build or no build??

[OG buckshot jr]

after years of scoping benchmarks my conclusion has been that, if you're buying Intel, the most economical option is to just aim straight for the high-end, $1000+ extreme edition chips. not only will you get the best performance out there out of the box, performance will beat everything from the current gen and typically even beats performance on all the next gen's mid-level CPUs too.

Agreed, but if you're shopping between a BMW 3-series and Mercedes c-300, you're not going to opt for a Lamborghini because it's better. That's not a fair comparison you've made.

 

[Glocky]

Agreed, but if you're shopping between a BMW 3-series and Mercedes c-300, you're not going to opt for a Lamborghini because it's better. That's not a fair comparison you've made.

Phrasing what $alvador said, or what I think he said, differently...

If you're going to build a rig, that you will keep as your primary gaming and productivity rig, for more than 3 years, you might as well go for X sku processors.

 

[Slawek]

after years of scoping benchmarks my conclusion has been that, if you're buying Intel, the most economical option is to just aim straight for the high-end, $1000+ extreme edition chips. not only will you get the best performance out there out of the box, performance will beat everything from the current gen and typically even beats performance on all the next gen's mid-level CPUs too.

Easy to say, not so easy to afford when you have a budget of $1500 or so. I built my rig 2.5 years ago and it's a monster still especially with SSD. Never sweats.

 

[47]

im running an i7-930 rig, everything is instant. i probably have a cap to what gpu i can use to its full potential though.

 

[Glocky]

im running an i7-930 rig, everything is instant. i probably have a cap to what gpu i can use to its full potential though.

Depends on what you're playing/doing... large multi-player games like BF4 (even 64 player BF3) would max it out.
Should be able to power a 770/780 or 280-290x

 

[47]

thx for the answer, glocky. ill upgrade card when they are much cheaper. im planning to keep this platform for another 3 yrs+.

 

[OG buckshot jr]

You can run any card you want to. The two things to think about are what version of pci express you have (2 or 3) and at what point your cpu will become your limiting factor, as opposed to the bottleneck being gpu, hard-drive etc.

With respect the pci express, in my own opinion, the differences are not massive, but are there. This is determined by your mobo and what version it supports.

With the above in mind, you can then determine price-range and thus gpu you're after.

Personally, I would advocate you buy a bomb gpu because it's likely you will run with it even after your next upgrade cycle of mobo/cpu. So be it if you notice your gpu performs better with new mobo and cpu, that's only a plus.

I can see if the guy I got my card from still can get 780ti's for $520 cash, if you want.

 

[$alvador]

Phrasing what $alvador said, or what I think he said, differently...

If you're going to build a rig, that you will keep as your primary gaming and productivity rig, for more than 3 years, you might as well go for X sku processors.

yea that. i'm big on ghetto systems but for people that just splurge on a full build every few years might as well kit out proper. right now though i'm not sure how relevant any current system will stay with DDR4 on the horizon, might as well just upgrade GPU for now since it's mostly the graphics requirements that are getting heavier