Is the 3930K really worth £200 more than the 3820?

[estebanrey]

Exactly, I've 'wasted' £200 on two extra processing cores whilst you've wasted the same amount on a stupidly expensive motherboard and a launch price GPU, neither of which offer a tangible benefit over the cheaper options themselves. I'd honestly rather have the two extra cores and wait a few weeks for GPU prices to plummet than to have two loud fans on my motherboard and a few extra fps right at this minute.

I've not accused you of wasting anything, PLEASE STOP TAKING MY THREAD QUESTION AS A PERSONAL ATTACK ON YOU!!!

I've always paid around £200-£250 for a motherboard, as I said that is mid-range for the chip-sets I usually buy so enough with the 'stupidly expensive' stuff. And whatever you think of the price of my board it isn't twice the price of yours like your CPU was twice the price of mine.

As for my 'launch price' GPU, can I ask why you didn't wait for IB and get a SB when they were bit cheaper? You've paid 'launch price' on your CPU so stop trying to now come across as frugal and someone who waits for the next gen so they can get the last one for a cheaper price when your CPU shows that not to be true.

I have already justified my decision but you seem to not understand because you probably aren't interested in doing what I want to do and that's fine.

I'm not interested in rendering animations of play doh men or random 3D geometric objects (sorry I used to know a guy who did 'rendering' and that's all he seemed to do anyway ) and that's fine too.




I will admit I did overpay for my GFX card though, I spent £30 more than I needed to by going for the Asus model and not the cheaper EVGA one

In your position I would have got the P67+2600K (saving £100 on the motherboard cost) and then sold them if I ever wanted to upgrade to hex/octo SB-E. As it stands you've spent £100 more and will be left with a 3820 that's difficult to sell because a> they're not popular and b> you've abused it with a high voltage.

Well in your position I'd have gone for a bulldozer AM3 set up. Probably £300 cheaper and you get those 2 extra cores you seem so fond of.

I wouldn't buy nor sell a 3 or 4 year old CPU anyway. I might sell it next year if IB-E comes out and is a big improvement but you need to read up on SB-E and their voltages as it seems you are judging by SB standard voltages.

Do you know what a premium is? believe it or not you do actually have to pay for the two extra cores. The 'premium' is the bit that Intel throw on because they know that those with the money are willing to pay for the best.

Riiiiiigggghhhht, which could be read as Intel know some people have more money than sense. Doesn't this quote completely contradict everything you've said so far about the extra £200 being worth it?

Now you're saying 'well £100 is just added on because Intel know I'll pay it' which means by definition (unless you are an Intel share holder) that it is not worth £200 more than the 3820...finally we can agree!!!

You didn't think I was ever saying the 3930k should be the same price do you? That's the implication from you're question about paying for the extra cores. The whole point of this thread is are those worth having for 200 nicker.

I'd agree that £100 increase would be sensible markup and had the 3930k been around the £340 I wouldn't even have started this thread.

Source?

Apoligies in advance, the chart I was refering to was actually based on an Intel e5800 being overclocked to 1.4v (orange line)

Given that SB-E can take higher voltages more easily, I'm guess the degradation is even less.

Intel documents stated the same for SB even though they've degraded/died at much less... 1.4V was borderline safe for Intel's 45nm let alone their 32nm parts. The safe voltage will decrease further with IB-E at 22nm.

Intel advise a max of 1.4 for SB-E. But you are criticizing for people running at that which is Intel's standard.

You are also forgetting that 99.99999% of Intel's custom comes from mass produced home computers and commercial contracts, they make very little from the enthusiast market.

Therefore I would suggest Intel's max are very conservative. It would be highly dangerous for Dell (for example) to sell millions and millions of PC's at 1.45 volts which is why Intel deliberately under-state the max for a ultra-safe, never fail scenario.

 

[Zuban]

..to 99% of people building an X79 system. You missed that bit which is kinda important.

i think that would be too high a figure, i imagine there definetly will be people for whom the 3930k was a waste of money, but its no small figures were talking but rather £200, i certainly dont spend that kind of money without thinking carefully about it, i can only imagine that if some people have skimped on other parts of the system they like me must have a valid reason for it, you'd hope so anyway lol.

I do think some people just take satisfaction in saying they have have x super powerfull cpu even if they dont make full use of it, and unless its caused them a problem in someway i dont really see an issue with it, people like to have nice things. If however they started claiming there system was better than another system because of this when it really isnt ie they gaming if they have a lesser graphics card then that would be annoying lol.

 

[andybird123]

why have you attritbuted a load of stuff I never said to me?
now who's putting words in whose mouth?

 

[andybird123]

Serious question, where are these retailers that are selling the 3930K for £100 more than the 3820? All the one's I've checked it's £200 more at the least.

good going to try to get someone suspended

 

[estebanrey]

i think that would be too high a figure, i imagine there definetly will be people for whom the 3930k was a waste of money, but its no small figures were talking but rather £200, i certainly dont spend that kind of money without thinking carefully about it, i can only imagine that if some people have skimped on other parts of the system they like me must have a valid reason for it, you'd hope so anyway lol.

