Solved Change to X79/ LGA 2011 - Worth it?

[TanyaC]

Some time ago someone posted here about upgrading to LGA 2011 when the current Ivy Bridge release was immenent and I asked why one would go the X79 route. My question was misunderstood and upset at least a couple of people. Some time has passed, and I'd like to ask the question again, hoping this time my poor english skills are not misunderstood again.

With the Haswell on the way, is an investment in LGA 2011 worthwhile?

Given it's expensive and starting to age, if I wanted to improve my systems performance for gaming, media encoding and photoshopping would spending $1300 be a wise investment? (ASRock X79 Extreme9, another 32GB of RAM, and a I7-3930X).

If you have LGA 2011 technology I'd welcome your thoughts.

Edit: Arghh: Sorry, posted in wrong forum.. Meant to post in Hardware & Devices... Slip of the mouse.. Please forgive me.

Thanks
Tanya

 

[bobkn]

Haswell looks like an incremental improvement over Ivy Bridge, which was an incremental improvement over Sandy Bridge. The comparison with Sandy Bridge E won't have changed a lot.

The Socket 2011 systems offer support for more RAM (if you buy a board with 8 DIMM slots, like the one that you mentioned), quad channel RAM support, more PCI-E lanes (may be useful for SLI or Crossfire, if you wish to use multiple graphics cards for gaming), and the ability to use 6 core CPUs. I know of one X79 board that can use 8 core Xeon CPUs:

ASUS - Motherboards- P9X79 WS

(8 core Xeons are expensive - over $1000US for the cheapest one at Newegg.)

I believe that the quad channel RAM's effectiveness is rarely seen outside of synthetic benchmarks.

The Socket 1155 CPUs that include graphics offer Quick Sync, which sounds potentially useful if you do a lot of video transcoding. (I don't.) If you want to go green, they also consume less power (77W for an I7-3770k, 130W for an I7-3930k.) You can also build a good Ivy Bridge system for much less than a Sandy Bridge E system. If you can live with 32GB of RAM, don't wish to use 3 or 4 high end graphics cards in SLI or Crossfire, and would like to use Quick Synch, then the Ivy Bridge system would be the obvious choice.

I like my I7-3930k based system quite a lot. I don't really need its capabilities, though.

 

[TanyaC]

Hi,

Thanks for your reply.

Perhaps the move to 2011 is not going to be worth the expense. I'm happy with a single video card, and I can live with 32GB of RAM - for now. Perhaps I'll come back to this in 6 - 12 months.

Quick Sync is optimized for speed, and sacrifices quality to achieve it. For <source> to portable (such as ipod), it's ok, but for my needs, which is to back up my fragile optical disks (which kids love to leave lying around), and place on server at 1080p for use on our many TVs and computers, it's not an ideal feature.

thanks
Tanya

 

[Britton30]

The Intel Extreme series is a good one although a little old. Worth $1300 to upgrade? I wouldn't do it myself, bbut that is me. There are rumors of Ivy Bridge Extreme CPUs on the horizon, but with the advent of Haswell I don't know if it's true or not, as I said, rumors.

If you did do it, I doubt 64GB of RAM would add more performance than your 32GB. But RAM is cheap, so why not have it, just in case? I don't tax my system with Photoshop but I do notice it snaps open with 16GB over 4GB of RAM, the SSD doesn't hurt either though.

 

[kbrady1979]

Ivy Bridge-E is coming out later this year and will still use the Socket 2011 platform. I'm not sure what it will have over SB-E though. I have used quicksync to encode and while it is fast, the lack of compatible software leaves a lot to be desired. However......Intel has open sourced Quicksync so other, more powerful, applications can utilize it. Notably Handbrake. Handbrake + Quicksync is hopefully going to be insanely great. Handbrake to Get Quicksync Support

TanyaC: What exactly do you use your computer for? Do you need to step up to Socket 2011? I can tell you a good Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge rig is more than enough for most users......Socket 2011 may be a waste of money if you don't have a specific need for what it can do.

 

[TanyaC]

Just trying to squeeze as much performance as I can out of my rig, and also "future proof" it a little. Spend it now, so I dont have to spend anything for a few years. The belt is going to have to tighten in a couple of years so I figured this might be one of my last chances.

I do a lot of media decoding/encoding. All of my optical disks are ripped to MKV and TS and placed on a server so we can watch them from there. The disks then dont get damaged or worn out.

The kids and I are also heavily into NBA. We have league pass, so backing up the games too.

I've also been converting alot of my movies to blu-ray; I have been running out of physical space to store my disks, and putting 3 movies on one disk saves me alot of space.

I do a lot of photoshop work for myself and other people.

I also play alot of games, listen to music, watch a lot of movies, write coldfusion web sites, some traditional programming and a lot of excel work.

I have a 256GB SSD which runs the OS, applications and is used as a scratch disk for all applications that need one. I have a 4gb RAMdisk which is used as a scratch disk for photoshop (before the SSD), and stores temp files, and my IE cache.

The system has a I7-3770K and 32GB of DDR3-2400, and is overclocked to 4.2ghz (cant go higher because x264.exe crashes over 4.2).

 

[kbrady1979]

I would wait until Ivy Bridge Extreme comes out because it definitely sounds like you could utilize a good Socket 2011 system. If you don't like what IB-E has to offer, SB-E parts should be quite a bit cheaper to make room for the new parts.

 

[paulpicks21]

I would wait until Ivy Bridge Extreme comes out because it definitely sounds like you could utilize a good Socket 2011 system. If you don't like what IB-E has to offer, SB-E parts should be quite a bit cheaper to make room for the new parts.

Interestingly Kelly I read an article a while back which is only rumours, but it said that Ivy E was being bypassed now and that Haswell E was due out this year.

Read the article here - Intel Haswell E launch rumoured for 2013 | bit-tech.net

Its a month old now, have you heard any solid news of a definite Ivy E release?

 

[realneil]

IMHO, with the new coming out soon, you should wait for release and benchmark scores to surface first.
I got a heck of a boost with my i7-2600K by adding double the 2133MHz RAM (to 32GB) and changing from a GTX-570 to a GTX-680.
It's plenty fast enough for my needs now and I'm good for at least another year.

 

[TanyaC]

Ok, thanks all. I will hold off and see what develops... IVY-E or Haswell..

 

[kbrady1979]

I guess it is all speculation because AMD isn't pushing Intel to release it on their regular time schedule. I believe if Intel hadn't already spent money on it and hadn't already promised it, they would scrap IB-E altogether. Here is something recent saying it had been pushed back to Q4 2013. Might be worth it for the OP to find deals on SB-E instead.

Ivy Bridge-Extreme Delay

 

[TVeblen]

I just built a socket 2011 system for myself, pretty much for the same reasons you want to. There are real performance increases when running programs that can use multiple cores and need to process large volumes of data.

However I basically just ignored any issues of upgrade paths. I am operating under the assumption that the compatible processors out now (Sandy Bridge-E) are all there will be for this platform. And in a real world sense these are powerful enough to handle anything out there. Intel has been more secretive that usual (if that is possible!) about their upgrade path, and most of what we hear/read is anecdote and rumor. There is no guarantee that Ivy Bridge-E will be released for socket 2011. But if they are I will cross that bridge then.

And isn't Haswell coming out on a whole new socket/platform? Socket 1150?
Intel does the tick-tock marketing thing. Tick is the incremental step, Tock is the major advance. I'm not sure if Haswell is the Tick or the Tock.

 

[Britton30]

Intel has no CPU competitors now so they can do what they want, when they want. AMD has announced they will no longer try to compete in the CPU arena favoring GPU development.