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Let me start by blaming TR (and the system guide) for putting disruptive thoughts in my head.

This post needs a little background though, as you may have noticed me asking about various components throughout last year.

I thought I could ignore the launch of Sandy Bridge last year, but I was wrong. All I could see was jaw-dropping performance (not reaching but) getting appreciatively close to the Extreme Edition family chips (which I thought were a waste), running cooler and overclocking better than I imagined, and suddenly I had stars in my eyes. I drooled on the way up to and past the launch of sandy bridge. I also started saving hard, thinking I might build as early as spring.

But I could wait. I could wait till fall because I expected prices to drop, and because my stop-gap econo-box build wasn't quite two years old yet. I foolishly picked up a few components along the way in anticipation. Approaching fall brought me closer towards Sandy-E though. I like a bit of excess I admit, but I never had a need for that much power. I even was still carrying a grudge against the whole Intel EE chips back from the Pentium 4 (Pentium D?) days (really? you want me to pay $1000 bucks for a chip that doesnt get that much more performance, uses a jury-rigged dual core design, requires super loud coolers and threatens to set my apt on fire? No thank you!)

...but you know, I did some budget calculations and a few small changes I could afford a more expensive Sandy-E system based on my estimates. And honestly, the Gulftown/1366 processors didn't do too bad, did they? While Core i-7s made the jump from socket 1156 to 1155, these stayed the same, going strong years on. Heck, by the time SBE launched, the 1366 chips would be 3 years old still at the top of the heap, with the 6-core gulftown at 2.5 years as the "power rig" in reviews. (Even today, lots of review sites still use gulftown for their power rigs ). That was the kind of longevity I dreamed of, the kind of thing that made higher upfront investment worth it over a longer run. Especially after it became apparent that avoiding the top rung $999 processor meant you could get almost as good performance one rung down for 500 and change. This was starting to sound good...

...except that it was expensive, and hotter, and 32nm, with talk of Ivy Bridge along the way. Reviews of the launch weren't mindblowing, and 22nm trigate tech, Ivy's 10+% performance increase (with SBE only yielding up to 17%+ increase) with a 77 TDP reignited a passion for more power, less waste that originally sparked my interest in SB. Coupled with the launch of the next gen graphics card, I could wait longer and see what was coming up. Even TR said I didnt need 6 cores and 12 threads if I wasn't running workstation stuff. And I'm not.


But then we get the schooner (thanks alot scott!), and as we approach april I realize, I really could go either way. I've saved way more than I expected to, for way longer than I expected to, so the price of an SBE system is not a barrier. Next gen graphics cards are here, they're not a barrier either. Both have PCIe 3.0 (which is more than necessary), both have USB 3.0 (and 3rd party performance is good enough that I dont have to worry about native), both have SATA 6GB.

One just gives me the cool and quiet I really enjoy, the other has the potential to give me the long life I'm looking for (and may end up well cooled and pacified in an FT 02 anyways). So I'm curious to hear some fellow gerbil opinions. Which bridge would you take to the prom?

Just wait for the reviews and then make your decision. You may get better prices or much better performance for the same price.

Of course. I'm not going to have access to ivy bridge builds before the review comes out...


And being this close to the ivy launch, I'm not going to build SB-E without seeing what comes out. I was just wondering if anyone had a particular itch in either way....

....processor wise, of course.

I'm in the same boat as you, except for the fact that my main desktop died about a month and half back... I've decided to hold out for Ivy Bridge and Kepler launches, but I've started collecting core components as they come on sale.. already ended up getting RAM and a couple SSD's. I'm on the lookout for PSU, Audio card, and my case right now. I'm going to hold off on the mobo until I get the chip I want... Can't think of anything else that I need right now.. (maybe an aftermarket cooler for the CPU).

I'm literally holding the trigger button on Newegg right now for a SB rig. My take on it... AMD isn't putting out any competition for the SB or IB, so the chances that the SB are going to get cheaper are slim to none. The chances that IB will be a better value over SB, very unlikely. I recall seeing one of the other tech sites qouting the 3xxx I7 compared to the I7-2600k and I5-2500k and stating that the 3xxx part they were considering was roughly 30% faster than the 2500, but at over a 300% premium :|.

