Should I wait for the intel haswell processor to build a gaming rig?

[Don Karnage]

I really do not understand all the hype with IB. We are only talking about a Tick with 5-7% performnce gains. Clearly Intel put the most effort into power savings and the IGP, which no one will use for gaming anyways.

$220 for a CPU that is only slightly better than a $179 CPU that has been out for 16 months now is not a great deal in my opinion. Especially since Haswell will wipe the floor with IB in less than a year.

7% better is still 7%. Id still upgrade even if it was 2%

 

[Makaveli]

7% better is still 7%. Id still upgrade even if it was 2%

You obviously like wasting money.

2% increase is only something you will notice on a benchmark.

 

[SickBeast]

I was thinking about upgrading my DDR3 1333 to 1600 ram to gain 2%.

 

[aaksheytalwar]

I was thinking about upgrading my DDR3 1333 to 1600 ram to gain 2%.

But ram is cheap. CPUs are not. If you can upgrade for a 2% difference you should go Fr 3960x plus 32gb ddr3 2133 cas 7 plus 7970 quad cf or 680 quad sli and nothing less

 

[Don Karnage]

You obviously like wasting money.

2% increase is only something you will notice on a benchmark.

I do

I was thinking about upgrading my DDR3 1333 to 1600 ram to gain 2%.

I'm waiting to upgrade from DDR3 2133 to DDR3 2800 :biggrin:

 

[rgallant]

ivyb\z77 will be so cheap for me , because I passed on sb, for not having pci-e 3.0 and having 50% less pci-e 2.0 lanes. seemed like a downgrade to me.
ib has 2 x the bandwidth to the cpu, for future cards.

so ib\z77 is the lowest platform for me with the min. baseline features I want.
cpu\mb this year and cards next year or when feel I need the upgrade.

-could be wrong but I can't see haswell playing games better than ib\z77 or 3820\x79's with 2 x high end cards W\C so why wait a year?

 

[aaksheytalwar]

Haswell will be a lot better with future games,

 

[Don Karnage]

Haswell will be a lot better with future games,

And you know this how? Haswell is looking to feature a lot better power savings and Igp. Its clock for clock increases look to be minimal

 

[Borealis7]

the thing is, Haswell will be on different socket, which means IVB is "end of the line" for socket 1155 and thus no upgrade path.
i'm facing the same issue. my C2D is getting old.

 

[ChippyUK]

the thing is, Haswell will be on different socket, which means IVB is "end of the line" for socket 1155 and thus no upgrade path.
i'm facing the same issue. my C2D is getting old.

You can still keep the same memory as the chipset will support DDR3. I always think to myself a motherboard + HS/Fan which isn't that expensive so why hold yourself back? You can always ebay it.

For me it's just the hassle with taking it out and replacing it. Takes a while but it's good to get it cleaned inside anyway

 

[Minot]

I'm just glad Don is getting his IB and Z77 board and reporting his findings. I think a lot of us are waiting for fellow enthusiasts to start posting personal experiences before we decide to jump for an IB or wait until Haswell.

 

[BenchPress]

And you know this how? Haswell is looking to feature a lot better power savings and Igp. Its clock for clock increases look to be minimal

Actually its clock-for-clock performance will be phenomenal. AVX2 doubles the SIMD throughput, both for integer and floating-point workloads. Furthermore, it features gather instructions, which can access memory up to eight times faster. It's a feature borrowed from supercomputers. And last but not least it provides vector equivalents of every major scalar instruction, making it highly suitable for SPMD processing. This allows every vector lane to be regarded as a core, turning a quad-core into a 64-core CPU for these kind of workloads!

To feed this beast they'll obviously have to double the cache bandwidth. And the multi-core efficiency will also take a massive leap with Hardware Transactional Memory, and Lock Elision.

I hope Haswell makes it into a console, because it would revolutionize gaming as we know it.

