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My Next Upgrade: LGA 1155 or 2011?

Yaayuh!

Yaayuh!

Yaayuh!

Soldato
Joined
5 Nov 2010
Posts
24,675
Location
Hertfordshire
Hi all. I'm stuck between 2 main choices in my next upgrade path, any help,comments or ideas would be appreciated.
Basically its a toss-up between 1155 and 2011 platforms. 1155 is slightly cheaper but i can't see any upgrade path from ivy bridge later on.. whereas lga 2011 has the potential for ivy bridge-e later on and maybe more..

My current setup

CPU: i7 920 C0 @ 3.9Ghz
Heatsink: CoolerMaster V6GT
Mobo: Asus P6T Deluxe (v1)
RAM: 9Gb OCZ Gold 1600Mhz 8,8,8,24,1T
GPU1: Asus GTX580 Matrix Platinum
GPU2: Asus GTX520 Silent
Soundcard: Asus Xonar Essence STX
SSD: OCZ Vertex 2e 60Gb
HDD: 2x WD Caviar Black 1Tb RAID-0
PSU: OCZ ZX1000
Case: NZXT H2

Main uses apart from internet browsing and music listening: Gaming, music production and i'm looking into VMs

Reasons for upgrade

I bought the RAM, Mobo and CPU within the first month of X58 release, it's been strong and loyal but it's old and has it's quirks.


  • CPU is hot and not a great overclocker.
  • Due to the motherboard, SSD and possibly the overclock settings; i am unable to recover the PC from sleep mode.
  • POST and the overall boot speed is so extremely slow.
  • USB3.0
  • SATA 6GB/s
  • Next year i will be buying a house, my annual PC upgrade budget will be pretty much destroyed :(.

Component upgrade

Option 1: X79 - LGA 2011

CPU: i7-3820
Heatsink: Phanteks PH-TC14PE
Mobo: Asus X79 Sabertooth
RAM: 16Gb Samsung Green
SSD: Crucial RealSSD M4 256Gb (unless there is a better suggestion)

Option 2: Z77 - LGA 1155

CPU: i7-3770K
Heatsink: Phanteks PH-TC14PE
Mobo: Asus Z77 Sabertooth
RAM: 16Gb Samsung Green
SSD: Crucial RealSSD M4 256Gb (unless there is a better suggestion)

Asus are my favourite brand as I've found them brilliant in terms reliability and price|performance ratio. Therefore i will be sticking with them for the motherboard choice, their Sabertooth model (so long as the system will be able to sleep ;)).
The SSD choice will probably change, will need to check more reviews and potential issues with the drive. It will be used for boot, apps and games.

TIA
 
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I can't see the point of Intel releasing an IB-E in late 2012 when Haswell is just around the corner. Why not a Haswell-E? I guess by then IB would be quite mature though, so Intel would factor that in.
 
X79 = approx double ram bandwidth than dual channel ram but lower read,write,copy,latency.
Z77/ivybridge/ddr3 2800mhz = more responsive rig,a lot faster read,write,copy,latency.

(gaming hardly uses any ram bandwidth)
 
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Random Guy said:
Sorry mate, I think you are wasting money on a current upgrade. How much % gain do you think you will gain from your upgrade?
Click to expand...

% in performance, not much i suppose. I didn't say anything about requiring better performance however..


stuntmanSLim said:
X79 = approx double ram bandwidth than dual channel ram but lower read,write,copy,latency.
Z77/ivybridge/ddr3 2800mhz = more responsive rig,a lot faster read,write,copy,latency.

(gaming hardly uses any ram bandwidth)
Click to expand...

Thanks! This is quite interesting. the bandwidth differences are obvious but i never thought about the overall latency with more channels. Will read up on this.
 
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Rossi~ said:
% in performance, not much i suppose. I didn't say anything about requiring better performance however..
Click to expand...

IMHO, if you have the money now, and later on in time it will disappear, why not? IMO the new interfaces (SATA 3/USB 3.0/PCIe 3.0) are quite tempting, with add-in cards (esp. SATA 3) ones being so poor.
 
Vinni3 @H|H said:
IMHO, if you have the money now, and later on in time it will disappear, why not? IMO the new interfaces (SATA 3/USB 3.0/PCIe 3.0) are quite tempting, with add-in cards (esp. SATA 3) ones being so poor.
Click to expand...

