Future PC Upgrade (Skylake or Zen)

[JoeRambo]

6700K and not waiting for AMD unicorns is the best advice. You are doing yourself disservice by sticking to1366 platform. I went from oced 920 to 4770K and it was amazing difference.

Xeon for 100$ is an option i have considered as well, but it won't improve single threaded performance that much and I was already spoiled by 4.7+ SB at work

 

[happy medium]

By next year, Skylake-E will arrive for HEDT

Will they use the same 2011 V3 motherboards as Haswell-E?

 

[ShintaiDK]

Will they use the same 2011 V3 motherboards as Haswell-E?

No. Only Broadwell-E will.

Skylake-E will be...LGA2011-5? Or something.

 

[ultimatebob]

The only time we should be discussing Zen as a potential buy is when it is out and on shelves.

Yeah, we really shouldn't be discussing the purchase of any AMD Zen processors until we have real third party benchmarks for them. At this point, we don't know when (or even if) they will be released, let alone how fast they'll be.

 

[Arachnotronic]

No. Only Broadwell-E will.

Skylake-E will be...LGA2011-5? Or something.

Yeah, it'll be an LGA2011-something

 

[Arachnotronic]

Well for sure Intel have so much excessive capacity and is perhaps even going to fab for apple because they are on a capex edge. Another incentive in favor of dumping prices. So i agree in that sense.

Proof of your claim that Intel has "so much excessive capacity"?

If zen is 40% higher ipc than excavator (and thats fairly certain as its an easy target) and its high clock (very uncertain given ss process so far) and perf w is acceptable for desktop. IF. If all that happens - and its not something i expect btw - then we are in a good situation as consumers.

Yeah, Haswell-level perf/clock is an "easy target"

 

[poohbear]

Hasn't AMD publicly stated a few years back that they're not competing with Intel anymore in the highend CPU segment? I recall they explicitly stated they don't have the resources to do that & they're focusing on low end & mid range product lines. So this talk of zen beating out anything Intel has is totally misconstrued. Just buy a skylake CPU & be confident zen won't come even close.

 

[RussianSensation]

Forget about getting a new platform, upgrade your current one! There are some awesome Xeons for LGA1366, which go really cheap on eBay at the moment- take a look at this thread (over 100 pages of people overclocking Xeons): http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2335636

A Xeon X5670 has 6 cores, a higher clock speed than your 930, 50% more cache, and runs cooler. (It's a 32nm chip, while your 930 is a 45nm chip.) Drop one of those into your motherboard, overclock it, and forget about upgrading for a few years.

EDIT: And you can get it for $100 on eBay: http://www.ebay.com/itm/INTEL-XEON-...BV7-2-93GHz-/221896421559?hash=item33aa0eb0b7

Unless there is a specific reason for mb upgrade i would go for the 6 core xenon 100 usd solution. Fantastic value and will last for years.
The satisfaction of plugging a much better cpu in a socket is fantastic !

Excellent advice. I agree. Perfect CPU stop-gap to get him the required CPU performance to upgrade to a 290/970 or similar.

With a GPU as low end as the 7950 by today's standards, there is no way that an i5 6600K/i7 6700K is a good return on investment against a 4.4-4.5Ghz overclocked 32nm Xeon, even from that era. Sure a platform upgrade is nice but 7950 isn't exactly a 980Ti/970 SLI to benefit that much from an i7 6700K.

Also, more modern games benefit from HT which means i5 6600K isn't even a smart choice to keep for 4-5 years which increases the OP's platform upgrade cost but may leave no room in his budget to actually upgrade that 7950 should he do a full platform upgrade right now.

I don't feel I need an upgrade atm, though I am annoyed at the features of the old MB, but I am really curious as to what
you guys think my best options in the near future are.

What features do you care the most about on the newer motherboards? As of right now USB 3.1 is nice on paper but most USB flash drives and external HDDs still do not support this format.

While direct transfer speeds for SSDs/M.2 drives will be far superior on the newer platforms, the biggest benefit to an SSD is actually its quick access time.

With your CPU, you could either overclock it to 3.8-4.2Ghz or sell it and get a Xeon as was suggested by others earlier. With your i7 930 / Xeon OCed to 3.9-4.5Ghz, you can easily upgrade your GPU to an R9 290/290X/970/390 and enjoy a lot more performance for another 1.5-2 years. By that time you can determine if you are ready for a full platform upgrade and benchmarks for Zen/Cannonlake should be widely available by 2H of 2017.

In terms of bang for the buck, if I were in your shoes, I would go Xeon for $100 off e-bay, sell your existing 930 and 7950 and upgrade the GPU to a used 290/290X or wait patiently for a deal this holiday on a 970/390. There have already been deals on the 390 as low as $225-250 so it's bound to happen again most likely.

So, what do you guys think? Should I wait for Zen, potentially cannon, or just wait for new skylake models and just upgrade then?

If you cannot afford to buy a new GPU fairly soon along with a Skylake platform upgrade, then no point in upgrading to a Skylake + DDR4 platform as that would cost you at least $500 ($230 i5 6600K to $350 i7 6700K + $120 for 16GB DDR4 + $150 for a good mobo = $500-620 US).

As advised earlier, you'd get a lot more benefit in gaming if you sell the 930 and go 32nm Xeon -> overclock to 4.4Ghz+ and sell the 7950, while picking up a 290/290X/970/390, etc. If you don't want to purchase a Xeon, overclocking the 930 to 4Ghz and getting a used 290 (or similar) is still an awesome deal to hold you over until you have $ to do a full-platform upgrade later on. With a 930 @ 4Ghz or Xeon @ 4.4Ghz+, you'll be mostly GPU limited in most games which is why buying a Skylake, especially i5 6600k, is not going to get you the appropriate return on investment without a GPU swap as well.

Skylake is a fresh new architecture and it's here now. By next year, Skylake-E will arrive for HEDT.

I thought with all the delays, it's BW-E in February-March 2016, and SKL-E is likely going to be shifted to Q1 2017? It's hard to keep track with all info on delays and some conflicting info.

 

[Arachnotronic]

I thought with all the delays, it's BW-E in February-March 2016, and SKL-E is likely going to be shifted to Q1 2017? It's hard to keep track with all info on delays and some conflicting info.

My bad, brain fart on my part. 1H 2017 for Skylake-E, not "next year."