upgrade now or wait?

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JoseJones

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Hi, I would like to hear your thoughts or recommendations on what you would do if you had my system at this point in time nearing the end of 2014.

Everything is working and money is an issue as always so keep that in mind but, I'm wondering what I may be missing out on as far as noticeable performance increases especially with SATA as my 2009 soon to be 6-year old motherboard only has SATA 2. A new CPU would be sweet too.

MSI 790FX-GD70 (could not find on Amazon)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130223

I got the mobo, CPU and HD used from a good friend 2 years ago in 2012. I upgraded the GPU from an HIS 4870 1g to the NVidia 760, which I would put in my next system along with my PSU.

So my system now is:

MB: MSI 790FX-GD70
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 955
HD: WD Blue 500g SATA3, 16mb cache
RAM: 8g Mushkin 1600
GPU: Evga 760 SC 2g
PSU: Seasonic X-750w

I'm considering making the jump from AMD to Intel. I've never had an Intel system before.

I've been holding out for DDR4 ram at 3200, DisplayPort 1.3, SATA Express/SATA 4 etc but, it will all be way too expensive for me when it first comes out so that's my pickle - I have to wait until it becomes standard and prices come way down. So, what would you do to get the most bang for the buck? I expected to have to wait until next year any way.

Settle for a Z97 or H97 or wait until next year?

I don't over-clock anything anymore for longer life-span to save the cash so, I wonder if an H97 system would suit me fine? Would an H97 cause me any issues?

I've also been holding out for a new system before I spend the $ on an SSD and aren't we on the cusp of new SATA SSD's at 12 to 16 g/ps so, I'll hold out for that too instead of just 6 g/ps. I may have to get a WD Black 2TB HD tho since my 500g is full - I'm just waiting on killer discount prices for that.

I work with Adobe CS6 to do some design, some video work and I game.

What would you do?
 
if you aren't thinking in overclock my best bet would be a i7 4790K, Yes K, why a overclockable K version? because of the clock.. the base clock of that chip its 4.0ghz with turbo up to 4.4ghz in single core or 4.2ghz under full load 4 cores.. while the 4790 non K with a base of 3.6ghz can turbo only up to 4.0ghz and 3.8ghz under full 4 cores load..

why not an i5? by the same fact that if you are planing to keep the processor for a long time, there is no point in pick a i5 at this point where games are starting to use more threads.. so even if any 4690 can destroy your Phenom II 955 a i7 will be more beneficial in any kind of workload design,video work and other stuff you do but also by a good margin in gaming due to higher clock.. as you pointed X99 is too expensive right now, and pointless for gaming unless you can overclock due to low clock of those chips.. so a i7 4790K can give the best balance of two worlds high clock without need to overclock, 8 threads for work and gaming..

about motherboard nope, H97 wouldn't be any issue..
 
Excellent comment, Araxie. I'm glad you brought all that up because it was on my mind. I was considering going with an i5 just to save money but, wondered if it would hurt me when working on video and other design workloads etc.

So, I would be wise to get an H97 (or even next years model) with an i7k even if I don't plan on over-clocking. That is very helpful to me and will likely get-R-done when the time comes. So, thanks for that. And, I do tend to keep my systems until they die ... they get handed down to a friend or to the kids.
 
Then again, the versatility of the 4790K its unbeatable at this point of the map as you will be able to keep it for a much more long time.. I always do the same with my brothers and even with my 7 years old daughter, and yes, you will be fine with any 1150 motherboard in fact.. with last year 1150mobos you only have to be sure its updated enough to support the 4790K.. as some cheap mobos does not offer fully native support for devil's canon chips.. the rest you will be completely fine.
 
I'm planning on waiting until Q1 2015 or so. We're actually expecting a whole slew of things then: Broadwell/Skylake and NVMe are my primary interests.
 
Zangmonkey said:
I'm planning on waiting until Q1 2015 or so. We're actually expecting a whole slew of things then: Broadwell/Skylake and NVMe are my primary interests.
Click to expand...

This, if you don't want to go for the 2011 socket wait till the next round of 1150 processors.
 
I've been considering waiting to see if Skylake was all they claimed it to be. Any thoughts on specs/features and prices?
 
My current system is fairly similar age wise to yours with one or two change outs in the specs but overall fairly similar.

My system technically works well and I'm sure I could get it to last another year or two but with video work and gaming it is eating up a lot of time (about 1 hour per minute of video for 1080p renders) and it chugs along elsewhere making it less fun to work on. Especially as I primarily shoot 2.7k on my GoPro and 1080 on my SLR. With layers and effects it chugs along with previews.