Indeed. Unfortunately though this doesn't help as both platforms offer all 3 of these :p (though Z77 USB3.0 native).

Is there any slightest hint that there will be a processor released on X79 after Ivy Bridge-E?
 
Hmm would changing your GPU not be a massive overall improvment over changing the rest of the system?
It looks to me that your GPU choices would currently be the limitation?
 
Hi there, If you want to upgrade I would personally go with a Z77 board + Ivy Bridge CPU.

As has been mentioned - the memory bandwidth on dual channel Ivy Bridge is still excellent (even compared to X79 SB-E) and the i7 3770K CPU is faster than the i7 3820.

That said, if you will be running VMs and think you may be installing a LOT of RAM, then you may be better off getting a 8 memory slot X79 board - so you can pack it to the rafters with memory modules.

As for CPUs past Ivy Bridge E - I don't think any will fit a LGA2011 board, haswell is expected to be a much bigger design change than sandy to ivy. Therefore, Intel are much more likely to design a new range of boards which can fully harness the power of haswell - instead of persevering with a legacy platform.
 
Hikari Kisugi said:
Hmm would changing your GPU not be a massive overall improvment over changing the rest of the system?
It looks to me that your GPU choices would currently be the limitation?
Click to expand...

Errm, what? BF3 on Ultra with FXAA is smooth as butter at room temperature :confused:


cmndr_andi said:
Hi there, If you want to upgrade I would personally go with a Z77 board + Ivy Bridge CPU.

As has been mentioned - the memory bandwidth on dual channel Ivy Bridge is still excellent (even compared to X79 SB-E) and the i7 3770K CPU is faster than the i7 3820.

That said, if you will be running VMs and think you may be installing a LOT of RAM, then you may be better off getting a 8 memory slot X79 board - so you can pack it to the rafters with memory modules.

As for CPUs past Ivy Bridge E - I don't think any will fit a LGA2011 board, haswell is expected to be a much bigger design change than sandy to ivy. Therefore, Intel are much more likely to design a new range of boards which can fully harness the power of haswell - instead of persevering with a legacy platform.
Click to expand...


The 3770K is faster than the 3820 depending on the overclock... if i can get 4.8-5 on the 3820 and 4.6-4.8 on the 3770K then the 3820 will win.

VMs, not too sure on how much i'm going to get into that yet, so 8 banks that X79 provides may not be required.

Ivy Bridge-E has been on the roadmap and will no-doubt be on LGA 2011. Intel releasing a socket for just 1 type of CPU would be a bit strange IMO, i don't see it being the case. Granted Haswell will be on a new socket/platform end of 2013.
 
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Yes, Ivy Bridge E will be LGA2011 - I was saying that CPUs past Ivy Bridge E are very unlikely to use LGA2011 (ie. haswell E or whatever).

As for the performance difference between i7 3770K and i7 3820 when overclocked. At stocks speeds (3.5GHz for 3770K and 3.6GHz for 3820) the i7 3770K is between 5-10% faster than the 3820 when the 3820 has a 2.9% stock clockspeed advantage. If you assume that the 3820 gets to 5GHz and the 3770K only gets to 4.6GHz then the 3820 has a clockspeed of advantage of 11.1% (8.2% more than at stock speeds). Therefore, I think it's fair to say that at these overclocks the two CPUs will be neck-and-neck in CPU heavy tasks.
 
cmndr_andi said:
Yes, Ivy Bridge E will be LGA2011 - I was saying that CPUs past Ivy Bridge E are very unlikely to use LGA2011 (ie. haswell E or whatever).
Click to expand...

Exactly, so do i get Ivy Bridge now and live with that or do i go with Sandy Bridge-E now and have an upgrade to Ivy Bridge-E later? Though looking around this morning it looks as though it wont be until Spring/Summer next year.
 
Yeah, I'm in this boat too.
I'm also considering running dual 680s with 3 monitors, so I've got 1 eye on PCI-e speeds/bandwidth.
Are there any Z77 boards that offer 16x/16x PCI-e 3.0?

I'm considering the 3930K though instead of the 3820. How well does a 3930K overclock (do the extra cores lower the potential overclock)?
Is the memory read/write/latency issue going to be noticeable?
 
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