I've been rocking out on an i7-930 for the past 4 years now. At one point I overclocked it from 2.8 to 3.4 Ghz, but the overclock "destabilized" a few months in, and it's been running at stock ever since. What I added when they came out was triple Vertex 2's in raid 0, which are still running just fine. The power supply was one of the first fully modular, gold-rated ones on the market.
The only thing that's needed replacing is my storage disk.
This was the first computer I built from scratch, it was a lot of fun to do, and I think it might be time to build a replacement soon. Just about everything except the storage drive is one or more generations behind.
The trouble is, I'm not seeing too much of a need for it. I do a bit of everything on my computer - some gaming, some working, some animating on occasion. This thing runs all of my games at maximum, or near maximum already. It "seems" pretty responsive, even though the SSDs are filling up with data, just as the heatsinks are filling with dust, and old memories.
My main question here - is it worth upgrading? I've read (and believe) that the last few generations of CPUs have added little in terms of performance. Have applications generally gotten more multi-threaded?
If in the past 4 years, transistors have shrunk from 45 to 22 nm, the area they occupy is 1/4 of what it was. Does that mean I'll get to see 4 times as many calculations per watt?
I'm thinking about an upgrade in a few months time, when prices on these new X99 parts settle, especially the cost of DDR4, so I can take advantage of ramdisks.
How about the raid controllers on the new X99 boards? How far can they go? My old ICH10R can handle 700 Mb/s. It's pretty much maxed out, and is the reason why I didn't get any more than 3 Gen 2 SSDs.
What would you do if you were in my place? If the difference is not worth it, then doesn't that suggest that my current computer has a lot of re-sale value? Or is it actually, legitimately, starting to be "worth it", and in upgrading I will genuinely see a night-and-day difference.
The only thing that's needed replacing is my storage disk.
This was the first computer I built from scratch, it was a lot of fun to do, and I think it might be time to build a replacement soon. Just about everything except the storage drive is one or more generations behind.
The trouble is, I'm not seeing too much of a need for it. I do a bit of everything on my computer - some gaming, some working, some animating on occasion. This thing runs all of my games at maximum, or near maximum already. It "seems" pretty responsive, even though the SSDs are filling up with data, just as the heatsinks are filling with dust, and old memories.
My main question here - is it worth upgrading? I've read (and believe) that the last few generations of CPUs have added little in terms of performance. Have applications generally gotten more multi-threaded?
If in the past 4 years, transistors have shrunk from 45 to 22 nm, the area they occupy is 1/4 of what it was. Does that mean I'll get to see 4 times as many calculations per watt?
I'm thinking about an upgrade in a few months time, when prices on these new X99 parts settle, especially the cost of DDR4, so I can take advantage of ramdisks.
How about the raid controllers on the new X99 boards? How far can they go? My old ICH10R can handle 700 Mb/s. It's pretty much maxed out, and is the reason why I didn't get any more than 3 Gen 2 SSDs.
What would you do if you were in my place? If the difference is not worth it, then doesn't that suggest that my current computer has a lot of re-sale value? Or is it actually, legitimately, starting to be "worth it", and in upgrading I will genuinely see a night-and-day difference.