I was on the fence for a few months leading up to November but ultimately I chose to upgrade now to a 5820k x99 setup as it should suit my needs quite well and last me another 5 to 6 years or more with some upgrades here and there. Depending on your overall budget and priorities there are a slew of options out there for you as others are posting that should give you many years of good use.

I have not had Intel since the P3 but they have the best all around offerings right now for my needs so I am switching back from AMD CPU's. If you can wait a little longer the upcoming models may offer benefits that matter to you and may lower some prices on the existing lineup but it is fairly unknown until people get their hands on some to test.

I have not done a lot of over clocking since I swapped my 550BE for the Thuban I have now but the speed increase of the ram may not offer as much performance as lowering the timings. I chose 2666 ram for that reason as it appears to be a more stable clock allowing for some faster timings.

My parts finish arriving Wednesday and I saved about 400 dollars on my build overall with the pre-black Friday and thanksgiving sales making this a more affordable upgrade than it would have otherwise been.
 
I would wait to see how Skylake pans out. It would be worth it (14nm), and it's allegedly right around the corner for a some-time-in-late-2015 release. Skylake is reputed to have all sorts of goodies, including DDR3 support.

OTOH, if Skylake is late and gets pushed into 2016+, I would be quite happy with a Haswell / Z97 setup. I would also consider a Broadwell setup, but only if i see the broad / ram prices drop in a big way.
 
atp1916 said:
I would wait to see how Skylake pans out. It would be worth it (14nm), and it's allegedly right around the corner for a some-time-in-late-2015 release. Skylake is reputed to have all sorts of goodies, including DDR3 support.

OTOH, if Skylake is late and gets pushed into 2016+, I would be quite happy with a Haswell / Z97 setup. I would also consider a Broadwell setup, but only if i see the broad / ram prices drop in a big way.
Click to expand...

Broadwell is supposed to offer a drop in replacement for Z97 boards (and possibly those Z87 boards that were updated to support DC refresh). So Broadwell will support DDR3, it's Skylake that will require the new 100 series chipset and most likely be DDR4 only..

Intel-Broadwell-9-Series-Power-Ratings.png
 
Weird, i thought it was Skylake that had the DDR3 support. Perhaps by then even DDR4 prices would be down to manageable levels.

That 5820K is mighty tempting every time i look at it.
 
in fact, yes, skylike will suport DDR3 and DDR4 RAM.. its part of the intel transition to fully DDR4...

http://www.techpowerup.com/205231/h...between-ddr3-and-ddr4-for-the-mainstream.html

Intel's bright idea about transitioning between DDR3 and DDR4 for mainstream client platforms is not hugely different from how its P35 Express chipset dealt with the issue. It plans to come up with a new memory module form-factor, called UniDIMM. It's a DIMM that can hold both DDR3-class and DDR4-class DRAM chips, designed for Intel's upcoming Core "Skylake" processors. "Skylake" will feature an IMC that supports both DDR3 and DDR4. With UniDIMM at their disposal, system manufacturers can source UniDIMM modules with DDR3 DRAM chips (which will be cheap, until DDR3 inventories begin drying up), and offer upgrade potential to UniDIMMs with DDR4 chips (which will get progressively cheaper). Future notebooks that ship with DDR4-UniDIMM memory will still support older DDR3-UniDIMM.
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So what all is Intel's Skylake suppose to have? So far, I see it's suppose to be 14nm. One concern I have is over the T.I.M. issues Intel has been having causing heat issues but, last I heard they were doing something to seriously resolve that issue? Last thing I need are heat issues. I don't have Air Conditioning in here so it can get 85/90 F in here.

November 26, 2014:

Intel roadmap update: Skylake on track for 2015, will debut alongside Broadwell-K
http://www.extremetech.com/computin...pdate-4g-tablets-skylake-on-track-for-h2-2015

"No More FIVR: Intel’s Fully Integrated Voltage Regulator has always been rumored to cause the company headaches. Whether or not that’s true, we do know that putting the voltage regulator next to the CPU can cause additional heat to build up on-chip, and that heat only increases as the CPU clock and voltage increase. Skylake is supposed to dump the FIVR design..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylake_(microarchitecture)

So, according ti Wiki, Skylake will be backwards compatible with DDR3 & DDR4 - is that a good thing or no?

"Other expected enhancements include PCI Express 4.0 support on the "-E" (extreme) version (for which the release is expected sometime in 2016), Thunderbolt 3.0, SATA Express, Iris Pro graphics with feature level 12.0 as the norm, and four cores as the default, with up to 128 MB of L4 eDRAM cache on certain SKUs. The Skylake line of processors is expected to retire VGA support, while supporting up to five monitors connected via HDMI, DisplayPort or Embedded DisplayPort (eDP) interfaces."

