Any point in buying an older generation cpu?

[Headscratcher999]

Hi everyone. Long time reader 1st time asker!
I am looking to buy or make myself a Desktop computer. I'll be using it as a 24/7 machine for gaming, general use, video encoding, music editing etc etc so it needs to be fairly good but I don't need it to do the job in a split second (diminishing returns not worth it etc). Basically I know what parts I want, I just can't decide on the CPU/generation to go with. So you know my thoughts I'm looking at 1 of the following - i5 2500k, i5 3570k, i7 2600k/2700k, i7 3770k or ofc the latest Haswell offering i7 4770k. I'm after the 'k' (unlocked series) as I see it as a sort of 'future proofing' (and forgive me but they're also mouth watering!). Equally I'm after a mobo that is brilliant for OC'ing and has SLI/Xfire. My question is should I go for the Haswell i7 (with hyperthreading etc and this is the new gen design etc) or should I go to sandy or ivy which are brilliant brilliant performance AND price, but they're essentially 'dead end' chips (end of the line with no upgrade paths due to socket) etc.
I'm not really fussed about the hyper threading as I can wait (the extra 10 mins?) for video encoding to be completed etc. Another thought is that I hear and understand that when it comes to overclocking that Sandy Bridge is the best (due to the highest heat resilience) and the newer the cpu (ivy + haswell) the worse the overclocking gets (small architecture thingys so the heat gets trapped easier)...
Now I won't be seriously overclocking them, I'd be after 4.2ghz not 5ghz as I don't really want to muck about with voltages etc, all I want to fiddle with is the multipliers. I'm a wee bit of a noob when it comes to this. Maybe my question should've been how far can you safely overclock an i7 4770k?
Sorry if this question is all over the place. Any information on any of my thoughts would be very greatful.

 

[WhiteSnake91]

z77 extreme 4 is pretty good, for awhile it was basically the cookie-cutter i5 combo to pair with to overclock. The z77 is the ivy bridge best overclocking mobos, the b75,etc are lower end, some have usb 3.0 but they won't crossfire well, if at all. The sandy bridge i7 will work with z77 fine. The difficulty was when people tried putting ivy bridge in old sandy bridge mobos and needed bios flash,etc...so I'd just go with z77, they're not bad for the price, maybe around $120 brand new

I'm thinking of getting the sandy bridge too, sandy runs cooler, if you've ever heard of people delidding ivy and haswell it's because they run so hot when overclocked, Sandy Bridge was soldered on so it runs cooler by default,despite being "more power hungry" which is only 3 more dollars a year according to cpuboss when I looked up the comparison to 3570k vs 2600k . The 2600k and 2500k are soldered cores to the IHS, but 3570k and 3770k just use TIM.

 

[DeathAndPain]

Whitesnake you suggests a Z77 mobo... am I right in thinking that the 'Z' represents lots of features?

Basically yes. The question is whether any of these additional features are actually interesting. For Haswell I know you need a Z mainboard if you want to legally overclock. Not sure about Sandy/Ivy.

DeathandPain - does the 7770 do max settings on most modern day games?

Well, I suppose you are referring to FPS (first person shooters), and unfortunately I am feeling sick quickly when playing any of those, so I cannot play that class of games and have little experience with it.

I know that crysis 3, metro ll, far cry 3 etc really push cards so maybe those require $$$$ cards.

Well, these are known as pretty much the most demanding games you can buy today, so I suppose a Radeon 7770 will not be able to max out on those, otherwise people buying those 100+ Watts cards for high money would all be idiots.

Any decent UK shops that offer good deals on hardware? I heard of a few good US places, but in the UK I'm a bit stumped so I am looking on E-bay etc (am researching the sellers!)

Look here. It is the UK counterpart to the best (by far) price portal in Austria and Germany.

 

[Headscratcher999]

Once again thanks for the replies guys, all the info and knowledge is very useful.

Very good point with regards to the graphics cards DeathandPain and what they can handle. Why Buy a titan if a 8800gt does the job... (over the top reference but you know what I mean!).
I know that some cards obviously can't handle max graphics, top end resolutions, max AA + keep a + 60 frames per sec (people always seem to mention 60 being the perfect amount... I have gamed at around 20-30 and it is still pretty cool but I can see the difference between 20 and 60 ofc).

Also as you say some motherboards can have a whole host of features but if some of them are not of use to me personally then why dish out the extra money. Again this is why I am looking and asking.

Going back to gaming, I don't game one hell of a lot to be honest, but it is nice knowing that you've got a bit of kit that can play games for a good 5+ years or so, even if you need to put all the settings down to low.


Whitesnake when you mentioned about "people tried putting ivy bridge in old sandy bridge mobos and needed bios flash,etc", this sounds like something to avoid or at least something that can be easily avoided by getting the right mobo for the cpu.

I see by your setup, and I do seem to be headed more toward the 3rd gen i7 (ivy), that you use the board you recommended, the Z77 Asrock Extreme 4m.
I've just read up about it, that sounds like a pretty much top notch bit of kit. SLI & X-Fire, usb 3, 7.1 audio etc etc, I won't list all the features. I think this will be the mobo I go with if I do grab an Ivy Bridge. Thanks for the recommendation.
Am I right in thinking that I would not need to flash the mobo if I went with a Sandy Bridge on this mobo? (I do not know anything on this subject apart from what you initially told me).

