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Which is best?

I would agree with stulid that in many cases the hex core Sandy Bridge E i7 3930K is the faster CPU - specifically when using applications that can effectively use multiple threads.

However, in lightly threaded applications the i7 3770K will be faster - since it is slightly faster per-clock and it is clocked a bit higher.

Here is a review which compares the i7 3770K and 3930K in a range of applications.

Also, in most gaming tests the i7 3770K tends to do as well or better than the i7 3930K - as most games can't effectively use many threads, but they do utilise the faster design and higher clockspeed of the Ivy Bridge.

Also, you have to take into account that the i7 3770K uses the LGA1155 platform - which is cheaper than the X79, but doesn't offer some of the X79's features like 40PCIE lanes and loads of a capacity for memory.

Finally, the Ivy Bridge i7 3770K has an onboard graphics core (the i7 3930K doesn't)- so if you are using applications (like video transcoding) which can make use of Intel's Quick Sync Technology then this makes the Ivy bridge very appealing.

Therefore, I would say "It depends" greatly on what you use your computer for.
 
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It will be used mostly for gaming, although I will probably doing some video encoding it'll likely just be using free applications, so i'm not sure they'll use the Intel Quick Sync Technology.

Since it's for gaming I was planning on going with SLI/Crossfire and as a result was thinking that a X79 board allows for faster PCI-e slots in multi-gpu setups and/or allows more cards to be used.
 
If you are planning to use three or more graphics cards - then yes X79 is the one to go for as it offers much more PCIE bandwidth.

However, if you only plan on using a maximum of two cards then a Z77 board and an Ivy Bridge CPU will be perfectly fine. If you get a board that supports running two cards at PCIE gen3 x8/x8 speed (a board like this can be had for ~£120) - then each of these x8 connections is as fast as a PCIE gen2 x16 connection. So as you can imagine there won't be an issue with bandwidth on that setup - so long as you are using a PCIE gen3 graphics card.

If you are mainly gaming then as I mentioned the i7 3770K will be just as fast (if not faster in some instances) compared to the i7 3930K and generally better value, though for video encoding the hex core sandy bridge E will offer better performance than the Ivy Bridge quad core - though the price premium is expected to be ~£200 (plus the cost of the more expensive motherboard).
 
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Looking at IvyBridge it seems it would be quite expensive for little benefit.

I think I may be sold on the SB-E setup.

Also, didn't Vega do some comparisons showing that there is a difference running 680 SLI @ PCI-e 3.0 8x and PCI-e 3.0 16x? I don't think it showed 16x being twice as fast, but it looked like there was difference. Can't find the link at the minute though...
 
GoogalyMoogaly said:
Looking at IvyBridge it seems it would be quite expensive for little benefit.

I think I may be sold on the SB-E setup.

Also, didn't Vega do some comparisons showing that there is a difference running 680 SLI @ PCI-e 3.0 8x and PCI-e 3.0 16x? I don't think it showed 16x being twice as fast, but it looked like there was difference. Can't find the link at the minute though...
Click to expand...

He did show a difference, but it was largest/most noticeable for 4-way SLI, i.e. extreme cases.
 
If it's mainly for gaming then the i5 3570K would be the one to go for seeing as hyperthreading is the only difference and games don't use that either.
 
IvanDobskey said:
If it's mainly for gaming then the i5 3570K would be the one to go for seeing as hyperthreading is the only difference and games don't use that either.
Click to expand...

I'm going to do this don't want to spend for no reason. If I'm not overclOcking will the stock cooler be ok?

Thanks
 
beejjacobs said:
He did show a difference, but it was largest/most noticeable for 4-way SLI, i.e. extreme cases.
Click to expand...

Do you know what board he was using to do 4-way SLI at PCI-e 3.0 16x/16x/16x/16x? I can't see any motherboards that support this.

Looking at this post it seems even with 2 cards there can be quite a difference.
 
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