I do think some people just take satisfaction in saying they have have x super powerful cpu even if they dont make full use of it, and unless its caused them a problem in someway i dont really see an issue with it, people like to have nice things. If however they started claiming there system was better than another system because of this when it really isnt ie they gaming if they have a lesser graphics card then that would be annoying lol.

Fair enough, I'll accept I've exaggerated somewhat with the 99% figure , I guess I just meant 'most'.

The part about the suffix is great because despite reaching 4 pages you're the first person to touch on that element of my OP. I am genuinely interested in the effect of the 'K' suffix on the X79 range when it comes to people's buying choices. Dare I say the K has become a bit of a sacred cow on the P67 platform and think some people who don't always think just buy it because of that.

And the reason I say that was because it was why I was going to get one originally, I sublimally assumed because it was getting anything less than a K on P67 the same would apply for the X79. It was only after my mate said "do you really need a £450 cpu right now? you can always get one later if you really need it" and I looked up reviews of the 3820 that I went with the cheaper option.

I said it before, had the 3630k been under £350 I may have been tempted but for my use (gaming, programming and a small amount of encoding) I really couldn't justify it paying almost twice the price for the K model.

 

[BrotherMuzone]

I went for the 3820 as it was all I could really justify to myself with a price/performance ratio.

I'd have loved to go for a K or an X CPU, but I decided that with my usage profile, the increase in cost, and the reduction in overall overclockability, I'd get better "worth" out of a 3820.

It's hard enough trying to convince 90% of people on OcUK that it was worth the step up over a 2500K (seriously, the 2500k isn't the answer to world hunger and AIDS in Africa, and I wish people would stop using it as the de-facto answer to every "rig" thread). But the minimal difference in cost between a high-end 1155 board/2600k combo and the 3820/good X79 board combo was negligible.

I'm happy with my overclock, although with a bit of spare time on the horizon I might see just how far I can push it as a one off/benchmark session. But 5GHz will definitely do me for day-to-day running!

This =)

 

[estebanrey]

good going to try to get someone suspended

I said WHERE are these retailers not WHO are these retailers? Nice try though...

 

[Dan2kx]

I bought my old Q6700 5 years ago, when people where recommending whatever the dual core "daddy" was then, now im sure you will agree if i had bought the dual core, i would have had to upgrade before then, which would have been a new mobo, ddr3 ram etc which would have been a lot more expensive than whatever the premium was 5 years ago

i upgraded in january to the 3930K and i intend this to last me for another 5 years, and the 2 extra cores are useful to me, i dont run them at 100% all the time but, for £200, its worth having to upgrade again in 1/2/3 years time

In before "technology changes"

 

[estebanrey]

I bought my old Q6700 5 years ago, when people where recommending whatever the dual core "daddy" was then, now im sure you will agree if i had bought the dual core, i would have had to upgrade before then, which would have been a new mobo, ddr3 ram etc which would have been a lot more expensive than whatever the premium was 5 years ago

i upgraded in january to the 3930K and i intend this to last me for another 5 years, and the 2 extra cores are useful to me, i dont run them at 100% all the time but, for £200, its worth having to upgrade again in 1/2/3 years time

In before "technology changes"

Reasonable logic there.

I took that approach with my first PC and soon found after 3 years all my stuff was miles behind the new stuff, a lot of which was much less than what I paid for stuff originally and the itch to upgrade would kick in.

So I've decided to upgrade every 3-4 years (well I want to upgrade after 3 but don't normal have the funds until 4 LOL). It means I'm (only slightly) more frugal when I come to upgrade but I figure I'm always going to own PCs and given enough time I'll spend the same as if I do a more expensive rig less often (there's no difference between spending £1500 and building 4 PCs over 20 years than spending £1200 every 4 years on 5 PCs).

My big outlay this time was the top of the line Nvidia card which did hurt a bit at £450 but as I said it was necessary for me to run BF3 on top settings at my full resolution and over 60fps. I have a 120GHz monitor so in the future when the 680 drops in price (halves) I'll drop another one in and hopefully be back to as powerful as whatever the current single card is at that time.

 

[Dan2kx]

Well i have only just found my CPU limitng my graphics card/games which is why i upgraded primarily, and when i say games, only BF3 really, which i dont play that much TBH, it was more as you say, the itch.
In video encoding my old setup was only was 4 times slower (e.g 40mins previously = 10mins encoding time now), but i was familiar with it, obviously the dual core would have HAD to have gone after a mere few years.

