Climbing the price/performance curve? How steep do you go?

[VirtualLarry]

I know that many of you in this forum, have chosen to go with a 4790K, or a 5820K. But probably almost as many, have i3 rigs, or even Core2Quad or Phenom II X4/X6 rigs.

What I'm wondering is, when is it appropriate to "go big, or go home" with PC parts.

I suppose budget has a lot to do with it, but, like GPUs, sometimes, it's better to save up and invest in "bigger", due to better longer-term "bang for buck".

I know that I got sort of a reputation for "buying crap", just because I started "investing" in lower-power devices, which are also necessarily lower on the performance spectrum due to low TDP budget.

But I will say that I got pretty good longevity out of my Q9300 rigs, which I only really replaced with my G3258 rigs, because I wanted something new to play with and overclock, and I didn't want a 4790K. (Partly because of price and budget, and partly because of personal reasons.) Also because of power-consumption reasons.

The secret is, I only paid $100 + tax for those Q9300 CPUs. I bought them when they were on fire-sale at Microcenter. I think that my most expensive CPU that I've ever purchased, in modern times, was my Q6600 CPUs, which were $200 + tax at MC on another hot deal. (I think I paid $250 for a used Pentium II 300 SL2W8, which was worth it, because those were overclockable to 450Mhz really easy, with an Abit BX board. A PII-450 was like $800 back then.)

But you have to temper the "bang for buck", and constantly choosing to go "up the ladder" (just a little more money, for more performance, and even a little bit more, for even a little bit more, etc.), with trying to be realistic about budget and how much computer you really need to achieve your tasks.

I mean, not everyone needs an X99 / 5960X rig. Especially not for a mom-box. (Ok, except for Escrow4's mom.)

I mean, budget permitting, I could use as much compute power as my room cooling and AC power can handle, since I do distributed computing. Something that can chew up as many cores and GPUs that you can throw at it.

But my budget is limited. So I go for what's cheap, 99% of the time.

If I could learn to save more easily, rather than just jumping on whatever hot deal pops up, and set a goal for higher-end hardware, I might be happier with my PC.

But I'm doing great on a budget with what I have. (The two 7950 cards for $130 ea. new were a great boost to my DC output.)

Just wondering what other people's thoughts and philosophies were on price, performance, "climbing the ladder", and longevity.

Edit: Let's not make this thread about my personal choices, thanks. I want to hear about your choices and philosophy behind them.

 

[Morgoth780]

I think your choices are bad and you should feel bad /s.

Anyway, OT.

I basically only use my rig for gaming. I bought a 3570k two years ago, and I'm pretty happy with that choice, as I haven't felt a need to upgrade at all, even though the total cost of mobo + cpu + cooler was around $350.

In terms of GPU, I'm still using my Sapphire 7950 I got for $310. Sure, by price/performance standards today that's pretty awful (there are cheaper 290x's) but it's served me very well. I've been planning on upgrading to a 300 series card for a while, but, considering all I play is Counterstrike at the moment, I don't think that's necessary. But Witcher 3...

Anyway, imo, I don't think that spending more than say $500 on a GPU is a bad idea. I mean, if you're buying at launch, you're basically getting a flagship (or a cut-down version) card, which should last many years, especially depending on the type of games you play.

In terms of CPU, I think it's hard to justify not buying an i5 for gaming at this point. I mean, a good OC'ing board for an 8350 tend to be around $150 (correct me if I'm wrong?), buy a decent Z97 board can be had for about $100, and an i5 is 'only' $200 - certainly not chump change, but I don't think it's that much more than an 8350 that it's prohibitively expensive. Plus, you could always get a locked i5. Just, imo, an i5 is the best choice for gaming now, especially since there doesn't seem to be a need to upgrade for at least the foreseeable future.

My biggest problem with X99 was the price of DDR4. Sure, $400 for an Intel 6-core sounds great, but then you end up spending at least a couple hundred bucks on RAM, and then with a good mobo it ended up being closer to $1k. Now there seems to be a lot more variety in what's available, and I'd maybe even consider X99 if I were building now...

