Talk me into X79

[moonbogg]

If longevity is what the OP wants, then X79 is better than Haswell. With a future ivy-E chip, you would have yourself an 8 core CPU, plenty of PCI-E 3.0 lanes for dual and triple SLI/crossfire and you wouldn't be PCI restricted for future GPU generations that will need those extra lanes for full performance. You got full specs for storage and everything else that will be needed for generations to come.

Haswell is for the ipc, period. Thats all it will offer gamers.
Hell, depending on how things pan out, I just might be more than happy with my X79 for a long time! Nothing wrong with that.

 

[Grooveriding]

About 3930K in gaming. This is not going to be true for all games, but, many new modern games are already performing better on a 3930K than a 2600K in these benches. Note the 3930K is @ 3.2, while the 2600K is @ 3.4.. I think the additional 200mhz on the 2600K could within a reasonable margin of error account for the additional IPC of an IB chip if one were used in these benchmarks.

 

[AdamK47]

Yep, multi-threaded game engines with usage beyond the typical quad core does appear to be catching on.

 

[NTMBK]

Yep, multi-threaded game engines with usage beyond the typical quad core does appear to be catching on.

And they're likely to only get more popular with the next generation of consoles. Frostbite 2 (the BF3 engine) is one of the engines most capable of eating up 8-12 threads and using all the resources it can get its hands on - and it was specifically built from the ground up to run well on the next generation of consoles. Its a good indication of what's coming in the next few years (lets face it, we all know most PC games are console ports), so if it scales well on a 3930k then expect lots more games to in the future.

 

[moonbogg]

Grooveriding, you just made my day. You increased my fondness of my system by about 25% with that post.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Oh, very nice. That makes me feel a lot less wasteful about what will likely be an upgrade to X79. Thanks for the benchmarks 🙂

Now, off to figure out how to cool a 3930K and what board I should use...

 

[Lepton87]

See how little the minimums improve compared to AVG? Besides, why 2500K and 2600k are neck and neck? Do additional threads do nothing? I don't trust those Russian tests haven't seen comparable results elsewhere. With the exception of BF3 2 additional cores do nothing for P2 X6 over P2 X4.

 

[DooKey]

Oh, very nice. That makes me feel a lot less wasteful about what will likely be an upgrade to X79. Thanks for the benchmarks 🙂

Now, off to figure out how to cool a 3930K and what board I should use...

Overclocked SB-E throws off a lot of heat. I highly recommend custom water to keep temps under control.

 

[ND40oz]

Overclocked SB-E throws off a lot of heat. I highly recommend custom water to keep temps under control.

You don't need a custom loop to keep them under control if you're sticking to the low 4s though, I use an H100 with my 3930k at 4.1, it works great. If you start pushing the voltage though, you'll definitely want something better.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Oh, very nice. That makes me feel a lot less wasteful about what will likely be an upgrade to X79. Thanks for the benchmarks 🙂

Now, off to figure out how to cool a 3930K and what board I should use...

Kraken X60 is the best cooler you could pair with a 3930K before going all out on custom water. Granted, you'd need to make sure it would fit in your case (need to have enough room to fit a dual 140mm rad)

Otherwise Thermaltake Water 2.0 Extreme is currently the best dual 120mm rad (also not easy to fit, although support for dual 120 rads is a lot more common than support for dual 140s).

As far as something smaller, Anandtech just had a roundup that concluded the H80i was actually better than the H100i, although they only tested on a 2700K, not a SB-E, however an H80i might be the best-perorming/most-compatible/easiest-install cooler you can get.

As far as tower coolers, well if you want similar performance to any of the aforementioned, you'd need to go with a monster like the Noctua NH-D14.

 

[Diogenes2]

Oh, very nice. That makes me feel a lot less wasteful about what will likely be an upgrade to X79. Thanks for the benchmarks 🙂

Now, off to figure out how to cool a 3930K and what board I should use...

I'm at 4.4g and using 212+ EVO as in my sig...

Temps hover in low to mid 70's at 100% load running Folding@ home...

 

[Makaveli]

Good thread.

For those of you posting your temps with SB-E chips?

what are your ambient temps, they don't mean anything unless you all live in same city with the same weather. The guy in the middle east will not see the same temps as you regardless of the cooler.

