Time to upgrade maybe?

[Obie]

Hey guys!

So I've been using my Intel Core i5 sandybridge since 2011 (RMA'd last year) and was wondering what your views were regarding an upgrade?

I mainly game on my rig so it would be purely for those purposes as I don't do any video editing etc.

I've come to the conclusion that a Haswell upgrade now would be kind of pointless with Skylake just round the bend, But would you say I could stick it out with this chip until say Cannonlake or the Skylake refresh?

Cheers and thanks in advanced, Brad.

[chrestomanci]

I am in a similar situation, except my system is even older. Also my focus is on software development, so I want a system with lots of RAM, fast I/O, and only basic graphics.

My take is that as Skylake is just around the corner and will use a new type of RAM and a new socket, so it would be foolish to spend £500 now on new stuff that will be out of date, and expensive to upgrade in a month or so.

If it where only January, and the new CPU is still over 6 months away then it might be different, Likewise if I had enough cash for a socket 2011 based system, as that already uses DDR-4, and is unlikely to see a significant refresh any time soon.

But as it is, if I upgrade my system with Haswell stuff now, then I would be spending about £500 on a CPU, Motherboard and DDR-3 RAM. Then when Skylake comes out it will all be out of date. In a normal year, I could at least keep the RAM, or even the Motherboard when I upgrade CPU, but this time around everything changes.

In your case, if you have money burning a hole in your pocket, I suggest you spend it on a graphics card, because there are no major ones on the horizon for a while, and anything you buy now can be transplanted to a new system when you upgrade.

[DanceswithUnix]

A 290X seems a pretty decent graphics card, and next year the 16nm ones will come out going twice as fast so that is exactly the same boat. I would leave the GPU as is.

If you are gaming then there is a case for a Haswell upgrade: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/288?vs=1261 (using the 2500K there because Bench has no gaming results for 2400).

But generally, does the machine *feel* slow. If it is driving you up the wall, then an upgrade could make sense. If you are OK using what you have, then it is always better to wait. Zen sounds very promising, so I am expecting Intel to pull their finger out with their upcoming chips to try and be better.

Edit to add: Looking back, those Bench results look a bit iffy to me, I wouldn't expect that big a jump. If possible, I would wait.

[Obie]

I am in a similar situation, except my system is even older. Also my focus is on software development, so I want a system with lots of RAM, fast I/O, and only basic graphics.

My take is that as Skylake is just around the corner and will use a new type of RAM and a new socket, so it would be foolish to spend £500 now on new stuff that will be out of date, and expensive to upgrade in a month or so.

If it where only January, and the new CPU is still over 6 months away then it might be different, Likewise if I had enough cash for a socket 2011 based system, as that already uses DDR-4, and is unlikely to see a significant refresh any time soon.

But as it is, if I upgrade my system with Haswell stuff now, then I would be spending about £500 on a CPU, Motherboard and DDR-3 RAM. Then when Skylake comes out it will all be out of date. In a normal year, I could at least keep the RAM, or even the Motherboard when I upgrade CPU, but this time around everything changes.

In your case, if you have money burning a hole in your pocket, I suggest you spend it on a graphics card, because there are no major ones on the horizon for a while, and anything you buy now can be transplanted to a new system when you upgrade.

Thanks for the reply man. Yes similar boats indeed, but would you still upgrade if Skylake was 6 months away? that's a tough one and I'd probably wait but I guess your uses and more CPU dependent.
I forgot about having to get DDR4 but that's ok, It comes with the nature of the tech so I'm fine with that.
Well I feel that my GPU is fine for 1080p so I project a 2016 upgrade when that horizon is a little closer

[Obie]

A 290X seems a pretty decent graphics card, and next year the 16nm ones will come out going twice as fast so that is exactly the same boat. I would leave the GPU as is.

If you are gaming then there is a case for a Haswell upgrade: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/288?vs=1261 (using the 2500K there because Bench has no gaming results for 2400).

But generally, does the machine *feel* slow. If it is driving you up the wall, then an upgrade could make sense. If you are OK using what you have, then it is always better to wait. Zen sounds very promising, so I am expecting Intel to pull their finger out with their upcoming chips to try and be better.

Edit to add: Looking back, those Bench results look a bit iffy to me, I wouldn't expect that big a jump. If possible, I would wait.

