so whats the latest?

[sdadept]

I'm getting ready to build a new rig and was wondering what the very latest proc and chipset were for intel. Is there a new proc version coming out soon or am I good buying it all now?

 

[colinstu]

What's your budget? Using it for gaming? General tasks? Heavier workloads?

New platform / microarchitectures aren't coming out till Q1-Q2 of 2013, so buying something now should be fine.

The current sockets right now are LGA2011 and LGA1155. LGA2011 is for X79 chipset and is costly (but does give you 6 core/12 thread chip options). LGA1155 will be replaced with LGA1150 in 2013. P67/Z68 were the old premium chipsets for 1155, Z77 is the new premium chipset.

 

[sdadept]

pretty much unlimited budget. I'm looking to put together a very powerful rig. It will be used for heavy software development, testing and enterprise architecture work so lots of virtual machines running at once. I intend to use all SSD's, 32gb of ram (for the VM's), a normal video card and my existing 2 2600x1600 dell 30" monitors.

 

[colinstu]

Unlimited eh?

Go with a i7-3930K or i7-3960X, X79 mobo with 8 DDR3 slots, get 8x8GB sticks = 64GB of ram. Closed loop water cooling solution and clock that puppy up to 4.5-4.7GHz. Use Samsung 830's for SSDs (they come in multiple sizes).

Edit: People are probably going to react violently to this suggestion and tell you to get a 3570K or 3770K and just stick with a Z77 mobo and 4x8GB of ram.

 

[psyclist]

ACTING VIOLENTLY! (throws chair at old lady) but 3770k might do you just fine in all seriousness though, IVB-E will be coming out for the 2011 socket as well still.

 

[colinstu]

ACTING VIOLENTLY! (throws chair at old lady)

hah

but 3770k might do you just fine in all seriousness though,

It would be a good choice of course. But with no budget cap... "why not" to double the ram and 2 more cores. that's the only reasoning behind my suggestion. And compiling software + VMs LOVE resources.

IVB-E will be coming out for the 2011 socket as well still.

I originally thought there'd be IB-E, but intel has never said anything officially about it. I'm (and other forum members) are starting to have second thoughts if it's really gonna happen. However the difference between SB and IB is pretty minimal, and when it comes to thermals... even worse (thanks to intel using TIM instead of soldering the IHS to the die. but Intel might do this properly with IB-E). It's a wait and see kinda game, but I say go ahead with the build.

EDIT: just a note: LGA1155 Processors with the k suffix don't feature VT-D. which might be questionably important depending on what kind of VM work you're doing. They all feature VT-x.

 

[JJ Johnson]

It will be used for heavy software development, testing and enterprise architecture work so lots of virtual machines running at once.

If the VMs are for testbeds, build one or more inexpensive servers that you can trash as often as you like. Makes no sense to run those on your development station. IMO.

 

[grambo]

Truly unlimited budget? I would go dual Xeon socket 2011 CPUs, 64GB-128GB RAM, 512GB SSD, possibly workstation GPU depending on needs. Good call on 3x 3011 displays

 

[xivlia]

lga 1155? but i still prefer 2011 extremes.

 

[sdadept]

JJ, I prefer to use vmware workstation for development testing as I can make use of multiple snapshots, reverts, etc. Flipping between them is pretty easy as well.

I think I'm going to go with the extreme edition chips. That gives me 4 extra logicals and appears to be the highest clockable of them all.

 

[silent-circuit]

EEs are never worth it, have fun throwing money away.

 

[Meyithi]

EEs are never worth it, have fun throwing money away.

Yeah, we don't need Ferrari's, jewellery or designer clothes, they are pretty much all pointless.

Having said that, being able to compile kernels in under a minute on a desktop platform rocks.

 

[bwang]

Yeah, we don't need Ferrari's, jewellery or designer clothes, they are pretty much all pointless.

Like a Ferrari, if you're buying an Extreme Edition you're probably doing it for the kicks, or to show off how rich you are, not because it offers additional functionality.
If you don't game, you might seriously consider a dual LGA2011 platform. Compiling scales across arbitrarily many cores (and if you get the Z9PE-D8 WS or SR-X you can game too!).