I am really happy that Intel will finally get rid of VGA. I thought Skylake was going to be 8-core instead of 4 again tho.

Skylake: "DDR4 memory, PCI Express 4.0, Thunderbolt 3.0, and SATA Express"

Will PCI Express 4.0 even matter? PCIe 3.0 sure didn't seem to matter much at all.

http://media.bestofmicro.com/V/P/391237/original/Intel-Roadmap-Post-Haswell-Rumour.png

"SATA Express functionality which should significantly enhance the transfer speeds of hard drives and SSDs." I'm hoping SATA Express will kick up to 20 instead of the current 10.

Cannonlake comes after Skylake and will be just 10nm.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannonlake
 
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I don't think we will see Skylake-K SKU's until mid-2016 though because Intel has a bunch of Broadwell-K parts they need to sell. The delay of Broadwell pushed things back 6-8 months it seems.
 
///M3 said:
I don't think we will see Skylake-K SKU's until mid-2016 though because Intel has a bunch of Broadwell-K parts they need to sell. The delay of Broadwell pushed things back 6-8 months it seems.
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Well, that's why I shared this article published just a few days ago saying that despite all the delays with Broadwell Intel is planning to release Skylake only a few months later in the 2nd half of 2015. I guess to catch up a bit.

November 26, 2014:

Intel roadmap update: Skylake on track for 2015, will debut alongside Broadwell-K
http://www.extremetech.com/computin...pdate-4g-tablets-skylake-on-track-for-h2-2015
 
Still no definitive word from Intel regarding life after Cannonlake. It's almost scary how quiet they've been past that architecture. Did Intel hit a wall? I know EUV Litho will be used for 10nm, but I'm guessing yields will drop too far or the time to create chips will rise dramatically (or both).

Usually we see 4+ new chips out into the future. Now that Broadwell is slowly becoming available, we only have 2 more generations on the roadmap.
 
I'm not really hopeful that skylake will be on time, which is why I picked up a Z97. I bet we will see interesting chipsets between broadwell and skylake but when skylake does release I'll be picking it up rather fast (this could very well last longer than the current arc).
 
If you did upgrade to ivy/haswell at least like i5 etc would be huge/very noticeable improvement hell even the i3s would be an improvement.....the x4 isn't that great I know, I have a Fx4300 build/msi 760 mobo not using anymore obviously rofl...even oced to 5ghz still a turd rofl....

this 920 eats that sucker absolutely alive no comparison rofl, will eat 8350s too rofl
 
JR88 said:
this 920 eats that sucker absolutely alive no comparison rofl, will eat 8350s too rofl
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god please save us from fanboy trolls like this one... yes, the single threaded performance of the 920 its like 15% better than the FX 8350.. however in multithreaded performance a FX8350 eat easily your beloved i7 920.. and for recent gaming its absolutely better the FX8350 I have both chips and i know how well perform both even overclocked.. I would pick any day a FX8350 over any i7 nehalem..
 
Who even cares about the 920, that's not what this thread is about.

I had a Phenom II X3 and the jump to anything Sandy Bridge or later is insane. Would highly recommend an upgrade. Intel has shown that they don't want to release anything particularly faster now that AMD is down for the count, so it's not like waiting will get you anything much better.
 
Dude stop being an AMD fanboy you noob the 8350 is over hyped as hell.. yes multithreading is better but thats still not really as useful yet....And I don't care if if you had both or not....your chip was probably a sucky/bad ocing one anyways.....the Op was talking about the X4...and I have Fx4300 all I was saying rather similar performance, but nehalem owns them, Sandy bridge was really not worth going to...yeah slight better power/AVX etc...but really wasn't worth it...
 
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Dude you are crazy to waste money on say PD 8350s/9350s etc price vs performance is a joke....and very limited boards capable of being able to actually handle one/with high OC, which is mandatory anyways of course to even compete with intel... and because of the sinlgethread/core performance being rather sucky lawl..
 
I am curious to find out about what ever happened to the claims over 12 and 16 g/ps SSD's coming out in 2014?

