To Wait or Not to Wait - The Great Intel Debate

[jsmith65]

I've been waiting over 7 years to do my dream video workstation build and it's finally looking like a possibility. I'll likely have the money by the end of this coming summer, but this timing presents me with a dilemma. There are echos all over the interwebz about Intel's upcoming Sandy Bridge E-Series. I was originally going to go with the Intel 990x (or the 2600k if my budget forced me to take the step down), but the news of the impending SB E-Series has me wondering if I should just wait till the end of 2011 to do the build. Then there's this Ivy Bridge thing that has me even more confused.

Is anyone more informed that me and can tell me if I should wait or not? If you had ~$5000 at midway through August this year, what would you do? Wait or go ahead and build?

As always, I appreciate the help.

 

[LucJoe]

Wait for socket 2011 if you won't have the money till August.

Also you don't need to spend 5k on it...

Then again, Bulldozer (June?) may be a great option for this.

I've been waiting over 7 years to do my dream video workstation build and it's finally looking like a possibility. I'll likely have the money by the end of this coming summer, but this timing presents me with a dilemma. There are echos all over the interwebz about Intel's upcoming Sandy Bridge E-Series. I was originally going to go with the Intel 990x (or the 2600k if my budget forced me to take the step down), but the news of the impending SB E-Series has me wondering if I should just wait till the end of 2011 to do the build. Then there's this Ivy Bridge thing that has me even more confused.

Is anyone more informed that me and can tell me if I should wait or not? If you had ~$5000 at midway through August this year, what would you do? Wait or go ahead and build?

As always, I appreciate the help.

 

[mv2devnull]

If you had ~$5000 at midway through August this year, what would you do?

I would think about the situation at midway through August rather than now.

 

[gevorg]

With $5K video workstation, I would go with 8+ core Xeon or Opteron machine (Sandy Bridge or Bulldozer variants). Your timing for end of the summer build is pretty good, AMD should release Bulldozer by then and more details should be available on Ivy Bridge. I would forget about Intel 990x, its already obsolete.

 

[Vette73]

Yep as said wait.

The Z68 will be out, AMDs bulldozer and 9XX chipsets, etc...

 

[jsmith65]

I would think about the situation at midway through August rather than now.

Ha, I wish I could wait to think about it then. I can't stop thinking about it, making huge wish lists on Newegg, etc. I've been waiting for this for so long that now that I'm so close, it's driving me crazy with anticipation.

 

[mnewsham]

What program will you be using? Is it highly threaded? Will it benefit more with cores or clockspeed? If cores, how many? 4? 6? 8? 10? 12? Will more RAM benefit you? (going with a server that supports 64GB or 96GB instead of 16GB-32GB with most consumer boards) What exactly will you be doing with this rig?

And yes waiting would be good as socket 2011 should add the ability for more RAM and cores then is currently available.

 

[tweakboy]

Wait, or you get burned. SB soon will be history as their top CPU/ 12 threads Ivy Core.
Wait longer for manufactoring keeps getting low, to 25nm or 22nm then 11nm etc. thx

 

[alcoholbob]

8 core sandy will be a beast.

 

[jsmith65]

What program will you be using? Is it highly threaded? Will it benefit more with cores or clockspeed? If cores, how many? 4? 6? 8? 10? 12? Will more RAM benefit you? (going with a server that supports 64GB or 96GB instead of 16GB-32GB with most consumer boards) What exactly will you be doing with this rig?

And yes waiting would be good as socket 2011 should add the ability for more RAM and cores then is currently available.

I'll be mainly using the Adobe Production Premium Suite: Premiere Pro CS5, After Effects CS5, etc. Lots of media encoding and special effects and video editing, so yeah, highly threaded apps. I'll also be doing my own fair share of PC gaming though. I'm going to buy an Nvidia 3D Vision kit. I'm shooting for 24GB of RAM right now. At least 16, but preferably 24. More RAM will definitely benefit in video editing.

 

[magomago]

unless that budget is going into all the SW and some really nice monitors i don't think i'd spend 5k on a system. It'd make more sense to spend a quarter of that on a nice system, and then upgrade again for the same cost in 1.5 years to something more powerful. even if i wanted to splurge, prices on stuff like ram and HDDs are so low that i can't imagine justifying what you'd buy outside of monitors/SW to hit that 5k mark
building the "dream pc" is always a waste of money because new tech comes out so fast. doesn't make your system any slower of course

 

[toyota]

then within a few months after Sandy Bridge 2011, Ivy Bridge will come out and make it seem silly for buying high end. sort of like building a 1366 system right before Sandy Bridge 1155 came out.

 

[Dadofamunky]

I'm bucking the trend here. With Adobe production suite (a package I have significant experience with) I'd seriously look at building a mondo 2600K system now for $2500 smackeroos, inc. GTX 570/580 and RAID SSDs plus RAID 10 HDDs. And do it now. Why wait? Yeah, the stuff coming out in 4-6 months will be even better, but you can ALWAYS say that. I don't think the Adobe software takes advantage of more than 4-6 threads. It all depends on when you NEED to do it.

