How many of you are going to get a Broadwell-E CPU?

[Cromulent]

Since it has been leaked that the new top end Broadwell-E CPU will be a 10 core / 20 thread beast I have decided that that is going to be my next CPU upgrade (upgrading from a Sandybridge-E i7 3930k).

So who else is going to make the jump to Broadwell-E when it comes out at some point in Q1 2016? Sounds like it will be a real monster of a CPU when it comes out and it'll certainly help with the video work I'm about to start doing. I don't want to be spending most of my time waiting for videos to encode to make them ready to upload to YouTube.

 

[Cromulent]

Unless your workload can really benefit from the cores it will be be a waste of money to as a higher clocking six core will suit most tasks better

Yeah I do a lot of video encoding which really makes use of extra CPU cores and of course when you are Twitch streaming live game play having the extra cores is a huge help.

Sure it won't be a CPU for everyone but I certainly think I'll get really good use out of it. Hopefully it'll be released really soon (February would be awesome) but I'm prepared to wait either way.

 

[Cromulent]

Still waiting on something that is so objectively better than my 2550K for gaming that I can subjectively get past the attachment I have to my first ever CPU.

Wow. You make me feel old. My first ever CPU was a 286 .

Well technically it was my Dads but I used that computer the most.

 

[Cromulent]

The 6900K looks a great chip if it replaces 5930K.

We need to see pricing first though, I wouldn't be surprised if it's £800 with the 10 core model at £1500 or so.

If it were £1500 no one would buy it. They'd just buy a 12 core / 24 thread E5-2670 v3 Xeon instead which would be the same sort of price with more cores and better multi-threaded performance.

No I think it'll be £1000 max but at this time it is all speculation. I'm hoping it'll be more inline with the current top end Haswell-E CPU since if they increase the price too much people will just start buying Xeons instead.

 

[Cromulent]

The Xeon is clocked much lower and you can't overclock it though, it'd be rubbish for a gaming system, worse than the 6-8 core i7's probably.

I can't speak for anyone else obviously but the reason I care so much about the 10 core Broadwell-E chip isn't so much for gaming but for doing things like video rendering and such like. The types of games I play are not really all that resource intensive but I do a lot of video encoding (I do it daily) so the more cores the better as far as I am concerned.

Overclocking is nice (I have 4.4Ghz running nicely on my Sandybridge-E at the moment) but I'd swap that for more cores in a heartbeat.

 

[Cromulent]

Believed to be March / April

I was kinda hoping that Intel would announce them in their CES keynote speech today and they would be available February / March. I guess I'm just being optimistic .

 

[Cromulent]

Now I'm not sure whether I should buy now or wait until Broadwell-E comes out with those rumoured prices for the 10 core. I was hoping the 10 core would cost the same as the 8 core Haswell-E CPU. What do you think I should do? If I was going to buy now I'd probably get the 8 core Haswell-E i7-5960X.

 

[Cromulent]

Lol wait if it wasnt the 5960x i would bite the bullet on a 5820k but not the 5960x it'll depreciate quicker then a broken nissan.

Yeah I guess you are right. Thing is this new computer is going to have to last me a minimum of 5 years since I won't be upgrading the CPU in that time (unless it breaks).

I can't afford the 10 core Broadwell-E if it is really going to cost $1500 which means I'll just be getting the 8 core one which doesn't sound like a huge upgrade from the current top of the range Haswell-E.

 

[Cromulent]

Well if the 10 core is expensive as everyone says it will be I'll just get the 8 core model instead. It'll still be fast enough for games for at least 3 - 5 years and will still work well with SLI and Crossfire.

It would have been nice to get a 10 core because it would drastically improve video rendering performance but I can't afford the amount of money that people are saying it will cost.

 

[Cromulent]

After a lot of thinking and going back and forth over my options I decided to upgrade my graphics cards instead of doing a total system upgrade. So I'll stick with my current CPU for at least another year as it is still fast enough for pretty much all games (it is an i7 3930k running at 4.4Ghz).

So yeah an Nvidia 980Ti will last me for another year, possibly two. By then Skylake-E should have been released with loads of new motherboard features.

Realistically speaking, a 6 core will perform just as well as 8/10core for gaming/ real world performance i.e human down time between tasks.

This is just wrong. When encoding 3 or more videos in a batch process having a 10 core could easily knock 30+ minutes off the encoding time compared to my current 6 core. Possibly more given the increased IPC of newer CPUs as well.

 

[Cromulent]

As it stands it looks a lot like Broadwell on the desktop in that with Skylake-E in Q1 next year they don't seem too bothered about selling many!

Yeah I think waiting for Skylake-E seems to be the most sensible option at this point.