Who's skipping Haswell-e and Broadwell-e?

[Carfax83]

15%, hope your right, cause that would keep me from investing in haswell-e. If by TLP and ILP you are talking thread level parallelism, well, then an 'aging' haswell system will benefit from that just as well. On the other hand, if you mean avx2+, that I might have seen in encoding software, but games? I havent heard of a single one.

Yep, greater ILP and TLP in software will benefit all CPUs, but of course those CPUs with the latest instruction sets stand to benefit the most..

edit : we had a user once, or alter ego, called benchpress, at one point he mustered something along the lines of haswell should be in one of the consoles, cause it was, well, awsome. It would have helped AVX2+ to take off though!

Yes, it's unfortunate that I don't think we'll ever see AVX2 being used in current games because the consoles only support AVX, and AVX is limited to FP so I'm not sure how useful that would be for game code...

But, we'll definitely see AVX/AVX2 used in physics engines, which are used in games. In fact, the latest PhysX and Havok SDKs have support for AVX/SSE4 and that increased performance significantly. It's just a matter of time until they add support for AVX2.

When AVX3 debuts, CPUs will be capable of generating very complex and lifelike physics compared to what we see now..

 

[Subyman]

I'm hard pressed to even need the CPU I have now. The upgrade itch may hit with Broadwell-E, but Haswell-E doesn't interest me. I'll wait for DDR4 to drop a bit more before jumping in. I think I'd rather find a used 4930k to drop in until Broadwell/skylake.

 

[dinker99]

I'm hard pressed to even need the CPU I have now. The upgrade itch may hit with Broadwell-E, but Haswell-E doesn't interest me. I'll wait for DDR4 to drop a bit more before jumping in. I think I'd rather find a used 4930k to drop in until Broadwell/skylake.

i suggest you play around with Unreal Engine 4 for a while, it seems to spend most of the time "compiling shaders" due to CPU limitations.

 

[RussianSensation]

i suggest you play around with Unreal Engine 4 for a while, it seems to spend most of the time "compiling shaders" due to CPU limitations.

We are not developers though but gamers. No one is disputing the fact that a 5960X is a powerhouse of a CPU. In March 2010 Intel launched a consumer 6-core i7 980X at $999. We are now in October 2014 with Intel selling an 8-core 5960X $999 but in 4.5 years, none of the 6-core CPUs from the original i7 980X provided any tangible performance increase in performance for 99.9% of games worth talking about over the more modern quad-core i7 Intel architectures. More or less going with a faster clocked, more modern architecture i7 on the mainstream platform provided a faster gaming platform overall, other than for those gamers who were using 4 GPUs where more PCIe lanes was necessary. Even Tri-SLI/Tri-Fire setup could still be addressed by getting a Z87/97 motherboard with a PLX chip.

Next year Broadwell K or Skylake K (if it isn't delayed to 2016) will once again be a better gaming chip than a 5960X unless games start scaling with 6 cores like Ryse: Son of Rome. If I were building a brand new system now, I'd get the 5820K not because it's faster than the i7 4790K -- it's actually slower in games - but because as CPUs last longer than ever I would sacrifice 200-400mhz in top clock speed to get 2 more cores as I'd keep that CPU for 4-5 years, at which point I think I'd take 2 more cores as a safety net over 200-400mhz more clock speed. But for someone already on a Core i7 2600K or faster, none of the X99 chips is a real upgrade for games.

BFG even showed that moving from an i5 2500K to an i7 4790K provided just a 6-7% increase in gaming performance on a Titan. Unless you have 970 Tri-SLI or faster, "upgrading" to a 6- or 8-core CPU for games is not worth it at all. And of course once an i5 2500K or i7 2600K are overclocked to 4.5Ghz, there won't be much difference in 99.9% of games either. I bet even after Skylake, it still won't be worth it to upgrade from i7 2600K style CPU.

I am going to upgrade from my i5 2500K not because I will feel the difference, but once all new tech comes out, I like to move on and play with new parts. With Skylake/Cannonlake at least there will be new features that would make one feel like they jumped to a new generation:

- AVX 3.2 (512-bit)
- DDR4
- PCIe 4.0
- USB 3.1
- Thunderbolt 3.0
- Fingers cross for 5.0Ghz+ overclocks on 14nm without water-cooling required

Additionally around these next generation CPU platforms we should finally be able to get GPUs with both HDMI 2.0 and DP 1.3. In other words, if I am going to be upgrading for fun, I might as well wait until all of these new technologies become available at once in a new platform since chances are I'll keep this new platform for another 4-5 years.