 

[andybird123]

Good, I'm glad you understand flippancy.

in case you haven't noticed, my last 2 posts are almost purely **** take and/or just to get a rise out of you

No you bought the UD3 and THEN discovered it wasn't good a bclk OCing. You could have bought an equally cheap board that was and we wouldn't even be having this discussion.

not entirely true, i knew about the potential issue before I bought it but they claimed they were going to fix it, it was one of the reasons why I went 3930k as the total cost of mobo+cpu was so close that I thought I may as well just save money on the mobo (that didn't contribute any features or speed) and pump that in to the CPU (that was faster)

The Sabertooth is built for durability not OCing so how can you claim I bought it because it's a good OCer? If that's all I was interested in I would have bought one of their ROG boards which are better known for OCing.

riiight... and the UD in gigabyte's naming means...

Please show me where someone has posted a polite reply to my OP, justifying why they bought the 3930K and I've jumped on them.......don't worry, I'll wait..........
...no? Oh well. The only people I've 'jumped on' are those that have chosen to attack me in their post in this thread (I believe you are one of them).

if you feel attacked by non-threatening written communication then maybe you need a break from the internet, it's a wild place out there

I have argued against people who come straight out telling me how much better their CPU is and used unrealistic performance increases like you have your 50% thing.

The only funny thing here is reading some people's first posts here, 3930K owners insulted that I even ask the question. Many cases of 'he doth protest too much' in this thread from some people.

there have been plenty of good examples of cases where the 3930k IS 50% faster than a 3820 AND that the price differential is much less than your quoted 200 quid

I realize you want to believe the choice is either cheap mobo + 3930K OR expensive mobo +3820 (because you've bought the UD3) for OCing but that's imply not the case.

Your logic is based on a false premise.

I've never said that is the only option, I said it was one of many options open to me at the time and when trying to find a motherboard that had all the features I wanted it was either the UD3 OR a much more expensive board - the more expensive board would have enabled a good OC on a 3820, but I decided to go for the less expensive motherboard and that justified to me getting the more expensive processor instead

The difference is £200, that may be negligible to you but not everyone.

a) it's not 200 and b) we are talking about PC's that cost upwards of 1200 in total to build (2000-3000 if you consider the type of system that 3930k is geared toward), so yeah even your over inflated 200 is negligible in those circumstances

But why are limiting a mobo's value on 'features' only? A Ford Fiesta has more "features" as a Ferrari but that doesn't mean it's just as good build wise, performance wise, efficiency wise.

no, obviously the ferrari looks much nicer than a fiesta, so basically I guess you are saying you bought the asus board because it looks nicer than a cheaper one rather than because it lets you crunch data any faster

*sigh* your motherboard is not faster or more efficient than mine, and considering the caps are made by the same manufacturer on both our boards (albeit yours are tested when falling out of a helicopter and mine aren't but luckily I don't plan on throwing my PC out of a helicopter so I guess that is ok then)

Exactly my point, you believe your 3930k will outlast my 3820 but think your cheap mobo will have the same longevity as my more expensive one. Can you not see the hypocrisy there and why I made that flippant remark earlier.

erm... so cheaper processors blow up quicker than more expensive ones do they? someone best tell my P2 that because it's still sat in the corner chugging away quite happily as a NAS box

Unless you mean 'outlast' in terms of still being a capable CPU in the future. Well both are chips are OTT for 99% of uses today so the fact your 3930K may still run a viable system in 10 years is fine so long as your not planning to upgrade for that long.

there we go, got the point at last... only I'm thinking more along the lines of 4 years like my q6600, where as 2500k users are already talking about getting IB or 2600k to solve SLI utilisation problems

As I said, unless you are a heavy renderer/film maker (and some here seemingly are) you need those 6 cores now, no one else really does and I can't see 6 cores showing real extra performance in everyday applications/games for a few years yet (at which point I'll upgrade).

this is the exact same argument everyone made about 2 core vs 4 core when the original Q's came out... and yet most people moved to 4 core pretty quickly, maybe 1 year at most after that whole argument went on, where as I sat with the 4 core that everyone said was not "worth it" for 4+ years... 150 divided by 1 year vs 300 quid divided by 4 years... which was better value then?

I'm glad your happy you crippled your X79 motherboard with an entry level processor instead of the enthusiast level CPU it deserved

 

[PCZ]

Folks
Stop it with the SLI scaling problems with 4 cores nonsense.
4 core CPU's such as the I5 do not have scaling problems with SLI.

Currently one title, namely BF3 has a bug in the multiplayer code which stops the GPU's being fully utilised with 4 core CPU's.
That is it. one title with buggy code.

For the majority of games an I5 is exactly what the doctor ordered, 4 strong cores and no HT which can cause stuttering in some titles.

It is only when you pair up an I5 or I7 for that matter with multi GPU's such as 680's or 7970's where scaling becomes an issue.
It isn't lack of CPU grunt which is the problem, it is the physical limitation of the number and speed of the PCIe lanes available on the MB's