And OP I would say go for it if you have the money you will still have along life on a SB-E system.

Hell I only dropped a 6 core chip into my 1366 system this year and should be able to get 5 years total use out of this rig its currently on year 3.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Seems the price of X79 boards is something like a rollercoaster,you get your open box boards then you get some sale on another board then the sell is over.

Was sorta dead set on the $160 open box Intel X79TO to match up with a 3930k then its completely gone,in place i found this board for $130 new http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813188121


Been hearing mixed reviews on that board and with my max budget of $180 for a board,the $50 savings could easily allow me to go up to 16gb with change to spare.

Just looking for a board to do a simple 4ghz overclock on the 3930k,offer one sata 6 port for my ssd and a couple usb ports.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Heck, if you are going to go with an X79 chipset, why not get a board that supports ECC memory and a Xeon, that would be sweet.

 

[Maximilian]

I snagged one of these open box:

msi x79a gd65
http://www.msi.com/product/mb/X79A-GD65.html

Reviews are hit and miss but most problems with it seem to be bios related and because it didnt support the 3820 with earlier bios revisions, which was a year ago so hopefully theyre fixed now.

It was between that and a gigabyte ud3 which also looks to be a good board, however i want to try something new so since ive never had an msi board i went with the above.

 

[Puppies04]

If longevity is what the OP wants, then X79 is better than Haswell. With a future ivy-E chip, you would have yourself an 8 core CPU, plenty of PCI-E 3.0 lanes for dual and triple SLI/crossfire and you wouldn't be PCI restricted for future GPU generations that will need those extra lanes for full performance. You got full specs for storage and everything else that will be needed for generations to come.

I have to disagree completly. You are talking about buying a SB-E setup then selling the chip and second hand and buying an IB-E 8 core chip (as far as I am aware intel hasn't said that these will even exist). With the money involved in that you could pick up an IB or haswell setup and bank the money you save. In 3-4 years if you machine doesn't cut it anymore you can use the money you saved plus the interest to upgrade your cpu/mobo and get another 3-4 years.

Paying through the nose for high end tech has never made sense if all you are after is longevity. Unless you are in a situation where you need the top end components now then stick to middle of the road stuff and save your money.

The vast majority of games don't scale past 4 cores because the vast majority of people don't have more than 4 cores. Until that changes then games manufacturers are going to concentrate on developing engines for 2-4 cores.

 

[skipsneeky2]

I snagged one of these open box:

msi x79a gd65
http://www.msi.com/product/mb/X79A-GD65.html

Reviews are hit and miss but most problems with it seem to be bios related and because it didnt support the 3820 with earlier bios revisions, which was a year ago so hopefully theyre fixed now.

It was between that and a gigabyte ud3 which also looks to be a good board, however i want to try something new so since ive never had an msi board i went with the above.

Nice board and yeah that's sorta what i have heard about the Evga X79 SLI as well,quality board buggy bios but i know after the 680i chipset came and went,these nvidia boards have not been a fan favorite.

Buying the best board $180 has to offer ad still have a few days before i purchase,saw the Asus x79 le open box for $180 then it disappeared in less then a day so hopefully something gives.:biggrin:

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Heck, if you are going to go with an X79 chipset, why not get a board that supports ECC memory and a Xeon, that would be sweet.

couple of things here

1. Xeons serve little purpose for enthusiasts willing to overclock, so when we consider that Xeons can't overclock and that a 3930K/3970X can be pushed to ~4.5GHz without too much trouble, well the six-core i7s will pretty much trounce the fastest 8 core Xeon because of that sheer advantage in clock-rate.

2. Just like with Xeons, ECC memory won't serve much purpose unless its actually needed, and the OP doesn't seem like a good candidate for either.

 

[Makaveli]

couple of things here

1. Xeons serve little purpose for enthusiasts willing to overclock, so when we consider that Xeons can't overclock and that a 3930K/3970X can be pushed to ~4.5GHz without too much trouble, well the six-core i7s will pretty much trounce the fastest 8 core Xeon because of that sheer advantage in clock-rate.

2. Just like with Xeons, ECC memory won't serve much purpose unless its actually needed, and the OP doesn't seem like a good candidate for either.

