x79 vs z68

[dpk33]

Well the system in my sig is due for an upgrade. i'm looking for a platform that offers more future-proofing. that's it. will the z68 for sure support ivy bridge and will the x79 for sure support ivy bridge-e?

if the x79 will support ivy bridge e, i'm probably going to grab myself one of the x79 boards and a sandy bridge e and then upgrade to ivy bridge e when it's out. does this sound like a good plan? or should i grab a z68 board and a 2500k and upgrade to ivy bridge when it's out?

 

[Rifter]

Z68 will support Ivy for sure. As for 2011 supporting Ivy-E i dont know as i havent seen anything saying it will yet.

 

[Grooveriding]

fwiw

 

[Rifter]

fwiw

Thanks, and i really mean that as i have not seen this slide before.

Still on the fence about the stripped down X79 we got though. I think im still holding out till USB 3 is native and more than 2 SATA 3 ports are offered.

Do you know if IB-E will have a new chipset as well as being offered on X79?

 

[BrightCandle]

SB-E is an expensive chip and platform and it doesn't give a lot of people much extra performance for that cost. Since no platform is really future proof you should just focus on getting the cost effective system today. Both SB and SB-E will have their own IB implementation, but whether you'll want to put it in todays generation of motherboards is quite hard to predict at this point. Most enthusiasts will be more than happy with a SB CPU, not least because it'll get IB nearly a year early by current predictions.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

I can't justify spending well over $300 for an X79 motherboard given the chipset is ultimately no better than Z68. Intially X79 was supposed to offer some killer features like 10 x SATA6 ports on its own 4x PCI-e lane to the CPU, but they nixed that and now offer no better than what Z68 provides, heck it doesn't even have SSD caching like Z68 offers. That might not have been as big of a deal if it did have 10 x SATA6 ports as you could have then very well RAIDed enough small SSDs together not to have need of it, but again, we only have 6 ports on X79, and only 2 of them are SATA6.

As far as whether or not we'll see a new chipset by IB-E, I certainly hope so, and I hope they bring back some of the feature X79 was originally supposed to have.

 

[Puppies04]

dpk33 what are you actually going to use this rig for? Unless you have very specific requirements you don't need 2011 and if you are going to say "mostly gaming" then 1155 is a no brainer.

 

[dpk33]

i'm just looking for the platform that will last me longer. price isn't an issue, but if the x79 platform doesnt outlive the z68 platform by much, then i'm getting the z68. also, is there going to be a new chipset released for 1155 socket?

 

[biostud]

Depends on your usage since both platforms have same longevity. They're both going to support Ivy bridge versions, so the question is whether you need 4, 6 or 8 cores?

If you don't do a lot of encoding or other heavy multi-threaded then go for z68

 

[Magic Carpet]

i'm just looking for the platform that will last me longer. price isn't an issue, but if the x79 platform doesnt outlive the z68 platform by much, then i'm getting the z68. also, is there going to be a new chipset released for 1155 socket?

The upcoming 7x chipset will have native usb3 support but as it appears PCI Express 3.0 is getting delayed until next platform. Z68 should serve you well until Haswell.

 

[dpk33]

I do a lot of gaming and some video-editing for school projects. I'm assuming 1155/ivy bridge is the one for me? is socket 2011 and ivy bridge-e way overkill for what i do? would it last longer than ivy for what i do?

 

[Magic Carpet]

I do a lot of gaming and some video-editing for school projects. I'm assuming 1155/ivy bridge is the one for me? is socket 2011 and ivy bridge-e way overkill for what i do? would it last longer than ivy for what i do?

If you can afford the 2011 platform, go for it. You're gonna have lots of joy with that. If you do lots of video encoding/transcoding the extra threads will certainly come in handy. Longevity will be there, guaranteed!

Now if you can't... 1155 then.

 

[Edrick]

The upcoming 7x chipset will have native usb3 support but as it appears PCI Express 3.0 is getting delayed until next platform. Z68 should serve you well until Haswell.

Where do you see that?

The chipset is only going to have PCIe 2.0 lanes (for storage, usb, etc), but the IB CPU will support PCIe 3.0 as will the MBs for graphics.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Where do you see that?

The chipset is only going to have PCIe 2.0 lanes (for storage, usb, etc), but the IB CPU will support PCIe 3.0 as will the MBs for graphics.

Yeah, I mixed it up. My apologies.