This was pretty rambly.

But uh...

I think ~$1000 is still the sweet spot for a gaming rig. Certainly can be done for a bit less what with <$250 R9 290s, and if you don't care about overclocking you could get a locked i5. So maybe at least $800 is good in my opinion? Somewhere in there. Just at this point in time I find it hard to justify buying a card that isn't an R9 290 because of how absurdly cheap they are.

I get pretty repetitive.

 

[Soulkeeper]

I purchased my relatively low price APU because:
1) I wanted to try AMD again
2) I wanted something that beat/matched my current Q9450 at lower power consumption/temps
3) bulldozer wasn't impressive

if there was a $300 APU/cpu with more than 4 cpu cores and preferably no GPU i'd have gotten it.
unfortunately if choosing AMD if you want the latest and greatest they have it requires the APU platform and compromises
I use my system as a workstation/server/desktop, when waiting 1hr+ for code to compile or transcoding to complete is pretty much the only time I wish I had more cores/cache (my old system or something else). The standard desktop stuff runs fine.

tbh i've had this system for awhile now, likely the longest i've went without upgrading in 15yrs
I just can't get excited enough to pull the trigger on anything out right now. Maybe i'm just changing

 

[greenhawk]

I find I perfer to look at the question from a few angles and only buying when they line up. Upgrading to have something new I grew out of a while back (ie: got burnt).

Buying something as it was cool or special, mostly over that (support / repairs / compatibility) as it just leaves me with me pulling my hair out. (ie: I have a nice dual opteron system in the cupboard, but I think the board is dead, and replacements are not worth the performance it gives).

So for me the item needs to be main stream, it needs to be listed as "mid ranged" (ie: not budget where $5 more gets 40% more performance) or high end (where a 50% price increase gets 10% more performance). As this is wasted power for me most of the time as the computer just does not get used that heavily any more (not like the pre-Ghz days).

Cost needs to be also in the "main stream" range ($200-$350/$400) as anymore than that and it was more than my "spare" money each week. I have other life bills so can not just go and spend 6 months of my possible savings on a few nice shinny devices / toys, especially ones that will be near worthless in 12 months time.

That all being said, the only time I go against the ideas is when something breaks, and when that happens, it is annoying given the time I put into part selection. I find a forced upgrade hurts when short of money a few weeks/months later while the computer sits gathering dust due to life commitments. But then the opposite is true if I do a downgrade and find myself with time to use the computer and have to spend 20 minutes readjusting the settings on each game I want to play. Side grades I can live with, but it feels like a lot of effort and hassles finding a replacement part (second hand). IE: a motherboard swap can be just too much work to end up with the same as what I started with. Though this rush upgrade is made worse for me as I am in a rural area. I can either wait for delivery (a few days, even though it should be overnight), or buy locally (if they have stock) and pay a 50-100% markup.

Personally, really looking forward to the day of lego style computer building.

 

[Ramses]

I've discovered that buying high end is boring. It's fast, it's cool, it's neat to have current stuff, but after a month or so, boring. Nowhere to go, no need to tweak, it does everything perfectly. Yawn. I have standards and expectations sure, but I never even look at the really high end until it's old. No interest, no need.

If there is an underdog, or something that does a few things really really well cheaply, etc, etc, I'm there. FX was a perfect example. Hell of a lot of fun, but even it turned out to be so fast it was mundane. I went through two cases, two PSU's, three or four GPU's, two CPU coolers and two motherboards till I was finally happy with it, and it was great. I sold the guts of it off last week. Using an i7 laptop which is a marvel of 17" 1080p dGPU SSD+1tb drive computing, and soulless. It's a tool.

Computing isn't what it once was to me.

 

[richaron]

I don't mind spending 'big' money on my PC, but I prefer to hold out for something I really want, and/or spend $ on parts which don't depreciate too fast...

Currently rocking an a8-7600 main system. Decidedly low range. But my case & fans cost ~$400(au); it also holds 2*SSDs, 4*3TB Reds, and 16G 2133 RAM all circa 2012 in Aus.

