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Those of you on X79 - when will you upgrade?

Cromulent

Cromulent

Cromulent

Soldato
Joined
1 Nov 2007
Posts
7,100
Location
England
I have an X79 system with a 3930k CPU running at 4.4Ghz with 2 x AMD 7950 in Crossfire.

At the moment I'm very happy with the performance of the system but as always I have my mind on when I should upgrade to get the best return on investment. At the moment I think I'll upgrade when the successor to X99 is released (what ever that will be called) and then get the 8 core version of the CPU. I imagine this will be a Skylake-E CPU (is that right? As far as I know Skylake-E is due after Broadwell-E?).

So when will you upgrade you X79 system? Any thoughts on it? As I said I'm perfectly happy with my system but having a couple of extra cores will be nice and some of the newer features in current CPUs look nice from a programming perspective and a virtualisation perspective (I use a lot of virtual machines on my computer).

In fact I bought this machine with the intention of playing lots of games on it but it has turned out that most of my usage has been virtual machines and programming. I'll definately get 32GBs of RAM next time round. I won't make that mistake again!

So, interested in hearing everyone's opinions!
 
Ive said it before but whoever bought a X79 3930k setup when released and still has it, what an absolute blinding investment its turned out to be. Especially if running high 4 even 5ghz.

No need to even be looking until atleast skylake-e, depending on what that brings to the table and how many cores games are using by then, might even be able to hold off even longer!!
 
IMHO a 5ghz 3930k is equivalent to

4930k @ 4.7ghz
5930k @ 4.4ghz

If im wrong, on not quite on the mark somebody please correct me
 
Xplo said:
Ive said it before but whoever bought a X79 3930k setup when released and still has it, what an absolute blinding investment its turned out to be. Especially if running high 4 even 5ghz.
Click to expand...

Yeah. I bought it on a whim when it originally came out and I couldn't be happier with the performance. It really does well in everything that I throw at it. With a Samsung 840 Pro 256GB as the boot drive the machine seems to manage everything near instantly.

Xplo said:
No need to even be looking until atleast skylake-e, depending on what that brings to the table and how many cores games are using by then, might even be able to hold off even longer!!
Click to expand...

Yeah that was my thinking. I could probably wait even longer than that I guess but I need to make sure that my system is reasonably up-to-date for various reasons (mainly playing around with CPU features when programming).

I guess a better upgrade would be getting a third monitor for my system. Then I'd have 2 x 24 inch monitors and 1 x 27 inch monitors which would be awesome for my programming workflow.
 
Xplo said:
IMHO a 5ghz 3930k is equivalent to

4930k @ 4.7ghz
5930k @ 4.4ghz

If im wrong, on not quite on the mark somebody please correct me
Click to expand...

I haven't tried pushing my 3930k above 4.4Ghz yet. I'm not sure if my overclocking abilities are good enough to get it that high and anyway I use air cooling on my system (Noctua NH-D14).

Do you think I could push it higher with that cooler? My CPU seems to run very cool at the moment and I have had no stability problems with it.
 
Heck, I'm still on Z68 (i5 2500k @ 4.4GHz) and have no plans to upgrade for at least another year.

Have to say there have been some excellent CPUs for longevity from Intel over the past six or seven years. My last CPU was a Q6600 overclocked to 3.5GHz that lasted me just over four years and was still performing admirably when I replaced it. I think this Sandybridge i5 might even top that.
 
My everday rig is I5 2500k @ 4.5Ghz, just added dual 970's in place of dual 680's and its plenty enough for my gaming etc. I was gonna up it to X99 but I don't think I'd see much change the way I use it. The pricing of X99 also is a major investment and won't Skylake be able to use DDR3 and DDR4?
 
colinmcr said:
The pricing of X99 also is a major investment and won't Skylake be able to use DDR3 and DDR4?
Click to expand...

I'm very confused about this, and I hope someone with more knowledge can explain further.

I think Intel are proposing introducing a new memory module form factor called UniDIMM to hold both the types of DRAM chips, so I guess that's how they're going to be able to support both DDR3 and 4 memory in Skylake. However, it looks like the key positions will be in new places, so existing RAM sticks will probably not be able to fit in an new 1151 mobo, and the unidimms won't fit into an existing 1150 socket mobo.

Is that even close to being right? Or am I talking nonsense?
 
I honestly don't think it's worth it at the moment. I think i'll wait until later next year.

