Some help/advice please

ntemples1

ntemples1

ntemples1

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Joined
19 Aug 2008
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Bournemouth
Hi guys,

I have been googling around reading forums ect but as I have been out of the loop with high end system building I am unsure as to what is what, I have a few questions and was wondering if you can give me some of your great wisdom!

I am currently running an i7 2600K Sandy Bridge in a P8Z68 V Pro @4.4

This was bought from OCUK as a bundle about a year ago.

I am looking maybe to upgrade it now and was thinking X79 or Z77

I am a little confused however, is Sandy Bridge E the next evolution of the i7 2600K?

I understand that SB-E on a X79 Mobo fully supports PCI-E 3.0 16 x 16

on the new Z77 Boards I can see they have PCI-E 3.0 but I read that it is only supported with Ivy Bridge (which isn't out yet) Is that correct

and Lastly I game at 2560 x 1600 with GTX 680's in SLI but I think my motherboard is running them at 8 X (PCI-E 2.0) because it doesn't support 16 x 16.

I want to try and future proof myself as much as I can to last the next couple of years so what's my best option?

go for SB- E X79
or Z77 (with existing CPU)
or Z77 (with Ivy Bridge)
Or stick with what I have and wait.

I am interested mainly for gaming ect.

Thanks in advance for your advice.
 
Nothing wrong with the Z68 you have, Z77 bring very little in new features.

Same applies to the 2600k, it's still a fine cpu & still has years of life left in it.

Look at the rest of you pc first, but if it's the pc in your sig, there is little you could improve, other than another 8gb of memory.
 
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And it's pointless changing your motherboard just for pci-e 3.0.

I think I'm right in saying PCI-E 2.0 is nowhere near saturated yet.
 
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Z77s only have PCI 3 with an IB processor. Plus SB to IB isn't that massive a jump in performance so you might as well keep the SB processor and setup you currently have and wait for Haswell to upgrade.
 
Im buying an i7 2600k next week (though I won't be using it for quite some time D: ) the reason being is if I get it now and all the SB processors do die out by June when I make my rig I will be fine :) and if theres a second load of IB that have reduced heat + better overclocking capabilities I will be able to just buy a IB 2nd i7 and put it in the z77 motherborad Im going to have anyway :)
 
Thanks guys for the info, I think based on what you are saying I'll stick with what I have for the meantime, I was just worried the my 680 SLI might be bottlenecked by PCI-e 2.0 @ x8 @ 2560 x 1600.
 
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