The CPU State Of Affairs........

[Caracus2k]

They could release a £250 eight core CPU sure, though why would they when 99% of users wouldn't use any more than 2-4 cores?

I was being slightly over the top to illustrate a point (that Intel aren't necessarily holding back on some mythical tech due to their being little competition).

I'll assume your claim of 99% of users not benefiting from more than 4 (never mind 2) cores was made in a similar vein.....

 

[McGraw]

Picked my 6700k up launch day (August 5th) for £320. Could have got it elsewhere for £300 if I wanted to wait for a week, though I'm not going to cry over £20

It's not very sensible buying a end of life 4790k/DDR3 based system now, considering that DDR4 is the future, Z170/X99 both have upgrade paths on their respective sockets, while z97 is totally dead, as is DDR3.

I'll re-use my DDR4 16GB (2x8GB) 3000Mhz kit in the next system I build, which will save a few quid

I'd already had mine a year by then.

By the time I think I'll want to upgrade we'll be miles further on in chipsets and maybe ram speed.

 

[solidair]

Well I have to say I'm going to be hanging on to my system for a good while I've just updated my system: i5 4670k to a i7 4790k and a gtx 770 to a 980 did a bios update on my MSI z87 g43.
I really didn't see the point of a whole new system right now with only small increases in speed ,by the time I sell the old parts on I will be only £300 out of pocket.
Could really see this lasting another 4 years now.

 

[Rroff]

Skylake has fallen a few quid since Christmas. There's a difference in price now worth taking into account, especially when you consider the price of x99 motherboards. That said, for a full mem/mobo/CPU combo, all things being equal price wise, and it was about a month ago, I'd go x99 all the way.

Yeah - there was a point where the i5 skylakes were not insignificantly more expensive than previous gen i7s which was just silly - now its not so bad.

 

[GinG]

AMD 8350

That is all

 

[robgmun]

i7 920 ftw

I'm still on this CPU. Clocked at 3.2Ghz and still seems fine

 

[pingu666]

hmm
if we took a %50 improvement over a sandybridge at 4.5ghz as a trigger point to upgrade and at the same price point roughly of £250-300 cpu, £110 good mobo, not sure on ram cost, at the current pace thats 4 - 5 years away?

thats crazy really.

sure 6 or 8 core can do it today with the right workload, but quads are like 20% better max atm?

 

[StriderX]

The problem has always been lack of software parity with multiple threads (obviously some things are just intrinsically linked to threads from the get go).

Most games a few years ago barely used more than a single core and now only haphazardly (stupidly even) use more due to Windows/engine adaptions.

 

[pingu666]

a american system builder with a blog did tests i read last month and photoshop and lightroom seem to average 5 cores being used to a reasonable return or %, but it was still a wash vs a quad, as the quad would likely have slightly faster cores...

hex and 8 cores might play into optimised for console but lazy port games, as they have 8 pretty slow cores, so the 8 real cores would be same as console, but way faster , but a quad would have to juggle threads

 

[Stovepipes]

I don't think I can really justify upgrading but I just wanna. lol.

 

[~>Dg<~]

you only have to look at operating systems from last few years.

catered for mobiles/tablets.blah blah sales men pc this that. we are close to saturation in many areas. we have what we need.

 

[Hambut_Bulge]

And that's why we all should hope zen is on pare with Intel or a little in front

Indeed. Hoping we'll get a little news about this and the socket AM4 architecture at CES this week

 

[zoomee]

DDR4 is a joke at the moment, far more expensive than DDR3. Last years DDR3 modules could easily achieve the same bandwidth with less latency. Even so at best you'd see like a 2% performance increase if your lucky when pushing memory to its limits in a system, especially a gaming system.

There are some compelling arguments to upgrade, but they are definitely NOT for a CPU upgrade where in a very best particular scenario you will get approx 5% performance increase - woop de doo.

Long gone are the days of double the performance jumps we used to get per generation - Intel are just milking us until we can see some serious competition from the likes of AMD or whatever. Nvidia are doing the same, they know fanboys will buy their latest greatest.

Looking forward to Zen, I sold my 4960X system (not using it that much at all these days) and am currently looking forward to Zen. By this time, DDR4 will be reasonably priced and platform enhancements like NVM or USB3.1c etc will have been well standardised, and as long as I can get roughly the same performance as the 4960X was giving me I'll be more than happy with Zen, its time for a long overdue change - havn't been AMD since my Q6600 days!.

Is it still Intel compiler that everyone is using for x86 coding or has that now changed? - I'd be very happy to see that evolve into something more standardised so we can see equal opportunities for other cpu vendors.....

 

[Bluntwrapped]

The sad thing is motherboard availability determines CPU lifespan long before the chip becomes obsolete in terms of processing power and power consumption. There is little the newer generation offers over the existing. You would be clutching at straws trying to justify upgrading if it wasn't for not being able to find a 1155 motherboard anymore

 

[Orangey]

I just came up with a name for Intel's new release cadence...

Hop, skip & a jump

Hop = Kaby Lake (refresh)
Skip = Cannonlake (shrink)
Jump = Icelake (new arch)

Sorry, had to put that li'l brainfart somewhere...