 

[Edrick]

Actually its clock-for-clock performance will be phenomenal. AVX2 doubles the SIMD throughput, both for integer and floating-point workloads. Furthermore, it features gather instructions, which can access memory up to eight times faster. It's a feature borrowed from supercomputers. And last but not least it provides vector equivalents of every major scalar instruction, making it highly suitable for SPMD processing. This allows every vector lane to be regarded as a core, turning a quad-core into a 64-core CPU for these kind of workloads!

To feed this beast they'll obviously have to double the cache bandwidth. And the multi-core efficiency will also take a massive leap with Hardware Transactional Memory, and Lock Elision.

I hope Haswell makes it into a console, because it would revolutionize gaming as we know it.

This!

I do not know why people keep thinking Haswell will not offer any IGP gains.

 

[tonyjones]

Get IVY BRIDGE!

 

[tweakboy]

Look, Haswell is going to be 5 to 15 percent faster then Ivy bridge. I promise you, you wont notice a difference; your going to wait a year for something you wont tell a difference when playing games. Come to my studio , My 2007 processor kicks butt every game, BF3 60fps capped, sometimes goes to 50's and jumps back up.. Crysis 2 , 60fps capped most of time. On a music project avg is 35 to 40 CPU usage. Now I need a SSD so all that stuff will load even faster. You don't need a i7 or a sandy or ivy or haswel or broadway to play todays games @ 1080p with AA at 60fps. People on here don't understand what a small role the CPU plays in FPS, all that is done with the video card, and as long as you have a quad your set. heck I'm set still. 5 years. If you don't have a quad then get a Sandy 2600k , if you have a quad, stick with it and save up for a SSD or new video card in future. gl

 

[aaksheytalwar]

I promise you that haswell will be as big a jump as q9650 to i5 750 or i7 860 or nearly as big at least. It will enhance the overall experience of the user in more than just benchmarks which would be just 10-20% better clock to clock. But the smoothness and snappiness will reach a different level. It is like comparing 3200 a64 Winchester to Venice except several times the difference. And people won't know about Winchester and Venice because they are old and not many people might remember using each in similar rigs but I have done that and it was a big difference and but benchmarks showed both with the same fps

 

[BenchPress]

Look, Haswell is going to be 5 to 15 percent faster then Ivy bridge.

Please take a look at the AVX2 and TSX technology links provided above. They can provided way higher performance than a 5-15 % increase.

I promise you, you wont notice a difference...

Probably not with today's games, no. But next year new consoles will be launched, and the new generation of games that come with it will push your CPU to the limits.

People on here don't understand what a small role the CPU plays in FPS, all that is done with the video card, and as long as you have a quad your set.

You say the CPU plays a small role yet you do recommend a quad-core? :\

You probably recommended a dual-core a couple years back, since "you won't notice a difference". Anyone following that advice now regrets it because now you and everyone else recommends a quad-core. Likewise, I think you need to realize that Haswell is still a year out, and games that benefit from its technology simply don't exist yet. But they'll exist soon enough, and you don't want to be stuck with an Ivy Bridge CPU and motherboard when that happens.

Your advice is only an argument why one should not upgrade to Ivy Bridge. You won't notice the difference compared to Sandy Bridge or even older than that. Instead, wait for something that does make a difference...

...heck I'm set still. 5 years.

I absolutely agree that there hasn't been a whole lot of progress in the last several years since the first quad-cores. It has all been small evolutionary steps. And Ivy Bridge is yet another one of those evolutionary steps.

But Haswell is different. It takes a revolutionary leap ahead. AVX2 is the first SIMD extension that is really suitable for high throughput SPMD processing. And TSX enables more aggressive fine-grained multi-threading that uses all your cores.

 

[Smartazz]

In all seriousness get the Ivy Bridge 3570K when it comes out. My overclocked 2500K is a beast in gaming, so I'd expect the 3570K to be at least a little better.

 

[Edrick]

Look, Haswell is going to be 5 to 15 percent faster then Ivy bridge.

Proof? Oh wait, you never have any proof for the sillyness that comes out of your mouth.

