Upgrading from LGA 1156

[Meladath]

USB3

Almost nothing actually supports it to a point where it has any benefit over USB 2.0

SATA3

Ok, this is actually useful, although not a massive difference if you already have an SSD. It is nice though.

PCI-E 3.0

Literally no difference for anything other than compute applications, which I doubt this guy does.

There isn't much point really, faster SSD is nice but hardly a game changer.

Not to mention Haswell power saving features, higher base clock and IPC gains....

Haswell "power saving" features don't do much at all if you measure them... save you 50p a year maybe.
Higher base clock does almost nothing.. since turbo boost is dynamic based on CPU load?
IPC gains.. yeah thats true, the only ACTUAL difference I think, around a 40% increase haswell over nehalem. I think someone needs to do gaming benchmarks with a stock nehalem vs stock haswell and overclocked ones.

 

[badbiddy]

I personally think it's brilliant.

Lower power cost (1156 is not very good on power usage) and the Haswell power save feature where it boots from hibernate to the desktop in a second is just awesome.

USB3 is handy for portable drives, in my scenario I had 1156 in a Corsair 540 Air, so my front USB3 ports were rendered useless. Now I can use them. Winner.

SATA3 made a big difference. Talking about going from a cap of 300MB/s to read/write speeds of 500+.

PCIE3 I don't know enough about. I only have an R9 290 for the moment and still get the same frame rates so it's not made a difference to gaming, but video encoding for example is faster by a country mile.

You're also ignoring the fact it's nice to have new stuff sometimes.

 

[Meladath]

I personally think it's brilliant.

Lower power cost (1156 is not very good on power usage) and the Haswell power save feature where it boots from hibernate to the desktop in a second is just awesome.

1156 has incredibly similar TDP to haswell, even in the best case scenario you are losing money from upgrading over your power bill...

Also.. you use hibernation with an SSD? wow

USB3 is handy for portable drives, in my scenario I had 1156 in a Corsair 540 Air, so my front USB3 ports were rendered useless. Now I can use them. Winner.

Yes, but if this were a thing OP cared about, he would have said. Not everyone has a portable 3.0 HDD. Z97 is equally as useless with its M.2 and SATA express.

SATA3 made a big difference. Talking about going from a cap of 300MB/s to read/write speeds of 500+.

In synthetics sure, in real world usage, not much difference if you aren't doing incredibly disk I/O heavy stuff.

PCIE3 I don't know enough about. I only have an R9 290 for the moment and still get the same frame rates so it's not made a difference to gaming, but video encoding for example is faster by a country mile.

Yes, but in gaming, it does nothing. If OP cared about video encoding performance, he would have said

You're also ignoring the fact it's nice to have new stuff sometimes.

Nope, just trying to inform someone. I "upgraded" from sandy bridge to haswell... biggest mistake I have ever made.

 

[badbiddy]

Stuff

You're trying to claim that Lynnfield will use less power than Haswell?? Ok then.

Why not- not like the SSD has to spin up to speed and cause wear, it's just saving power.

The OP didn't describe what they use the PC for, I'm making these comments so that people thinking of upgrading to a newer architecture don't take what others spout on here as gospel and think there's no gains to be had.

If upgrading your PC is the biggest mistake you've ever made then I think life has a few surprises for you.. Also, why didn't you just put your Sandybridge stuff back in and return your Haswell stuff if you were so disappointed.

I looked at buying 2nd hand Sandy/Ivybridge stuff online before just going Devils canyon. But in reality a few hundred quid for a CPU and MOBO isn't the end of the world if you only do it every few years.

 

[Meladath]

You're trying to claim that Lynnfield will use less power than Haswell?? Ok then.

Erm... No? When did I ever say anything even close? I said they have incredibly similar TDP. That's it. 4690 is 84W vs the 95W of the 750. Obviously, TDP is not power consumption, but given stock usage it shouldn't be too far away.