Agreed a Xeon doesn't seem like a good choice for reasons stated above and 1 missing price!

 

[cytg111]

Yep, multi-threaded game engines with usage beyond the typical quad core does appear to be catching on.

hmm .. take a look at these benches

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/443?vs=551

and looking at those gamegpu.ru benches again, i'd say that were looking at a ram constrained gfx card and we're seeing the benefit of quad-channel DDR3 in this context.
So more about feeding the graphics card than any huge effect of moar coars(tm).
Could be.

 

[tweakboy]

Haswell for mobile is coming out first.... Then Haswell budget low power chips then in 2014 8 thread chips. but nothing faster then a top matchine of today,, just a much much faster better GPU inside the CPU. That is all Haswell is, a new tech GPU which is probaly as fast as a 460 1GB or 9800GT at least.

Haswell wont be 6 core 12 threads.....

Sandy E and Ivy Bridge E will have 12 threads.

When Ivy E comes out, Im gonna buy it right there and then.

 

[AdamK47]

Or.... it could be the benefits of the entire entire platform. More cores + more channels. Pin the tail on both donkeys.

 

[moonbogg]

I have to disagree completly. You are talking about buying a SB-E setup then selling the chip and second hand and buying an IB-E 8 core chip (as far as I am aware intel hasn't said that these will even exist). With the money involved in that you could pick up an IB or haswell setup and bank the money you save. In 3-4 years if you machine doesn't cut it anymore you can use the money you saved plus the interest to upgrade your cpu/mobo and get another 3-4 years.

Paying through the nose for high end tech has never made sense if all you are after is longevity. Unless you are in a situation where you need the top end components now then stick to middle of the road stuff and save your money.

The vast majority of games don't scale past 4 cores because the vast majority of people don't have more than 4 cores. Until that changes then games manufacturers are going to concentrate on developing engines for 2-4 cores.

Dude, what on earth are you talking about? When the "K" version of the ivy-e chip comes out, you can sell the 3930k for like $300 and fork over the rest to get a new chip and more life out of the system. How is that paying through the nose? It might be better than having to totally replace your whole damn board and rip everything apart every 2 years. X79 has an upgrade path. Nothing else does. That was my point.
Also, I never claimed to have a crystal ball. Thats why I said things like, "depends on how it pans out" etc.

EDIT: Also, the "vast majority" of games suck. So I don't care about them. If my 6 core sandy/Ivy gets me better Crysis 3 performance as well as other new games, then I win.

 

[blackened23]

As far as current performance goes - aside from maybe 1 game there is little reason to get SB-E over ivy bridge. In fact, IPC in single threaded apps is higher on the IB. On the other hand, SB-E gives you dual x16 natively while Ivy bridge z77 requires a PLX chip which is higher latency for SLI/xfire. So overall, SB-E will be better for dual GPU but in most games they are pretty much in a dead heat.

With that said -- if you have the cash - why not? Its a hobby and personally I enjoy having the fastest on the block. If I really didn't care at all about funds I would definitely get a 3970X with a RIVE just because I love building PCs. Aside from that -- we also know that IB-E will be pin compatible with LGA 2011, while Haswell will require an entirely new motherboard. So upgrading to IB-E will possibly have a lesser overall cost than haswell.

It's a tough call, but if you have the cash why not. Personally I get a silly wide grin when I build a new PC with the latest and greatest parts and seeing how blazingly fast it is. Go for it.

 

[Gillbot]

couple of things here

1. Xeons serve little purpose for enthusiasts willing to overclock, so when we consider that Xeons can't overclock and that a 3930K/3970X can be pushed to ~4.5GHz without too much trouble, well the six-core i7s will pretty much trounce the fastest 8 core Xeon because of that sheer advantage in clock-rate.

2. Just like with Xeons, ECC memory won't serve much purpose unless its actually needed, and the OP doesn't seem like a good candidate for either.

What? I had a Xeon E5-2609 and had no problem overclocking it, albeit mildly. Granted, it's no "K" chip but Xeons can be OC'ed just like a 3820 could I'd guess. Otherwise, I agree. ECC has no real benefit and the extra cost of a Xeon isn't really worth it.