Waiting on Star Citizen &/or PCIe SSDs before I need to upgrade again.

 

[ShintaiDK]

i5 is quite a sweetspot in my eyes. And it shows in benchmarks as well over time.

 

[Shehriazad]

Usually I am very budget oriented unless something comes out that is a true gamechanger.

Like if a CPU/GPU comes out that trashes its' last generation by 50% (which nowadays doesn't really happen anymore)...then I'll pay the price.

But I wouldn't ever think about getting the newest Intel CPU at 1000+++$ each for some measly 10-20% gains.

Which often means that I skip a generation since then I get a 50% performance plus...and generally a bit cheaper...unfortunately even that doesn't seem to hold true anymore it seems...but that is an entirely different issue. xD

If DDR4 had brought the massive gains that it SHOULD have brought..I would have switched instantly...but it's just DDR2->DDR3 all over again.

 

[cbn]

I know that many of you in this forum, have chosen to go with a 4790K, or a 5820K. But probably almost as many, have i3 rigs, or even Core2Quad or Phenom II X4/X6 rigs.

What I'm wondering is, when is it appropriate to "go big, or go home" with PC parts.

I suppose budget has a lot to do with it, but, like GPUs, sometimes, it's better to save up and invest in "bigger", due to better longer-term "bang for buck".

I know that I got sort of a reputation for "buying crap", just because I started "investing" in lower-power devices, which are also necessarily lower on the performance spectrum due to low TDP budget.

But I will say that I got pretty good longevity out of my Q9300 rigs, which I only really replaced with my G3258 rigs, because I wanted something new to play with and overclock, and I didn't want a 4790K. (Partly because of price and budget, and partly because of personal reasons.) Also because of power-consumption reasons.

The secret is, I only paid $100 + tax for those Q9300 CPUs. I bought them when they were on fire-sale at Microcenter. I think that my most expensive CPU that I've ever purchased, in modern times, was my Q6600 CPUs, which were $200 + tax at MC on another hot deal. (I think I paid $250 for a used Pentium II 300 SL2W8, which was worth it, because those were overclockable to 450Mhz really easy, with an Abit BX board. A PII-450 was like $800 back then.)

But you have to temper the "bang for buck", and constantly choosing to go "up the ladder" (just a little more money, for more performance, and even a little bit more, for even a little bit more, etc.), with trying to be realistic about budget and how much computer you really need to achieve your tasks.

I mean, not everyone needs an X99 / 5960X rig. Especially not for a mom-box. (Ok, except for Escrow4's mom.)

I mean, budget permitting, I could use as much compute power as my room cooling and AC power can handle, since I do distributed computing. Something that can chew up as many cores and GPUs that you can throw at it.

But my budget is limited. So I go for what's cheap, 99% of the time.

If I could learn to save more easily, rather than just jumping on whatever hot deal pops up, and set a goal for higher-end hardware, I might be happier with my PC.

But I'm doing great on a budget with what I have. (The two 7950 cards for $130 ea. new were a great boost to my DC output.)

Just wondering what other people's thoughts and philosophies were on price, performance, "climbing the ladder", and longevity.

Edit: Let's not make this thread about my personal choices, thanks. I want to hear about your choices and philosophy behind them.

I'm definitely a budget guy, but I have been wondering if there might be a lot of value in the X99 platform. This assuming we eventually see surplus Haswell-E Xeons drop in price like we saw with the LGA 1366 Xeons. Maybe at some point 1.5+ years into the future a X99 on clearance becomes a good purchase for someone wanting to use one of those future surplus Xeons?

With that mentioned, I still have a lot of research to do on the various price trends. Worst case scenario I would hope used i7-5820K, Xeon E5-1620 V3 (4T/8T @ 3.5/3.6 with 10MB cache, 140 watt TDP) or Xeon E5-1630 V3 (4T/8T @ 3.7/3.8 with 10MB cache, 140 watt TDP) processors drop enough in price for me to use on a potential clearance sale X99.

