[Solved, for now] Looks like I might be doing a new build soon...

[ZaO]

Edit: So it looks like I'll be going for the 4690K or 4790K with the way things stand. If the Skylake cpu's get a release soon, I will re-evaluate. But they probably won't be released soon enough as far as I can tell. Thanks for all the feedback!



I'm thinking of building a new machine from scratch within the next couple of months (Mainly for gaming. Though I am strongly considering hyperthreading/having 8 cores for other tasks). The first thing I need to figure out, is which cpu to get. So, I'm looking at the top of the line FX chip from Amd (9590), and that's going to require a good water cooler and a hefty psu. On the plus side, I should be able to get a good AM3+ board for quite cheap these days. Then there's the Intel chips. I was thinking the 4690k looked good. Similar price, probably better performance, lower power usage.. though I might need to spend more on a board, but less on a psu. I am also considering the 4790K due to the hyperthreading. But, that costs about an extra £90 more than the Amd chip...

Then I'm hearing stuff about Intel supposedly releasing some new cpu's next month/soon (Skylake?). Anyone know anything about that? I think I should wait if they are. Their older chips should get cheaper, or the new ones might even have something good in my price range. As for Amd, I have no idea when they'll release a good new desktop chip. But, I'm losing patience. Amd will probably have to have my money next time round I'm also waiting for Amd to relase those new gpu's so I can grab an R9 for cheap. Anyone know when that'll be? So, that's where I'm at anyway.. What's the word, people? Cheers

[Dareos]

In my experience there is always something new and better just around the corner. Its the nature of the technology we love so much. It gives us a myriad of choice when building something new and sometimes that's too much choice.
I think its a bit simpler at the moment though. PC performance growth has slowed considerably over the last few years and for the moment at least it appears to be more about making things smaller and more stylish than about pure performance.
I don't think many people see a huge difference in the day to day use of a computer between an i5 and an i7 processor or the higher end AMD processor. If you are planning for future upgradeability and overclocking then be wary of components but otherwise I wouldn't worry too much unless those 3 or 4 frames per second mean the world to you.
I'm not saying don't be particular about the components you choose, just that there's a lot less real world difference than can be made out at times.
But if its music production get an Atari1040 ste and cubase

[DanceswithUnix]

I think the golden rule is that if you can wait, then wait. Only upgrade when your PC breaks or is too slow to run stuff.

Even when DDR2 first came out it was slightly slower than DDR, but allowed things to improve until they were faster again. I think that has been the way for ages, I expect DDR4 will be no different. First gen will be a more expensive way of getting DDR3 performance, possibly with the exception of integrated graphics users where it might be a big win.

Otherwise, I am still happy with my FX8350. Mine is in a big case with a largish air cooler so is pretty quiet (I am really fussy about noise). Would I buy FX now? Difficult to say, the 8370 still seems a good buy but my biggest annoyance is case size and there just aren't any good uATX motherboards for AM3+. That could be enough to drive me to using an Intel chip for a main machine.

What spec are you using atm?

[scaryjim]

If it's music production, what software will you be using? And will you be recording in the same room as the PC, or will you just be doing post-prod? Getting a nice low sound floor in a room with a gaming PC is a hell of an ask... OTOH music production isn't (afaik) actually that hardware intensive: a lot will depend on which external interfaces you're using.

[Ttaskmaster]

I'd generally check Tom's Hardware heirarchies and only bother upgrading when it will take me several tiers above what I already have.

Game-wise, so long as I can run anything at decent speeds and settings, it's not a concern. Outside of that, I only upgrade if something comes with fancy features that I just want!

[ZaO]

Thanks guys. Well forget about the music production part. I always just build gaming rigs, which naturally cope very well with music production I actually sold my last build, last year so that I could buy an audio interface and good monitors for mixing on. Since then, I've been stuck with an old budget build I made back in 2009 I think... It's totally not capable for what I want. For starters, the gpu is a 4850 512MB which is artifacting and about to die. I can just about play insurgency with low settings. This has driven me to play games on my ps4. These crappy framerates and all the rest of the console games crappieness are killing me lol...

As I say, I'm cool going with DDR3 like my last gaming build But I just don't know which cpu I should go for.The AM3+ board has no upgrade path, but I'm guessing the Intel route won't either. I do like to go for Amd stuff, but the Intel chip is probably a better choice for now. I'm sure though, that the current Amd R9 gpu's will get cheaper once those new cards come out, and that these Intel cpu's I'm looking at will also get cheaper if they have some new ones coming out soon. Any ideas on that stuff? Thanks!

[shaithis]

A z97 board will have some upgrade path (Broadwell), AMD is a bit up-in-the-air and my guess would be AM3+ is a dead-end (not to mention the choice of boards isn't great to begin with).....although I never buy a motherboard with any grand future upgrade plans...it's normally not worth it these days. Sorry if that doesn't sway you either way

If your doing music production though, I would have thought quieter would be better, leaning me towards intel.

The current R9 GPUs should get cheaper (at least before they disappear) as they will get cleared to make room for the re-badged versions.

[Gronich26]

I would ask what budget do you have and what resolution will you be playing at?

[ZaO]

A z97 board will have some upgrade path (Broadwell), AMD is a bit up-in-the-air and my guess would be AM3+ is a dead-end (not to mention the choice of boards isn't great to begin with).....although I never buy a motherboard with any grand future upgrade plans...it's normally not worth it these days. Sorry if that doesn't sway you either way

If your doing music production though, I would have thought quieter would be better, leaning me towards intel.

The current R9 GPUs should get cheaper (at least before they disappear) as they will get cleared to make room for the re-badged versions.

