Does it make sense to buy Haswell now?

[flexy]

I have a very ancient system (Q6600@3600) and I am itching for the longest to upgrade.

So I am looking into a 4690k on an Asrock Z97 Extreme6 which I can hopefully overclock to 4.5 or so.

Now I read Skylake is already around the corner, although possibly delayed. Obviously I feel odd now upgrading if an entire new architecture might come out late next year? (Here I simply want to ignore Broadwell, not that I see any sense in Broadwell anyway...)

On the other hand, something new is ALWAYS around the corner...so what should I do? Get a recent Haswell system and then (maybe) upgrade again once Skylake has come out?

 

[Chesebert]

I have a very ancient system (Q6600@3600) and I am itching for the longest to upgrade.

So I am looking into a 4690k on an Asrock Z97 Extreme6 which I can hopefully overclock to 4.5 or so.

Now I read Skylake is already around the corner, although possibly delayed. Obviously I feel odd now upgrading if an entire new architecture might come out late next year? (Here I simply want to ignore Broadwell, not that I see any sense in Broadwell anyway...)

On the other hand, something new is ALWAYS around the corner...so what should I do? Get a recent Haswell system and then (maybe) upgrade again once Skylake has come out?

Sorry to hijack the thread. I have similar system and was wondering the same thing.

My Q6600 is @ 3.8ghz and I am looking at either 5820k or 5960x. I have had people suggest I go with 4790k. But I have a feeling that I won't see much difference going with another quad core rather than step up to 6 or 8 cores.

I use my PC mostly for lightroom (and other related plug-ins), x264 encoding and some games (mostly hardcore rather than casual), none of which I am doing professionally.

 

[ClockHound]

Sorry to hijack the thread. I have similar system and was wondering the same thing.

My Q6600 is @ 3.8ghz and I am looking at either 5820k or 5960x. I have had people suggest I go with 4790k. But I have a feeling that I won't see much difference going with another quad core rather than step up to 6 or 8 cores.

I use my PC mostly for lightroom (and other related plug-ins), x264 encoding and some games (mostly hardcore rather than casual), none of which I am doing professionally.

Get the Hex or Octacore. For render work there is no substitute for moar, fast cores. Altho, you will see a big improvement going from your 'vintage' Q6600 to the 4790k from both IPC increases and double the threads.

Since you wring the full life out of your system, a Haswell-E 6 or 8 core system seems the best long-term choice. Enjoy.

 

[mikeymikec]

Do either of you have a specific reason to upgrade? If not, I think you're more likely to be disappointed with the result, wondering whether you should have waited, etc.

When you've got a specific reason to upgrade, and the upgrade you've researched fits the bill, you're more likely to be satisfied with what you've done, money spent etc, IMO.

 

[Chesebert]

Do either of you have a specific reason to upgrade? If not, I think you're more likely to be disappointed with the result, wondering whether you should have waited, etc.

When you've got a specific reason to upgrade, and the upgrade you've researched fits the bill, you're more likely to be satisfied with what you've done, money spent etc, IMO.

Hope to speed up Lightroom 5 (probably should upgrade to SSD first and see if that helps) and reduce the encoding time for my occasional x264 needs.

On the gaming side, I need to get that min frame rate up on some of the newer games (e.g., bioshock infinity) and would like to upgrade to a better GPU (currently on OC 5850) that will not be bottlenecked to the death by the Q6600.

 

[NTMBK]

If you have something which is too slow for you to bear (a game that won't run, a transcoding job which takes too long, whatever) then upgrade. Otherwise don't bother.

 

[cytg111]

I'd wait and see what the first incarnation of skylake brings in terms of architectural improvements and based on that decide if the desktop sku is worth waiting for.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Not sure what the OP should do since he hasn't described his usual workload.

video encoding is best enhanced by a video card, if you're running software that can do just that. So, if you're itching to upgrade, I'd look at your encode options and see if you should be targeting a specific video card rather than doing a general system upgrade.

Lightroom 5 will apparently tax no more than 6 cores on average:

https://forums.adobe.com/message/5944052

so I have my doubts as to whether or not any 12 or 16 thread CPUs will be of much use in that department. It is possible that a 5820k will still be faster than a 4790k @ same clockspeed depending on how well HT performs when running that application (if it does not do well, then the 5820k's extra physical cores will surely beat out the 4790k's dependance on HT-induced logical cores). Sadly, Lightroom 5 will gain nothing from a GPU upgrade.

Now, that being said, the overclock potential of the 5820k and its more-expensive brethren shows that you do not gain much from sticking with LGA1150. If you are not an overclocker, perhaps your best performance option is the 4790k, since it will turbo to 4.4 ghz (very close to its average max OC anyway) while the 5820k will not.

 

[Arachnotronic]

I have a very ancient system (Q6600@3600) and I am itching for the longest to upgrade.

So I am looking into a 4690k on an Asrock Z97 Extreme6 which I can hopefully overclock to 4.5 or so.

Now I read Skylake is already around the corner, although possibly delayed. Obviously I feel odd now upgrading if an entire new architecture might come out late next year? (Here I simply want to ignore Broadwell, not that I see any sense in Broadwell anyway...)

