Is it Worth upgrading to Ivy Bridge or wait for Haswell??

[HURRIC4NE]

this is a real dilemma... i have no idea what to do....

[BallaTheFeared]

Neither do we since we have no idea what you have now /\

[taltamir]

Is it Worth upgrading to Ivy Bridge or wait for Haswell??

Why not do both?
Ivy bridge now, Haswell when it is out

[HURRIC4NE]

im running on a i5 650 on socket 1156 on a H57 platform which i believe is from Clarkdale ?

[HURRIC4NE]

Originally Posted by taltamir

Why not do both?
Ivy bridge now, Haswell when it is out

well im running a asus 7850 and i was also wondering if pci 3.0 would compliment my video card......

besides i really dont wanna spend money... i gots to be tight on it lol

[BallaTheFeared]

No, not really there isn't much difference between a OC 7850 and an OC 470 and I don't suffer much even running x8 2.0 lanes.

[Dkcode]

Originally Posted by taltamir

Why not do both?
Ivy bridge now, Haswell when it is out

+1

[Smoblikat]

Originally Posted by taltamir

Why not do both?
Ivy bridge now, Haswell when it is out

Because thats a waste of money.

[taltamir]

Originally Posted by Smoblikat

Because thats a waste of money.

Its not a waste if you spend a lot of hours on the computer. There is both the boost to your productivity and a boost to your electric bill.

And you can ebay your used parts to recover cost.

[Denithor]

Originally Posted by HURRIC4NE

im running on a i5 650 on socket 1156 on a H57 platform which i believe is from Clarkdale ?

I'm more or less in the same boat as you with an i3 550 (3.2GHz, 2C/4T, no Turbo unlike your chip). I was planning on Ivy for my first quad but after everything I've read about Haswell I'm thinking of just waiting it out.

My i3 is adequate for most of the gaming I do these days, the only time I really stress it at all is for encoding the occasional DVD and I usually just queue those up in handbrake and let it run overnight.

It's really too bad they aren't launching the Ivy duals until late 2012, if they were coming out now I would probably snag one of those for the IPC improvement, power savings and QuickSync. But oh well...

[HURRIC4NE]

Originally Posted by Denithor

I'm more or less in the same boat as you with an i3 550 (3.2GHz, 2C/4T, no Turbo unlike your chip). I was planning on Ivy for my first quad but after everything I've read about Haswell I'm thinking of just waiting it out.

My i3 is adequate for most of the gaming I do these days, the only time I really stress it at all is for encoding the occasional DVD and I usually just queue those up in handbrake and let it run overnight.

It's really too bad they aren't launching the Ivy duals until late 2012, if they were coming out now I would probably snag one of those for the IPC improvement, power savings and QuickSync. But oh well...

the turbo feature is basically OC your cpu.... its pretty useless if you ask me.. have you OC'd it ?

[BrightCandle]

I seem to be the only person that still considers that its not worth upgrading unless you can get nearly 2x the performance. Going from any model of i7 to IB wont net you that (although SB-E will in the limited circumstance of 6 core capable programs).

[HURRIC4NE]

Originally Posted by BrightCandle

I seem to be the only person that still considers that its not worth upgrading unless you can get nearly 2x the performance. Going from any model of i7 to IB wont net you that (although SB-E will in the limited circumstance of 6 core capable programs).

i do sort of agree with you.. although the price for those 6 core processors are damn near more than expensive.... i have a feeling that haswell wouldnt be much of a "performance gain" as it should be since its being released in June 2013 (from what i've heard) however it does say that haswell has 8 core ability which (GODDAMN!) is more than enough... but if its running at the goddamn old Intel i7 960 speeds (2+ghz)... its gonna stink unless we spend our hardworking sweat and blood into OC-ing those stinkers

ivy bridge doesnt feel worth upgrading too since the only main advantage of it is the PCI 3.0 seriously who cares about their power consumption on a PC ? its like 5-20 dollars more which is friggin CANDY MONEY! but also that is unless you are using a laptop where it could be considered quite usefull....

so unless ivy bridge (2011 socket if possible) can show me a 8 core processor with 16 threads running well above 3.3ghz+.... i don't see myself upgrading.

[Denithor]

Originally Posted by HURRIC4NE

the turbo feature is basically OC your cpu.... its pretty useless if you ask me.. have you OC'd it ?

Yeah, I know what the turbo does, it's nice but not necessary, especially on dual-core processors (it only ramps up when you're running a single core, which seldom happens because of background tasks - and most programs these days can take advantage of two cores). Turbo is much more viable on quads because if a program is heavily using two cores and the other two are idle, the cpu will in essence turn off those cores and divert the extra power into speeding up the loaded cores. Without affecting the power consumption and/or thermal generation.