Dude, stop torturing yourself.

 

[AdamK47]

Wait for the high end socket 2011. Skip the lower end socket 1155.

 

[Edrick]

then within a few months after Sandy Bridge 2011, Ivy Bridge will come out and make it seem silly for buying high end. sort of like building a 1366 system right before Sandy Bridge 1155 came out.

How do you figure that? IB will be on LGA1155 and SB-E will be on LGA2011. I imagine IB for LGA2011 will be out Q3 of 2012 as well.

The differences between LGA2011 and LGA1155 will be quite significant, regardless of how fast the actual CPUs will be clocked.

 

[XLNC]

Like others have said, $5k will allow for building with 1155/2600K now and upgrading later to 2011/Ivy. Unless you won't have the cash till August, in which case throw Bulldozer into mix. I know the feeling of wanting that perfect machine but it becomes impractical at a certain point. 2011/Ivy could easily be delayed months for any number of reasons: bugs, manufacturing, Intel's wish etc.

Waiting days/weeks makes sense. Why wait months? If you have a need now, build now.

 

[beginner99]

Anyone thought about the fact that SB-E does not have an IGP and QuickSync and will hence probably be slower in encoding?

I would do as mentioned above. Get a 2600k, a good nvidia gpu and at least 2 screens. AFAIK you can use QuickSync with a dedicated gpu if you attach a monitor to it.

 

[nyker96]

if you can wait til summer, also check out amd bulldozer, could be a real alternative comes to video encoding, of course, need the real product to tell how good it is.

 

[dma0991]

To actually get a SB-E and not do some extreme overclocking is a sin . If you're just an average user/overclocker the current SB is more than enough. If you could wait a little bit longer it would be Bulldozer or if you're a performance enthusiast for the latest e-penor then get the SB first and upgrade it to Ivy Bridge with just a BIOS update.

 

[flexcore]

I would wait for the Socket 2011/sandy-e vs Bulldozer for the type of machine you want. If you just can't wait, 2600k system with all the components you need. Nice case, PSU and data storage system that you can later swap out MB, CPU and RAM of choice.( SandyE or BD)

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Adobe PPro CS5 uses Nvidia's Cuda Processors.

I would also ask about a computer setup in the Adobe Premier Pro forums as-well.

EDIT: Here is a little Premiere Pro Benchmarking tool too PPBM5 Benchmark

EDIT 2: Apparently the GTX 560ti and the 480 hold their ground in these benchmarks against the GTX 580 and NO Dual GPU/SLI is NOT supported (so far) in the Mercury Playback Engine.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

I'm in your same boat, OP. I've already bought a couple of the components for my next rig (SSD, RAM) and plan on reusing my case, vid card, drives, and possibly my power supply. I had a chance to pick up an i7-2600K for $280 at MicroCenter a couple of weeks ago and elected to pass, thinking that at a minimum, I should wait for Bulldozer to see what it offers. Worst case is that the 2600K would still be the best choice but Bulldozer would drive its regular price down quite a bit. I had toyed with waiting for S2011 and still might change my mind and do that, but to be completely honest, my current rig plays everything very well so I think a 2600K would be more than enough to overcome the CPU bottleneck I've seen in a couple of games.

 

[SickBeast]

If I had $5000 in August, I would take a good look at Bulldozer as its 8 cores should do quite well in video work.

If I had the money burning a hole in my pocket right now, it would be a tough call. With that type of budget I guess you might as well go with a 2600K. If I were building a video rig on a tight budget I would consider an AMD X6 Thuban, but on a $5K budget I don't know if it makes sense to try to save $100-200 on the CPU.

 

[trexpesto]

Yep if you have work to do NOW and can't do it, you are losing more money between now and then. Are you already an expert with the software and at least familiar with the work? If not, be honest with yourself, it's a bad economy.

Red Flag:
7 years is way way to long to wait. 2600 build now if you have the scratch, save the rest for future build or contingencies.
Red Flag:
Making and remaking lists on the egg. How much is your time really worth?

You may be able to transfer the software licenses & support to a new machine, no idea.
Sounds like you're awfully comfortable on that fence!

 

[BonzTM]

I'm usually against waiting, as it just becomes a vicious cycle; then you usually end up waiting forever and using your current hardware.

In this case however, I would definitely wait a few more months to see what happens. SB-E is supposed to debut Q3 of this year. Intel usually debuts their extreme edition first, but judging by the budget you have, an extreme edition wouldn't be a problem for you.

I bought an i7 950 recently because I was desperately in need of some CPU power for bluray encodes. I definitely plan on doing an 8 core SB-E when the time comes though. So if you've come this far, stick it out a few more months to see what happens.

Also, it's my personal belief not to waste 1 G on an extreme processor. Save yourself a huge pile of money with a very slight performance cost, and spend the money elsewhere on the rig... Large monitors perhaps?