Final upgrade for entire life, go with LGA 2011 or LGA 1150?

iratemonkey · Sep 15, 2014

I want to upgrade to a new computer one final time for my entire life and never have to deal with it again. I've decided Windows 7 64-bit is "good enough" and as it supports 64-bit RAM, native ipv6, and DirectX 11 then I don't see the point of upgrading to any future version of Windows ever. I will mainly use the computer for 50% playing hardcore 3D games and the other 25% web surfing and 25% applications like 3ds max, photoshop, autocad, cadence, lightroom, etc...

In terms of future proofing, platform longevity and that sort of stuff should I go with a LGA 2011 or LGA 1150?

I'm confused because it seems LGA 2011 is the more "powerful" of the two geared towards enterprise/server/hardcore stuff compared to LGA 1150, however LGA 2011 came out in 2011 and is "older" than LGA 1150. Both seem to have preliminary support for Broadwell's 14nm architecture and both do not support DDR4.

Since I plan no this being my one last and final upgrade my entire life, I want to get it right.

I understand technology is an ever forward moving target and there is no such thing as "future proof", just like how it would be equally ludicrous if back in 1995 someone wanted to spend a lot of money to buy a system that would Future proof it to 2015.

But 14nm is close to the end of the line, any smaller than 8nm and we run into quantum effects. I don't see silicon being pushed much further and besides, I doubt we will see quantum computers being sold to the consumers as desktop devices in our lifetime.

However, if the analogy makes any sense, the jump from Windows XP to Windows 7 crosses the "64-bit threshold" and we will never run out of ram ever again.... See how fast we went from 4bit to 8-bit to 16-bit to -32-bit but 64-bit is the end of the line...

Same with the switch from ipv4 to ipv6, with ipv6 we will never run out of ip addresses ever.

In a sense, Windows 7 64-bit Pro with sp1 is "good enough", forever.

I also think desktop computing has basically 'matured' where we don't need to swap systems every few years.

I guess it is all speculation, but I think computer systems built today will be able to last for a good 10-20 years without being "outdated" compared to other newer systems out there, especially since everyone these days are all so concerned about mobile, tablets, etc... and small form factor stuff.

And in a sense, XP is still more longevity than Vista, Xp with much larger marketshare than Vista.

So in terms of future processors that support or are backwards compatible with current sockets, will 2011 or 1150 hold more of the platform or mindshare?

If I (for my own reasons) wish to pick one socket type and stick to it forever, which one should it be?

faalin · Sep 15, 2014

anonymous1 :

LOL

I see the 2011 socket holding on for another 2-3 years and the 1150 for about 1-1.5 years before intel puts out a new socket. The 1150 is already 1.5 years old and I can see it being ran for a good 5-6 years but something will give out well before that if your a hardcore gamer. Ether a gpu upgrade will be bottlenecked by the cpu or the game its self will get bottlenecked.

If all you want to do is office work and play on the internet then yes ether one of those sockets should last you the 10-20 years if the MB does not fail by then, which by then you will not find a replacement board.

kira70591 · Sep 15, 2014

There are three revisions of 2011 and you are thinking about the x79 chipset platform. LGA2011 v3 just came out with the new set of three CPUS which include the 5820k, 5930k, and the 5960x on the x99 chipset. This chipset supports DDR4. If you want something that will last you for some years you are going to spend some serious money. The 5960x is 1k alone along with with 64GB of memory which run you probably another couple grand.

Your view on OSs is skewed. It may be "good enough" for you but how important is your safety. XP may have market share but that is because people are cheap and do not like to upgrade or they do not understand the importance of doing so. Have fun with your old OS that is so full of holes and vulnerabilities that you always have to worry about your data being protected and eventually the software that you wish to use will no longer be supported.