P.S. With Asrock's MCE or ASUS's 5 way optimization there is even potential to raise all the cores of a Xeon from base clock to full turbo. This means the top E5 Xeon could have 18 Haswell-E cores at 3.6 GHz (this assuming the boards VRMs can handle the power delivery and there is adequate cooling for the cpu).

 

[Yuriman]

My devices are as follows:

Athlon X2 PC in the living room, used rarely, was free
A8 6600K in a PC I'm in the process of selling to a friend - ~$400
Haswell Celeron Chromebook (11+ hours of battery life) (~$170)
Core2Duo T8300 Macbook -> Windows that my wife uses
Ivy Bridge i5 desktop for me
Haswell i3 desktop for my wife
iPad Mini
2x Moto X
Nexus 7 2012 (RIP)

I tend to avoid spending more than $5-700 on my "main rig", though parts left over from older builds don't usually count in my budgeting. By having an i5 desktop, I'm able to have oddball devices like Chromebooks that lack full functionality but have a cheap price tag and amazing battery life, which is my priority in things I carry around with me. I often remote into my desktop (which idles at ~35w) to run Windows software and do heavy lifting.

The Haswell i3 is probably overkill for my wife's main PC but if all else were the same, an i3 vs a Celeron didn't make too much difference in the overall budget, and it makes the occasional gaming (when we're not swamped with classes and work) more enjoyable. I got the APU to play around with a while back but decided to sell it rather than the i3, in part because of the rather high cost of FM2 ITX motherboards (just ITX's our desktops), and in part because the i3 is faster and uses less power, and I have a 7850 in her machine making the iGPU redundant.

The only thing we use the iPad for is keeping in touch with her Apple-fanatic family. My Nexus 7 hard bricked a few months ago after a bad flash, and I find myself feeling like I don't really need a tablet, between the phones, laptops and desktops.

EDIT: I agree with others that higher-end stuff gets rather boring, but I'm finding my life full of other things lately, so that's not a bad thing.

 

[GOLI@TH]

I dont like to purchase brand new setups because i'm a kind of person that love to maximizing potential of something cheap, older and underdog.

The only brand new system that i bought was my first computer AMD Duron 900Mhz in 2003, if i'm not mistaken.
I was fooled by the store that convinced me about Duron just the same with Athlon, and it was later proven wrong.
At least the performance difference from Athlon was not too wide.
Since then i was always bought second hand components such as cpu and gpu, which i overclocked near its maximum limit. That is my way to narrowing the performance gap from its newer successor.

Due to limited budget, even on 2nd hand components, i always choose AMD based systems.
Duron, Athlons, Semprons, Athlon XP, Athlon64, X2, Phenom X3, and X4 which i ever bought until this year.
I had tried Intel based system but not a performace class one, only a E5200, and that's it.
Just say no steep upgrades, only back and forth in mainstream class.

My steep progress in term of performance upgrades just happened this year. I decided to upgrade my system to something fast but considerably cheap.
My first option was FX6300 or 1060T or perhaps FX 8210 if able. I determined to build a cheap 6 core based system.
Fortunately somebody in nearby classifieds offered an 32 nm 6C/12T Xeon including Intel board just with $200 pricetag. Darn cheap in my area.
After did a small research i found that this Xeon performs awesome in various tests despite its age.
And one thing that i like, this cpu really a good overclocker for my standard.
So i bought it along with 2nd hand 7950.

After short test here and there, i put a wide grin in my face. I took a great decision by buying this old system.
It scores high in every tests that i throw in, far better compared to my Phenom II.
It overclocks easily to 4Ghz+, which i dreamt for so long. It feels snappy in term of real life applications.
This Xeon also haven't lost its prestige yet.
The last but not least, i have high expectation that this Xeon 5650 still have a long serving years ahead.

In short, i just made a HUGE steep upgrades.

 

[Arachnotronic]

I would consider the most intensive use of my PC to be for games, so I like to have a system platform in place to allow me to upgrade my GPUs as often as I need to.

