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Who still has an i7-3930K??

edgedemon

edgedemon

edgedemon

Soldato
Joined
10 Oct 2005
Posts
4,192
Location
London
Been rocking this build since 2011, X79, Rampage IV, 32Gb of 2133mhz RAM which due to the weak chipset I could never overclock :-(
I think I finally have the upgrade itch, I'm beginning to notice for the 1st time that my PC seems a bit slow sometimes, games are fine, but photo editing is beginning to slow down. It made me realise how long it was since I last looked at hardware, and I was curious, are there any other X79 owners out there who are still happy with their build or have you all upgraded/moved on now?
Im off to look at the latest AMD CPU/mobo's and catch up on the last 7 yrs :-)
 
If you want to upgrade, upgrade, but post a full current spec first as your CPU is still what i’d Consider reasonable at the job. If you aren’t already using an SSD for example, switching will likely yield a much bigger perceived improvement than anything else.
 
Overclocked to 4.2, could never get it any higher and remain stable under load unless I dropped the memory speed down :-( Having read up on Ryzen, I might wait until AM5 or whatever is after AM4 and 2020 and go for better SSD's instead, I still have my original Crucial 128Gb's mirrored for the OS and use my SAN for photo storage and an internal 1TB SATA drive for everything else.
 
I had my 3930K on an X79 Sabertooth sat at 4.44GHz (44x101) with 16Gb of Samsung Green (best.ram.ever.) at 2400Mhz with nice tight timings. Bought when it released and sold to upgrade to the Ryzen 1800X when it launched.
 
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I've had a 3930k overclocked to 4.4 for many years now and it has been amazing. Just still can't quite justify an upgrade to what is currently available. Maybe this will be the year.
 
Realistically, core for core, you have a 20% or so average increase in single core performance to a 2700x, obviously in optimised multi-core workloads 8c vs 6c gives a larger potential boost (assuming the software can utilise it). If you're expecting a significant performance leap, you will very likely be disappointed, unless your specific usage has your CPU pegged at 100% for long periods (you've posted nothing to identify what's causing your perceived slowdown). The problem with upgrades is the law of diminishing returns, this does however ignore things like hardware instructions optimising certain tasks, eg AES-NI hardware encryption vs software or the generally smoother performance from having additional cores for the OS/background processes to use or general power/efficiency savings.
 
If you're going to upgrade you should definetly wait for Zen 2, which is coming some time in the next six months and should be a large jump at a reasonable price. Intel's HEDT offering is a complete mess at the moment and massively overpriced, whilst Threadripper just seems like overkill for most people's purposes now that 10+ core chips are essentially confirmed for the mainstream Ryzen platform, on a new process that should also clock higher.
 
I still have my 3930k and I haven't seen a need to upgrade it yet although I am starting to get the upgrade itch for a shiny new Zen 2 when they arrive
 
I upgraded last year to the X99 platform from the X79, had same board as you with a 3960X, was a great system, alas my motherboard failed and I got a cracking deal on the 6950X so jumped.
 
As photo editing appears to be one of your gripes then I strongly suggest you go with Intel when you do upgrade. Photo editing now and for the foreseeable future benefits more from high clock speed than core count.
 
Why not a cheap Xeon in the mean time? An 8 core E5-2667 v2 or a 12 core E5-2697 v2 can be found quite cheap these days. If your board can run them at their turbo frequency with a small BClk increase you wont lose too much in single core performance either.
 
reef said:
Why not a cheap Xeon in the mean time? An 8 core E5-2667 v2 or a 12 core E5-2697 v2 can be found quite cheap these days. If your board can run them at their turbo frequency with a small BClk increase you wont lose too much in single core performance either.
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Both of those CPU's are still going for over well £200. The 2667 is a rare chip but there are more 2697's. For both of those CPU's he will see a decrease in what he mentioned, namely gaming and photo editing. Only if he was doing video or rendering where he could guarantee maxing out all cores would the 2697 V2 be worth it. The 2667 V2 is a non starter over what he has now for every scenario.

I've got 2697 v2's and even with Bclk at 113 Mhz it will only go to 3.4Ghz on all cores. The 8 core 2667 v2 will do ~3.7Ghz on all cores even though the turbo is stated as 4Ghz. It's better he waits to see what Zen2 clocks to and how it compares.
 
Avalon said:
Realistically, core for core, you have a 20% or so average increase in single core performance to a 2700x, obviously in optimised multi-core workloads 8c vs 6c gives a larger potential boost (assuming the software can utilise it). If you're expecting a significant performance leap, you will very likely be disappointed.
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I disagree. I found upgrading to an 1800X was an upgrade in every respect in itself. But with the 2700X CB15 shows quite a big difference. 3930K @ 4.7GHz gives you around 160 where as 2700X stock is around 180.

However, if you are considering Ryzen, wait for Zen2 IMO. The 3930K is still VERY capable.
 
Rossi~ said:
I disagree. I found upgrading to an 1800X was an upgrade in every respect in itself. But with the 2700X CB15 shows quite a big difference. 3930K @ 4.7GHz gives you around 160 where as 2700X stock is around 180.

However, if you are considering Ryzen, wait for Zen2 IMO. The 3930K is still VERY capable.
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You do realise that using the figures you quoted only gives you a 12.5% increase in single core performance. I do agree that the 3930k is still a good CPU.
 
Rossi~ said:
I disagree. I found upgrading to an 1800X was an upgrade in every respect in itself. But with the 2700X CB15 shows quite a big difference. 3930K @ 4.7GHz gives you around 160 where as 2700X stock is around 180.

However, if you are considering Ryzen, wait for Zen2 IMO. The 3930K is still VERY capable.
Click to expand...

One benchmark (and the 160 seems optimistic from reading the op of that thread with the updates) does not a good indication make.... I used the SC averages from another site, core for core it’s 20% ish, in specific benchmarks the numbers can vary significantly, but the overall average was the basis of my comparison.
 
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