I too thought I could ignore the SB and go for a Bulldozer setup, but BD has sucked so bad I'm going with the SB now.

I figure I've waited this long, what's another month? Then I can check the reviews, and the Microcenter near my house for any good deals...

If you havent pulled the trigger yet on Socket 1155. Piledriver will probably be close to 35% better than bulldozer.
+10-15% ipc
somewhere near 20% higher clocks. comming from 10% power reduction from Resonant clock mesh which eliminates clock skew which allows ~10% higher clocks. so....10% lower power adds about 10% higher overclocking on top of the gains from practically no clock skew.

I would be planning on a Piledriver build.

Sorry, but who are you ?

Not attempting to be rude but it seems odd to have someone with a single post come in and lay down a bunch of numbers of products that have yet to release. To be honest it seems like someone is trying to put out false PR for the upcoming Piledriver chips..... I suppose I should give you more of a chance than that. Do you have any reliable sources?

grndzro wrote:

If you havent pulled the trigger yet on Socket 1155. Piledriver will probably be close to 35% better than bulldozer.
+10-15% ipc
somewhere near 20% higher clocks. comming from 10% power reduction from Resonant clock mesh which eliminates clock skew which allows ~10% higher clocks. so....10% lower power adds about 10% higher overclocking on top of the gains from practically no clock skew.

I would be planning on a Piledriver build.

And that still wouldn't match up to IVB, assuming a few hundred MHZ clock boost and a 5% IPC boost on it. Bulldozer is often slower than Phenom IIs...

Edit: Oh, another thing. 10% less power draw than Bulldozer is still far more than IVB will have, given its TDP of 77W(Of course we all know that's not a 100% set in stone limit, but it's a close enough guideline for this purpose).

I am looking forward to Piledriver, and I hope it's better than Phenom IIs outside of the oddball task here and there. I do not expect it to be better than Phenom IIs outside of those oddball tasks, but I figure it will equal it in most places this time.

PD won't just have 5% IPC boost due to tweaks and cache improvments. it will be closer to 15% imo. AMD's own 10% ipc estimate is pretty conservative given the changes between Bulldozer and Piledriver.

And it won't be just 10% due power reduction. it also eliminates clock skew.
Clock skew limits the mhz by around 10% also. Eliminating this will free up the 10% for higher overclocks.

so...~20% higher clocks isn't 100 mhz. it's closer to 1000 mhz on the high end. 5000x1.20=6000. So if you go with ~+800mhz it is a big boost.

A factual question: what are the advantages of Ivy Bridge over Sandy Bridge? Also, are those advantages so massive that you would want to wait 30-60 days for Ivy Bridge? If so, why?

The 4000 series igp is much faster.... like a lot. Which should allow for people with quick sync to encode videos much faster. Of course there are cpu speed increases. There are some other changes...

The max CPU ratio is now 63x up from 57x
2. You can now adjust CPU ratios without a reboot, just via a register write.
3. DDR3-2800 will be the maximum DRAM frequency.

But my feeling on it is that the price premium isnt really worth it unless you really demand the performance for work like applications or you want to pump out every last drop of power out of your system.

Then again if your not desperate for a new system now waiting wont hurt as prices on SB may drop slightly.... well hopefully.

In addition to IGP and memory improvements, the new 22nm process will make the chips run same speed @ less power, or faster @ same power. Also, since SnB is the real competition to IB, we hope SnB price will go down after IB comes out.

Bah!

First of all, thank you for your opinions...even those that I would term as blatant AMD fanboyism. Oh, and it's not that I have anything against AMD, but I think ones chances of convincing me to wait for pile-driver based on unsubstantiated and unsourced optimism is pretty low when I have already specified what choices I want to make my considerations between.

The "Dilema" thread has gotten me to come back to this thread and comment which I've been lazy about. Of course I have the same "which one" thoughts...just with slightly different circumstances.

I really am back and forth between my choices. Seems every few days I lean towards SB-E (thinking mainly on its ability to power its way to longevity) then I go back to IB (thinking mainly on its slightly later tech and better power efficiency).