Performance increase from a 4.6GHz 3930K to a 5930K isn't worth the cost IMO. I would have to go to the 8-core and even the would only benefit on benchmarks.
 
Xplo said:
IMHO a 5ghz 3930k is equivalent to

4930k @ 4.7ghz
5930k @ 4.4ghz

If im wrong, on not quite on the mark somebody please correct me
Click to expand...

I would disagree. 3930K and 4930K are very close together but there's a bigger gap between the 4930K and 5930K than the 3930K and 4930K.

Just as an eample to illustrate my point: Something like 3930K @ 4.8GHz =
4930K @ 4.7GHz
5930K @ 4.4GHz

I wouldn't put a 5GHz 3930K as the equivilent of a 5930K at 4.4GHz. That's quite some leap.
 
spot35 said:
I think Intel are proposing introducing a new memory module form factor called UniDIMM to hold both the types of DRAM chips, so I guess that's how they're going to be able to support both DDR3 and 4 memory in Skylake. However, it looks like the key positions will be in new places, so existing RAM sticks will probably not be able to fit in an new 1151 mobo, and the unidimms won't fit into an existing 1150 socket mobo.
Click to expand...

UniDIMM is aimed at the mobile segment, but is achieved with a 2nd Integrated Memory Controller, same as some of the AMD Chips did to achieve DDR2/DDR3 compatibility. Can't see that the UniDIMM concept makes much sense, as DDR3 has already been out for a long time.
 
spot35 said:
I'm very confused about this, and I hope someone with more knowledge can explain further.

I think Intel are proposing introducing a new memory module form factor called UniDIMM to hold both the types of DRAM chips, so I guess that's how they're going to be able to support both DDR3 and 4 memory in Skylake. However, it looks like the key positions will be in new places, so existing RAM sticks will probably not be able to fit in an new 1151 mobo, and the unidimms won't fit into an existing 1150 socket mobo.

Is that even close to being right? Or am I talking nonsense?
Click to expand...

I'm not saying you are wrong because I don't know but I'd find it strange if Intel bothered with DDR3 compatibility in their high end enthusiast chips since those are the type of people who will spend whatever is required to get a top end PC.

I know when I upgrade I'll likely get DDR4 just because of the advantages it has over DDR3. If they do support DDR3 though I guess it'll make the upgrade seem worth it some as it just saves them the money having to upgrade the RAM as well.
 
Cromulent said:
I'm not saying you are wrong because I don't know but I'd find it strange if Intel bothered with DDR3 compatibility in their high end enthusiast chips since those are the type of people who will spend whatever is required to get a top end PC.

I know when I upgrade I'll likely get DDR4 just because of the advantages it has over DDR3. If they do support DDR3 though I guess it'll make the upgrade seem worth it some as it just saves them the money having to upgrade the RAM as well.
Click to expand...

Completely agree. As I've been informed, unidimms are for mobile platforms.
 
HazardO said:
I'm not going to upgrade for another couple of years now. New SSDs are probably my next upgrade.
Click to expand...

If you already have an 840 Pro like your sig says, I doubt you'll be needing to upgrade for a good while yet. Though I suppose an M.2/sata express SSD might be nice for super speedy loading but probably not that noticeable over a high performing SSD like an 840 Pro!

I'm not going to be upgrading my 3770K until at least Skylake, perhaps longer depending on how well they perform and the features the new chipsets provide.
 
Totally pointless upgrade for me. Doubt a 5930k would achieve noticeable gains over my 3930k (which can run @ 5GHz). Similarly a 5960x unless in benches or applications utilising 16 threads.
 
alex_123_fra said:
Totally pointless upgrade for me. Doubt a 5930k would achieve noticeable gains over my 3930k (which can run @ 5GHz). Similarly a 5960x unless in benches or applications utilising 16 threads.
Click to expand...

Yeah the 5930k is a pointless upgrade but by the time Skylake-E comes out I would have hoped that the performance gap between the 3930k and the (7930k? assuming they keep the same naming scheme) new Skylake-E CPU will be big enough to justify the upgrade cost.
 
One of the things I really like about the 2011 X79 boards is the robustness of the CPU socket and the ease of putting a heatsink on it - will be a big consideration for future upgrades and to a degree makes me less keen to move on in a hurry. Especially with AIO's its a simple job to screw them in with no messing about with a backplate or fiddly retention mechanisms that don't work properly.
 
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