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i7 920 upgrade plans - dilemma

Timber

Timber

Timber

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Joined
21 Oct 2002
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East England
I know there's a lot of these posts but I wanted to get some thoughts on an upgrade path. I'm still rocking an i7 920 and motherboard from 2010 (when OCUK did that wonderful EOL offer and arguably my best CPU ever) which is paired with a MSI 780GTX Lightning and mammoth Cosmos II case I bought more recently.

My main uses are currently gaming, browser, odd letter or spreadsheet and some video encoding (usually with handbrake to MP4 encoding) or CD rips. I would love to downsize the PC to mATX and really like the look of the Corsair Carbide Air 240. The PC is generally fine for what I want but recent games like the Witcher 3 are obviously pushing it at 1080p even and I've been thinking about upgrading for a while. In particular I always assumed I would go with X99 and one of the 5820K or 5930K CPUs when the time came. But after reading up quite a bit I'm starting to think this isn't the best course of action.

I've realised I can go 4790K, 16GB RAM and mATX motherboard for £400-450 which is going to be £200-300 cheaper than the 5820K route. The 4790K, ram and motherboard all appear to be really good value atm. This means I can buy the new PC and immediately benefit from improved specs because I'm thinking about pairing this with a 980ti.

However Skylake is around the corner and my assumption is that whatever is the equivalent CPU is to the 4790K is easily going to be more than £300 and require expensive RAM to begin with. Also I might not have the same choice of motherboards on Skylake as Z97 for a little while.

I've tried to find out what other benefits Skylake brings (better PCI-E or SATA for example?) but haven't got very far.

So I realise it's a subjective question, but am I mad to be thinking about a 4790K now?
 
Timber said:
I know there's a lot of these posts but I wanted to get some thoughts on an upgrade path. I'm still rocking an i7 920 and motherboard from 2010 (when OCUK did that wonderful EOL offer and arguably my best CPU ever) which is paired with a MSI 780GTX Lightning and mammoth Cosmos II case I bought more recently.

My main uses are currently gaming, browser, odd letter or spreadsheet and some video encoding (usually with handbrake to MP4 encoding) or CD rips. I would love to downsize the PC to mATX and really like the look of the Corsair Carbide Air 240. The PC is generally fine for what I want but recent games like the Witcher 3 are obviously pushing it at 1080p even and I've been thinking about upgrading for a while. In particular I always assumed I would go with X99 and one of the 5820K or 5930K CPUs when the time came. But after reading up quite a bit I'm starting to think this isn't the best course of action.

I've realised I can go 4790K, 16GB RAM and mATX motherboard for £400-450 which is going to be £200-300 cheaper than the 5820K route. The 4790K, ram and motherboard all appear to be really good value atm. This means I can buy the new PC and immediately benefit from improved specs because I'm thinking about pairing this with a 980ti.

However Skylake is around the corner and my assumption is that whatever is the equivalent CPU is to the 4790K is easily going to be more than £300 and require expensive RAM to begin with. Also I might not have the same choice of motherboards on Skylake as Z97 for a little while.

I've tried to find out what other benefits Skylake brings (better PCI-E or SATA for example?) but haven't got very far.

So I realise it's a subjective question, but am I mad to be thinking about a 4790K now?
Click to expand...

I'd definitely wait for Skylake. The 4790k is the exact same silicon as the 4770 - which was released over 2 years ago. Nothing wrong with it of course, but I'd wait the extra 6-7 weeks for brand new technology, including the much improved Z170 chipset.

The 6700k should cost the same price as the 4790k currently does - it's going to replace it and make the 4790k end of life.

P.S. I'm also still using my i7 920 and Asus P6T Deluxe which I purchased from OCUK in December 2008. Utterly fantastic value for money :) That said I'm upgrading to the 6700k/Asus Z170 for sure - I'm looking forward to finally getting PCI-E v3, Sata3, m.2 x4 slots, UEFI (awesome fan control), USB3, USB3 Type C, the list is endless :D
 
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Dave2150 said:
I'd definitely wait for Skylake. The 4790k is the exact same silicon as the 4770 - which was released over 2 years ago. Nothing wrong with it of course, but I'd wait the extra 6-7 weeks for brand new technology, including the much improved Z170 chipset.

The 6700k should cost the same price as the 4790k currently does - it's going to replace it and make the 4790k end of life.

P.S. I'm also still using my i7 920 and Asus P6T Deluxe which I purchased from OCUK in December 2008. Utterly fantastic value for money :) That said I'm upgrading to the 6700k/Asus Z170 for sure - I'm looking forward to finally getting PCI-E v3, Sata3, m.2 x4 slots, UEFI (awesome fan control), USB3, USB3 Type C, the list is endless :D
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. Some good points and you are probably right but part of me thinks the 6700K isn't going to be as low as the 4790K is, or that early adopters will get hit on the memory front but I suppose the 4790K isn't going anywhere. I suppose there's nothing stopping me dropping a 980Ti in early. And yes the 920 is a legendary chip which I'll miss.