 

[exar333]

If you can afford the 2011 platform, go for it. You're gonna have lots of joy with that. If you do lots of video encoding/transcoding the extra threads will certainly come in handy. Longevity will be there, guaranteed!

Now if you can't... 1155 then.

I kind of agree with this. But if gaming is your primary goal, it's tough to beat the bang-for-your-buck 1155 2500K purchase....

 

[BrightCandle]

As a heavy workstation class user I still agonized over the additional cost of X79 and a 3930k over a 2600k on a Z68. Despite spending most of my day in front of the darn thing I still worry now whether its the right choice to spend in excess of £300 more for a machine I might only keep for a year and where those 2 extra cores will only help in some of the things I do. Compilation is still mainly single threaded as are the tests I run.

For me if Intel released a 200W TDP chip with nothing but the best single threaded performance money can buy I'd consider it. But not everyone makes a living with their computer and my time is valuable to me.

X79 is for the guys who run 3 monitors, know what to do with 16GB of RAM, run water cooling and crossfire/SLI setups. Its pure performance without attempts to make it all that cheap for the average consumer. Bang for the buck and performance per watt are much worse than Z68, but the fact it has no GPU on the chip tells you about the audience, its not cost effectiveness Intel is targeting. It is still cheap enough that many people can afford it.

So ask yourself how much time do you spend using your computer and do those activities benefit from 6 cores instead of 4?

 

[nanaki333]

both are going to have the same shelf life. intel made it's decision to go with 2 sockets for "budget" and "enthusiast". a 2600k would probably do you just fine. look at all the benchmarks out there and you'll see performance is near identical clock for clock, except in the very few heavily threaded apps.


brightcandle,

you mean 32GB of memory! 8 DIMMs baby! i just use fancycache and let my system use all of my memory for something rather than have 28GB free doing nothing.

 

[imaheadcase]

I saved $600 going z68 over x79. So there is that...

Plus the gap in performance pretty much ends when you overclock cpu on x68.


No real reason to go x79 unless you are hardcore graphics editor.

 

[dpk33]

Well then, 1155 seems to be the way to go. Although will there be a new 1155 chipset specifically for Ivy Bridge or something? Or is getting the z68 a better option?

 

[mrjoltcola]

In general I agree, except there are many other fields of use that need 32GB+ than graphics editing. I don't do graphics, myself; my graphics person does fine on 16GB RAM, but for my purposes, 32GB allows multiple virtual machines to fully simulate and test architectures server architectures, plus allows me to run some database configurations that simulate my production environments (Oracle and SQL Server). On top of that, it is now feasible to work on code projects from a RAM drive, so hopefully my compile times will improve even more than when I switched to SSD. So the point isn't whether I really need 32GB, I can get by without it, but it opens up a whole new realm of computing for me.

Besides that, I fully believe with RAM prices dropping to where they have, now is a great time to buy RAM. I know some companies got out of the DRAM market, due to the losses they experienced trying to keep pace with Samsung (in both price and manufacturing).

Lastly, if you need 32GB of RAM, then look at X79 as a $120 off coupon for a 6-core processor, because 32GB on X79 with 8 DIMMS is about that much cheaper than 32GB on Z68 with 4 DIMMS, after you figure in the motherboard price differences. Comparing 16GB or less configurations, there is more of a differential and Z68 makes way more sense.

And if you want to overclock, take it from me, stick with quad-core, 2600K or 2700K. I've only tried with my 3930K, but so far, noone else in the SB-E overclocking thread has broken 4.7. Statistically, getting 6-cores to a high clock is way more of a rare feat than with 4-cores. Either that, or all of us early adopters got lower-bin silicon, but I sort of doub it.

 

[greenhawk]

Although will there be a new 1155 chipset specifically for Ivy Bridge or something? Or is getting the z68 a better option?

There will be new chipsets. if they are worth it, hard to say as intel has only released overview of the feature changes.

Getting a Z68 only matters if you are getting a SB now as you need something to use it in.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Despite spending most of my day in front of the darn thing I still worry now whether its the right choice to spend in excess of £300 more for a machine I might only keep for a year and where those 2 extra cores will only help in some of the things I do. Compilation is still mainly single threaded as are the tests I run.

I work with video and can already exploit the benefit of extra threads.

The amount of extra $ it can potentially bring home and the amount of your time it can potentially save... since you can do your work faster! is worth the premium Intel asks for it

If you think, it is not worth it for you, then it probably isn't. But there is a market for it.

 

[jacktesterson]

Z68. no question.

My opinion though.