What I like to do is to buy the best performance that I can afford, but at the same time I won't pay excessive amounts for minimal gain.

For example, when I put together my primary computer, I chose an X79 + i7 4930K. To me this represented very high end CPU performance that would last me for years (the earliest I am even thinking of upgrading would be to Skylake-E, and that's only if the platform-level improvements are huge over X79), and I had a platform that would allow me to upgrade the other components (like GPU, storage, etc.) for years to come.

I would never have paid $1k for the 4960X because not only is $1k a lot of money, but the incremental performance improvement I'd have gotten over a $500 4930K would NOT be worth it. I would rather get the 4930K, save the $500 for 3+ years down the line, and get something at that time that will last me as long.

Now, if I were building a new system today from a baseline of something 3+ years old, I would be torn between the very high bang-for-the-buck 5820K and the 5960X. The 5960X would give me two more cores than the 5820K (which could easily mean an additional 2 years or so of longevity over the 5820K), and I'd get more PCIe lanes. The 5820K on the other hand would still last a VERY long time and it's much, much cheaper upfront. The 28 PCIe lanes would irk me, but reviews show that having 8x/8x in an SLI setup isn't a show-stopper by any stretch so I'd deal with it.

The worst perf/$ of the HSW-E lineup is the 5930K, and that is something I wouldn't buy if I were building today.

 

[Charlie98]

i5 is quite a sweetspot in my eyes. And it shows in benchmarks as well over time.

...and still so. I not only have a 2500K in my desktop, I recently rebuilt my budget rig (First G3220, then G3258, and now...) into an i5 gaming rig, but rather than upgrade to Haswell, I just used a leftover Z68 board and sourced a used 2500K... and spent a little more for the GPU (GTX970.)

I have always considered myself a mid-range builder and user, but I like quality, name-brand components, and absolute capability. My business rig has my older GTX760... completely unnecessary, the i5's iGPU would suffice, but I like having adequate hardware even if it's to fool around with benches. The upside is I also have a backup machine (or component) if one of the others fails.

I don't have to have the newest components or architecture, but I try to upgrade components here or there as money and time allow... I recently upgraded my Pentium CPU in my HTPC to an i3... again, completely unnecessary, but, hey, it was a good deal and a nice upgrade without having to pull the mobo or spend a bunch of money on newer tech... and it gave me a reason to open it up, hose it out, and fiddle with it.

I'm a little sad, though. My recent round of upgrades have left me with 3 very capable, perhaps over-capable (for my purposes) machines. I have nothing else to do, now, without splitting hairs. 16GB RAM? I barely need the 8GB I have now. GPUs are solid. PSUs are solid. Cases rock. ...and I don't need a 4th PC... :\

 

[KingFatty]

I try to go for the feeling of:

"I'm awesome and my computer is awesome!"

1) get the best thing/component you can, and feel good every single time you use it. Like a nice fancy mobo, then you get a mid-range CPU and just expect to upgrade later. So you always know that part of your computer is/was the very best you could get at the time.

2) get the best value, by waiting for a super deal and pounce on it. So you know it's not the best, but you feel great every time you use it because it's also the best, in terms of being a great value. Consider depreciation too, which can cause some pain later down the road. Like video cards depreciate worse than motherboards or CPUs etc., so maybe apply this for video cards?

3) get a cheap/value part, because it won't matter. Not sure here, maybe you can find a cheap case fan filter or something, where it's to give character to the system, and you feel good because that part brings value from its diversity, and doesn't matter if it's a good value or the best

So I approach system building like this. I probably will do this soon with my next system, splurging on the motherboard most likely.

But important to feel good about your choices, and just think in terms of how you can mix and match with your budget in mind. You can get the best "thing" while still targeting a lower-priced component. For example, it may only be $100 difference between a good value mobo and the "best" mobo, which is easier to accomplish compared to video cards where the good value video card may be many hundreds of dollars difference compared to the best video card (and the comparatively similar depreciation curve).

