Best Processor Under $500

[bunnyfubbles]

980X is perfect but you'll never find one for under 500 bucks and its not worth the 650-750 people want for them

no one said anything about the 980X

 

[aaksheytalwar]

3930k will be a lot better than Oced 2700k or 3770k Oced, even at stock. Once Oced it goes further. The difference will be enough for you to measure without any instrument or watch or benchmark. Not in games but in heavy 3d apps which use 6 cores. Going from a 4ghz 920 to 5ghz 3930k will make performance increase by up to 100%. However even a 4ghz 3930k will be about 30-60% faster at least in most med multithreaded apps. In heavy mutlithreaded apps you will see from 50-80% performance increase

But you will need to spend $300-350 on a mobo and 16 or 32gb quad ch ram preferably 1866 or faster Cas 9, but minimum 1600 MHz Cas 9 with quad channel, preferably 32gb based on your usage.

Don't go for a 980x, it is half the upgrade of an Oced 3930k

 

[bunnyfubbles]

3930k is a lot better than 980x. Get either 3930k for a med-high upgrade or 3770k for a low-med upgrade.

the CPU really isn't that much better

the best part about SB-E vs. Westmere is X79 vs. X58. You get Intel SATA6, PCIe3.0, and up to 33% more memory capacity/bandwidth with quad vs. tri.

3930k will be a lot better than Oced 2700k or 3770k Oced, even at stock. Once Oced it goes further. The difference will be enough for you to measure without any instrument or watch or benchmark. Not in games but in heavy 3d apps which use 6 cores. Going from a 4ghz 920 to 5ghz 3930k will make performance increase by up to 100%. However even a 4ghz 3930k will be about 30-60% faster at least in most med multithreaded apps. In heavy mutlithreaded apps you will see from 50-80% performance increase

But you will need to spend $300-350 on a mobo and 16 or 32gb quad ch ram preferably 1866 or faster Cas 9, but minimum 1600 MHz Cas 9 with quad channel, preferably 32gb based on your usage.

Don't go for a 980x, it is half the upgrade of an Oced 3930k

its really all up to the OP. It sounds like he could benefit from a 6 core CPU, and thus something like a used i7 980 would service him well, or even a new one if he can push his budget. But a full on 3930K upgrade is going to cost at least $800, most likely closer to $900+ if he gets new RAM as well.

and speaking of RAM I'm pretty sure single user scenarios really won't benefit much from more than DDR3-1600 with Sandy, especially SB-E with its quad channel. Recommending 1866 is kind of ridiculous IMO.

Granted, with how cheap the low profile Samsung Green stuff is, and how very easy it is to overclock, it would be pretty easy to go ahead and load up with that.

 

[tweakboy]

You btw you need RAM too lots of it at least 16GB if not 32GB , also use SSD or get one.

gl

 

[soccerballtux]

shouldn't need that much for compiling I was fine with 4GB in my Ubuntu VM?

 

[tweakboy]

If your doing Video Editing or any type of production grab a 16 threads xeon processor will use all 8 cores and 16 threads total.

If your gonna upgrade do it right. and put in 128GB of ram. ok 64GB lol

 

[skulkingghost]

@Tweakboy I like your style.

I have an SSD as my main disk now. It looks like a lot of good options. I will look into the processors listed above. I definitely want more ram, probably 24gb, but if I can save up a bit and do a nice XEON system that might be the way to go.

 

[crazymonkeyzero]

I'd suggest looking into the the Intel Xeon E5 2620, which is currently $420 at newegg (if you don't mind having a server ship) It's a hex core with hyper threading and 15mb cache, which will definitely be a plus for what you are aiming to use it for. I'd pair it up with the Asus P9X79 WS board so you can use non-ecc memory as well, and have support for up to 4 videcards.

cpu
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819117269

mobo
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131798

 

[Joseph F]

A Core i7 2600k would be faster than that Xeon.
Now, that Xeon would be awesome if you could OC it, but the BCLK is locked on them.