I think Intel is pretty much decided at this point after thinking more this morning I think I need to try and find some more info on Skylake, to see when they'll be released. Better get searching...

I would ask what budget do you have and what resolution will you playing at?

Not completely sure about budget yet. As for res, well I'll probably get an ultra widescreen monitor, so I might play some games at 1080p, some higher res. I'm thinking of getting an R9290X when the new gpu's hit. That should have enough power and vram to be sufficient Though I might get one of the new Amd gpu's if they have something worthwhile around the same price. A lot is hanging on the new hardware coming up really. It's sort of going to make my mind up for me I think..

[Biscuit]

Audio software generally loves to thread, so if you can afford it, one of the hyper threading Xeons might be the way to go. It will be a bit cheaper than the lowest price i7 and will have slightly lower clock speeds, but that shouldn't make much difference!

HUGE air coolers and slow fans is generally king, but a good AOI liquid is (in some ways) bit more convenient inside the case and can be bought for a bit cheaper. I put a Coolermaster Hyper 103 in my brothers PC (with i5 4690) not so long ago, and it was barely audible, so even the low end coolers will do the job these days.

[ZaO]

Audio software generally loves to thread, so if you can afford it, one of the hyper threading Xeons might be the way to go. It will be a bit cheaper than the lowest price i7 and will have slightly lower clock speeds, but that shouldn't make much difference!

HUGE air coolers and slow fans is generally king, but a good AOI liquid is (in some ways) bit more convenient inside the case and can be bought for a bit cheaper. I put a Coolermaster Hyper 103 in my brothers PC (with i5 4690) not so long ago, and it was barely audible, so even the low end coolers will do the job these days.

Yeh I actually decided earlier that I wanted hyper threading If I was to buy a cpu right now, I would go for the 4770K. I think I'm probably sticking with that until I hear some more about Skylake. But just out of interest, how well do those Xeons perform in games compared to the i5's and i7's? I don't really get what's different about them.. Thanks

[scaryjim]

Audio software generally loves to thread ...

It's also worth saying that some *ahem AUDACITY ahem* audio software hammers IO too. Run any kind of processing over a multitrack audacity recording and you'll rack up 100s of megs of small-file random writes. So an SSD with exceptional degraded performance is a must. I made the mistake of editing 1hour+ 4 track audio files on an older 120GB SSD (with poor GC) and it ground to a halt very quickly, thanks to the 20+ GB of writes I was doing each session and its very poor degraded performance. It's probably worth putting some money aside for at least one datacentre-grade SSD, even if you use it purely as a working drive for audio processing.

[shaithis]

But just out of interest, how well do those Xeons perform in games compared to the i5's and i7's? I don't really get what's different about them.. Thanks

The same. They are just binned to run at a lower voltage. You lose the IGP and they have the same (non)overclocking ability as the non-K i7.

Think you need the 1230 or above for hyper-threading.

I use a 1230v2 (the older socket 1155 variant) in my HTPC/second gaming rig and it handles every game I throw at it fine.

[Ttaskmaster]

But just out of interest, how well do those Xeons perform in games compared to the i5's and i7's? I don't really get what's different about them.. Thanks

Based on a few threads I read - Xeons are some kind of top end, high performance server chips.
So high that people are taking old X58 motherboards, chucking in old Xeon chips that were previously used in servers and overclocking them to th point where they outperform some of the better i7 4xxx chips.
But because the X58s are old second-hand kit, you can pick up a Mobo & CPU & 12GB RAM (X58 boards are triple-channel) as a package for about £100.

There is a lot more to it that this and I admit I have only very briefly scan-read the threads, but it's caught my interest and I am following the progress of a friend who is doing this very thing... once he's finished playing with his new Titan Xs, that is!

[shaithis]

Based on a few threads I read - Xeons are some kind of top end, high performance server chips.
So high that people are taking old X58 motherboards, chucking in old Xeon chips that were previously used in servers and overclocking them to th point where they outperform some of the better i7 4xxx chips.
But because the X58s are old second-hand kit, you can pick up a Mobo & CPU & 12GB RAM (X58 boards are triple-channel) as a package for about £100.

There is a lot more to it that this and I admit I have only very briefly scan-read the threads, but it's caught my interest and I am following the progress of a friend who is doing this very thing... once he's finished playing with his new Titan Xs, that is!

People are doing that as the 6-core S1366 Xeons are starting to become cheap second-hand. The X58 boards are starting to die though!

[ZaO]

It's also worth saying that some *ahem AUDACITY ahem* audio software hammers IO too. Run any kind of processing over a multitrack audacity recording and you'll rack up 100s of megs of small-file random writes. So an SSD with exceptional degraded performance is a must. I made the mistake of editing 1hour+ 4 track audio files on an older 120GB SSD (with poor GC) and it ground to a halt very quickly, thanks to the 20+ GB of writes I was doing each session and its very poor degraded performance. It's probably worth putting some money aside for at least one datacentre-grade SSD, even if you use it purely as a working drive for audio processing.

Yeh, I must get myself a good ssd for this stuff! I'll be posting another thread at some point asking about some other components...

The same. They are just binned to run at a lower voltage. You lose the IGP and they have the same (non)overclocking ability as the non-K i7.

Think you need the 1230 or above for hyper-threading.

I use a 1230v2 (the older socket 1155 variant) in my HTPC/second gaming rig and it handles every game I throw at it fine.

Cool! I'll have to have a look into those then! I was going for a 'K' to get overclocking potential when I wanted it. But I heard that 4770K can't really be pushed much further than stock in most cases.