So what's the word on upgrading to Haswell???

Another vote for Ivy

Sygnus, I know you do a lot of graphics work. How much, I don't know. But, the people who do a lot of the heavy duty graphics work claim that Sandy-E will pay for itself rather quickly. From some of the comments I've heard from the heavy graphics people is that sandy-E will do it in extremely time faster than the 2600K or 3770K. And, the CPU you chose will overclock well too, if you need to.

I agree, Kelly. I just think if he does a lot of graphics work he should go 2011. That's what it's made for.

essenbe said:

Sygnus, I think you have pretty much decided on Sandy-E, which is an excellent choice. You probably need it too with your graphics work. I think you'll be amazed at what it will do. If Ivy-E comes out before you build, see what the reviews say about it and make that decision then. As far as just a 3770K or a 2600K, I would go with the Ivy. I have both and the Ivy is stronger and tougher, in my opinion. All of the talk that it won't overclock as high is BS. But, it will get hotter if you are running stress tests, but in normal operation, there is no difference. Plus, Ivy with the Z77 has a few chipset advantages such as USB 3.0 which is part of the chipset and PCIe 3.0, which may not make a big difference right now, but may in another year. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Wait... I've just looked a few X79 boards with PCIe 3.0 and native USB 3.0 so what am I missing?

Also, though I may do some slight overclocking, it isn't really the make or break deal for me. Which is also another reason I backed down from the ASUS Rampage IV Extreme.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong but from what I gather... the real brute of the CPU's and power users are the Sandy Bridge-E's on a X79 boards?

And one other question: are the Z77 (Ivy Bridge) motherboards better than the X79 motherboards.

I'm doing some research but I'd like to get further feedback.

Thanks.

I'm not sure you are missing anything. I've just looked at some and I believe I was wrong about the PCIe 3.0, it seems they do have that. But, I think I was right about the native USB3.0. A lot of boards come with USB 3.0 but they are add ons. From the Asus Rampage IV Extreme, they use ASMedia USB 3.0 controllers. The Z77 boards, as I understand it, were the first boards out that Intel made USB 3.0 as part of the chipset. That was what I meant by native (part of the chipset and not an add in). They come with 2 sata III ports and 4 sataII ports as part of the chipsets. To increase the number of ports, most use add ons such as asus uses ASMedia, I believe, others use marvell. The X79 boards have 40 lanes of traffic available where the Z77 boards have 24, I think. That helps a lot for multiple GPU or add on cards. I believe I am correct in saying that any add ons are never as good as features supported natively by the chipset. The Haswell chipset comes with 6 SATA III ports native to the board, which can be a big plus if you run multiple SSDs.

The 2011 boards and CPU are enterprise versions and typically have better features than the Z77 boards. Keep in mind, I don't own a 2011 board so am telling you what I 'think' I know about them. Lady Fitzgerald has one and is very up on the feature set. But, i also believe I am correct in saying that the Sandy Bridge-E CPU's are the 'beast' right now.