ivy bridge or sandy bridge?

aznseank

New member
I am thinking about a new pc build in the next few month. However, I am not too sure which chipset and CPU I should use. I am a casual gamer, but this time around I want to build a system that can crank out 60fps on 1920 resolution in modern games(batman, call of duty...etc). I am also thinking about a mild overclock. In the past years I have overclocked e6400 to 3.2 and q6600 to 3.6, so I am not a hardcore overclocker but a casual one.

My next build is going to be a mitx w/ geforce 670 and using h80 push/pull. So my question is, do I need an ivy bridge? For some reason, I think a used 2500k paired with a geforce 670 will be more than enough for my gaming needs. What are your thoughts? And can you also recommend me an economical yet good overclocking mitx board?

my future build

case: bit fenix prodigy

CPU: 2500k or ivy bridge..

CPU cooler: H80 push/pull

mobo: mitx from asus..(don't know which model is the winner)

ram: I have no clue...probably ddr3 from corsair or ocz maybe?

gfx: geforce 670

HDD: 1tb and SSD 128gb (havent decided on a brand)

*imon inside HTPC remote controller

*my main priority is price/performance ratio...it just needs to crank out above 60fps...

any feedback would be greatly appreciated
 
By the looks of you will be going with a asus p8z77-I deluxe in which case i would recommend a 3570K as this will work the best with that board and give you the pci 3.0 option, hope this is of some help to you
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Ivy Bridge if you have the money but if you are looking at a used 2500k then you probably want to save some. There isn't much difference between Ivy and Sandy though, so either way you will be happy.
 
But aren't the Ivy's and Sandy's hardly different except the Ivy's heat up a lot more. So if you overclock, isnt it better to have a Sandy?
 
But aren't the Ivy's and Sandy's hardly different except the Ivy's heat up a lot more. So if you overclock, isnt it better to have a Sandy?

i would say as he is going to be gaming he will not be doing any big overclocks just run of the mill ones and would be better off with the option of pci-e 3.0 support for any of the gpu's that has that connectivity
 
An ivy with a mild overclock will be ok as to ram either corsair, kingston or gskill and the ssd kingston hyperx or even sandisk extream
 
I would go for Ivy because they are the same price but they are that 10% better and honestly what would you rather go for?
 
When talking about CPUs there is almost no point discussing IB vs SB performance because ultimately they perform the same. IB will get to 4.6 ish, which is the equivalent of about 4.8 SB. So they end up performing the same.

You need to decide on other factors really:

IB (z77) has a better RAM controller so you can populate all the ram slots without adding instability to overclocks (only important if you need more than 2 sticks - but you only need 8gb of 1600mhz for gaming)

IB is more power efficient (but costs more to buy in the first place so it depends on how long you leave it on for each day as to which one is cheaper in the long run).

IB has pcie3 slots (only important if you intend on running 2x pcie3 gpus in the future)

Hope that helps with the decision!
 
Yeah, like everyone else says go for the ivy. you may not be able to achieve as high of a clock speed as the sandybridge chips, but clock for clock ivy bridge is faster and so even at a lower clock speed the ivy will probably outperform the sandy. Plus it's always good to keep up to date with technology.
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thanks for all your replies.. very very informative. I want to go with a cheap sandy but I think the newer ivy processors based on socket 2011 will definately come out in the future. I guess buying a 1155 socket at this time seems kind of dumb. Perhaps its comparable to buying a qx9850 when nehalem is out.

I really dont want to buy new parts. I find used parts to be much smarter choice economically while performing just as well as their newer counterparts (except for the case, mouse, and keyboard..yuck.. who the hell wants a used mouse and keyboard..) after years of building computers and selling them for dirt price few years later, I think buying used parts and selling them later doesnt seem as wasteful. But anyways, enough of my rant, thanks for sharing your information. I still pretty ambivalent but I think I will just go with a better deal. If the used parts of sandy is 30% or more cheaper than a used ivy, than sandy should be my logical choice.
 
The sandy bridge CPU ! Although its last gen it still hits really hard. With the sort of over clocking you have alluded to then the ivy bridge will should out perform SB by somewhere in the region of 10% give or take. I was looking to upgrade my SB to IB before the release but after some research the gains would be so minimal over what I am running now there is really little point my 2600k is running at 4.8ghz with good temps and good volts. If it was me I would buy the SB and aim for a powerful gpu as nothing will push SB hard enough to cause problems. My rig will hover around 100fps on BF3 at 1920 x 1080 take out one gpu and it drops to between 50-70. a good friend of mine has one gtx 580 and an IB 3770k he gets between 50-70 at the same res. no difference what so ever. This is because the limiting factor here is the GPU. Go SB and put the cash you will save towards a thumping great GPU.
 
thanks for all your replies.. very very informative. I want to go with a cheap sandy but I think the newer ivy processors based on socket 2011 will definately come out in the future. I guess buying a 1155 socket at this time seems kind of dumb. Perhaps its comparable to buying a qx9850 when nehalem is out.

I really dont want to buy new parts. I find used parts to be much smarter choice economically while performing just as well as their newer counterparts (except for the case, mouse, and keyboard..yuck.. who the hell wants a used mouse and keyboard..) after years of building computers and selling them for dirt price few years later, I think buying used parts and selling them later doesnt seem as wasteful. But anyways, enough of my rant, thanks for sharing your information. I still pretty ambivalent but I think I will just go with a better deal. If the used parts of sandy is 30% or more cheaper than a used ivy, than sandy should be my logical choice.

Thought I would chime in here, you do not seem to understand what IvyBridge and Sandybridge are in relation to LGA1155 and 2011 sockets. Ivy Bridge is an LGA1155 processor,2011 Ivybridge E will not be released for some months. and seeing as you are talking about bang for buck within a certain scope its a little odd you would mention the much more expensive 2011/X79 platform at all. Sandy Bridge is Ivy bridge to be as straight forward as possible, just as P67 is Z68, theres just some minor modifications that have only a small impact on the overall function. Sandy Bridge E is still the top of the line and IvyBridge E hasnt been discussed a heck of a lot, so contemplating that is not even in the picture. The price of Maximus4 mobos came down dramatically when X79 came to market. That would have been the time to get a great mobo at a great price and brand new to boot. When SB was taken off the shelf prices remained the same up until then,and pricewise they are on par with the IB replacements so brand new, 2nd hand theres not going to be much in it at all, in actual fact the overclock friendly nature of SB would make it more sought after imo unless you are looking to run seriously highend multi gpu configurations. Hope that puts things into prespective a bit more. Hope you have great success.
 
I'd consider getting a secondhand 'k' edition processor pretty dodgy personally. Who knows what the previous owner has put through it...
 
i've not seen many m-itx sandy boards about, but i know that the asus z77 i deluxe that's already been mentioned is a good board that will do everything you want, and more
 
I would have to say the sandy bridge, you can get the quite cheap now. The slight performance increase doesn't make up for the extra heat while overclocking. PCIE3.0.... well where to begin, we still are barley getting a bottleneck from PCIE 2.0 8x so we still have a long way to go before we need PCIE3.0. Lastly So what if you can't run as high frequency RAM the performance in game between 1333Mhz and 1600Mhz is <1% Unless you're going to be running Video or Audio software and need extreme speed for like a RAMDisk Scratchdisk then the difference between SB and IB isn't going to make that much of a difference.

SB imo
 
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