Wisdom (or lack thereof) of choosing weakest CPU for socket; upgrading later?

[crashtech]

Well, considering the GPU is what matters for gaming, and considering video cards get outdated much faster than CPUs, it's only to prioritize GPU upgrades over CPU upgrades.

The thing is, buying a top of the line GPU today will make it last like 4 years, if you're willing to compromise on the details later in its life. You're likely to spend 500USD in the card, which amounts to 125USD a year on video cards.

If, however, you spend, say, 250USD on a video card today, it will last you 3 years until you need to upgrade. Say the new video card you buy in 3 years for 250USD will last you another 3 years, that amounts to 500USD for 6 years, which means 80USD per year, which is about 50% in savings.

Sure, a GTX760 won't play like a GTX780 today, but, truth be told, the difference doesn't justify paying double.

It seems like we tend to use reductio ad absurdum to make our points, but the differences tend to be far more subtle than than any extreme example. No one is going to pair an i3 with a $500 GPU, but if someone can save $50 using a cheaper CPU and go one more tier up on the GPU ladder with the money, it might be a wise decision depending on the budget. Gamers looking more the most performance today are best focusing on the GPU, imo, though I do think it makes sense to buy into the newest platform if possible.

I think we must agree to disagree.

 

[Morbus]

If you think we must, that we shall.

 

[know of fence]

I'm fairly certain that the reason why Intel is so eager to sell 2 GHz NUCs, Ultrabooks and Tablets, is because they will become obsolete fairly fast, or at least some of their features will. A 4GHz desktop is twice as fast, which is a massive difference, compared to >10% IPC gains every generation.

Desktops have pretty much peaked, but graphics haven't, which is why we see the focus shifting to graphics and features. Future platforms will be boasting DDR4, Quicksync X, and embedded heterogeneous memory. Maybe some of those will become a killer feature or maybe not.

Being a such a minor improvement in a series of increasingly shrinking ipc gains, Haswell i7s may last a long time, but this will also mean that they aren't getting significantly cheaper in the future.

 

[CHADBOGA]

For price conscious folk who aren't adverse to upgrading in order to get value over a 2 to 5 year horizon, I think the conditions that may have made taking certain actions in the past, don't really apply any more.

With great CPU's now being so affordable and prices on CPU's effectively flat for many years now, it has been hard to go past Intel's 2500K/3570K/4670K line of CPU's.

You don't need to overclock them to start with and if you do, you get an extra boost likely to tide you over for another year or two.

Hell, the way CPU single core performance has slowed in recent years, I expect my 3570K will last me at least 6 more years, especially with it overclocked.

Keep in mind, for most people who aren't going SLI with top end cards, it is going to be many years before something like my 3570K overclocked to 4.0Ghz, becomes such a bottleneck in gaming, that I can't enjoy playing games with it.

 

[Markfw]

Well, what about a 5660 hex core (socket 1366), overclock it, and see what happens when it gets slow.....
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Xeon-...7AA-/261412195826?pt=CPUs&hash=item3cdd618df2
$150 + motherboard

My favorite :
http://www.ebay.com/itm/GIGABYTE-GA...116489313?pt=Motherboards&hash=item461bf0fe61

$150 again. 12 threads most likely@3.4 or better.

 

[vasdrakken]

Really the best thing to do is look at what you use a computer for then plan for double the power of what you currently use. This plans for bloat and for advances that might impact you down the road.

Next don't buy a system on creidt start a savings account the day you buy your system, and having it automatically dump money into when you get paid. When there is enough money in there to cover the parts you need you spend that money and you will always have decent hardware and not feel the hurt unless you are taking too much money from your paychecks.

When I follow this I go about 3 years between system upgrades. The graphic card I bought when it was release in 2010 lasted me until 2013, and would still be an upgrade for a lot of normal people, because I buy the second from the top or in some cases the top, but generally it never makes sense to buy the top part as it will be replaced by something else in six months and generally costs a crazy amount of money. That said there are things I can do with my titan in work that you can not do with a lesser card, due to the certified memory and amount of it. But my current system was designed around maya use so maxing out the system is still possible for me, even with the top products from 2013.