As anon said above, unless you are 80, plan on upgrading again at some point in the future. If you did get the 5960x I would expect the system to last at least 5-7 years without being a complete slouch.

iratemonkey · Sep 15, 2014

I'm asking a realistic question. I plan to keep the motherboard socket type , even if I upgrade to a new mobo I will keep socket and ram type and etc. Tired of Intel changing motherboard every two years, and becauses moore's law is dead.

logainofhades · Sep 15, 2014

Welcome to technology, things change and change often. Go with a 5930k, a supporting motherboard, and all the ram it can handle. They will last you a good while, but eventually, even that will be outdated. Every time people think that hardware cannot possibly get any faster, someone finds a way to do it. To be blunt, your idea of the system lasting 10-20yrs is nothing short of a pipe dream.

iratemonkey · Sep 15, 2014

logainofhades :

1903 - 1945 went from bicycle flying machines to jet engines (42 years)
1967 - 2014 Boeing 737 debut in 1967, Boeing 737 is still the most popular airplane in the world ( 48 years)

I had a Q6600 back in 2007 (more than 7 years ago)
I can still play Crysis on the Q6600 like I did back in 2007.

The changes in computers from 2000 to 2007 is an quantum leap
The changes in computers from 1993 to 2000 was also a quantum leap.

Changes from 2007 to 2014? No so much. Especially on the gaming side, since essentially Crysis 1 that came out today is no different than the max graphics we have today.

In comparison, from 1995 to 2002 we went from DOOM graphics to Quake-iii graphics, which is a night and day qualitative and quantitative difference.

A state of the art desktop PC today is not going to be very much outdated compared to a computer in 2020 or 2025.

logainofhades · Sep 15, 2014

Crysis 3 would melt a Q6600 system. It requires an i5, at minimum, to get decent gameplay.

iratemonkey · Sep 15, 2014

logainofhades :

On the contrary,

After Crysis 1, the Crytek team sold out and stopped being PC exclusive and catered to the consoles. They had to make it run more efficient in order to run on xbox360.

There are only minor incremental improvements on graphics quality from Crysis 1 to Crysis 3 with huge improvements in efficiency due to polished coding of the gaming engine.

A Q6600 overclocked with good GPU can run Crysis 3 quite well.

logainofhades · Sep 15, 2014

I would disagree. A phenom II X4 965 is faster than an old Q6600, and even it doesn't do very well in Crysis 3.

iratemonkey · Sep 15, 2014

Which socket is more future proof?

1150 or 2011 v3?

Both are rumored to support 14nm....

Five or ten years from now, which socket type can you still buy new cpu's for?

For example, even today you can find cpu that run LGA 775 even though the Q6600 itself is no longer being sold.

Is DDR4 and having 64GB ram really that big of a deal?

Will games ever require more than 32GB of ram?

iratemonkey · Sep 15, 2014

In essence, true that 2011v3 is more newer than 1150, but concern is that it will become outdated sooner than 1150 which is more 'mainstream' and thus hold more of a mind share and market share and is a more stable platform longevity wise. However might 2011v3 be like the Vista that is trapped between XP and Windows 7 in that one Skylake comes out in 2016 that means 2011v3 will have only a 1.5 year lifespan while ironically 1150 might actually survive might longer in terms of a viable platform and socket type that other new cpu's down the road might still come out with?

logainofhades · Sep 15, 2014

Given Intel's recent history, I would expect to get at least Broadwell E on the latest X99 platform. X79 saw 2 generations of CPU.

kira70591 · Sep 15, 2014

There is absolutely no possible way to answer those questions barring the answer of "maybe or perhaps." Future proof is an illusion. Intel could release a socket and stop supporting it a year from now or they could support it for 2 - 3 years. Games could migrate to needing more memory / CPU cores next year. There is just no possible way to know what is going to happen. However, you can look at current trends and say that Intel will "maybe" support 2011 v3 for at least a couple of years as they just released it with super high end components and it is workstation class which tends to live a bit longer. DDR4 is a big deal. There is a huge amount of difference in performance between it and DDR3; however, this is in synthetic benchmarks. Real world you will not see much of a difference.

iratemonkey · Sep 15, 2014

What do you mean? one more generation after that is LGA 1151? Or will there be a LGA 2011v4?

iratemonkey · Sep 15, 2014

kira70591 :

If that is the case what is the motivation for users to switch to DDR4 given the price premium?

