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

sygnus21 · 14 Jun 2013

essenbe said:

ONE MORE THING: With what you want to do with your computer, it may be easier for you to narrow your choices down to 2 until Ivy E comes out. I would suggest you narrow your choices to the 2011 rig you started this thread wanting and Ivy bridge. Haswell is not an improvement over Ivy, in my opinion. With your graphics work, and I believe you do a lot of it, you started out with the correct set up.

Yeah from the replies I got here, as well as my research, I'm thinking Sandy-E or Ivy-E. Definitely not considering the Sandy 2600K.

And yes, at the moment, Haswell is out as I get the impression the real emphasis with these chips is on laptops and battery/efficiency performance rather than brute speed...

On the flipside jumping on a Haswell wouldn't be too bad considering I'm upgrading from a first gen i7 (950) processor anyway.

Then you have the motherboards. For me, this is where the decision will be made. If I remove the OC factor, and consider that Sandy, Ivy, and Haswell offer about the same performance, than it comes down to what tech the motherboards are offering.

From that perspective the Z boards (77/87) look to be the better choice since they are newer than the X79's. and as essenbe pointed out, the Z77 boards offer native USB 3.0 support through the chipset, as well as SATA III.

For my needs, I'm looking at a high performance system that can handle 16/32gig of high speed RAM (1800+Mhz), SATA ports that provide high performance speed for my SSDs/HDs - typical configuration will be two SSD drives and one 2TB HD

Though I will be overclocking, it won't be extensive. Though I'm a huge, a single high end GPU is all I need; maybe I'll do crossfire, but definitely not tri or quad.

PC will be used for gaming, photo editing/processing with Photoshop, and some music editing/mixing.

With that... decisions, decisions

BTW I just looked at these two boards...

GIGABYTE Z77X-UP7 Intel Z77 Motherboard Review - GIGABYTE Z77X-UP7 - The New Flagship - Legit Reviews

AnandTech | Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H Review: Functionality meets Competitive Pricing

essenbe · 14 Jun 2013

It would also depend on how much and what kind of video editing you do. The sandy-E will do it in probably half the time of any of the other CPUs mentioned. As far as motherboard features, Haswell boards have some great features, such as 6 native sata III ports where the Z77 only have 2 native and depending on which model you buy 2-4 add on sata III ports, which don't get the performance of the native ports, and the ones with Marvell add ons have issues with SSDs. Of course with Haswell you are going to have to contend with some heat issues, even more than Ivy Bridge which has heat issues. I don't know how Haswell handles gaming or such as that, but Ivy handles it well. I only have heat issues with Ivy when running stress tests, but Haswell is supposed to be hotter than Ivy. But the features on the Haswell boards are really good. you're right, decisions, decisions

Layback Bear · 10 Aug 2013

Long video but very informative.

Boozad · 14 Aug 2013

essenbe said:

Of course with Haswell you are going to have to contend with some heat issues, even more than Ivy Bridge which has heat issues. I don't know how Haswell handles gaming or such as that, but Ivy handles it well. I only have heat issues with Ivy when running stress tests, but Haswell is supposed to be hotter than Ivy. But the features on the Haswell boards are really good. you're right, decisions, decisions

In the three months I've had my rig I've hammered it regularly with some pretty intense gaming sessions and I can honestly say I've never experienced any heat issues. I can't compare to Ivy as I moved from an AMD rig, but Haswell has yet to throw up any problems for me while gaming.

I'm running a 4670k (stock clocks) with a triple copper heatpipe cooler on a Sabertooth Z87.