The amount of IVY Bridge cpus is daft imo

[easyrider]

There are to many now in the lineup imo.

 

[Martini1991]

There are to many now in the lineup imo.

SB had a lot of chips in the line up too.

 

[Gav_881]

As a lack of choice is unlikely to affect the price of the high end chips i say the more the merrier. However part of me does think it may be an attempt to drive the final nail in on AMD's cpu range by providing an intel chip at each price point.

That would ofc be a bad thing as without competition they are free to push the price up all they want in the future.

 

[Rooster212]

From a business point of view it makes perfect sense, provide the right silicon in each price range, the ones that can run best are in the 3770k and 3570k, whilst the ones that aren't quite as good are put in the lower end chips, all the way down to the Pentiums.

 

[ubersonic]

There are to many now in the lineup imo.

Not including specialist (low power/server/mobile) chips you have a Pentium dual core, a couple of i3's, five i5's including the K series, and two i7's again including the K series.

You have to remember that IB is a replacement to SB in all areas from entry level right up to high end enthusiast (quad core anyway). Compare that to Clarkdale/Lynnfield* when you had a Celeron, a Pentium, four i3's, seven i5's and four i7's all on LGA1156 and its not really much different. Back in the Core2 day you also had a large range with Celeron/Pentium dual cores plus Core2 duo and quad.

*I know Clarkdale and Lynnfield were were two architectures versus IB's one but they were designed to compliment each other and make up the line-up together, IB is designed to be the line-up so it works out.

 

[ULP]

Is there more to come?

My new build needs to happen soon, I want a 6 core extreme.

How long am I waiting for it?

IvyBridge ?
Haswell ?

 

[ubersonic]

The are no more planned with Haswell right around the corner, as of this moment no 6 core consumer Haswell is planned. But if you want 6 core Intel you can actually get the i7 3930K or higher right now, they use the enthusiast SB-E architecture, X79 chipset and socket 2011 though. If you want to wait then IB-E is slated for 3rd-4th quarter 2013 and that will have hex cores (again though socket 2011 and X79 (perhaps also a newer chipset as well).

The reason Intel only make 6 core CPU's for the enthusiast/high end market is basically because the average user has no need/use for that many cores, for gaming a quad i5 will do the job fine and for a lot of "work" a quad i7 with HT is enough.

 

[illuz]

Hex cores. Who needs that kind of power

 

[ULP]

The are no more planned with Haswell right around the corner, as of this moment no 6 core consumer Haswell is planned. But if you want 6 core Intel you can actually get the i7 3930K or higher right now, they use the enthusiast SB-E architecture, X79 chipset and socket 2011 though. If you want to wait then IB-E is slated for 3rd-4th quarter 2013 and that will have hex cores (again though socket 2011 and X79 (perhaps also a newer chipset as well).

The reason Intel only make 6 core CPU's for the enthusiast/high end market is basically because the average user has no need/use for that many cores, for gaming a quad i5 will do the job fine and for a lot of "work" a quad i7 with HT is enough.

A long time to wait for the extreme version of IB, a hex from haswell will be a right wait you reckon.

I'm a mixed user, video and 3d rendering plus general use, so I find myself placed between Xeon and i7, extreme version seems the right choice.

Can you see a massive improvement in the IB-E to the SB-E given that its only another tick?

I've been looking at the 3930k and am close to just bitting the bullet and ordering.

 

[BrianB]

First world problems... I think it's great that they have lots of choice in their lineup. If there was nothing between an i3 and a 3770K I would have gone AMD.

 

[ubersonic]

Can you see a massive improvement in the IB-E to the SB-E given that its only another tick?

I've been looking at the 3930k and am close to just bitting the bullet and ordering.

I was in this position too, and I originally bought a 3820 with the intention of keeping it until IB-E, however I changed to a 3930K when I got a great deal on one because the way I came to see it was (and this is just an assumption obviously) IB had a ~5% performance gain over SB due to better IPC but imo the big benefit was the improvement in the integrated GPU and the lower heat (at stock).

IB-E like SB-E before it should ditch the iGPU so there is a big benefit of IB gone straight away, that just leaves the lower heat at stock and better IPC, now I may be off the mark here but I don't believe many people buy K and X CPUs to keep at stock so there goes the cooler stock temps, last is the superior IPC which is still a good thing, however if SB-E/IB-E goes anything like SB/IB did then the IPC will only make up for the heat wall hit when over clocking (I.E a 3770K has better IPC than a 2700K but the SB will reach higher clocks before hitting its thermal wall so the performance is roughly equal).

So factoring that in unless you want to keep the chip at stock speed then IB-E will give no performance benefit over SB-E and even if you do want to then it will be only ~5% anyway. Of course Intel may use a better IHS solution for IB-E which should relieve its thermal ceiling somewhat and let it employ its IPC advantage at high overclocks, but still then its not exactly a massive advantage.

I decided to bite the bullet and go 3930K and I'm loving it, mines clocked at 4GHz in a passively water cooled system rigged for silence and never goes over 60 degrees even after hours of gaming with other tasks running in the background.

 

[ULP]

Cheers man, that's useful information!

I'll keep you posted.

I was in this position too, and I originally bought a 3820 with the intention of keeping it until IB-E, however I changed to a 3930K when I got a great deal on one because the way I came to see it was (and this is just an assumption obviously) IB had a ~5% performance gain over SB due to better IPC but imo the big benefit was the improvement in the integrated GPU and the lower heat (at stock).

IB-E like SB-E before it should ditch the iGPU so there is a big benefit of IB gone straight away, that just leaves the lower heat at stock and better IPC, now I may be off the mark here but I don't believe many people buy K and X CPUs to keep at stock so there goes the cooler stock temps, last is the superior IPC which is still a good thing, however if SB-E/IB-E goes anything like SB/IB did then the IPC will only make up for the heat wall hit when over clocking (I.E a 3770K has better IPC than a 2700K but the SB will reach higher clocks before hitting its thermal wall so the performance is roughly equal).

So factoring that in unless you want to keep the chip at stock speed then IB-E will give no performance benefit over SB-E and even if you do want to then it will be only ~5% anyway. Of course Intel may use a better IHS solution for IB-E which should relieve its thermal ceiling somewhat and let it employ its IPC advantage at high overclocks, but still then its not exactly a massive advantage.

I decided to bite the bullet and go 3930K and I'm loving it, mines clocked at 4GHz in a passively water cooled system rigged for silence and never goes over 60 degrees even after hours of gaming with other tasks running in the background.