Might the price premium put negative pressure on DDR3 and thus make DDR3 last longer?

I can still go to Fry's and purchase DDR2 ram, will DDR3 age as gracefully as DDR2?

Basically, is it going to be a difference that ends up making a real difference?

kira70591 · Sep 15, 2014

The motivation is that it is the latest and greatest and many people want the "best" no matter if it gives any noticeable difference or not. You can see the difference with regards to editing programs, rendering, etc; however, for games, there is not going to really be a performance increase by using DDR4. The price will eventually fall to DDR3 pricing but all new technology initially carries a high premium. DDR4 also offers higher performance with a decrease in voltage which will allow you to save power over the life of the system. It may not be much but it will also exude less heat and will run cooler.

Lee-m · Sep 15, 2014

so when we are all using new quantum computers in 30 years or so, your going to stick with your LGA board from the darkages ?
If the x86/64 line comes to and end, as you point out due to shrinking die size, do you think intel and amd (and arm for that matter) are just gonna close up shop and call it a day. No, they will come up with somthing new, and we will all have to upgrade eventually. PC's as they are now, wont be around forever.

Unless you only plan on being alive for the next 10 years. Your going to need new technology at some point just to get by.

Also the one you have is going to break, and parts will be come scarce and not worth spending money on to replace, since newer and better parts will be cheaper.

iratemonkey · Sep 15, 2014

Lee-m :

Quantum computer for Desktop? Like portable fusion devices.

Never gonna happen.

iratemonkey · Sep 15, 2014

kira70591 :

My question is , what if ironically 1150 actually "outlives" the 2011v3?

Specs wise yes 2011v3 is more future proof as it is newer, supports more than 32GB ram, and has DDR4 support, but what if 1150 actually "outlives" the 2011v3 due to its mainstream catering that makes it actually more ubiquitous? After all both will support 14nm... and any smaller than that and we get quantum effects. Meaning we are at the end of the road.... and hence why I'm building the last final computer for lifetime.

Lee-m · Sep 15, 2014

iratemonkey :

Was a slight exageration to go along with your point. You get the idea.

This is the silliest thing I have ever heard if your under 65 years old, and don't plan on hanging in for a long life.
And x86/x64, and microsoft wont be around forever.

iratemonkey · Sep 15, 2014

Lee-m :

I'm 29 years old. I work in IT as sys admin, and I've always been the type growing up as 'catching up to the state of the art' the type that used to upgrade every few months,etc...

But I see the bigger picture, things are slowing down not speeding up, any improvements are incremental and even that is slowing down.

All the low hanging fruits are gone. Back in 1945 the ENIAC did ballistic table calculations less than 1Khz and yet it was of immense national security value and application was world shattering....

In 1969 the computer that help land man on the moon was less powerful than a TI-89 calculator and yet it achieved one of the greatest feats of mankind....

These days everyone's smart phone is orders of magnitude more powerful than ENAIC or the Apollo Guidance Computer but can anyone truthfully say that we have made "use" of all that power?

The consumer uses it to surf the web, twitter, facebook, etc... we have received the point where each incremental power in computers is meet with less and less actual utility.... you get my point.

Case in point, on a fundamental level nothing has changed in computing processors since the invention of the Integrated Circuit nearly half a century ago..... basically we are still chipping away at silicon and we will reach quantum limits dictated by the laws of physics very soon now...

And for the past few decades there has been nothing in academia or otherwise that leads one to believe there is a viable alternative down the road like DNA computing or Quantum Computing or NanoComputing, etc.

Fact of the matter is, computers are now mature and the market is saturated. Same reason why we aren't all driving around in electric cars or even hybrids for that matter. All companies, organizations and consumers are on silicon. Even if Quantum computers magically existed tomorrow, it will still takes years if not decades for everyone to switch over. XP has been retired long ago and yet in most banks and gas stations and other systems still use embedded XP and won't change for another ten years or more....

