AMD to Intel, Opinions please.

[cmi86]

Soooo I am finally jumping ship.. Not so much because my CPU doesn't do what I want it to just more so because AM3 is over 4 years old and lacks many modern features that are now common place with intel. That and I just had a baby so money will be tight and my new build is going to have to last a while, Idk how much longer the 6300 will remain viable and now is the time to upgrade.

My main use is gaming @ 1080P, I like high settings and steady 60 FPS is a big deal to me. In addition to gaming my PC also serves as the media center for my room (possibly media server for the house down the line) so all kinds of media streaming/playback/conversion etc.. With the new baby I foresee myself working with photos and videos in an amateur aspect in the near future as well. Nothing professional.

Where I am stuck is choosing a CPU and a platform. I live near a MicroCenter so I can get some pretty good deals. I have a rough budget of $450. This allows me a few different options, please weigh in.

#1- i7 4790K, ASUS Z97-AR, 8GB Ballistix Sport, 212 Evo= $455.99 b4 tax
Is the i7 overkill or does it justify giving up the SSD for the HT?

#2- i5 4690K, ASUS Z97-AR, 8GB Ballistix Sport, 212 Evo, PNY XLR8 128GB SSD=$446.98 b4 tax
Will the i5 remain viable for many years without the boost of HT ?

#3- Xeon E3 1230V2, ASUS P8H61-M,8GB Ballistix Sport, PNY XLR8 128GB SSD=$404.98 b4 tax
Will the xeon at only 3.3 Ghz have the speed to push current and upcoming games for the foreseeable future and are the savings enough to justify building on an older socket like 1155 ?

Please weigh in and give your opinions on which one would offer the best value for my usage needs. Thanks.

 

[ronintexas]

Do you have a GPU for the gaming? The Intel HD graphics aren't going to do much for gaming.

The option #2 is viable for current stuff - and the SSD will give you better boot times and snappier performance overall. I have SSD's in all my machines.

I am surprised you haven't listed the AMD FX 8320/8350 processors - I have seen the FX8320 on sale for $119 - probably close to $100 less than the i-5 - and you should get similar performance (I am an Intel man at heart - but AMD has some great budget machines).

The Pony SSD isn't a terrible SSD - but the Samsung 840 EVO is a better drive - only a few bucks more....

 

[Adversus]

The FX-6300 should be able to handle current and upcoming games well with your setup. at 60fps 1080p

however if you really must upgrade it , then i should go with the i5.
the i7 is really overkill, but also not worth price/performance. (i5 can handle all upcoming and curret games at 1080P 60fps)

Also if you have 16GB Vengeance, then there is no need to get 8GB Ballistix?

 

[cmi86]

The FX-6300 should be able to handle current and upcoming games well with your setup. at 60fps 1080p

however if you really must upgrade it , then i should go with the i5.
the i7 is really overkill, but also not worth price/performance. (i5 can handle all upcoming and curret games at 1080P 60fps)

Also if you have 16GB Vengeance, then there is no need to get 8GB Ballistix?

The 6300 guts are sold to fund the upgrade minus the 7870LE, so sadly the vengeance is gone.

 

[cmi86]

Do you have a GPU for the gaming? The Intel HD graphics aren't going to do much for gaming.

The option #2 is viable for current stuff - and the SSD will give you better boot times and snappier performance overall. I have SSD's in all my machines.

I am surprised you haven't listed the AMD FX 8320/8350 processors - I have seen the FX8320 on sale for $119 - probably close to $100 less than the i-5 - and you should get similar performance (I am an Intel man at heart - but AMD has some great budget machines).

The Pony SSD isn't a terrible SSD - but the Samsung 840 EVO is a better drive - only a few bucks more....

I should have said I carried over the 7870LE from my sig rig. The rest of the innards (minus PSU and HDD)have been sold to finance the upgrade.

 

[synphul]

I think in your case, mostly gaming the i5 would be plenty. It will be plenty of horsepower for a media server and hobby photo/video editing. The 4690k is a fairly new release being a haswell refresh I think from june or around there. The next scheduled broadwell for desktop pc's isn't expected until the second half of 2015, 3rd or 4th quarter sometime and the next cpu from amd likely won't come until around 2016. Considering all that, I don't see software dev's taking off at a rampant pace given what hardware is available. Unlikely it will be needing replaced anytime soon.

For gaming at 1080 you're looking at an upper end graphics card which I don't see listed. Not sure what your current card is, you'll likely want something like an r9 290/290x or gtx 970 or something similar for high settings and 60fps. You're looking at the $250-350 range for a graphics card. Without knowing what power supply you have, you may need a new one.

An ssd can be nice but more like icing on the cake. I understand people say an ssd like night and day compared to a 7200rpm hdd, but honestly I think it's more of a luxury item. I have a 'slow' 7200rpm drive and even with win7 and aero, all the eyecandy, my apps and windows and things open up pretty much instantly. About the worst case scenario, I haven't used photoshop cs6 recently so it wasn't cached or anything. A hard load completely from the drive took around 35sec and that's one of the largest programs I can imagine loading. That's also with two browsers and probably well over 100 tabs open between them, a messenger program and a few other things loaded and the system has been up and running for over a week without restarting. If you need programs and games to load instantly, go with the ssd. Otherwise when actually gaming an ssd doesn't give much performance difference.