Again, depending on Haswell deals etc, I do seem to be headed more toward an i7 3770k now, unless someone literally sold me an i7 2600k/2700k for silly money. Equally if I could get my hands on an i5 2500k/3570k for silly money then I would as the performance is still at the higher end of the spectrum.

I'll head over to the link you sent me D&P, looks good

I youtube'd some guy doing this de-lidding on his Haswell I think it was, with a chisel and a vice... not for me I must say!

 

[WhiteSnake91]

yes, Sandy Bridge would drop in just fine. The issue was people putting the new Ivy Bridge cpus at the time into the old z68/p67 mobos.

For gaming the cheaper 2600k i7 is still among the best for gaming esp. overclocked (but it's great so you don't even need to) and for general pc use it's a beast at multitasking due to the 8 threads and stout architecture. I often see them barely used for the price an i5 goes for.

 

[wtfxxxgp]

I couldn't read through all the comments... some of the guys were just bickering with each other eventually. Bud, if I were you, I'd look for the best of each generation that you can find (mobo and cpu) and then I'd see what the price difference is. I think you'll probably find that an i5 3570k is going to give you serious bang for buck if you're gaming more on your system than what you are doing other things. Also, it's been proven again and again that if you do want to overclock it, they're pretty robust. The ONLY thing I think you'll have to sacrifice on is the core-count when dealing with well-threaded apps that do take advantage of more than 4 cores. Doing things this way will provide you with the best outcome for your needs versus what you want to spend. Cost/benefit analysis FTW. What's the point if we tell you to get a previous gen system and then you can't actually find any? Then you're back to square one. So, find the best parts you can, and then do a quick cost/benefit analysis and make up your own mind

 

[bicycle_repair_man]

To answer the question "is there any point in buying an older generation CPU?", I've actually done this, so here's my two pence.

I went from an Ivy Bridge Pentium G2030 to a Sandy Bridge i5 2500k just last week. The sticking point for me was that the 2500k was 30% cheaper than the 3570k, but the performance gain was negligible. The lower TDP doesn't bother me as I'm not stressing or running my machine 24/7, but that's obviously different for you. I've yet to overclock, as I need a new motherboard, but it's certainly on my to-do list.

If you go Sandy Bridge, don't settle for anything other than a "k" series CPU. The overclocking potential will make it a very good performer for years to come. As wtfxxxgp says, do a cost/benefit comparison and go from there.

 

[sirstinky]

Since a lot of others already chimed in +1 ^

When you are comparing Sandy to Ivy, the only differences you're going to see is going to be in the area of overclocking and technology, mostly the micro architecture and manufacturing process. In short, Ivy uses a die with more transistors in a more efficient architecture than Sandy (32nm opposed to 22nm, 95 watt TDP to 77 watt TDP). The cores are more efficient per clock in Ivy and Haswell than Sandy. You can OC Sandy to the moon, but you can OC an Ivy pretty high too, and it will be faster and use less power and produce less heat. Haswell, in most applications, will give about a 9-15% performance difference over Ivy or Sandy. It's a trade off for all three. As far as Hyperthreading, all that does is make it so a single processing core addresses 2 threads, so 1 logical core and 2 virtual cores. The CPU can do more at once than a single threaded core, but this is application-specific. In games, there isn't enough of a difference in performance between a $220 i5 and $325 i7. You'll see the biggest difference in heavily threaded applications.

For the Sandy/Ivy Bridge-E parts (LGA 2011) $500+(with the exception of the i7-4830k at $320), they are about useless for anything other than quad and 3-way SLI and CrossfireX, or if you need uber memory bandwidth afforded by quad channels, and processing huge amounts of data at once (like in rendering videos and images, or animations or graphic design, or with an AD, DC, large scale file, or web server with lots of IOPS) where you don't want the CPU to bottleneck other things. For anything else they're too expensive, use too much power (130+ TDP's), and generate too much heat.

If it were me, I'd go with the Haswell or Ivy Bridge. For pure cost-effectiveness for gaming and general use, an i5-3570-4670k is going to be enough. If you want to do things like video editing, graphics rendering, or imaging with Photoshop or CAD stuff, an i7-3770-4770k. My argument for Haswell is it's new technology and I think will be around for a while (future-proof). Also, the price differential between the similar i5 and i7 Ivy/Haswell K parts is negligible, unless you can find a sale. If you can find an Ivy Bridge i5-3570K for under $220, and an i7-3770k for under $300, then buy those. The i5 and i7 K Haswells go for about $230 and $330 (respectively).

Since Sandy Bridge parts are going on 3 years old, they are to me "old" tech that I'd avoid, unless you can get one for a screaming deal. I'd avoid the old i7 Sandy Bridges. You get better performance in the Ivy Bridges (the i5-3570k is as fast in some respects as the old i7-975 Extreme that cost $600) and Haswells.