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Upgrade a few things or wait?
JayFiveAlive
Member UncommonPosts: 601
I am stuck between waiting for a full desktop or just upgrading a few components and trying to buy another year or two on my system. Here are the main bits of what I have currently:
2500K @ 4.4Ghz
16Gb 1866 Ram
Gigabyte GTX 670
Samsung 256 840 Pro
1440p monitor
With the 980 Ti out, I'm going to be getting the Gigabyte G1 when that releases for sure. I'm not sure if my system will be a bottleneck for it though.
I really want a 400-500ish GB SSD so was thinking of maybe getting the Samsung 512GB 850 Pro, but in a new comp I would like to get a Intel 750 400GB NVMe drive.
Part of me wants to wait for Skylake, but part of me wants to hold on to what I can for another year for DDR4 prices and performance to get better... But I could also just get whatever is out now if Skylake ends up being "meh". My CPU is over 4 years old, but maybe it can go longer... What do you all think would be best? Budget isn't necessarily a concern, but I also don't want to just throw money away if this will last longer and if we have a"leap" in performance within the next few months.
Comments
A 2500k @4.4 wont be a bottleneck.
My advice would be to wait on buying a cpu. Maybe upgrade your GPU and throw in a bigger SSD if you want. No need to buy a new CPU just yet.
Plus when you do build a new system in a year or so the 980ti and new SSD will go right in your new system.
Well, games that are written with DX12 won't be as bottlenecked by the CPU - that isn't exactly the same thing though. It's not like today's games will magically get faster, because they are all on DX9/10/11. And even then, just writing or migrating a game to DX12 won't necessarily be faster.
But the demos that are out for DX12 that are better that showcase some specific cases where DX12 can help - wow, it's a drastic improvement. Granted, those are written (or shown) more or less to showcase DX12, and make explict use of the new features in DX12, but it's promising, I admit.
"Possibly we humans can exist without actually having to fight. But many of us have chosen to fight. For what reason? To protect something? Protect what? Ourselves? The future? If we kill people to protect ourselves and this future, then what sort of future is it, and what will we have become? There is no future for those who have died. And what of those who did the killing? Is happiness to be found in a future that is grasped with blood stained hands? Is that the truth?"
I didn't see anyone mention USB 3.1 Type C. It'll be worth waiting for a motherboard that natively supports it (instead of having to buy an add-on card just for that).
Type C is the connector, which will finally be reversible, small, and should appear on all devices from phones to laptops to desktop computers. 3.1 is the communication, which will be faster.
This, i've got a budy who is running an i7-920 that he bought when it came out new. He has a GTX 770 and has been able to play every game he wants to at either max or high settings, with a few notable exceptions. Hell he even has a pretty heavily modded Skyrim that he runs fine (ive seen it myself).
While you *will* get less framerate than someone running a top end i7 now, its not huge, it might be 10-15% on the top end.
The video card is still the primary driving force in your gaming performance. Its not like back in the early core 2 or pentium 4 and before days where every new generation of processor was making 50-100% performance gains. The difference between a first gen i7 and a 5th gen i7 is like 25% clock for clock. Not huge.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
At stock speeds, a Core i7-4790K will more than double the performance of a Core i7-920. So they have made progress over the years. But Sandy Bridge is a whole lot closer in performance to Haswell than it is to Nehalem, and if you overclock everything, might come within single digit percentages of the latest and greatest.
And I refuse to use Intel's generation numbers for their processors. First, there was Core. Then Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Solo. Then Core 2 Quad. Then a die shrink also called Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad. Then nearly the same chips, except branded as Pentium and then Celeron. Then came Core i7. Then a chip that was sometimes Core i7 and sometimes Core i5. Then another chip that was sometimes Core i3 and sometimes Core i5, unless it was a laptop, in which case, it could also be Core i7. Then basically the same chip branded as Pentium and Celeron. Then another chip that was Core i7 only and really meant for Xeon. And then after all of this, the next chip was... Second Generation Core. As if all of those other chips scattered across 4+ years and at least three process nodes amounted to one "generation".
You are correct, which is why i specified clock for clock, obviously though a i2 920 is only running at like 2.8ghz whereas a modern i7 is more like 4ghz. So there is that.
Problem is a 50% upgrade in CPU doesn't translate to anywhere near a 50% upgrade in gaming performance. Id have to go look but last time i checked the difference between a super old proc and a new i7 was around 15-20% in framerates in game.
So, my point was yes he would see some benefits, but not enough to justify the cost of a new proc, etc, over what he has.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
The Nehalem analogy is roughly akin to AMD (and just about as capable, ironically):
The newer chips are newer and faster, and sometimes by a large margin, but if the older/slower/less expensive chips get you to 60+FPS, what other difference does it make?
4790k is a nice gaming CPU, but so is a 4690. So is a 3570, and 2500k, and 920.
Sure, they are in descending order of performance, but when the bottom of that list can still game admirably...
Maybe in a years time, or two years, or five years - or maybe with DX12 (or maybe not), the bottom end of that list will drop off. Maybe the entire list will drop off. But that will be at some point in the future, we could have Skylake by then, or Cannonlake, or who knows what - and who knows at what price. And all the other variety of goodies (USB C 3.1, DDR4, NVMe, whatever else gets cooked up) that go along with upgrading platforms.
But if your trying to chase that "Futureproofing" horse now, your chasing a phantom and throwing that money away. And this is coming from someone who gets the completely irrational "upgrade" itch from time to time. I did finally upgrade my 920 to a 4790 - it wasn't so much because the 920 was slow, but because I wanted to get more desk space back (I had a full tower case with an exterior custom water cooling loop) and make a small and quiet rig, and when Maxwell came out I finally had all the pieces I needed to do that without taking a step back on performance.
Originally posted by laokoko
"if you want to be a game designer, you should sell your house and fund your game. Since if you won't even fund your own game, no one will".
Moore's Law used to allow faster CPU cores. Now it allows more CPU cores, but not really faster cores. Recently, clock speeds have been going down with subsequent die shrinks, and that trend could easily continue. That's still good improvements in CPUs if you can take advantage of many CPU cores. But games don't scale so well to many cores.
Yeah, a common mistake because of the media, was saying that moore's law says cpu power doubles every 12 months or whatever it was. The reality is he said transistor counts double. And actually he just said he noticed that they HAD doubled, not that they would continue to double. Anyways, misinformation/spinning is great.
Never the less double the transistors doesn't mean double the speed, as we've obviously discovered.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Wanted to post a thank you all for the input. I could not be happier with my desktop. I got my 980ti on Monday along with an 850 Pro SSD and it's been incredible. I'm able to easily run everything I've tried so far on max/ultra settings @ 1440p. Now I'm starting to want a new 144hz monitor lol, but that will have to wait for some time.
Battlefield 4 with 130% resolution scaler is stunning!! GTA V is just mmm mmm good! I hope to keep this machine for a good 2+ years now.