CPUs just aren't what they used to be, which is actually a good thing because we no longer need to upgrade every 2-3 years like before. With CPU performance having dramatically slowed down from Pentium 4/D/Core 2 Duo/Nehalem days where you could feel the upgrade in games, now a nearly 4-year-old SB (shocking!) which should seem and feel ancient by historical standards is practically 93% of the performance of i7 4790K in games, even closer once overclocked. That is really mind-blowing stat and shows how unimportant upgrading to the next Intel CPU has become. Most of the desktop bottlenecks are now in the GPU, storage and I/O. I would actually welcome more PCIe-based flash storage to make a breakthrough in speeds. Those would benefit the overall speed of the machine much more than the move from i7 4790K to Skylake for instance.

***

Even if I look at my nearly 2-year-old IVB laptop with i7 3635QM, there isn't much worth upgrading to either on the CPU side. The flagship i7-4940MX and i7-4930MX or even i7-4980HQ are barely 15-20% faster! But these are $600-1000 SKUs which aren't even a replacement for the $378 i7 3635QM:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Processors-Benchmarklist.2436.0.html

Most advancements in laptops are coming on the M.2/mSATA RAID and GPU side, as well as 3K/Retina IPS screens. A typical laptop with a solid battery life can now last 5 years easily with a modern $200 MX100 512GB SSD swap.

More shocking is that an $1,800 15.6" modern gaming laptop with a 970M comes with an i7-4710 47W CPU which is barely 10% faster than a 2-year-old IVB 45W i7 3635QM! At least Intel lowered 5820K from 4930K on the desktop by $150 for the power users who need 6 cores on the cheap. :thumbsup:

On the Intel desktop and on the laptop side, CPU performance has become one of the least important aspects for gaming since the introduction of Core i7 2600K @ 4.4-4.6Ghz on the desktop and IVB i7-quads on the laptop side. Pretty much as a gamer one should prioritize the upgrade budget towards a monitor upgrade (G-Sync 1440P, 3-4K displays, faster GPUs and a larger SSD/faster M.2 SSD. A next gen Intel CPU has become the least important priority now for games.

Until either games scale better with 6-8 core CPUs like we've seen with Crysis 3/R:SOR and or there are some poorly threaded next gen strategy games/MMOs that benefit from a 30% increase in IPC over SB, BW-E and even Skylake itself will be more of an upgrade on paper than in the real world for gamers. The higher the gaming resolution, the more GPU limited we will become with next gen titles such as Dragon Age Inquisition, Witcher 3, Project CARS, etc.

*** The reason I touched on the laptop side is to provide added proof of the slow advancements in CPU performance.

 

[cytg111]

Next year Broadwell K or Skylake K (if it isn't delayed to 2016) will once again be a better gaming chip than a 5960X unless games start scaling with 6 cores like Ryse: Son of Rome.

- This, exactly this, and why I think that anyone pondering on a an E platform should wait and see what skylake brings to the table. Total performance wise(including overclocking) since sandy have been stagnant, a bit higher IPC and a bit lower clock each generation makes it ~break even. If skylake continues this trend, I will have a staredown with a haswell-e platform this spring.

 

[Zodiark1593]

Unless my laptop breaks, that answer will be a no. Still rolling an i5-460M btw.

I'm on what you would call a Cheapskate Upgrade Cycle. Same with my phones.

 

[raasco]

I contemplated upgrading when my motherboard died recently. I decided that my overclocked 2500K will last me a couple more years until the price of DDR4 comes down some.

 

[Carfax83]

We are now in October 2014 with Intel selling an 8-core 5960X $999 but in 4.5 years, none of the 6-core CPUs from the original i7 980X provided any tangible performance increase in performance for 99.9% of games worth talking about over the more modern quad-core i7 Intel architectures.

I see your point, but you're forgetting a few things. Although Nehalem is on the edge of becoming unviable, the hex core variants are doing so at a much slower pace than the quad cores.

If you check Anandtech's Haswell-e review, the 990x is still very competitive against the 4770k and 4790k in CPU bound apps, and even in games.

The reason is because software (including GPU drivers) has become naturally more threaded over the years due to necessity, because thats where the technological trend is going.