And look at games... most games are now focusing on other ideas like "plot" and "creative story" and less and less on sheer graphics or sheer CPU power etc...

And look at applications like Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Office, etc why do you think Adobe/Microsoft is switching over to "subscription based"? Because there is not that much difference between Office 2010 vs Office 2013 vs Office Next, and subscription (as opposed to perpetual licenses) is the only way to continue to milk the average consumer... Same with Adobe products, like Photoshop ... what is the real difference between Photoshop today and Photoshop that came out five years ago? Nothing... it has all matured.

Even if Quantum computer is possible today and affordable, we as a society will not be able to change because of the 'network effect' and all the 'momentum' built behind silicon. Think of all the software, all the support, all the programing languages and all the stuff that will have to change along with it? Never going to happen. We can't even get people to change from ipv4 to ipv6!!!!!

And plus, more realistically what will happen is when we hit the limit, we will just stop changing... and desktop/computing will mature and stop changing.... finally we won't have to play perpetual catch up...

Think of airplanes and aviation industry. It used to be each new aircraft was bigger, faster, and speedier than the next. Weren't we supposed to have HyperSonic Mach 5 commerical jets by now? Instead what happened? Airplanes today are no faster than they were 60 years ago! The airline industry has by and large long ago since matured and been saturated.

Same analogy applies to desktop and computing.

faalin · Sep 15, 2014

I have an old (well to me) P4 socket 478 computer with a radeon x850xt and 2gb of ddr ram ill trade you. According to you nothing in the computer world has changed in the past 10 years so that will run any game you want.

It was bought brand new back in 2000 so is only 14 years old which still falls in your 10-20 year window. It has since been replaced by 6 computers since it was bought.

Lee-m · Sep 15, 2014

So in 20 years time, when your outdated pc can't install a new OS, and new software can't be installed, you cant get a browser that works with whatever new internet tech is out what will you do ? write all your own software from then on ?

What about future upgrades to the internet its self? New software and file formats you wont have software to run and open.

Even something as simple as new versions .net wont be supported, work or even install on win7 in another 10 years.

when steam 2020 says 'Sorry, we no longer support windows 7, please upgrade'.

Who says they wont be slow changes to ipv6 over time ? who says it will still be appropriate and used 20-30 years down the line ?

You must be the worsed sys admin in the world mate, no offense.

Good luck. your going to need it if your still using the same machine 41 years from now when your 70.

faalin · Sep 15, 2014

by the way just for sh!ts and giggles what games do you play and what are your system specs?

as for my specs

i5-2600k @5.4ghz
2 MSI GTX580 @ 1000 core 2470 memory with a custom bios for more voltage
8gb for mushkin ram
and a full custom water loop

This build will soon be replaced ether this year or the beginning of next year since it no longer gets me the graphic settings or FPS that I want. By the way its only 3 years old, can't even imagine trying to play a game on this system in another 2 years let alone 7-17 years like you believe you should.

iratemonkey · Sep 15, 2014

Lee-m :

I've already decided for personal use (obviously at work that is different) I will stick forever with Windows 7 Pro 64-bit which maxs out at 128 GB RAM (more than I will ever need) and supports natively ipv6 and also has DirectX11 support for 3D applications and games.

Beyond that, I can always switch to Linux in parallel or as a replacement of Windows. And Mantel and OpenGL will save the day when all PC games force DirectX15 (face it DirectX12 is hype and a joke)

Web browser? I'm sticking with Firefox 28.0 and will compile my own to attempt to maintain further forwards compatibility. Most sites that complain about old browser can be spoofed by a custom useragent in about:config of firefox that does not require compiling anything....

And I'm gonna use Office 2013 forever, until I switch to a linux open source option.

So with the OS and Browser and Office set in stone, all I have to worry about is whether or not my final hardware platform should be LGA 2011 or LGA 1150?

Will I TRULY regret not being able to have more than 32GB of RAM or not being able to use DDR4 or not being able to have more than QUAD cores going forward?

That is my only real question..

Final upgrade for entire life, go with LGA 2011 or LGA 1150?

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