Why not- not like the SSD has to spin up to speed and cause wear, it's just saving power.

It's also wasting space on your SSD. I guess if you have the space though why not. Space on SSD's isnt as premium as it was a couple of years ago though thats for sure.

The OP didn't describe what they use the PC for, I'm making these comments so that people thinking of upgrading to a newer architecture don't take what others spout on here as gospel and think there's no gains to be had.

This is very true, you have some good points, no one should take a single persons advice without considering other possibilities.

If upgrading your PC is the biggest mistake you've ever made then I think life has a few surprises for you.. Also, why didn't you just put your Sandybridge stuff back in and return your Haswell stuff if you were so disappointed.

Granted at the age of 22 in my first job after being a recent grad, I imagine life does have a few surprises for me. Sadly I couldn't return it as I sold the old rig to a friend quite quickly without really thinking about it, wish I did now though.

I looked at buying 2nd hand Sandy/Ivybridge stuff online before just going Devils canyon. But in reality a few hundred quid for a CPU and MOBO isn't the end of the world if you only do it every few years.

Aye thats true, but depending on how much you gain, it can be less important, ofc not the end of the world, but potentially wasted money is never a good thing. OP says he wants to upgrade, so I would just say go 4690k for the ease of it, but he could save a decent chunk of cash going 2nd hand/old stock sandy/ivy stuff.

 

[C64]

A 4690k overclocked vs overclocked 1156 quad will only be about 15 % faster in real world usage it's just not worth the cost for such a small gain.

 

[badbiddy]

A 4690k overclocked vs overclocked 1156 quad will only be about 15 % faster in real world usage it's just not worth the cost for such a small gain.

Did you pluck 15% from thin air?

Also, what you and I consider 'real world' usage may be very different things.

 

[DragonQ]

Did you pluck 15% from thin air?

Also, what you and I consider 'real world' usage may be very different things.

15% is about right for Sandy Bridge to Haswell, on average. Maybe closer to 20% but it's not a simple number to calculate.

There are certainly applications that will benefit hugely from such an upgrade but they're pretty niche. Basically only applications that heavily use newer instruction sets like AES or AVX.

 

[badbiddy]

15% is about right for Sandy Bridge to Haswell, on average. Maybe closer to 20% but it's not a simple number to calculate.

There are certainly applications that will benefit hugely from such an upgrade but they're pretty niche. Basically only applications that heavily use newer instruction sets like AES or AVX.

Sure, but it was about 15% from Lynnfield to Sandybridge...

 

[C64]

15% is about right for Sandy Bridge to Haswell, on average. Maybe closer to 20% but it's not a simple number to calculate.

There are certainly applications that will benefit hugely from such an upgrade but they're pretty niche. Basically only applications that heavily use newer instruction sets like AES or AVX.

I did kind of pluck it from thin air but its a realistic ballpark guesstimate for gaming based on what end users are saying, I am getting no more frames on haswell vs i5 750 here more gains on gpu upgrades than cpu if you already have a quad at 4ghz+.

But some quick reading around you will find many a person saying they went from quad at 4ghz to haswell at 4.5 saying it's no better gaming wise.

 

[badbiddy]

I did kind of pluck it from thin air but its a realistic ballpark guesstimate for gaming based on what end users are saying, I am getting no more frames on haswell vs i5 750 here more gains on gpu upgrades than cpu if you already have a quad at 4ghz+.

But some quick reading around you will find many a person saying they went from quad at 4ghz to haswell at 4.5 saying it's no better gaming wise.

Yes but an i5 750 or similar is not a bottleneck in most games so it's irrelevant.

For other apps there will be big differences (and that's ignoring the architectural improvements).

 

[C64]

Yes agreed what it more comes down to is simply not bottle necking your gpu.

 

[Scougar]

If you play something like Planetside 2, you will see a good gain in framerate as that is a very CPU bound game.