45 board is sufficient enough.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2020-09-25, 01:10:

XP games won't use more than 2 cores, so overclocked Core 2 Wolfdale with P45 board is sufficient enough.

So my low power I3 3220T should be adequate, unless you mean a Wolfdale Core 2 overclocked beyond 3.5GHz .

Blame Phil. And it's not for XP.

kolderman wrote on 2020-09-25, 02:18:

Blame Phil. And it's not for XP.

I wouldn't be so quick to blame Phil for simply showing that these are still capable machines, there are quite a lot of people out there still running 1155 on even their main daily machines. If you want to blame anyone, blame Intel for getting lazy for not innovating a whole lot in performance after this generation.

kolderman wrote on 2020-09-25, 02:18:

Blame Phil. And it's not for XP.

I don't think Phil is as big a influencer on this stuff as you might think.

"budget builds" in general are kinda a trend with some people atm, so I'm not surprised Intel's semi modern stuff still fetches a decent penny.

Any parts that can be slapped together to play popular eSports/casual games at atleast tolerable resolution and 60FPS at a value pricetag are understandably, in demand.

The way I see it, your typical gamer will have moved on a while ago to Ryzen, Skylake, or similar modern hardware. And the mass market users who are not gamers are likely happily using laptops, or some modern desktop for things like video editing and such. But the 1155 platform would be of interest to those looking to build an overkill XP rig. Or maybe your next in line youtuber looking for a test platform to make videos like "550ti still got game in 2020???"

It seems unlikely that your average Joe is still buying up Sandy Bridge era hardware because he can't afford anything newer.

pixel_workbench wrote on 2020-09-25, 05:02:

The way I see it, your typical gamer will have moved on a while ago to Ryzen, Skylake, or similar modern hardware. And the mass market users who are not gamers are likely happily using laptops, or some modern desktop for things like video editing and such. But the 1155 platform would be of interest to those looking to build an overkill XP rig. Or maybe your next in line youtuber looking for a test platform to make videos like "550ti still got game in 2020???"

It seems unlikely that your average Joe is still buying up Sandy Bridge era hardware because he can't afford anything newer.

I'd say the chance of people sticking with their hardware that's still ok performance wise for gaming and just fine for web browsing and productivity is much higher than everyone suddenly becoming interested in overkill XP systems. Can't provide any statistic of course but it just seems more likely that way. Especially after Microsoft just giving away Win10 for free on those machines. Also I feel like there are a lot of cheap second hand graphics cards from that generation avaliable. A GPU upgrade made sense to many while the rest of the system didn't hamper 3D performance much.

Edit: We could look at the Steam hardware survey for at least an indication of wether those platforms are still popular for gaming on more current Windows.

I don't think it has anything to do with the retro scene (or Phil). Sandy, Ivy, Haswell all for some reason hold their value really well because of the i5 and i7 chips. I think it's because of the i7 branding still being seen as "the best" regardless of age, by a lot of slightly-savvy (or "think they're savvy") tech buyers, and this keeps up the value of the whole platform. They're also fine for general usage in Windows 7 and probably 10. I have an i3 3xxxx 3.4GHz and an ITX motherboard and it's entirely adequate at "being a computer", and cost about £for the board and CPU and I have put cards ranging from a 7950GT to a 1070ti in there for gaming.

A basic Ivybridge CPU and motherboard is pretty cheap here in the UK. You can get a basic gigabyte / msi / intel board for £30 to £40 but this will go up as the good boards die or get binned. I think it's the CPUs keeping the board values up. i7 3770Ks are still going for £100 which seems mental compared to how much a Ryzen 3600 costs. But a 3Ghz Pentium Dual Core is £3, and i3 is £5.

pixel_workbench wrote on 2020-09-25, 05:02:

The way I see it, your typical gamer will have moved on a while ago to Ryzen, Skylake, or similar modern hardware. And the mass market users who are not gamers are likely happily using laptops, or some modern desktop for things like video editing and such. But the 1155 platform would be of interest to those looking to build an overkill XP rig. Or maybe your next in line youtuber looking for a test platform to make videos like "550ti still got game in 2020???"

It seems unlikely that your average Joe is still buying up Sandy Bridge era hardware because he can't afford anything newer.

