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Upgrade Path for purchase early Dec

C

Caveman

Platinum Member
See sig... Obviously it's been a while since I've built a new rig.

I've been lurking around but admittedly can't make heads/tails of what CPU path I should be on... I'm planning on 2 new build:

1) Rig for my kids using the sig rig... Probably all except the case and PSU will go... Thinking absolute bang for buck (maximizing saving $$). Computer will be used for a few years before total rebuild. Looking for something that would have been considered mid to high end about this time last year - that shoudl save some $$. Looking to spend no more than $150 on the CPU and maybe $100 on the MoBo.

2) Rig for myself - Looking for CPU path that can be refreshed in 1-2 years with something better... Still want best bang for buck but much more biased on the "bang" side... Looking for something that will be considered nearly top end when I build it in a month and that has an upgrade path such that I can drop in a new CPU and video card in 1-2 years and still have it be considered "solidly fast". Thinking a 290 or 780 will be vid card of choice on this rig. Looking to spend no more than $500 on the CPU/MoBo combo if possible.
 
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The trend is that a new CPU -> new socket. So you'll not be able to get a better CPU down the line. The good thing is that CPU progress in raw performance is incredible slow, all focus is on using less power, so the CPU will probably last for ~4-5 years. Videocards can easily be replaced when needed. But a r9 290 with a better cooler is probably the best bang for the bucks ATM. But you'll either have to wait for manufacturers to make better cooling for the 290, or install custom cooling yourself.

Will you be overclocking?
 
I'll be looking for good air coolers on both rigs. Mild overclock on 1 and med to high on the 2nd CPU.

I gather from reading that Intel is way ahead of AMD at this point and that I probably want an Ivy Bridge solution for rig 1 and Haswell solution for rig 2. Yes?

I have no idea which chip to get though... Perhaps 2700 for rig 1 and 4770 for rig 2??
 
Caveman said:
I gather from reading that Intel is way ahead of AMD at this point and that I probably want an Ivy Bridge solution for rig 1 and Haswell solution for rig 2. Yes?

I have no idea which chip to get though... Perhaps 2700 for rig 1 and 4770 for rig 2??
Click to expand...

Not necessarily... if you lock into Ivy you will be stuck with an obsolete 1155 mobo. Depending on what the purpose of rig #1 will be (you haven't stated the purposes for either machine...) you may be able to go with something like a Haswell Pentium G3220 / H81 mobo for Rig #1, and something a little stronger (depending on what you will be doing) for Rig #2.

You mentioned probably being able to reuse the old PSU... forget it. Ditch it and get new.
 
Unless you're looking at used parts, there's little reason to pick Ivy over Haswell. The biggest problem with your price plan for #1 is that Intel has a big hole between about $140 and $190. So you can look at a $50 mobo that won't overclock with a $200 i5-4570 that also won't overclock.

Or you might want to look at AMD, where you can get an overclockable $120 CPU and what should be a decent $120 mobo. (But I really don't know AMD mobos.)
 
Answer the sticky questions found in post #1 in this thread; post the answers here. We need more info, especially about what exactly your children will be doing on the computer.
 
Info below in the contect of the "sticky questions"...

Both Systems are for the same basic thing: gaming... More specifically, flight simulation which requires more advanced processing than an FPS as they are generally CPU hungry. Of course a great graphics card helps as well. System 1 just needs to be good and basic to play flight sim titles from a few years back with ease... though I'd also like to play newly released stuff on the kids machine #1 at reduced settings. They will be playing 1600 x 1200 on an old Dell 4:3 monitor. They will need a CPU, Vid Card, RAM... I've got a 2 year old Intel SSD I'll throw in there...

My Rig (#2) will be for advanced flight simming with a single 30" 16:9 monitor at 2560 x 1600 (max)... Upgrade path will be a 4K when they become affordable, but most likely will use Oculus Rift instead of monitor anyway. This reg will also serve to stream Netflix and dump the video signal to a 720p PJ in the same room while I play at 2560 x 1600. I want this rig to be as state of the art "as possible"... I've got a great case for it with plenty of room for a giant cooler. I've got a Corsair 1000W modular PSU for it already... Just looking for recommendation on best CPU that may have an upgrade path and advice on what's coming next (even if that means changing mobo)... Is that 1 month from now or 6 mos from now... If 1 month I might wait but probably not anyway since I like riding the back side of the performance curve to get best price and still great (bit not absolute best peroformance to the nth degree). I'd really not like to spend more than $1200 on the remaining parts for this rig: CPU, Vid Card, 16GB RAM, 256 GB SSD. Maybe I need a secon small SSD for the OS only? Also want some awesome sound capability... Lookign for a good, resoanbly priced soundcard.
 
