Upgrade now or wait for Intel Intel Skylake?

C

Crux

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Crux said:
Hi all.

I'm considering upgrading my ancient Intel DX58SO mobo + Core i7 920.

My question is, should I upgrade now (Asus z97-a + Intel Core i7-4790K) or wait for Intel's Skylake chips rumored to be released in July/August this year?

http://vr-zone.com/articles/unlocked-intel-skylake-desktop-cpus-arriving-by-q3-this-year/86221.html

Also will there be a significant price increase between the current i7-4790K and the Skylake overclockable version?

Cheers.
Click to expand...

I would say the price of the 5770k ( or whatever it will be called ) ,probably be about R200 more expensive.

You can also grab a 4790 NONE K for around R2600 on carbonite and just upgrade to skylake later on.
 
Crux said:
Hi all.

I'm considering upgrading my ancient Intel DX58SO mobo + Core i7 920.

My question is, should I upgrade now (Asus z97-a + Intel Core i7-4790K) or wait for Intel's Skylake chips rumored to be released in July/August this year?

http://vr-zone.com/articles/unlocked-intel-skylake-desktop-cpus-arriving-by-q3-this-year/86221.html

Also will there be a significant price increase between the current i7-4790K and the Skylake overclockable version?

Cheers.
Click to expand...

Just a question, why are you upgrading?
My old machine is a i7-960, I still haven't been able to max it out while gaming. If you are having lag/want better fps/quality maybe consider upgrading the graphics card instead?
 
Johnatan56

Thx for the reply but you're assuming that I want to upgrade for gaming reasons which is incorrect. And also, I have an Asus Strix GTX 970 so I'm covered for gaming.

The DX58SO does not support USB 3.0, sata 6gb/s, or 1600 MHz ram. All of which helps with transferring and editing large amounts of very large image files.

Cheers.
 
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Crux said:
Johnatan56

Thx for the reply but you're assuming that I want to upgrade for gaming reasons which is incorrect. And also, I have an Asus Strix GTX 970 so I'm covered for gaming.

Cheers.
Click to expand...

So you are upgrading due to power consumption/rendering?
 
Thx, but as far as I understand the Skylake chips will not be LGA 1150 such as the current 4790K, but LGA 1151 which mean a later upgrade will not be possible
 
The 4790K is an amazing chip. I use it myself. Awesome for overclocking and very powerful. However, if you're not going to overclock it to atleast 4.6+Ghz I'd recommend getting the non K version as stated above since it's a bit cheaper and just as powerful.

As for the Skylake chips, again I'd say only get them if you're planning to overclock since that's pretty much what they're made for (the K versions) If you're gonna buy a Skylake chip you're also gonna have to buy a new motherboard with lga 1151 and DDR4 RAM which isn't the cheapest at the moment. Which brings me to the next question, what's your budget?
 
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Johnatan56

Rendering/transfer speed yes. I know the LGA 2011 socket chips provide a lot more headroom in that regard than the 1150's but I'm not willing to pay that price premium.
 
Crux said:
Johnatan56

Thx for the reply but you're assuming that I want to upgrade for gaming reasons which is incorrect. And also, I have an Asus Strix GTX 970 so I'm covered for gaming.

The DX58SO does not support USB 3.0, sata 6gb/s, or 1600 MHz ram. All of which helps with transferring and editing large amounts of very large image files.

Cheers.
Click to expand...

Cool. The motherboard I have, not sure what it is, has USB 3.0 and tri-channeling. Guess the motherboard is the issue then.
 
Crux said:
The DX58SO does not support USB 3.0, sata 6gb/s, or 1600 MHz ram. All of which helps with transferring and editing large amounts of very large image files.
Click to expand...
Get USB 3.0 PCI Express card and problem solved. As for SATA 6Gb/s, benefits might not be justified for upgrade (depends on your configuration). I would wait.
 
Depends on how long you can wait versus what is better. That platform that you have is ridiculously old. The performance increase will be massive.
 
