3930K to 5930K

[RussianSensation]

This is a very salient point. If I stayed on the GTX 770 4GBs, I would be GPU bottlenecked regardless.. As I mentioned previously, I don't really have any intention of upgrading my GPUs unless they become an obstacle to getting the frame rates and IQ that I want, and so far, I don't see any game on the horizon that can cause this to happen..

I would drop 1K on GPUs if I thought they were worth the money. The GTX 780s last year to me were not worth the 1200 dollars I would have paid for them if I had bought them as the performance increase over the GTX 770 wasn't big enough.

I am not talking about last year, 780s vs. 770s. I am saying since you yourself acknowledge that 770s will be a bottleneck, why would you upgrade the CPU platform instead of the GPUs? Even if 880s are not 30 % faster, in 12-18 months something will be 30-50% faster. By that time we are already on the heels of Broadwell-E.

 

[moonbogg]

I might. It depends on my GPU config and resolution at that time. If I'm running two GTX 870's and 1440p@120hz, then CPU matters for the high FPS but I think GPU is going to be the real pain at that point. An extra 20fps may or may not be worth it, assuming the GPU headroom is there.

 

[RussianSensation]

I might. It depends on my GPU config and resolution at that time. If I'm running two GTX 870's and 1440p@120hz, then CPU matters for the high FPS but I think GPU is going to be the real pain at that point. An extra 20fps may or may not be worth it, assuming the GPU headroom is there.

Right now is a very tricky time to pick the best CPU option for short vs. long term. We are now seeing companies such as Ubisoft gimping next generation games by downgrading the PC version or providing a totally unoptimized turd. For example, Watch Dogs doesn't have next gen graphics, eats VRAM without having best in-game textures and doesn't truly benefit enough from 6 dedicated Intel cores despite supposedly targeting PS4/XB1 (if it did, you would expect 25-40% increase over 4770K). OTOH, Dice is rehashing the same engine for BF:H and a lot EA's games will support Mantle which lifts the CPU bottleneck:

http://techreport.com/news/26709/amd-lauds-mantle-gains-in-plants-vs-zombies

In the short term I feel that a quad Skylake OC will beat any OC X99 HW-E chip. But if someone intends to keep the CPU for 3-4 years, I'd rather go HW-E. Thing is even 3930 @ 4.4 is still a great gaming CPU. If you are aiming at 2x 870s, it is better to stick with X79 and get 880s. If you can keep the same CPU platform longer, doesn't that justify why you spent extra $ on 3930 in the first place? ) The real justification for upgrading to X99 is cuz enthusiasts are bored and it's a unique platform since not many users have it. Some pay extra for having a more exclusive PC setup.

 

[UaVaj]

a gamer point of view with 770 SLI on a single 1440p. you will gain very little gaming performance upgrading to going to haswell-e.

a workstation point of view. haswell-e is a serious consideration.