Is it worth waiting for Ivy-E

[TonyTBR]

I was thinking of upgrading my pc and i was going to go 2011, i was going to get a Rampage 4 Extreme and a Intel 3930k, but then i read about ivybridge-e coming out q3 this year so i was wondering is it worth the wait? Is there going to be a huge difference in the two cpu's, Also is there going to be a new 2011 chip set, which would mean possibly a Rampage 5 Extreme??

Any help would be much appreciated

 

[tinytomlogan]

Quite literally its all speculation mate. No one knows what they will be like

 

[TonyTBR]

Quite literally its all speculation mate. No one knows what they will be like

Right okay, i might just go sandy-e then and upgrade after Christmas, if needed.

 

[antihero]

Well, that's always been my issue with Intel. They release their CPUs in such short time frames, I never know whether to get a recent one or whether to wait for their next release. Every new CPU they release is always allegedly 5-10% faster than its predecessor but no one really knows until it's out.

 

[TonyTBR]

Well, that's always been my issue with Intel. They release their CPUs in such short time frames, I never know whether to get a recent one or whether to wait for their next release. Every new CPU they release is always allegedly 5-10% faster than its predecessor but no one really knows until it's out.

Yerr its such a pain, especially with me as for some reason i have to have the latest and best thing, but its hard when they release their products so frequently. But i suppose that could be said for many other things as well.

 

[Avro]

Any reason you're choosing Haswell over SB-E?
I'd have thought you'd want the newer, platform.

 

[TonyTBR]

Any reason you're choosing Haswell over SB-E?
I'd have thought you'd want the newer, platform.

Not quite sure what your asking, i was never going haswell!! i was thinking of waiting for ivy bridge-e which is rumored to drop in q3 this year, but now i'm going with sandy bridge-e and i will upgrade after Christmas if needed. Also haswell is newer than sandy-e!!!

 

[Avro]

Bah, I put them the wrong way around.
Why you're choosing SB-E over Haswell.

 

[MacLeod]

I dont think its ever worth it to wait for anything really. In this hobby, there is ALWAYS something newer, faster and cheaper coming out right around the corner. I think its best to just buy what you need, when you need it. Unless we're talking something thats coming out in the next week or so, I dont think itll be worth it to wait.

 

[Avro]

I dont think its ever worth it to wait for anything really. In this hobby, there is ALWAYS something newer, faster and cheaper coming out right around the corner. I think its best to just buy what you need, when you need it. Unless we're talking something thats coming out in the next week or so, I dont think itll be worth it to wait.

I agree with this to some extent but if you already have a good enough system there's no point upgrading it right off the bat because you know if you wait you can get an even bigger upgrade.

 

[TonyTBR]

Bah, I put them the wrong way around.
Why you're choosing SB-E over Haswell.

Haha no worries, thought you might of, the main reason is 6 cores instead of only 4, yes its more up to date but i rekon a 3930k will still beat a 4770k especially when overcloked, ive seen in some test they are similer in some test but in others the 3930k wins, but i do a lot of rendering so i need the cores.

 

[airdeano]

I dont think its ever worth it to wait for anything really. In this hobby, there is ALWAYS something newer, faster and cheaper coming out right around the corner.

^^ - agree

you'll wait yourself to having nothing.

note your needs, appz and budget and the rest pretty much writes itself.

 

[NeverBackDown]

I agree with this to some extent but if you already have a good enough system there's no point upgrading it right off the bat because you know if you wait you can get an even bigger upgrade.

But if you wait longer you can get a bigger upgrade or even longer and a bigger upgrade! Or wait forever and get the biggest possible upgrade but in a few months something new will be out. It's a never ending cycle. Buy now and don't live in regret.

 

[MacLeod]

I agree with this to some extent but if you already have a good enough system there's no point upgrading it right off the bat because you know if you wait you can get an even bigger upgrade.

But if he waits til IB-E gets here, by then everybody will be looking for Broadwell which will be right around the corner. Might as well wait for that then. But then by that time, Haswell-E will be out right around the corner. Might as well wait for that then. And on and on it goes. ^_^

If the dude is wanting to upgrade now, he should buy now. If hes fine with his current rig, then wait. Buy what you want/need when you want/need it.

 

[Vicey]

If you look at Sandy Bridge to Ivy Bridge on Socket 1155 I think most people would say it was underwhelming. But that wasn't due to Intel or the processors it was due to people like us hyping Ivy Bridge up.

It was not a new architecture it was just a die shrink and improvements on the CPU and most of the performance gains were on the GPU side of things. We however treated it like the coming messiah and were thinking we would see performance gains of 10-15% on the processor side. This didn't happen and we have only ourselves to blame for thinking that a die shrink would improve performance to the degree we thought.

Now I say we but I didn't actually engage in that because I knew it would not be a huge improvement over Sandy Bridge having gone through many of these Tick-Tock rotations with Intel over the past decade but when I say we I do mean enthusiasts.

So what I'm saying is, don't expect Ivy Bridge-E to be anything special when compared to Sandy Bridge-E. What I expect is full PCIe 3.0 compliance on the X79 platform, some slightly higher clocks (maybe 3.4GHz instead of 3.2GHz 6 Core) and generally more of the same of what we already have but manufactured on their new 22nm process.

The only question we should have is what they will do about the IHS. The Integrated Heat Spreader on top of the processor package. Will they use thermal interface material like they did on Ivy Bridge or will they continue to use fluxless solder like they do on the current Sandy Bridge-E and the previous Sandy Bridge chips?

We are all fully aware that by them switching to TIM on Ivy Bridge created an upper limit OC wall by which temperatures go out of control as you raise the clocks and voltage to levels that Sandy Bridge could handle on a good cooler. To most it wasn't a big deal because Ivy Bridge can still hit 4.4 comfortable and 4.6 with a great cooler. The problem is Sandy Bridge in the right hands was hitting 5.0, 5.2 and even higher.

Probably the last nail in that TIM coffin is that when you actually remove the integrated heat spreader and change that material to a better compound or just do away with the IHS altogether you can reduce temperatures drastically. I've seen some users on other forums claiming up to 18c differences which has enabled them to OC a lot higher.

So the question is do you get a Sandy Bridge-E now with what we already know or do you gamble on Ivy Bridge-E? Personally as you can see by my signature I've set my post on Sandy Bridge-E and I'm living in the here and now. If you wait for the next big thing you'll always be waiting is my motto, that's not to say you shouldn't buy smart and wait sometimes but for this I'd say the difference will be so incremental it won't be worth waiting more than a few days for and certainly not to the end of September this year.

 

[TonyTBR]

I understand what everyone is saying now, that there is no point in waiting months for an upgrade, when firstly the upgrade could only have a slight increase in performance over the previous one, and secondly because by the time you wait for the next one there will be talk of the one after that, it is better to just get what is available now rather than wait for months for something.

 

[Willzzz]

It isn't the TIM as such that is the problem, it's the amount of space that the TIM needs to fill between the chip and the IHS.