Question To Alder Lake or Not To Alder Lake?

[Collider]

I'm well overdue for a new system and need upgrade advice. My current system specs are listed in the signature, its a battle tested X58 system that's been with me since 2009.

Frankly I am amazed that this platform lasted me almost 12 years. I've done everything I can to upgrade it, maxing out ram, swapping i7 920 for an overclocked X5675 and going NVME for OS/Boot drive. But it's starting to show its age and I need an upgrade.

My workloads are mostly software development with heavy multitasking. Usually have a ton of things running, multiple Visual Studio and IntelliJ instances, 1-2 emulators/VMs, 50+ chrome windows, MS office stuff and tons of other apps running simultaneously.

Originally was thinking to go the Threadripper route (3960X or 3970X) but it being a dead end platform doesn't make much sense at this point. Zen 3 doesn't look any better with Zen 4 coming next year.

Alder Lake 12900K + overclock seems like an obvious choice, but my concern is its only 16 cores. Yes I know I'm getting by with only 6 cores now and 12900K is roughly 4x times faster, but still.

What other options should I consider? Should I wait for Zen 3 or Alder Lake Xeons or stick it out and wait for Zen 4?

Thanks in advance!
(sorry for a long thread)

 

[diediealldie]

Wait for a Sapphire Rapids HEDT if you have enough time otherwise, go with 5950X. Since you're a developer and run intense MT loads you can't really use Z670 since they don't have ECC supports.