I haven't OC'd my i3 for the simple reason that it's in an HTPC with a measly 300W PSU (SSF PSU - or I would have a more typical wattage unit in there). And that's actually the reason I wish the IB duals were launching immediately - lower power on the cpu side would allow me to put in more GPU within the same power envelope. Oh, well...

And regarding Haswell, you need to do some further reading. Looks like it has potential to be as much of a game-changer as the original Core 2 series were versus the older Netburst architecture.

[alyarb]

I've built a few i3-540 machines for my broke gamer friends and they all did 4.4-4.6 GHz with 1.3v, but I backed all of them down to 4.2 GHz for 24/7. 99% of the time they are idle and running at ~2 ghz. That should last almost any gamer until Haswell.

You have an opportunity for a 35-45% boost in single threaded performance without altering your hardware configuration, and you are asking people to talk you into ivy?

[HURRIC4NE]

Originally Posted by alyarb

I've built a few i3-540 machines for my broke gamer friends and they all did 4.4-4.6 GHz with 1.3v, but I backed all of them down to 4.2 GHz for 24/7. 99% of the time they are idle and running at ~2 ghz. That should last almost any gamer until Haswell.

You have an opportunity for a 35-45% boost in single threaded performance without altering your hardware configuration, and you are asking people to talk you into ivy?

im running a i5 650 which is supposed to be quite good when OC'd but come on lets face the facts..... im running a 2 year old cpu on a 2 year old motherboard that has almost NO OC CAPABILITY CAUSE ITS FACTORYWARE im stuck at 3.5 ghz (which isnt that bad actually)

but i would love an 8 core processor since faster encoding speeds

[alyarb]

get the motherboard model number...

[HURRIC4NE]

Originally Posted by alyarb

get the motherboard model number...

i tried quite a lot... the only way i could go furthur was using SetFSB.. which didnt let me change any voltages at all and so i was stuck on 3.6 ghz...

[alyarb]

Leave it at 3.6 then. Your system is fast enough for what you do. If you spend $400 upgrading to ivy bridge you will be completely disappointed. If you buy a 6 or 8-core chip thinking it'll make your games faster you'll be even more disappointed.

[HURRIC4NE]

Originally Posted by alyarb

Leave it at 3.6 then. Your system is fast enough for what you do. If you spend $400 upgrading to ivy bridge you will be completely disappointed. If you buy a 6 or 8-core chip thinking it'll make your games faster you'll be even more disappointed.

well i consider myself a Novice Overclocker with somewhat-pro tools.. i stuck a h100 on that cpu and i BARELY ever hit 40C even while playing BF3......

[alyarb]

that's because the H100 is a good cooler. but if you can't overclock in the BIOS, then don't bother.

This board is pretty cheap and will get you to 4.2-4.6 GHz:

http://www.amazon.com/ASRock-LGA1156.../dp/B003BTV920

But personally I think your PC is fast enough and you should wait for Haswell. On the other hand, $65 is a small price to pay for a 40% boost while you wait for Haswell. It depends on exactly what you are trying to improve.

[HURRIC4NE]

Originally Posted by alyarb

that's because the H100 is a good cooler. but if you can't overclock in the BIOS, then don't bother.

This board is pretty cheap and will get you to 4.2-4.6 GHz:

http://www.amazon.com/ASRock-LGA1156.../dp/B003BTV920

But personally I think your PC is fast enough and you should wait for Haswell. On the other hand, $65 is a small price to pay for a 40% boost while you wait for Haswell. It depends on exactly what you are trying to improve.

i have to say that is a really nice board... but i really dont wanna buy 4 gigs of extra ram and stuff... besides i could really use a Sata 3 port and a USB 3.0 since im being bottlenecked by my PC atm

[alyarb]

use the RAM you have. the whole point is that this is a swap to enable OCing, not a migration to an overpriced enthusiast platform.

if you *are* low on RAM and don't own an SSD, do it now while prices are at the floor.

Here is the official page for the board. There is no USB 3.0 or SATA III. It is a very basic H55 board, and that's why it's only $60, but it can very cheaply give you very substantial general purpose performance gains relative to a stock-clocked IVB, which is why you started this thread.

http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?model=h55m-le

[BenchPress]

Definitely wait for Haswell. Ivy Bridge doesn't offer anything new for desktops. Haswell brings twice the SIMD throughput with AVX2, and much more efficient multi-threading with TSX. Both of these are revolutionary in their own right.

Ivy Bridge is evolutionary at best and only potentially interesting for ultrabooks, and even there Haswell will be much more efficient. Ivy Bridge is basically Sandy Bridge on an immature 22 nm process.

[Don Karnage]

Haswell is going to need a new motherboard LGA 1150