Should I upgrade? You decide.

[Arachnotronic]

Haha yeah, I remember selling my i7 860 for about $180...good times. Mobo resale values are garbage, though, but that's to be expected.

 

[Don Karnage]

I had a 760 at 4.3ghz and it was a beast. Overclock more and wait for haswell

 

[BenchPress]

Why is everyone waiting for Haswell? People always wait wait wait. What if Haswell turns out to be not worth the wait?

Haswell gives us:

* Twice the SIMD integer throughput.
* Fused multiply-add support.
* Twice the cache bandwidth to support the above.
* Vector gather support (parallel memory read access).
* Hardware transactional memory.
* Hardware lock elision.

Basically they're including GPU technology into the CPU cores to provide a massive increase in vector performance, and they make multiple cores work together much more efficiently and with less effort for developers to exploit it.

It's been a long time since anything this revolutionary has been announced, all at once. So yes, it's well worth waiting for Haswell.

 

[mikeymikec]

I do it so I always have a top of the line computer. I find the time I put into building, tweaking, researching stuff therapeutic.

Are you sure it's not a "size of your wang" thing?

Even if I had a large disposable amount of income, I'd feel pretty silly after spending time replacing the main guts of my computer to find that most games ran perfectly well before and I get maybe 10fps more on one.

Considering that I do PC spec'ing and building as part of my living and I do enjoy it to a certain extent, doing significant work on my own PC is a major project.

If I had said income I'd probably upgrade my Phenom II rig to Sandy Bridge for better power efficiency, less noise and more performance, an SSD as well, and I'd be as happy as a pig in its favourite habitat 🙂 However, I'm fairly happy with my setup.

 

[thestrangebrew1]

I went from an i5 750 to an i72700k. Worth the upgrade for what I use my rig for, and I got lucky because I was able to unload the whole i5 rig to my bro-in-law at a great price. I think I sold that thing for $400 including a pair of 5770s and we're both happy.

I pretty much upgrade when I have the itch, not necessarily because I want the latest and greatest. And I've made it a point to make sure I can get coin for my older stuff prior to ordering the newer so it helps soften the blow, considering how much I've spent this year alone.

 

[moonbogg]

Haswell gives us:

* Twice the SIMD integer throughput.
* Fused multiply-add support.
* Twice the cache bandwidth to support the above.
* Vector gather support (parallel memory read access).
* Hardware transactional memory.
* Hardware lock elision.

Basically they're including GPU technology into the CPU cores to provide a massive increase in vector performance, and they make multiple cores work together much more efficiently and with less effort for developers to exploit it.

It's been a long time since anything this revolutionary has been announced, all at once. So yes, it's well worth waiting for Haswell.

This sounds like all the hype around the E8400 with SSE4 and similar CPU hype. Sure, new tech is being released on the chip, but by the time apps, especially games, actually use those new techs, Haswell will be 2 generations old.
The only thing we have to hope for with Haswell is more IPC, and given how fast things are now, its very unlikely that haswell will be another Sandy Bridge-like explosion in IPC performance. Huge jumps like that just don't take place with each new arch.

 

[borisvodofsky]

This sounds like all the hype around the E8400 with SSE4 and similar CPU hype. Sure, new tech is being released on the chip, but by the time apps, especially games, actually use those new techs, Haswell will be 2 generations old.
The only thing we have to hope for with Haswell is more IPC, and given how fast things are now, its very unlikely that haswell will be another Sandy Bridge-like explosion in IPC performance. Huge jumps like that just don't take place with each new arch.

HAHAHA, you're very correct, most of that stuff is hype, IPC increase of 10-15% at most. 😉 if they can get the clocks up on the OC, then we're gonna see some nice gains, but the techno mumbo is pretty worthless to the end user.

 

[Magic Carpet]

HAHAHA, you're very correct, most of that stuff is hype, IPC increase of 10-15% at most. 😉 if they can get the clocks up on the OC, then we're gonna see some nice gains, but the techno mumbo is pretty worthless to the end user.

Conroe to Haswell should be a logical upgrade for my main rig. The sooner it comes out, the better 😛

 

[KAZANI]

A "top of the line" requirement doesn't quite chime with a SB upgrade option. Quit beating around the bush and admit to yourself that the only reason for this poll is to get enough feedback to support scratching that irresistible itch every PC tinkerer gets at one point or another.

 

[Batmeat]

A "top of the line" requirement doesn't quite chime with a SB upgrade option. Quit beating around the bush and admit to yourself that the only reason for this poll is to get enough feedback to support scratching that irresistible itch every PC tinkerer gets at one point or another.

Top of the line has never been a requirement, I just like have a top notch computer. That being said, the only thing I've been doing lately is word processing, and Diablo 3. I think what I'll do is wait for Haswell. It's not to far away, unless it gets delayed.

thanks to you all for helping me make my mind up.😉