 

[SteveGrabowski]

Since gaming performance is what's important to me, it's hard to go too budget. I go budget on the parts that don't matter a whole lot. Like a $50 motherboard (GA-H81M-DS2V), $60 RAM (8GB G.Skill Value RAM DDR3 1600), a $30 case (Antec GX500). I managed to pick up a really nice power supply, Antec Neo Eco 620C, for $23 also, though the power supply does matter a lot I feel. If I was going straight price to performance I probably would have bought a $200 i5-4590 for the CPU, but I wanted hyperthreading since a few games are starting to show gains from more than 4 virtual cores. So I went for the cheapest hyperthreaded Intel LGA1150 chip, the Xeon E3-1231v3 at $253 (I guess the Xeon E3-1230v3 would be technically the cheapest, but I was willing to pay $3 more for better temperatures and a 100MHz clock boost). I don't mind overspending a bit on the CPU, since current trends have them being relevant for a long time. As for GPU, I definitely overspent and got a GTX 970 for $340. The price to performance choice would have been a $260 Sapphire Tri-X R9 290, and in retrospect I maybe should have gone with it instead and pocketed the extra $80. Though I did get Far Cry 4 with my 970, which softens the blow a bit since it's an incredible game I probably would have bought for full price anyways.

 

[Ratman6161]

I could care less about games so lets get that out there up front. But, my opinion is that timing is everything. My last two main PC's at home have been a Core 2 Quad 6600 which was replaced by an i7-2600k which is still in use. I consider these to both be extremely well timed purchases.

I got the the C2Q 6600 when it had been out a few months and the 6700 had taken over as the top mainstream Intel CPU. More core 2 Quads (up to the 9500 I think?) came and went but were not significantly faster for what I did. The initial "I" cpu's came and went and I observed from the sidelines....until Sandy Bridge came along.

Still I bided my time for a while ( a few months) while the prices came down and finally bought the 2600K. Now I've seen Ivy Bridge come and go and then Haswell arrive and probably soon to go and I'm not finding my 2600K slow. Humming along at 4.4 Ghz its probably as fast as a non-overclocked newer chip.

Where does that lead? I guess I'm getting at the best buy is (at least CPU+motherboard wise - cant speak to you gamers and your megabuck video cards) usually going to be to buy something at the upper end of main stream and then skip a couple of generations. For me that ended up being the i7. Though not a gamer, everything I've read says that had a gamer bought the i5-2500K at that time, he would still be in good shape today too.

 

[jhu]

I use my computer mainly for rendering and as a file server. Ideally I would have a low power system as a file server (powered on 24/7) and a more powerful system as the renderer (wake on LAN). But I'm too lazy so all duties are performed by the FX 8350 (which replaced a 1090T) since I already had an AM3+ board. If I were to make a new build I'd have gone with some cheapo Atom/Kabini for the file server and a 5820k + Titan Z for the renderer.

 

[Yuriman]

I should add, I also have an Asus RT-N66U router that I use as a file server. It has USB ports, and you can plug in external hard drives and access them remotely via the router. I was tired of trying $20-$40 junk routers and now that I've coughed up $120 for a nice one, I'm not fiddling with it anymore, and it replaces the functionality of several other devices to boot.

 

[escrow4]

Life is too short for cheapo parts. I put a $350 non K 4770 in my porn box and just under $700 5930K in my gaming box. Not US prices. Because I can. Why would I buy a poky peasant i5 when I can get a CPU with some real balls? :whiste:

 

[toyota]

yeah I just dont understand the logic some people use. if you are building a real gaming pc then build one that is worth a crap not gimped from day one. saving 100-200 bucks up front to go with a silly AMD cpu or an i3 or locked i5 just boggles my mind. you will likely keep your cpu for at least 3 years so get one that can handle any gpu now and allow for future gpu upgrades. plus its not like you lose all that extra money you spent as you will have parts worth more when you go to sale them down the road for your next build.