OP, I'd upgrade now. Skylake won't present any massive increases in CPU performance and DDR4 will still be much more expensive to adopt than DDR3. Given your current hardware, I'd save up for Haswell-E. It'll last you just as long as your current setup has, will give you six cores with hyper-threading right off the bat, has much more memory bandwidth on tap and has lots of PCI-Express connectivity for future upgrades.

Gtx Gaming said:
You can also grab a 4790 NONE K for around R2600 on carbonite and just upgrade to skylake later on.
Click to expand...

Er, no, you can't upgrade from Haswell to Skylake without changing platforms and memory types. Perhaps you're thinking of a Haswell-Broadwell upgrade?

sajunky said:
Get USB 3.0 PCI Express card and problem solved. As for SATA 6Gb/s, benefits might not be justified for upgrade (depends on your configuration). I would wait.
Click to expand...

Using a PCI-E USB 3.0 card is a possible solution, but OP will still be stuck with an aging platform that has a chipset that maxes out at 500MB/s for a single PCI-E 1.1 x1 slot. Upgrading to X99, or even current Z97 Haswell products, would get him native USB 3.0 and big boosts in available bandwidth for I/O connected to the chipset.

If OP is also using Windows 7 still, upgrading to Haswell/Haswell-E might be easier than moving to Skylake purely for support purposes, because Intel is removing USB 2.0 EHCI support from the 100 series chipset. A lot of USB 1.1 and 2.0 peripherals won't work without legacy driver support, and during the installation none of the USB ports will function - you have to install Windows 7 using a PS/2 keyboard and a DVD drive, somehow load on network drivers for your NIC and then hope that there are driver updates from your motherboard vendor to support XHCI hand-off on the newer hardware.
 
CataclysmZA said:
If OP is also using Windows 7 still, upgrading to Haswell/Haswell-E might be easier than moving to Skylake purely for support purposes, because Intel is removing USB 2.0 EHCI support from the 100 series chipset. A lot of USB 1.1 and 2.0 peripherals won't work without legacy driver support, and during the installation none of the USB ports will function - you have to install Windows 7 using a PS/2 keyboard and a DVD drive, somehow load on network drivers for your NIC and then hope that there are driver updates from your motherboard vendor to support XHCI hand-off on the newer hardware.
Click to expand...
Thanks for revealing a joint plot to kill Windows 7. Not a first time. Windows XP was killed by not supporting installation from USB and incompatible AHCI SATA mode, despite of number fixpaks.

Having said so, USB 3.0 card is only 300 bucks. :)
 
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CataclysmZA said:
OP, I'd upgrade now. Skylake won't present any massive increases in CPU performance and DDR4 will still be much more expensive to adopt than DDR3. Given your current hardware, I'd save up for Haswell-E. It'll last you just as long as your current setup has, will give you six cores with hyper-threading right off the bat, has much more memory bandwidth on tap and has lots of PCI-Express connectivity for future upgrades.



Er, no, you can't upgrade from Haswell to Skylake without changing platforms and memory types. Perhaps you're thinking of a Haswell-Broadwell upgrade?



Using a PCI-E USB 3.0 card is a possible solution, but OP will still be stuck with an aging platform that has a chipset that maxes out at 500MB/s for a single PCI-E 1.1 x1 slot. Upgrading to X99, or even current Z97 Haswell products, would get him native USB 3.0 and big boosts in available bandwidth for I/O connected to the chipset.

If OP is also using Windows 7 still, upgrading to Haswell/Haswell-E might be easier than moving to Skylake purely for support purposes, because Intel is removing USB 2.0 EHCI support from the 100 series chipset. A lot of USB 1.1 and 2.0 peripherals won't work without legacy driver support, and during the installation none of the USB ports will function - you have to install Windows 7 using a PS/2 keyboard and a DVD drive, somehow load on network drivers for your NIC and then hope that there are driver updates from your motherboard vendor to support XHCI hand-off on the newer hardware.
Click to expand...

CataclysmZA, thanks for a very informative post that actually answers my question.
 
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