Have standard hard drives hit their limit or will there be performance increases there in 2015? How long 'till we have SATA 4?:

Speedy 8Gbit, 16Gbit SATA Express systems coming this year
http://www.computerworld.com/articl...it-sata-express-systems-coming-this-year.html

4T, 8T & 16T SSDs at 12Gb/s available 3rd Q of 2014

http://www.tomsitpro.com/articles/sandisk-4-tb-optimus-ssd-lightning,1-1925.html

http://www.sandisk.com/enterprise/sas-ssd/lightning-ultra-ssd/

Lightning Gen. II 12Gb/s SAS SSDs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSyAFQdrjw4
 
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November 30th 2014: PCI Express provides a much higher-capacity path to storage drives than SATA does.

"It turns out that the SSDs that ship alongside HDDs in today's computers are handcuffed in performance, limited not by the capabilities of the NVRAM chip array inside, but by the interconnect that carries the data back and forth to the system's CPU and memory."

"The vast majority of SSDs shipped to date have come installed in computers' SATA drive bays, which are designed for HDDs and connected to the motherboard via a serial cable whose signaling and data rates are governed by the Serial ATA (SATA) standard. Though it's a clean and capable interface to support an HDD's lower performance, today's pervasive SATA revision (3.0) can't keep up with the rates an SSD can deliver. Tying a screaming-fast SSD to performance-throttled SATA is like driving a Lamborghini and never leaving the slow lane."

"PCI Express: Autobahn for SSDs

Of course, where there's an obvious system bottleneck, you can bet that engineers will be working to eliminate it. And that leads us to a relatively new choice in storage options: PCI Express SSDs."

"SSDs supporting PCIe Gen 3, capable of twice the bandwidth of Gen 2 (with the same number of lanes), will be appearing soon. And PCIe's edge over current serial SATA is so compelling that SATA itself is adopting it. SATA Express, formerly referred to as SATA Revision 3.2, will support a new (and backward-compatible) connector that will not only carry SATA serial lines but two or four PCIe lanes."

http://www.cadalyst.com/hardware/workstations/interface-choice-ssds-21388

Welcome to the fast-moving world of flash connectors
http://www.theregister.co.uk/Print/2014/11/13/flash_connectors/
 
JoseJones said:
November 30th 2014: PCI Express provides a much higher-capacity path to storage drives than SATA does.

"It turns out that the SSDs that ship alongside HDDs in today's computers are handcuffed in performance, limited not by the capabilities of the NVRAM chip array inside, but by the interconnect that carries the data back and forth to the system's CPU and memory."

"The vast majority of SSDs shipped to date have come installed in computers' SATA drive bays, which are designed for HDDs and connected to the motherboard via a serial cable whose signaling and data rates are governed by the Serial ATA (SATA) standard. Though it's a clean and capable interface to support an HDD's lower performance, today's pervasive SATA revision (3.0) can't keep up with the rates an SSD can deliver. Tying a screaming-fast SSD to performance-throttled SATA is like driving a Lamborghini and never leaving the slow lane."

"PCI Express: Autobahn for SSDs

Of course, where there's an obvious system bottleneck, you can bet that engineers will be working to eliminate it. And that leads us to a relatively new choice in storage options: PCI Express SSDs."

"SSDs supporting PCIe Gen 3, capable of twice the bandwidth of Gen 2 (with the same number of lanes), will be appearing soon. And PCIe's edge over current serial SATA is so compelling that SATA itself is adopting it. SATA Express, formerly referred to as SATA Revision 3.2, will support a new (and backward-compatible) connector that will not only carry SATA serial lines but two or four PCIe lanes."
Click to expand...


This is why many of the newer motherboards, especially the x99 chipsets, have the m.2 PCIe slots for SSD. The ones on the Asus board can go up to 32 Gb/s using 4 lanes. Not all motherboards use 4 lanes or the newest generation and some "only" do 20 Gb/s.....compare to 6 Gb/s for SATA 3 and 10 Gb/s for SATAe.
Currently we just need some companies to produce new SSD in the m.2 PCIe form factor as there are only like 2 on the market and they are expensive. More competition will bring the prices down and faster increase in storage capacity.
 
Dude, grab any new'ish i5 K-edition chip with a Z-series motherboard and an SSD. It'll blow your socks off. You do not need an eight thread i7 or a fancy motherboard. A mildly overclocked i5 hangs with the big boys no problem and requires only an adjustment to the multiplier. Reaching 4.0ghz on stock volts is guaranteed with any chip. You'll pee yourself coming from a Phenom 955.

Technology is moving to power efficiency (and lower clocks) so you'll find your hardware capability will stay current for longer. Don't worry about the type of ram, just worry about the capacity. The only standards you'll miss out on is USB 3.1 and perhaps NVMe, both of which may be remedied with an add-in card.
 