Any thoughts to add? Right now mine are like this:

Right now having a long life platform is winning out, but a lot of those z77 board previews are looking sexy.

riviera74 wrote:

A factual question: what are the advantages of Ivy Bridge over Sandy Bridge? Also, are those advantages so massive that you would want to wait 30-60 days for Ivy Bridge? If so, why?

That's the pertinent question. From what I have heard:
1. Lower load power consumption
2. Possibly a little better overclocking thanks to #1
3. Way better IGP which means just a little better than Llano IGP, which I figure very few people here care about anyway.

Unless you're into pushing the OC as high as you can I think there will be barely any difference. Of course, it's great to be able to wait for the reviews, but if you are in a situation where you really need a computer ASAP then I don't think you're going to be hurt by jumping now. I don't think there are any IPC improvements to speak of. The only way you'll be "hurt" is by the degree to which IB overclocks better than SB. SB commonly clocks to 4.5 on air; with a bit of luck IB might commonly clock to 5.0 on air, but I have not heard anything on what can be expected.

Anandtech previewed IB and said this:

Based on these early numbers, Ivy Bridge is pretty much right where we expected it on the CPU side. You're looking at a 5 - 15% increase in CPU performance over Sandy Bridge at a similar price point.

Now, notice AT said "5-15% better perf at a given price". That's not at all the same as 5-15% better perf at a given clock.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5626/ivy- ... i7-3770k/1

And as for the SB-E question - it's all about the RAM. PCIe 3 isn't going to mean anything, practically speaking, from what I recall. SB-E isn't decisively faster than SB and, especially, it does not offer better performance for the dollar. SB is limited to 32 GB of RAM. SB-E will get you to 64 GB of RAM. Motherboard selection is going to be far better for 1155 than for 2011 - more choices and especially in the mATX form factor, if that matters. Socket 2011 might have a longer life span - I don't know how long Intel plans to keep it around and what Intel's plans are for bringing some kind of 22 nm IB-E to market. That's something you could look into and let us know!

One final consideration is the next gen chipset that Intel will release alongside of IB. In terms of SATA 6G and USB 3 there may be some meaningful improvements in those areas that may be worth waiting for. I then to think the choice of motherboard is very nearly as important as the choice of CPU, and sometime even more important if you plan on keeping the system for a long time.

This is exactly the reason that most SBA advice starts with the question, "what are your top 3 uses of the computer". This will frame the whole conversation to see if you really need the "excess".

1366 and 2011 platforms boast a lot of memory bandwidth in which typical desktop workloads (games, browsing, etc.) will not utilize, which makes it a waste. If you really have that kind of money you should be spending it on better monitors (get 3 of them if you like!), better graphics, SSDs, and such. Now, if you have even more money then you would be asking the question to begin with you will just go buy whatever.

As always, if you can afford to wait, wait. There is always something newer down the pipe.

This was a while ago, but this http://www.techpowerup.com/155307/Ivy-B ... d-X79.html says ivy bridge-e is targeted at Q4 2012.

They may have pushed that back though, if they've been having trouble getting rid of sandy bridge inventory. Anyway, that's what I've been looking at for my next upgrade; it's far enough in the future that the inevitably high price-tag doesn't bother me..

EDIT: Well never mind; according to the this slide ( http://techreport.com/discussions.x/22646 ), there won't be anything new in the high performance area till after Haswell. Very weird.

Subject: Dilemma - Need opinions..

I previously wrote:

I'll vote for the Core i5-3570K (Ivy Bridge). You'll want to wait for the Panther Point platform controller hub (Intel Z77 chipset) to choose your motherboard.

The applications that perform significantly better with LGA2011 than with LGA1155 are very rare.

JustAnEngineer wrote:

JustAnEngineer wrote:

I'll vote for the Core i5-3570K (Ivy Bridge) with mozzarella on top. You'll want to wait for the Panther Point platform controller hub (Intel Z77 chipset) to choose your motherboard.

The applications that perform significantly better with LGA2011 than with LGA1155 are very rare.

Eh? i5 3570K = 1155.

Eh? i5 3570K = 1155.

I think the quote represents his opinion, he didn't need to type it himself.

The bottom line is just there to help understand why he doesn't recommend LGA 2011 for the "normal user", which is the same conclusion I would draw given the reviews out there.