 

[cytg111]

I wanted to build a gaming rig within the next 6 months but I have read that the intel haswell processor will be coming out in the spring of 2013. Now I figure that it would be worth it to wait to build my gaming rig until the haswell processor comes out. That way I would not have to upgrade my motherboard or other components if I decided to upgrade to a haswell processor in the future. So, as of right now, would it be worth it to wait for the haswell processor to come out and then build my gaming rig? Also, how much more powerful will the haswell processor be compared to the ivy bridge processors?

No. Haswell will be a gaming-wise sidegrade, do SB today or wait a few weeks for those 5% extra performance from IB (read : might as well get SB today).
One thing in favor of waiting for IB is Z77 could be pcie 3.0 .. Yes no graphics card today will saturate 2.0, but in 3-4 years, this rig may still be pretty frisky with a GFX update .. and at THAT time pcie 3.0 will be usefull.

1up

edit : on avx2, before that makes it into a patch for crysis 6, we will all be 5 years older at least. IMO / CrytalBalls.

 

[Edrick]

edit : on avx2, before that makes it into a patch for crysis 6, we will all be 5 years older at least. IMO / CrytalBalls.

You really think so? I dont. For example, FMA (part of Haswell), is already built into most gaming code because all GPU can already use it (that part of what makes GPUs so fast). So extending that to the CPU part of the game will not be that difficult. That is just one example.

Also, some of the Haswell instructions are already in the BD CPUs. So once Intel adopts them in Haswell, there will be nothing stopping developers from using it. I expect to see gains from Haswell's new instruction within a year of release for some applications. Majority of applications within 2-3 years.

 

[BenchPress]

No. Haswell will be a gaming-wise sidegrade...

Based on what?

on avx2, before that makes it into a patch for crysis 6, we will all be 5 years older at least. IMO / CrytalBalls.

Wrong! AVX2 support is already making its way into major compilers (GCC, Visual C++, LLVM, ICC, etc).

It is vital to realize that unlike previous SIMD extensions, AVX2 requires a mere recompilation to benefit from it. That's because it's the first extension that has vector equivalents of every major scalar instruction. Hence every code loop with independent iterations can be easily vectorized. This is a game changer (pun unintended).

And like I said before, new consoles will be released next year, and so the games targeting such hardware are under development right now. Unlike previous generation games which had to run smoothly on 6+ year old console hardware, these new ones will try to push the limits of the new console hardware. And they will very likely have a CPU capable of AVX2.

Also note that the applications which will use AVX2 first, will be the ones which can use the added performance the most. In other words, if you chose an Ivy Bridge you won't see any speedup in performance critical software over its entire lifetime.

 

[essential]

Couldn't agree more and I as well am an intel stock holder. Anyone remember the price of the athlon 64 fx-60? Was a thousand dollars.

I picked one up for $40 on craigslist, still rocking a 939 system, ganna build a 1155 IB over the summer.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

I'm waiting for haswell, but I'm pretty satisfied with my i7-860. If you just don't have anything and want something don't wait. If you've got something good wait it out in my opinion.

 

[Makaveli]

Look, Haswell is going to be 5 to 15 percent faster then Ivy bridge. I promise you, you wont notice a difference; your going to wait a year for something you wont tell a difference when playing games. Come to my studio , My 2007 processor kicks butt every game, BF3 60fps capped, sometimes goes to 50's and jumps back up.. Crysis 2 , 60fps capped most of time. On a music project avg is 35 to 40 CPU usage. Now I need a SSD so all that stuff will load even faster. You don't need a i7 or a sandy or ivy or haswel or broadway to play todays games @ 1080p with AA at 60fps. People on here don't understand what a small role the CPU plays in FPS, all that is done with the video card, and as long as you have a quad your set. heck I'm set still. 5 years. If you don't have a quad then get a Sandy 2600k , if you have a quad, stick with it and save up for a SSD or new video card in future. gl

No disrespect Tweakboy but unless you work for intel or have access to an engineer sample of haswell you don't know how it will perform and have no actual data to backup that statement.