MikeMurphy said:
Dude, grab any new'ish i5 K-edition chip with a Z-series motherboard and an SSD. It'll blow your socks off. You do not need an eight thread i7 or a fancy motherboard. A mildly overclocked i5 hangs with the big boys no problem and requires only an adjustment to the multiplier. Reaching 4.0ghz on stock volts is guaranteed with any chip. You'll pee yourself coming from a Phenom 955.

Technology is moving to power efficiency (and lower clocks) so you'll find your hardware capability will stay current for longer. Don't worry about the type of ram, just worry about the capacity. The only standards you'll miss out on is USB 3.1 and perhaps NVMe, both of which may be remedied with an add-in card.
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Totally agree. There are quite a few cheap 2500ks out there on Ebay for example. In fact, here's one for $150. Take that bad boy up to 4.6ghz and you've got megabang for your buck.

However, i do feel that the OP would have no issues with a Z97/4790k and then hold on to it for a couple years. As we all know, the Intel i7s hold their value extremely well.
 
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Is that 32 g/ps only for M.2 or could it potentially work for PCIe in the future? Wow, SSD's at 32 g/ps would be sweet! But, if it can reach 20 g/ps with two lanes why doesn't 4 lanes get to 40 g/ps?

17_100714.jpg


"With a 4 x PCI Express 3.0/2.0 bandwidth, M.2 supports up to 32Gbps data-transfer speeds..."

ASUS X99-E WS LGA 2011-v3 Intel X99
http://www.amazon.com/X99-E-WS-LGA2011-v3-CrossFireX-Motherboard/dp/B00OVAG02W/
 
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Do you have an application that could use this bandwidth? I mean unless this is a server I would not expect to ever achieve this type of performance outside of benchmarks.
 
Good question, I really wouldn't know as this is all new info to me but, I'm sure if it came out that there would be intensive applications that would find a way to make good use of it as they always do ... in Workstations for starters.
 
drescherjm said:
Do you have an application that could use this bandwidth? I mean unless this is a server I would not expect to ever achieve this type of performance outside of benchmarks.
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Consider that without NVMe this throughput may not be that useful because without NVMe parallel data ops are significantly hindered.

Once NVMe opens the floodgates for paralleization in data calls this bandwidth will be tremendously useful.
 
atp1916 said:
Totally agree. There are quite a few cheap 2500ks out there on Ebay for example. In fact, here's one for $150. Take that bad boy up to 4.6ghz and you've got megabang for your buck.

However, i do feel that the OP would have no issues with a Z97/4790k and then hold on to it for a couple years. As we all know, the Intel i7s hold their value extremely well.
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I would be totally careful to recomend -K CPUs especially when OP said he doesnt care for overclock. K usually tends not to have VT-d support. Sure for pure gamer it doesnt matter (unless one wants to experiment and play on linux for example) but it should be mentioned as there is "price" for getting the K
Imho it is pretty lame that Intel is disabling VT-d on K variants while nonK has it.
 
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Lordken said:
I would be totally careful to recomend -K CPUs especially when OP said he doesnt care for overclock. K usually tends not to have VT-d support. Sure for pure gamer it doesnt matter (unless one wants to experiment and play on linux for example) but it should be mentioned as there is "price" for getting the K
Imho it is pretty lame that Intel is disabling VT-d on K variants while nonK has it.
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VT-d just enables hardware pass through for virtualization. There's no difference with it on or off if you're just using virtualbox VMs or something day to day.

VT-d is generally for server virtualization if you're passing through a network adapter, raid card, or video card or other device instead of using an abstraction of it in the VM. The regular VTx is included on the k series chips and that's what generally gives you the performance benefit of hardware-enhanced virtualization.

With VT-d you can pass through a graphics card and run games in a VM... but it's sort of dumb to do that. Where I've seen it used is on xenserver type VM hosts. I can see MAYBE using it on a home server, but you're adding a lot of complexity there that you don't really need. That would probably be something for systems administrators to do in their spare time to learn the tech better.
 
Its not dumb at all. Imho it is pretty smart & neat. I mean for ppl that hate windows and like linux, today they cant game that well. Either games are not native ported to linux or wine not working that great for many games. With XEN and vga passthrough they could run WIN in VM and play their games without need to dualboot with minimal to no loss on performance.

I was fascinated when I found about this tech and wanted to test it but have only 1 GPU (mainly my mobo is only single PCIX) so even that my old rusty E8400 CPU has VT-d it is no experiments for me :(

My point being there was that there is tradeoff for K while I admit for majority of ppl it is perhaps irrelevant.
 
Personally, I'm waiting until high speed 16GB UDIMM DDR4 modules and the E5-1691 V3 are available...;)
 
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