Don't underestimate how many regular non-gaming people still use desktops. Yes, sales of new desktops have plummeted, which on the surface makes it look like everyone has moved to laptops, but sales only say something about machines entering the ecosystem, and the big change has been at the other end: if you are not a gamer, you don't need a new computer. Apart from steady RAM bloat of web browsers, requirements for general computing (office, communications, OS functions) haven't significantly increased in a decade. Even operating systems haven't, considering that 2009-era Windows 7 automatically updated to Windows 10 for most people. If you're not doing anything challenging, you simply don't replace the computer. That is unlike any other time in computing history, where a 3 year-old system usually started feeling dated and within 5 years you could basically forget running an up-to-date OS and applictions

And - crucially - if you do need a new computer, 2nd-hand is a very valid and widely chosen option, either from classified ads or from refurb resellers. Basically, PCs have become a mature market a lot more like cars. The fact a lot of people simply don't (need to!) buy new anymore has at least as much impact on sales as people moving to laptops. It's not a matter of not being able to buy new, they just don't need to anymore. And that keeps the price up of usable 2nd hand systems and parts, simple supply and demand.

Why are laptop sales not similarly affected? Because they physically fall apart or electrically die and need replacing long before the actual hardware reaches obsolescence, which reduces the 2nd hand market and keeps sales up.

My primary PC is a 3770 with 32GB RAM, a GTX 980Ti and a NVMe PCIe SSD (BIOS hack necessary) @Win10. And it is sufficient for all modern things i want to do, incl. high detail HD gaming. Over the time the CPU needed fresh thermal conduction between Die and HS. The S1155 from year 2011 with i5 and i7 CPUs is powerfull enough for most of modern SW and far away from retro and for its power and usability not overpriced (IMO).

unless you mean a Wolfdale Core 2 overclocked beyond 3.5GHz .

Core 2 4.2-4.5 Ghz.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2020-09-25, 11:07:

unless you mean a Wolfdale Core 2 overclocked beyond 3.5GHz .

Core 2 4.2-4.5 Ghz.

Thank you . I may need to aim a bit higher than what I have then, depending on what I end up playing on XP .

Probably people have nostalgia for the platform- amazing overclockers. I had an i5-2500k @ 4.8ghz, and didnt upgrade again until my current i7-5960x. Honestly Sandy bridge felt like a big IPC boost, and then every generation since felt like +5%. (Yes 5% is probably undercutting it to make my point, but I've always felt the Intel supplied numbers were some best case scenario usage).

BinaryDemon wrote on 2020-09-25, 12:21:

Probably people have nostalgia for the platform- amazing overclockers. I had an i5-2500k @ 4.8ghz, and didnt upgrade again until my current i7-5960x. Honestly Sandy bridge felt like a big IPC boost, and then every generation since felt like +5%. (Yes 5% is probably undercutting it to make my point, but I've always felt the Intel supplied numbers were some best case scenario usage).

Haswell also provided a big IPC boost over the Bridges. The improvements may have seemed minor at launch, but once you start running newer software (especially games and emulators), you definitely notice a good boost in single-threaded IPC. I believe most of that comes from Haswell's much faster L1 cache, but more programs are starting to take advantage of AVX2 as well. To me, AVX2 "feels" like the new SSE2 in that not many programs used the original AVX introduced with Sandy Bridge, but there are quite a few out there that leverage AVX2 to significantly increase performance.

Haswell to Skylake was only a modest improvement, and of course every desktop chip released since 2016 has been a rehash of Skylake. Higher clocks and more cores, basically.

ninkeo wrote on 2020-09-25, 04:44:

kolderman wrote on 2020-09-25, 02:18:

Blame Phil. And it's not for XP.

I wouldn't be so quick to blame Phil for simply showing that these are still capable machines, there are quite a lot of people out there still running 1155 on even their main daily machines. If you want to blame anyone, blame Intel for getting lazy for not innovating a whole lot in performance after this generation.

I'm indeed blaming Intel for not innovating while basically doing a lot of sockethopping without the newer sockets being much of a performance upgrade at all 😜
As a bonus, these boards have their pins on the board so these are easier to damage.

1155 still being relevant is really not much of an eyeopener tbh.

dionb wrote on 2020-09-25, 00:18:

Simple: it's still useful in a modern build. I'm typing this on my 2011-era Core i7-2600, which is still the fastest CPU I own. I'm not a huge gamer, but if I play remotely modern games (WoT...) my GPU, not my CPU is the bottleneck, even with my 2016-era GTX1060.

If I were to buy a new system, it would be a Ryzen, but given the relative shortage of 2nd hand Ryzen, whenever I build a budget system I sort of end up with So1155 or 1150. Lots of other people do too, so demand is high, ditto prices.

My old AM3 rig was sufficient to run WoT, though my GPU was indeed always the bottleneck.
These days I don't play WoT anymore though because I don't find it a fun game. At all. WoWS was a much better game but has been going down the same gutter in the last 2 years or so.

I'd also go Ryzen now.

Btw, wasn't Intel stuff expensive for years on the second hand market for a very long time? LGA775 stuff had also remained expensive even years after it had already been superseded.