octa core vs. hexa core

[batmanpreet23]

Hey guys, if I'm looking forward to buy a cpu with a hefty budget to spend, what processor should I buy? An octa core or a hexa core one considering that I don't want to upgrade cpu again for atleast 5-6 years

 

[batmanpreet23]

I'm getting an x99 for the same price as a z97. plus isn't gtx 970 sli better and more worth the value than a single 980. Also, an addon of 200 bucks gives me hexa core 5930k which can last me longer than a 4790k with all these multi threading games coming up. Right?

 

[Alpha3031]

I'm getting an x99 for the same price as a z97. plus isn't gtx 970 sli better and more worth the value than a single 980. Also, an addon of 200 bucks gives me hexa core 5930k which can last me longer than a 4790k with all these multi threading games coming up. Right?

Yes, the 970 SLI is better, as long as you don't need more than 3.5 GB VRAM, which for most current and soon-to-be-released is enough. Especially at FHD high-refresh instead of 1440p. By the same note, games are highly unlikely to jump from on average requiring 4 threads to requiring more than 8 and while the 12 threaded 5930K would give slight benefit by moving workload from logical to physical cores it would be a minor one.

 

[batmanpreet23]

That's my plan. Get a 970 sli till the time it can max out all games at fhd. Any idea how many years btw?

 

[Alpha3031]

NP.

 

[batmanpreet23]

Maybe I can wait till the titan x price drops to somewhere around 800 bucks then. Maybe in a year.

 

[atomicWAR]

That's my plan. Get a 970 sli till the time it can max out all games at fhd. Any idea how many years btw?

i would not touch a GTX 970 for SLI (or at all and i am a fan of the GTX X70 series) with the VRAM issues at hand. even at 1080p games like COD Advanded Warfare, Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor...break the 3.5GB threshold. Then stuttering and low frame rates set in. I bought GTX 980s because of this. Now if your willing to keep an eye on the VRAM and not bust 3.5GB the GTX 970 is not a bad card and performs well but me i want to max my games in every way. The next year the VRAM usage will only go up in modern games and i think the problem will be worse come Christmas time. I think your much better off buying a GTX 980 now and another latter (if budget is issue).

Also to sz0ty0l4 remark of a GTX 980 being able to max all games @1080p. Well that simply is not true. while generally considered overkill by reviewers, running 2 GTX 980s in SLI for 1080p, it is the only way to max out some games like far cry 4 for example at 1080p with TXAA 4x filtering (or any filtering for that matter). I had GTX 780s also in SLI that could not do it. not till i got GTX 980s could i max it at 1080P (using Nvidia Enchancements too BTW). I buy at least 5 games a year that need both cards to play the game at 1080p max everything with heavy filtering (ie 16X anisotropic 8x AA, or TXAA 2-4X, or SMAA 2-4X, or MSAA 4-8X)

Also Games like Far Cry 4 BF4 use 6 cores now, so a X99 build is not pointless it's (six core builds) are just now starting to show there muscle. Yes hyper-threading on a quad core/ eight thread z97 build would help down the road as more games use more threads which will happen as Devs get more experienced with the next gen consoles that have 8 cores/threads. If you want a rig to last 5+ years going hexa-core is not a bad thing. While some call future proofing pointless or impossible...i have plenty of luck with it. You just have to have reasonable expectations as to how much you can future proof. In this case its a couple of cores that may give you performance benefits down the road in some games. Is it worth it? well it's your budget only you can decide that. My game stream server is only a quad core with a gtx 760 but i also only play games on 8" screens or smaller for it so i don't need to crank everything to 11....but all my primary gaming rigs (ie living room and bedroom) are six core set-ups, one i7 970 one i7 3930k. I find them very worth it. Games that don't use the cores...i can run other things in the background like music, HW monitors, OC software, ETC...without it affecting my games frame rate, something i can't do on my quad core setup without a noticeable hit in FPS. And as i said some games do use the cores just fine, in which case i am far less likely to run extra software.

Anyways to my point if you want your build for 5-6 years I would still heavily consider a six core build.

 

[atomicWAR]

also if you like to encode video say from DVD's or blu-ray so you can watch them on the go/or watch them disc-less on your PC to avoid scratching your discs then a six core system also makes since as encoding video will use every thread/core you can through at it. Between that and the fact i run SLI plus a physx card, they were the reasons i went with six core (at least for the i7 3930k as it had more native PCIe lanes then a socket 1150 build, not an issue with my i7 970 build as Intel didn't cripple their mid range CPUs PCIe lanes yet).

 

[batmanpreet23]

Couldn't agree more. I'm definitely going for 5930k (instead of 5960x) and wait for another year for titan x to get cheaper or if not, then go with 980Ti Sli. I hope 5930k with some ocing down the road will do the job.

 

[doubletake]

The Titan cards don't get cheaper, they just get discontinued + supplanted by a new model. Remember that this is the 3rd Titan release to date, and so far I've seen that the only way you'll find one cheaper than MSRP is to buy used. Which is probably what I'll be doing to grab a second one in a few months when upgrade junkies start dumping them cheap to move up to R9 390(x).

 

[batmanpreet23]

Titan z prices are dropping at a steep to accomodate 980Ti. I guess titan x price will be suppressed by gtx 990 and pascal series amd I expect a price around 800 by next year. If not, I'll simply go whatever gives me the best shot for money. 980 Ti at 600 seems good

 

[doubletake]

Well, I kinda forgot about the Z but the fact that it's a dual card puts it in a distinctly unique category. The previous single card Titans were unaffected by the release of the 780 and 780 Ti, despite each of those cards offering nearly identical gaming performance. But I guess it's possible this time around now that the new Titan is no longer a light version of a professional tier compute-heavy card.

 

[batmanpreet23]

But pascal will definetly pressurize titan x. Anyways I think a rumored $600 980Ti in sli is going to be more worth the money against titan x. 980ti rumored specs are mostly similar to titan x except that it would be having 8gigs of vram.

 

[JohnDR]

Well considering you will eventually want to push your CPU to the limit, regardless of the CPU (Intel or AMD), you will need to have specialized cooling if you want your CPU to last 5-6 years.

In addition to that, if you don't want to burn out the motherboard as well, look into getting a computer case with good airflow, or purchasing an open air rig so heat doesn't buildup.

Personally, I've had Hex and Octa core systems perform just fine with air cooling and no overclocking. However, should you want to get the max useage out of your CPU by overclocking, you will need water cooling of some kind.

 

[Alpha3031]

Actually, something like the CRYORIG R1 Ultimate should be enough to keep the 5930K cool at 4.6 GHz/1.3 V.