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i7 920 upgrade plans - dilemma

MG42Maniac said:
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.
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wanted to ask, what sort of improvement in terms of fps difference/encoding time (from i7 920 to 4770k) do you get when encoding with handbrake - 20% faster encode, 30%?
 
I'd say about 35% quicker though I never really watched it. I mainly do encoding on my Plex server which has a 4670k @ 4.0Ghz and even that is faster than the 920 was, probably about 20% faster. I loved my 920, a real work horse but they are getting long in the tooth now for certain tasks. If you are mainly wanting to improve encoding times a 6C12T Xeon may be a better bet for you.
 
Wait for skylake to make an informed decision. I don't expect it to be significantly more expensive than Z97, preorder prices are always higher and DDR4 prices have come down a lot (DDR3 is also supported). Also, there will be less heat and much less power used than X58 with a big performance increase.

I'm probably going with the 6700k and if Zen or Skylake-E (new socket, not X99) are revolutionary and DX12/Vulkan changes things significantly, I will sell and upgrade next year. I have a Core I7 940 and have had problems with my PC randomly rebooting itself since May so my upgrade is more urgent than most.
 
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If you're likely to be using a lot of single core things, like games then skylake will be the fastest; I know some games are appearing that use multi core but a lot will still be geared towards 1 fast core.
 
Dave2150 said:
HBM, eDRAM, hex-channel DDR4 etc will obsolete the 5960X in 2-4 years IMO.
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In 10 years time, will these new innovations bring forth that much of an increase in everyday applications, enough to warrant an immediate upgrade?

What sort of applications will need that much memory bandwidth? GPU accelerated applications possibly.

I'd say the 5960x in a decade will still be powerful enough for everyday purposes.

Games in 10 years time will definitely need a GPU upgrade though :D
 
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Dave2150 said:
HBM, eDRAM, hex-channel DDR4 etc will obsolete the 5960X in 2-4 years IMO.
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I get your point but hes sort of right.

Im not saying that some future cpu with hbm memory wont perhaps be a lot quicker than 5960x with ddr4 but do you need that extra speed?

I lived fine for 4 or 5 years with my i7-950. I only swapped to get sata3, usb3 and m2 slots plus a few more cores since more coires is becoming more important.
 
smilertoo said:
If you're likely to be using a lot of single core things, like games then skylake will be the fastest; I know some games are appearing that use multi core but a lot will still be geared towards 1 fast core.
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I disagree. With directx 12 and windows 10 there will be a lot more games which benfit from multi cores IMO
 
Something weird about those results. Check the graphs. On the 980 with directs 11 the 4 core cpu is pretty much 100% usage across the test in directx12. How the hell can ore cores then not give better fps? It's def been cup limited?

Other articles on direct 12 shows a massive boost from an i5 with 4 cores to a i7 with effective 8 cores with hyper threading so I don't see why 6 wouldn't show further improvement?
 
I've been running my X58 system since launch and for the last few years with a 6-core 970. It is actually the chipset which is now ageing the system more than the CPU!

I'm going to try to hold out for Skylake-E and all the goodies the associated chipset will bring. I just don't think I can "downgrade" to 4-cores.
 
Yeah I held out with x58 for as long as I could too.

Finally went x99 after seeing a cheap board on mm and ddr4 finally dropping to 100 quid for 16gb. So whole mobo ram and cpu cost under 500 quid.

X1366 boards sell for silly money almost as much as x99 boards do.
 
I'm still running a i7 920 and i7 930 .. all be it with a change from an old 5850 gpu to GTX970 .. I'm not running a large screen though just 24inch and I have no problems with any game I've tried. Not looking for the top frame rates though just a really smooth game .. no problems ... yet ... but I'll be sad to see the 920 and 930 go .. they've been fantastic .. maybe time to change when a reliable 27inch monitor with g sync comes out
 
Greebo said:
Something weird about those results. Check the graphs. On the 980 with directs 11 the 4 core cpu is pretty much 100% usage across the test in directx12. How the hell can ore cores then not give better fps? It's def been cup limited?

Other articles on direct 12 shows a massive boost from an i5 with 4 cores to a i7 with effective 8 cores with hyper threading so I don't see why 6 wouldn't show further improvement?
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The vast majority of games simply don't want more than 4 cores. Check the official X99 review from the most reputable websites. The 4790k wins in the majority of the games.

Think about it from the developers point of view. They are spending millions developing a new game. They come to optimization etc, they look at what the majority of users will be using to run the game. The majority use a quad-core, as Intel still did't release a mainstream hex core. There's the problem. I'm guessing it's under 1% of the PC gamer userbase that actually games on a hex core Intel CPU.

Until Intel make the top mainstream CPU a hex-core, forget about having games properly optimized to take advantage of 6 cores/12 threads and above.
 
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