 

[VirtualLarry]

yeah I just dont understand the logic some people use. if you are building a real gaming pc then build one that is worth a crap not gimped from day one. saving 100-200 bucks up front to go with a silly AMD cpu or an i3 or locked i5 just boggles my mind.

See, that's where I'm kind of at. The restrictions are primarily budgetary, and involve me wanting some sort of instant gratification. If I can afford an i3 today, and a locked i5 a month from now, I would purchase the i3 today. But then, there's the "ladder climb" thing again, i3 to locked i5 isn't a huge jump, compared to the jump from a cheap under-$100 G3258 + mobo combo to the i3, and then there's the next step up, to an unlocked i5, which would be likely preferable, but then I've got to go and ditch my H81 micro-ATX mobo, and go for a Z97, and an aftermarket cooler (212 EVO).

I've debated upgrading my G3258 @ 3.8, to a locked i3 Haswell @ 3.6-3.8, but the higher clock speeds, it's almost the same price as a locked i5. And who wants a locked CPU? Not nearly as much fun.

I don't really do much gaming, not nearly as much as I did when I was younger. I primarily do DC, and web browsing. Not even much movie watching.

For web browsing, the G3258 OCed is amazingly snappy, along with a SATA6G SSD. I plugged in a 7950, for possible gaming sometime, but also because of its superior double-precision floating-point calcs for distributed-computing projects.

Thought about altcoin mining too. Seems like that's kind of in a slump right now.

OTOH, I paid under $600 for this rig, including a 240GB SSD and a 3TB HDD.

I even entertained the idea of buying a Z97 mobo that supports 5th-gen Core CPUs, M.2, and SATA-Express, just to be "future-proof", and keeping the G3258 for now and trying to OC it higher than 3.8 with a "proper" overclocking board.

 

[Stuka87]

My line is between an unlocked i5 and unlocked i7. The i7 just doesn't offer much over the i5 for my use case (gaming) to justify an extra $100. Been very happy with my 4690K @4.5 though. Way faster than the 965BE @4.0 that it replaced.

I would have gladly went AMD if they offered something that competed and didn't consume twice the power. But unfortunately they don't.

 

[toyota]

just think back when I built my 2500k how silly it would have been to go Phenom X6 at that time. I would have had a much crappier experience for 3 years for saving a measly 150 bucks up front. plus I really lost nothing more in the end as sold the 2500k and mobo for much more than anyone would have given for Phenom 2 and mobo last year. that is the same as getting a 4790k over the 8350 now as down the road the 4790k will retain a lot more of its value. factor in the 50 bucks or so difference in power consumption with that and you save almost nothing over 3 years and have a slightly worse experience during that time.

 

[Ramses]

just think back when I built my 2500k how silly it would have been to go Phenom X6 at that time. I would have had a much crappier experience for 3 years for saving a measly 150 bucks up front. plus I really lost nothing more in the end as sold the 2500k and mobo for much more than anyone would have given for Phenom 2 and mobo last year. that is the same as getting a 4790k over the 8350 now as down the road the 4790k will retain a lot more of its value. factor in the 50 bucks or so difference in power consumption with that and you save almost nothing over 3 years and have a slightly worse experience during that time.

Nothing wrong with that if performance and $ are the important points.
The only gripe I have is when people (aggressively) insist that it's the only goal that can be. I had an awesome experience with the much maligned 9590, and I expect the 4790K to be as well. Just less interesting.

 

[VirtualLarry]

just think back when I built my 2500k how silly it would have been to go Phenom X6 at that time. I would have had a much crappier experience for 3 years for saving a measly 150 bucks up front.

Funny you should mention that, because I did just that; purchased a 1045T rather than a 2600K, because the AM3+ offered greater platform features than Z77. (More SATA6G ports, primarily.) And it wasn't even an up-front savings, with MC combos, it was roughly the same cost.

To be sure, some people responded that for distributed-computing, the six real cores / real FPUs were better than the four cores of the 2500K. But it wasn't better at gaming.

My old thread, debating the X6 1045T versus 2500K:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2220113&highlight=990fx+extreme4