Can you recommend an Intel CPU and Platform?

[BIGTom-]

Greetings to all,

I am seeking advice and recommendations on a machine upgrade that I would like to complete in the near future.

Currently, I am running with system with Core2Duo Wolfdale.

I do a considerate amount of media transcoding, seldom compiling, and light gaming. I am torn between i7-3770k, i7-3930k, or wait for IB-E and weighing the Upfront cost vs Performance vs Annual Energy Cost. I plan to stay with the new platform for as long as I can. The machine will have 24/7 uptime and be under load often.

Can someone please make up my mind?

Thanks!

[ShintaiDK]

Depends what kind of transcoding, you might be able to use quicksync.

[Piroko]

If you've been doing fine on a Wolfdale until now I would consider the i7-3770k. The 3930k is a lot more expensive and not in every program faster (more cores, but slightly lower clock - also, no quicksync).

[Intel17]

Originally Posted by BIGTom-

Greetings to all,

I am seeking advice and recommendations on a machine upgrade that I would like to complete in the near future.

Currently, I am running with system with Core2Duo Wolfdale.

I do a considerate amount of media transcoding, seldom compiling, and light gaming. I am torn between i7-3770k, i7-3930k, or wait for IB-E and weighing the Upfront cost vs Performance vs Annual Energy Cost. I plan to stay with the new platform for as long as I can. The machine will have 24/7 uptime and be under load often.

Can someone please make up my mind?

Thanks!

i7 3770K is the winner. You won't regret it.

[Klunt Bumskrint]

Originally Posted by Intel17

i7 3770K is the winner. You won't regret it.

Easy winner

[Arkaign]

Originally Posted by Klunt Bumskrint

Easy winner

Yep. 39xx is great, but so not worth the huge extra cost to 99% of people.

[SocketF]

If you don't overclock and don't need the iGPU:

Xeon 1230v2

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819117286

If you can wait, next gen. comes in June.

[Pilum]

Originally Posted by BIGTom-

Currently, I am running with system with Core2Duo Wolfdale.

I do a considerate amount of media transcoding, seldom compiling, and light gaming. I am torn between i7-3770k, i7-3930k, or wait for IB-E and weighing the Upfront cost vs Performance vs Annual Energy Cost. I plan to stay with the new platform for as long as I can. The machine will have 24/7 uptime and be under load often.

If you can wait a few months, wait for the Haswell successor to the 3770.

Haswell will introduce AVX2, which can handle 256-bit integer instructions. Software transcoders using SSE2+ will be able to benefit from that; per-core speedups of 50-75% compared to IVB should be possible. Of course this depends on whether your software will be adapted to AVX2. For encoders which are ported, the HSW 4-core will very likely outperform any SNB-E/IVB-E.

The other new features like FMA and TSX will also turn out useful over a longer system lifetime, as more software will grow to support them.

Also, HSW is supposed be even more energy efficient than IVB, which seems to be signficant in your case.

If you can't wait, I'd recommend a 3770(K), saving the money over a socket 2011 build and then doing a "quick" upgrade in 1-2 years to one of the Haswell successors.

[moonbogg]

For most things the 3770k will be a little faster for less money. If you are transcoding the 3930k might be quite a lot faster, but you can look at benchmarks comparing the two for the kind of stuff you will be doing, then decide if the increased cost is worth it to you. I can tell you that for gaming the 3770k makes a lot more sense and is actually a bit faster. I can also tell you that my 3930k hauls all the ass in the world for converting video.

EDIT: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5771/t...3770k-review/6

This compared the two in a variety of apps. Scroll down for video transcoding. On first pass they are almost equal. On second pass the 3930k pulls ahead quite a lot. Gaming will depend on your GPU head room. 3770k will only be faster if you have two high end GPUs and play at lower res, like 1920x1080.

[Piroko]

Originally Posted by Pilum

Haswell will introduce AVX2, which can handle 256-bit integer instructions. Software transcoders using SSE2+ will be able to benefit from that; per-core speedups of 50-75% compared to IVB should be possible. Of course this depends on whether your software will be adapted to AVX2. For encoders which are ported, the HSW 4-core will very likely outperform any SNB-E/IVB-E.

Don't quote me on it if I'm wrong, but most encoding should have to do very little with 256 bit wide calculations (and especially integer). There's a reason why GPUs excel at video encoding and these are 32/64dp bit for the most part.

[crashtech]

Originally Posted by SocketF

If you don't overclock and don't need the iGPU:

Xeon 1230v2

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819117286

If you can wait, next gen. comes in June.

I've been eying this CPU for a while now. Lots of bang for the buck there. If I break down and buy something soon it will be the E3-1230V2.

[coffeejunkee]

Compared to a Core2duo even a 3570K will give a big boost in encoding time, especially with a slight overclock. The 3770K will be even faster with it's extra virtual cores. Obviously the 3930K will be the fastest with its 2 extra cores, but if its worth the extra money for the cpu and motherboard is the question. Looking purely at price/performance/power it's not, but this is always the case with high-end hardware. You also pay quite a lot more for motherboard-features like quad channel memory and lots of pci-e lanes, stuff you don't really need. It might last you a generation longer though.

Personally I think it's better to get good midrange hardware and upgrade more often, recouping the cost by selling the old hardware. If that doesn't appeal to you I would probably get 3930K. Or if you can wait, see what Haswell brings to the table. Performance is probably not going to be that much better, 10% or so compared to IB (which is still nice) but it's likely to do very good on power consumption, especially idle which is important for 24/7 use.