Most modern game engines now will scale above 4 cores, something that wasn't the case even as short as 2 years ago. Whats changed? The current gen consoles arrived and put pressure on developers to thread their engines because thats the ONLY way they're going to get performance out of the new consoles.

Thread or die basically.. Even Watch Dogs as horribly optimized as it is for PC architecture, runs faster on Sandy Bridge-e than on the 4770k..

If I were building a brand new system now, I'd get the 5820K not because it's faster than the i7 4790K -- it's actually slower in games - but because as CPUs last longer than ever I would sacrifice 200-400mhz in top clock speed to get 2 more cores as I'd keep that CPU for 4-5 years, at which point I think I'd take 2 more cores as a safety net over 200-400mhz more clock speed.

Well this kind of proves my point. The hex core CPUs will be viable for much longer than the quad cores, so investing in one isn't a bad idea regardless of whether you're a prosumer or a gamer like myself.

BFG even showed that moving from an i5 2500K to an i7 4790K provided just a 6-7% increase in gaming performance on a Titan. Unless you have 970 Tri-SLI or faster, "upgrading" to a 6- or 8-core CPU for games is not worth it at all.

I would only recommend a hex core over a quad core to someone that had multi GPU, and not many people are running that kind of setup..

Just like I wouldn't recommend a GTX 980 to someone that only games at 1080p. We should always tailor our hardware to our needs primarily, and not just our desires.

 

[moonbogg]

No way am I going Haswell-E. I would have to be really loaded with cash to justify the expense vs performance over what I got. What I may do though is upgrade my monitor and video cards. Looking at the ROG swift and a couple 970's perhaps. Even then, what I got is pretty good for my needs.
However, give me a new BF game to get excited about and watch the dollars fly from my wallet. That's usually how it works.

 

[Mondozei]

I got a 4 core Haswell i5... would you guys think it would be worth it to upgrade to a 6 or 8 core mainstream Skylake (which would be necessity be a non-E version) if Intel released a mainstream model?

Of course, all the caveats of "we can't know for sure etc", but still, what are your estimates? IPC increased by 5-10% per iteration. Plus throw in two extra cores or so for the mainstream processor.. worth it? I'm mostly gaming.

 

[dangerman1337]

I'm on a 2500K at the moment and I'm installing a SSD at the moment (just need to grab a few cables). I ain't upgrading anything except maybe a GPU upgrade from my Twin Frozr 7950 if the 980 drops here in the UK to around £399 or the 970 coil whine doesn't seem to become a problem anymore.

The next big upgrade/new PC will be a Skylale-E for 4K/VR with Pascal or AMD equivalent (hopefully Nvidia will put out a big Pascal w/512-bit bus late 2016 since GM200 will be on 28nm as the former is a Q1 2015 release).

 

[CakeMonster]

I got a 4 core Haswell i5... would you guys think it would be worth it to upgrade to a 6 or 8 core mainstream Skylake (which would be necessity be a non-E version) if Intel released a mainstream model?

Of course, all the caveats of "we can't know for sure etc", but still, what are your estimates? IPC increased by 5-10% per iteration. Plus throw in two extra cores or so for the mainstream processor.. worth it? I'm mostly gaming.

Won't happen. Intel needs the differentiaton between those two segments. Mainstream will stay at max 4c/8t for a good while.

And that won't be a problem anyway for 99%. I game and occasionally encode stuff. That's why I finally justified an i7 with 8 threads. None of my games have any use for more than 4 cores, so I can't foresee that I'll move away from the mainstream platform in the next couple of years.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Going from 45nm, to 32nm on 1366 was enough to hold me over for another 2 or 3 generations. GPU upgrade is where I'm looking to.

 

[Fire&Blood]

If I were on a 2500K, I wouldn't even be tempted til Skylake. People who jumped those 2500K+mobo deals made a great decision, especially if gaming is primary use.

Not paying the DDR4 premium, no way. I saved a lot of money by hanging onto this budget build for so long. If I weren't so obsessed with 4K, I would have opted for a ~$1600 SLI build and picked a CPU accordingly.

Skylake itself may not be too desirable but when it comes out, chances are next gen GPU's will come out with 2 cards sufficient to drive 4K, 4K IPS displays and DDR4 pricing will likely hit mainstream too. There will be enough "new" stuff on the market and stuff entering mainstream price ranges to compel people to build skylake rigs even if skylake itself doesn't do enough to trigger the "time to upgrade" logic.

