Upgrade or not? Platform switch.

T

tcclaviger

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Platform Selection
Looking for some opinions based on objective reason, not subjective prefference :p

Currently I have an Crosshair 5 Formula and 8150 at 5015mhz. It performs well for what I want to do.

I am in a position where I can trade, straight up for a 2500k and a Maximus 4 Extreme.

As a secondary alternative, I can spend $100 more, and upgrade to an i7 3820 and a Rampage 4 Formula. Since the price is basically even, but the 2011 socket has a much better upgrade path, the 2600/2700 are not even a consideration currently. Ivy Bridge also doesn't in the slightest interest me since the 3820 is equal or better than the 3770 and IGP is wasted on me.

The video setup is crossfire 6870s. Basically the PC is used for gaming, MS office productivity, and occasionally (maybe 10 times month) video compression. I will be skipping the 6xx and 7xxx series of cards completely.

All involved CPUs will be pushed to their maximum stable OC under a custom loop, so OC vs non-OC doesn't really matter.

Suggestions on the best fit for my use? Stay with what I have, swap to 2500k, or jump up to a 3820?
 
If you're gaming, I'd trade for the 2500k. I can't see the extra PCIe lanes making a huge difference with 6870's, so I wouldn't worry too much about X79. And you don't encode enough for the 8150 to make up the difference. A 4Ghz SB chip will outperform a 5Ghz BD in gaming. That's kind of subjective, but I could like you to sites with pretty graphs that are going to tell you the same thing.
 
If you can swap even for the Intel or go Rampage for $100 more, I'd say jump on it! Especially if you're using dual video cards and this is a mostly gaming PC.
 
Thanks for the replies.

Kirbyri, the subjective part is exactly why I find the decision difficult. I have looked through all the reviews, and rarely do I see either the i5 or the 8150 clearly beating the other by more than a small margin, thus, my indecision.
 
Yeah you're not really going to see Sandy Bridge run off and leave a FX til you get in the really high resolutions and/or multiple GPU's. That's why I really haven't swapped over to Intel because I can duplicate all the 5870 benchmarks I see on other sites using a Nehalem or Sandy Bridge proc and I'll never run multiple monitors and doubt I'll ever run more than 1 GPU. So I wouldn't say it would be worth it if you had to shell out a lot of cash but for an even swap, ya can't really pass that up unless you just don't want to deal with having to reinstall everything again. I don't blame you there cause that is a huge pain in the balls.
 
Do the LGA 2011 support Quick Sync at all? Thought the IGP was a requirement for that. That will have a huge disadvantage for the LGA 2011 specifically for encoding.
 
No, it does not support Quick Sync. However, not everyone wants to do Quick Sync encoding, especially since it doesn't have the same level of quality as traditional CPU encoding.

@ OP, I would personally go the 3820/Rampage IV Formula route, although I'm not a big fan of the Formula. If I get an x79 board, it better have all 8 RAM slots :p
 
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