On the other hand, something new is ALWAYS around the corner...so what should I do? Get a recent Haswell system and then (maybe) upgrade again once Skylake has come out?

Get the Haswell and enjoy. I doubt we'll see Skylake-K until 2016.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Sorry to hijack the thread. I have similar system and was wondering the same thing.

My Q6600 is @ 3.8ghz and I am looking at either 5820k or 5960x. I have had people suggest I go with 4790k. But I have a feeling that I won't see much difference going with another quad core rather than step up to 6 or 8 cores.

I use my PC mostly for lightroom (and other related plug-ins), x264 encoding and some games (mostly hardcore rather than casual), none of which I am doing professionally.

Go with the 5820K. You'll get far more life out of it than from a 4C/8T Haswell, IMO, if you're willing to put in the additional upfront costs that LGA2011-3 demands.

 

[szatkus]

Skylake doesn't look interesting for gamers (even Skylake-K). It has a lot of cool features, but games won't use them at least for next few years (if ever).

 

[Charlie98]

Hope to speed up Lightroom 5 (probably should upgrade to SSD first and see if that helps) and reduce the encoding time for my occasional x264 needs.

An SSD will help overall system responsiveness, but I don't think it will help encoding speed, that's typically not a victim of slow write speed.

On the gaming side, I need to get that min frame rate up on some of the newer games (e.g., bioshock infinity) and would like to upgrade to a better GPU (currently on OC 5850) that will not be bottlenecked to the death by the Q6600.

If you upgrade your GPU now, even if it bottlenecks your Q6600, you will at least see a reasonable upgrade for the now; and if you pick the right card, you can take it with you to the next build.

 

[Denithor]

flexy - Yes, 4690K is a great option for you, should last many years (like your Q6600 has).

Chesebert - 5820/5930/5960 would be an excellent upgrade, the extra cores will SERIOUSLY help on the x264 encoding and the higher IPC will push the games much better.

 

[Gikaseixas]

Haswell is pretty awesome, go ahead and get it

 

[AtenRa]

Haswell is pretty awesome, go ahead and get it

yeap, he will not miss anything waiting for Broadwell or even Skylake. Unless he really wants a 14nm CPU and DDR4.

 

[Headfoot]

Sorry to hijack the thread. I have similar system and was wondering the same thing.

My Q6600 is @ 3.8ghz and I am looking at either 5820k or 5960x. I have had people suggest I go with 4790k. But I have a feeling that I won't see much difference going with another quad core rather than step up to 6 or 8 cores.

I use my PC mostly for lightroom (and other related plug-ins), x264 encoding and some games (mostly hardcore rather than casual), none of which I am doing professionally.

You will see a MASSIVE difference between your Q6600 and a modern Haswell quad. And an even bigger one for the 6 or 8 core, especially since you are doing encoding and gaming. Y'all vastly overestimate the Q6600. It was a good chip in 2006. It's thoroughly pounded into the dirt in anything modern by Haswell. I notice the difference in even single tab web browsing between an i5-2400 and an E8400 @ 3.8 on pages with decent quantities of javascript or flash.

 

[xthetenth]

Six months of the difference between Conroe and Haswell would be far more painful to me than six years of the difference between Haswell and Skylake, and that's generally the criteria I use.

 

[tential]

Sorry to hijack the thread. I have similar system and was wondering the same thing.

My Q6600 is @ 3.8ghz and I am looking at either 5820k or 5960x. I have had people suggest I go with 4790k. But I have a feeling that I won't see much difference going with another quad core rather than step up to 6 or 8 cores.

I use my PC mostly for lightroom (and other related plug-ins), x264 encoding and some games (mostly hardcore rather than casual), none of which I am doing professionally.

5820k no question about it if you can afford it over the 4790k. More cores for encoding! You want those tasks done ASAP so you can use your PC again for gaming. I do some encoding on my 4770k and if the 5820k had been available, I would have paid the premium because I could record and encode more HDTV.

 

[escrow4]

A 5820K hands down. Can't see why you'd bother with a quad when you can make use of a hexa core. If you'll use the box for another 5 or 6yrs, you could even consider the 5960X, running it via MCE (and stock technically) @ 3.5GHz will last for years in any task.

 

[dontsh00tmesanta]

Go oct

 

[biostud]

I chose to get a 5820K when I upgraded from a i5-750. When I upgrade I want the difference to matter. I went x2-3800+ (dual) -> i5-750 (quad) -> i7-5820K (hex)

 

[OBLAMA2009]

haswell is a pretty good upgrade from what you have and there really isnt anything coming out in the next few months, its definitely worth getting. oh and it works flawlessly with linux

 

[Arg Clin]

Upgraded from (equally ancient) PhII 965 to 4690K a few days ago and very satisfied with the performance jump. If you can find a reasonable deal on Haswell I'd say go for it.

 

[PliotronX]

Don't worry about what's around the corner. I went from a Q6600 G0 at 3.6GHz to a 4670k at 4.6GHz ... and an SSD, the whole works. Worth. Every. Penny.

 

[poohbear]

Is there a noticeable difference between a 4 core with HT & full on 8 core? Doesnt the system just see 8 threads either way?