Thanks for the info there man however as you said it does look a little iffy and the scores regarding the 3D all look to be the onboard processor graphics scores at a lower res to boot.
You're right, It's not driving me up the walls by any means however the last resource-heavy game I played was Dragon Age:Inquisition and I was able to max that game and the was no stutter.
However I did notice in Afterburner that my CPU cores were running at 80-90% load in game. I'm just a little concerned as I'm currently playing The Wither 1 [this game is fine ] and will be venturing into Witcher 3 territory shortly after, I imagine it will be a lot more rough that DAI from what I've heard

[DanceswithUnix]

I am in a similar situation, except my system is even older.

I think that is an easier call tbh.

The Q6600 is now old enough that just about anything would be a good upgrade, something like a £105 A10-7870 would give you about twice the CPU power and vastly uprated graphics with cheap motherboards like http://www.ebuyer.com/611200-asus-a8...rboard-a88xm-a that give you 4 ram slots and enough SATA for a small raid array (that board is what I use in my home Linux server). Another £20 on the motherboard and £30 on the CPU and you get an FX 8350, so the whole CPU+board+upgrade is still well under £300.

DDR3 pricing has dropped a lot in the last month, so at under £40 for an 8GB kit getting old RAM isn't quite the hurt it would have been before.

[chrestomanci]

Thanks for the reply man. Yes similar boats indeed, but would you still upgrade if Skylake was 6 months away? that's a tough one and I'd probably wait but I guess your uses and more CPU dependent.

If the next big thing where six months away, then I would upgrade. I recently started working from home, so I am using that system for 8+ hours a day, 5 days a week, and it is starting to feel sluggish on some things. The only reason I have not upgraded already, is the feeling that I will be wasting a lot of money if I don't wait for Skylake.

The Q6600 is now old enough that just about anything would be a good upgrade, something like a £105 A10-7870 would give you about twice the CPU power and vastly uprated graphics with cheap motherboards ... <details omitted> ... so the whole CPU+board+upgrade is still well under £300.

True, but because I am a Linux user, I need to steer clear of AMD graphics (Their drivers are slow and buggy), so that means, either I ignore the integrated GPU, use a cheap nVidia card, and put up with bugs in the chipset drivers, or I go for an Intel system, which gets me back to waiting for Skylake.

My thinking is that seeing as I have kept the core parts of my current system for over 5 years, I will probably do the same with the next, so it is worth spending reasonable money to get something good, hence my budget of around £500.

DDR3 pricing has dropped a lot in the last month, so at under £40 for an 8GB kit getting old RAM isn't quite the hurt it would have been before.

For my use case, you can never have too much memory, and it is an easy upgrade you can do on any system. My current system only has 8Gb, but that is because it is the maximum the motherboard allows. For my next system I will choose a motherboard that will take at least 32Gb, or 64Gb if I can find one.

[DanceswithUnix]

True, but because I am a Linux user, I need to steer clear of AMD graphics (Their drivers are slow and buggy), so that means, either I ignore the integrated GPU, use a cheap nVidia card, and put up with bugs in the chipset drivers, or I go for an Intel system, which gets me back to waiting for Skylake.

I am a Linux user

My home server runs the open source driver, as that is fine for configuration and general use. Most of the time the box is headless, so fglrx is a pointless update.

My main workstation has an R9 285 GPU with no open source support until kernel 4.2 is out, so it has to run the fglrx blob as otherwise I have to use the old VESA driver which I did for a while but performance was pretty dire. I believe if you run something like Debian then the driver is just an apt get away, but I run Fedora so I had to put an hour aside to google the latest patch to get the driver built. Now it works fine, and I can play my Steam games again just as well as I could with my old Nvidia card.

More ram is nice, though the jump from 8GB to 16GB wasn't as noticeable as the jump from 4 to 8.

[Pullock]

I was planning to upgrade when Skylake comes out if you don't want to get dedicated graphics immediately have a look at the improved performance of the Skylake processor's mainly the i5-6600k and i7-6700k might be what your after.

[lankeyphil]

Now it's out I'd push for the skylake appears to be worth it from a future perspective if you need an upgrade.

[pandamonia]

2500k is massivly inferior compared to the new Gen CPU's In cpu tasks especially. Also in game smoothness and minimum frame rates on many games now also. There are some reviews which show what is going on.

[kalniel]

2500k is massivly inferior compared to the new Gen CPU's In cpu tasks especially. Also in game smoothness and minimum frame rates on many games now also. There are some reviews which show what is going on.

Smoothness + min frame rates aren't significantly affected by having a 2500k so you're fine there. CPU tasks have to be quiet extreme to notice a big change - depends how critical those few % are really.

[stephen0205]

not get a better cooler and squeeze a little more life out of that i5