What flight sims have been coming out recently? Stuff like War Thunder comes to mind, but that doesn't take a huge amount of CPU power. I definitely agree with Biostud that you shouldn't worry about upgrading the CPU in a year. The CPUs that will be out in a year won't be significantly faster that what's available right now.

As for sound, if you want killer sound, you don't buy an internal sound card. First, you spend at least $1000 on speakers or $500 on headphones, anything less and you won't be able to hear the difference between onboard and a better setup. Then you you take digital out from S/PDIF or HDMI and send it to a real DAC/Amp (or receiver).

Can you be specific on what case you have in case (haha) there are any oddities we should know about?
 
War Thunder is just an FPS set in the context of an airplane - it's not a flight simulator that's doing thousands of complex physics calculations avery millisecond to give the illusion of a real plane flying through the air, rather than a gaming article "on rails"... There's a lot of physics going with the damage modeling as well... And complex engine managment, and navigational and other avionics, etc... "Real" flight sims tax a computer far more than any game does CPU-wise... and on the order of a good FPS graphics-wise. It's really like a very heavy engineering application than a game per se. Some of the titles I'm hoping to play this year include the DCS series (fast movers), Battle of Stalingrad (the "real" successor to IL-2) made by 777 Studios, and Lockheed Martin's (as in defense contractor) revamp of the Microsoft's FSX engine. I hear you on the sound and plan to output the sound to a Denon Rx. That said, garbage in garbage out and a good Rx can't make up for low/hi level losses from the original intended sounds...
 
Don't worry about upgrading, you are better off getting top-of-the-line now since your use case is not one in which buying "cheap" and then upgrading to the best available on the socket 2 years from now is going to leave you satisfied. In addition, there are no "upgrade paths" from buying top-of-the-line to next gen's top-of-the-line; never mind that it is hardly worth the money to buy a $330 CPU for just a ~10% performance gain(give or take). "Haswell Refresh" will not be compatible with current boards nor will Skylake be compatible with Haswell Refresh/Haswell. AMD's FX chips are behind Intel's and they might be retiring AM3+ at some point in time; even if they did not, those chips are aching for a new socket anyway. Haswell-E will not be compatible with LGA 2011 chips either...

An i5-4670K box would be fine for your kids since I don't think they'll be super picky and you can buy yourself an i7-4770K box. The 4670K is roughly on par with the 2700K at stock speeds in a few apps; I don't know what the difference would be if they were overclocked. Note that the bench has the 4670K's clockspeed wrong, it is 3.4 Ghz, so the results in the benches are solely due to architectural differences and Hyperthreading.
 
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Thanks so much for that reply - it is exactly the kind of info I was looking for... Leaning towards the 4770 for my rig... Any thoughts on 8 vs 16 GB of RAM?
 
Caveman said:
Thanks so much for that reply - it is exactly the kind of info I was looking for... Leaning towards the 4770 for my rig... Any thoughts on 8 vs 16 GB of RAM?
Click to expand...

I would get 2x8GB, now we see 64bit in usage with consoles ports and simply modern games.
 
Charlie98 said:
It sounds like I need a new version of FSX!!! 😀



What program is that, exactly?
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Prepar3d

His other game's predecessor is "Rise of Flight". It does like 4 cores, but any more, I'm not sure.

As an aside, I doubt these flight sims are significantly more demanding than Crysis or BF4, and they won't stress the CPU more than stress testers.
 
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Caveman said:
Some of the titles I'm hoping to play this year include the DCS series (fast movers), Battle of Stalingrad (the "real" successor to IL-2) made by 777 Studios, and Lockheed Martin's (as in defense contractor) revamp of the Microsoft's FSX engine.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the list. FSX is single-threaded and not graphically intensive. Based on Rise of Flight, BoS should not be terribly intensive either. DCS doesn't scale beyond two cores in benchmarks, but can be a GPU beast if you turn everything up and fly around an area with lots of models.

Luckily a normal i5 4670K gets you the best single and dual-threaded performance around.

Caveman said:
I hear you on the sound and plan to output the sound to a Denon Rx. That said, garbage in garbage out and a good Rx can't make up for low/hi level losses from the original intended sounds...
Click to expand...

GIGO is true, but you should not be converting from analog to digital in the EMI storm that is a computer case. Send it out digitally, either S/PDIF or HDMI. Both of those are just passing bits along, a fancy sound card won't improve either.


By the way, it wasn't clear to me what parts you needed. Do you need just CPU/mobo/RAM/GPU, or do you need the whole thing? What's your budget for the parts you need?
 
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