Zico said:
Get a Xeon 5650 for your board.
See here:
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18618052
Click to expand...

I remember reading about these when everyone buying them off eBay. Just there's as much a driver here to downsize the PC as much as keeping my existing setup going.
 
Wait for Skylake mate. Im more than happy with my current set up but i dont feel ive progressed much since I had a X58 rig a few years ago. Nice to be able to use PCI-E storage though.
 
Skylakes likely to remain 4 cores throughout the range. If your going to downsize its a good option but if you want some serious processing power for video encoding go down the six core x58 route for a cheap upgrade or x99 if the budget allows. I kept a x58 platform through two cpu's (920 then a hex 980) went to x99 as ita likely to have more legs in it than intels more regular consumer platforms judging by x58. The cheaper platform up front may not be the cheaper one in the long run depending on your upgrading habits
 
If I was buying right now I'd probably go with 4790K because its substantially cheaper and I think a 4-core processor will be fine for what I need it for. The big unknown to me right now is Skylake, but I'm coming around to the idea of waiting it out.

I guess I was secretly hoping someone said 'do it...buy the 4790K' but I think the common sense thing to do is wait for now.
 
I would not put it past Intel to have Skylakes successor 'Cannonlake' as a four core CPU lineup aswell. Apparently Cannonlake will come out with yet another new chipset (200 series, Skylake is 100 series ie 170 chipset) so people may find that they have to shell out for yet another motherboard to upgrade from Skylake. I recommend that some people consider the 'enthusiast' line up (ie x58, x79, x99) sometimes especially if you go in with the low end CPU to start with (I have the 5820K) as you, on past experience, are far more likely to be able to slot in a higher performing CPU a few years down the line to make the most of the platform. If you look around 5820's can be had for circa £270 new DDR4 has fallen a lot in price recently and there are some fairly reasonable X99 boards out there that don't cost that much over a good 1150 board.

Here hoping we get Broadlake - E or even better an X99 compatible SKylake-E! Given that the enthusiast line up share so much with the Xeon E5 series I would imagine that we will get at least one of these for the Enthusiast line if not a Xeon drop in part much like the hex core drop in CPU's for X58
 
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Timber said:
If I was buying right now I'd probably go with 4790K because its substantially cheaper and I think a 4-core processor will be fine for what I need it for. The big unknown to me right now is Skylake, but I'm coming around to the idea of waiting it out.

I guess I was secretly hoping someone said 'do it...buy the 4790K' but I think the common sense thing to do is wait for now.
Click to expand...

In your shoes I'd be sourcing a Xeon 5650, and dropping that in. Absolutely awesome, powerful, cool running chip.
 
Kelt said:
In your shoes I'd be sourcing a Xeon 5650, and dropping that in. Absolutely awesome, powerful, cool running chip.
Click to expand...

This x1000. The only thing that is tempting me at the minute to upgrade would be for sata, usb, pci, ddr4 etc but then i think na duck it. I have my xeon running at 4.4GHz also. My firestrike score is ~12000 with this plus an overclocked 290x. Which keeps up with newer systems.
 
Well after lots of deliberation and reading, rational behaviour went out of the window tonight. Basically dropped a lot of money on a 5930K/32GB RAM/MSI 980Ti plus various other goodies.

So close to Skylake but the timing suits now to building this new rig, and I sense this will be a great upgrade no matter how good or bad the mainstream i7s are.
 
im going from a i7-930 DO to a 4790K shortly ..

Got the motherboard Z97X-UD3H-BK but awaiting for the case , and also need to get the CPU.

Purchased the 16GB about a month ago and currently using it at the moment instead of the 6GB

Recently got a new Vapor-X 290X on a cheap as well.

Just got to hit the button when the 4790K are about the £230-£240 mark.
 
If i were in your position I'd sell the cpu and board and just buy a secondhand 2500/2600/2700k it's a very smart choice budget wise.
An overclocked 2600k is right up there with the 4790k but at 1/3 the cost.If wanting brand new components then wait for skylake.
 
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Cheers for all the advice and thoughts. I think hanging on, or buying the Xeon were the logical choices, but my PC is getting on. The SDD and HDDs are full, I'd like to downsize the case and I crucially have some spare time to build it coming up. So it made sense to buy into X99 now (budget went up a bit).

Looking forward to the new build and upgrade.
 
I went from a i7 920 @ 4.2Ghz to a 4770k which I currently have clocked at 4.5GHz as my main gaming PC. In terms of actual performance increases in games it is not noticeable at all. One area it is clearly faster in though is Handbrake. It is also very nice to have Sata III and USB 3.0.

I have two 4770k at 4.0GHz & 4.5GHz (Gaming PC 1 & 2) and a 4670K @ 4Ghz (Server) and for day to day uses they all feel identical. It is only in synthetics I can see a difference.
 
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If you worry about having redundant tech you'd never buy anything.

I can't see you being unhappy with a brand new X99 system. Even if you'd gone Z97 you'd still be happy I think.
 
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