 

[III-V]

Not paying the DDR4 premium, no way. I saved a lot of money by hanging onto this budget build for so long. If I weren't so obsessed with 4K, I would have opted for a ~$1600 SLI build and picked a CPU accordingly.

Man, I don't want to pay for memory at all right now. It's way too expensive as is, and DDR4 is worse.

 

[Makaveli]

Swiftech now introduced the H240-X which is 2x140mm for only $10 more than their H220-X. Now I'll need a new case for my next upgrade too as my case can't fit such a rad. Just happens that NZXT will soon have the matte black H440 that fits a 2x140mm rad at the top! It's like they are reading my mind or something.

Now I just have to hold out to Skylake-E 6-core.

I was looking at the H220 before but now considing moving to a Corsair 450D but will probably step up to the H240 which the 450D should be perfect for.

 

[Makaveli]

Yes, IPC is much harder to get, but it's possible. As I said in my OP, I would expect at least a 30% gain in IPC from Skylake compared to Sandy Bridge, and 15% compared to Haswell, which is still significant.

With CPUs getting more core and threads, we can expect the majority of the performance gains to come from increased TLP and ILP in the future. We're already seeing that now with games and encoding/transcoding software. Game developers have been forced to redesign their engines to utilize more cores/threads as a result of the PS4 and Xbox One. All of the new 3D engines benefit from more than four threads, and some will scale up to 8 threads even.

So whilst IPC is still very important, it's not where the focus is. As long as it keeps evolving though, thats all that matters.



Mainstream will be quads, but I'm talking about enthusiast level hardware. Just like Haswell-e is 6 core minimum and 8 core maximum, I would expect Skylake-e to have 8 core minimum and 10 core maximum..

I'm not sure intel will move to 8-10 cores on the desktop for skylake its only a year and abit away would make more sense to get better clock speeds and to increase ipc in that 6-8 core range.

But you never know.

 

[escrow4]

By the time Broadwell E is released there will be a quad core i7 equivalent released within a year that is as fast if not faster. Buying an expensive platform for the whole package is an investment, except you don't really need it in games. Not for a good long time at least. When that happens buy six core sure but buying six core now in the hope for longevity is pointless. And really, Rome and Crysis 3 are pretty tech demos, not games, there is nothing in either that requires a hexa core. And really Intel, 3.5Ghz max for <8 cores is poor if I pay $1K.

 

[guskline]

I've learned that in the upgrade world, you never say "never". I'm really satisfied with my 3930k @ 4.6Ghz so Haswell-E is very unlikely.

IF I didn't have a 6 core chip, I woud look at the Haswell-E. Hopefully, DDR4 drops in price.

 

[biostud]

I'm not skipping it.

 

[Makaveli]

I'm not skipping it.

lol I think this thread is for those on older platforms don't think it applies to you.

 

[biostud]

lol I think this thread is for those on older platforms don't think it applies to you.

I were on a i5-750

 

[Spydermag68]

I was going to upgrade to a Haswell/Broadwell system but I am skipping it now. I read about the bug in H/B cores and that is when I decided to wait. Now I am waiting on skylake mainly because of all the features that RussianSensation mentioned in post #29. I am currently running on an AMD 965.

 

[Owls]

No way am I going Haswell-E. I would have to be really loaded with cash to justify the expense vs performance over what I got. What I may do though is upgrade my monitor and video cards. Looking at the ROG swift and a couple 970's perhaps. Even then, what I got is pretty good for my needs.
However, give me a new BF game to get excited about and watch the dollars fly from my wallet. That's usually how it works.

Many times I sat at my computer looking at my shopping cart full of haswell-e stuff and I'm thinking, am I going to see any difference? And the answer for me (since it's gaming) is always no. so I close the browser window, start looking at 30" 1600p IPS monitors, and become depressed that none are 120Hz.

We're in a state where there is not enough tangible progress over previous generations to justify upgrading.

 

[Makaveli]

Many times I sat at my computer looking at my shopping cart full of haswell-e stuff and I'm thinking, am I going to see any difference? And the answer for me (since it's gaming) is always no. so I close the browser window, start looking at 30" 1600p IPS monitors, and become depressed that none are 120Hz.

We're in a state where there is not enough tangible progress over previous generations to justify upgrading.

We have been in that state since after nehalem in 2008. You are better off skipping a few generations then doing your upgrade. The days of upgrading platforms every two years are long done. The only thing that has kind of kept that has been GPU's.