What I might do if it were me given being on a budget and considering the things you want to do, would be to go with an i5, z97 motherboard, the 8gb of ram, skip the i7 and ssd and instead use that money toward a graphics card for your 1080 gaming. Being near microcenter is a definite perk, they've had some killer deals.

If you do want to go the ssd route, you might be happier with a crucial mx100 or samsung 840 evo over that pny.

 

[ronintexas]

One word of advice - if you get the ASUS Z-97 with either processor - make sure that MicroCenter updates the BIOS to the current version before you leave - there are a lot of the mobos out there that don't support the new processors with the older version of the BIOS and the only fix is to put an older CPU in and update the BIOS or RMA it to ASUS.

MicroCenter did it for one person....

I would not invest in the i-7 unless you get heavy into Adobe Photoshop, you won't notice much of a difference out there. My wife is running on a FX-8320 and her install of Photoshop is virtually as fast as mine until we compare 3-D Rendering and some advanced filtering (she has a minimal GPU also).

 

[cmi86]

I think in your case, mostly gaming the i5 would be plenty. It will be plenty of horsepower for a media server and hobby photo/video editing. The 4690k is a fairly new release being a haswell refresh I think from june or around there. The next scheduled broadwell for desktop pc's isn't expected until the second half of 2015, 3rd or 4th quarter sometime and the next cpu from amd likely won't come until around 2016. Considering all that, I don't see software dev's taking off at a rampant pace given what hardware is available. Unlikely it will be needing replaced anytime soon.

For gaming at 1080 you're looking at an upper end graphics card which I don't see listed. Not sure what your current card is, you'll likely want something like an r9 290/290x or gtx 970 or something similar for high settings and 60fps. You're looking at the $250-350 range for a graphics card. Without knowing what power supply you have, you may need a new one.

An ssd can be nice but more like icing on the cake. I understand people say an ssd like night and day compared to a 7200rpm hdd, but honestly I think it's more of a luxury item. I have a 'slow' 7200rpm drive and even with win7 and aero, all the eyecandy, my apps and windows and things open up pretty much instantly. About the worst case scenario, I haven't used photoshop cs6 recently so it wasn't cached or anything. A hard load completely from the drive took around 35sec and that's one of the largest programs I can imagine loading. That's also with two browsers and probably well over 100 tabs open between them, a messenger program and a few other things loaded and the system has been up and running for over a week without restarting. If you need programs and games to load instantly, go with the ssd. Otherwise when actually gaming an ssd doesn't give much performance difference.

What I might do if it were me given being on a budget and considering the things you want to do, would be to go with an i5, z97 motherboard, the 8gb of ram, skip the i7 and ssd and instead use that money toward a graphics card for your 1080 gaming. Being near microcenter is a definite perk, they've had some killer deals.

If you do want to go the ssd route, you might be happier with a crucial mx100 or samsung 840 evo over that pny.

Thank you for the detailed response. I have been leaning towards the i5 option as I don't really do much that would even utilize the 8 threads of the i7 at the moment, just thought the HT light give my CPU a little longer life span. I am carrying over my 7870LE which has served me well so far but yes the plan is to upgrade in the near future. I would like to get by long enough to get a look at the R9-3XX stuff before pulling the trigger on a 970 or upcoming 960. I have the budget for an SSD so I might as well pick one up to help with load times and responsiveness, my WD 500 blues are a bit aged now and would be better suited for mass storage.

 

[cmi86]

One word of advice - if you get the ASUS Z-97 with either processor - make sure that MicroCenter updates the BIOS to the current version before you leave - there are a lot of the mobos out there that don't support the new processors with the older version of the BIOS and the only fix is to put an older CPU in and update the BIOS or RMA it to ASUS.

MicroCenter did it for one person....

I would not invest in the i-7 unless you get heavy into Adobe Photoshop, you won't notice much of a difference out there. My wife is running on a FX-8320 and her install of Photoshop is virtually as fast as mine until we compare 3-D Rendering and some advanced filtering (she has a minimal GPU also).

Wasn't the Z-97 chipset specifically for the "devils canyon" refresh of the haswell line or am I mistaken ?

 

[ronintexas]

Several people have posted recently that had a newer haswell chip and the Z-97 that had issues, once the BIOS was updated, problems went away.

 

[cmi86]

So since there have been no comments about the less expensive Xeon build I can probably scratch that option. It was never really a main option just something I threw together to try and save a few bucks.

 

[ronintexas]

I have never used the Xeon chips in anything other than servers. Most programmers will take advantage of the type of CPU their program runs on. Microsoft SQL server is written to take advantage of multiple CPUs and multiple cores and performs better with Xeon processors. Adobe Photoshop and most games will perform better on a mainstream desktop CPU.