Sign in with
Sign up | Sign in
Your question

5820k vs Broadwell / GPU PCIe / DDR crossover question

Tags:
  • GPUs
  • DDR
Last response: in CPUs
Share
September 24, 2014 5:49:14 AM

Hello,

I've been thinking about upgrading my current system, which has served me well over the last number of years (Win7Pro, 2x580GTX SLI, i2700k etc), and still does except for increasing mobo glitches, and I have begun doing the necessary research for a system build; the bulld that I am interested in is primarily gaming, but I do want it to be strong overall, especially for multitasking.

I've been reading some of the reviews and benchmarks for the tech that has come out, but with so many CPU's around at the same time (Haswell, Haswell-E, Broadwell, future Broadwell-E and Skylake), I need some expert advice on a sort of crossover question. I know that there is a new board out, the X99 that seems fairly solid and provides DDR4 support that is not yet mainstream, and I know that there are some new GPU's out, up to the 9-series now. In reading the reviews of Haswell-E, the 5280K seems to the one to go for, low price, good for gaming, very solid, though not necessarily the highest binned (perhaps?), though it is not an octocore (which isn't a huge thing). However, with Broadwell coming out, not being a major upgrade but still an improvement, there seems to be some juggling in terms of what each CPU family offers in the way of PCIe slots and DDR4 support.

From what I can see, Broadwell will only have DDR4 support on it's -E platform and its server models whereas Skylake will have it presumably on all models as well as PCIe 4.0 support. It seems as if late 2014/2015 is a sort of bridge period between generations. So what I was wondering is, and I know that the tech hasn't come out yet so you can't be sure, but what is the general idea about the "importance" of this period, is there a big step here, a certain starting point that it would be better to just wait for to get all of the new standards on the same system, or is that not the situation.

I know that you can always wait for new and better tech and all that, but I am not in a hurry to buy, nor do I want to get into the situation where you are sort of using the old standards and sort of using the new ones, if I am explaining myself clearly. I was thinking, for instance, would it make more sense to wait for a CPU that supports dual x16 PCIe slots that doesn't cost USD1000~ perhaps in the Broadwell family, but then is Broadwell really an upgrade and is it worth switching to Broadwell if Skylake is going to be a lot better. I ask this also from the point of view of having intentionally avoided Haswell (so far) due to some of the same issues (waiting for the X99 board, wasn't much of a performance upgrade for what I need et cetera).

I'm sorry if my question is a bit garbled, I am just wondering what the community thinks about the coming Broadwell/Skylake period I suppose is what I am asking, and how they think it will compare with Haswell, specifically relating to new standards and what you'd look for in a gaming machine.

Thanks.

More about : 5820k broadwell gpu pcie ddr crossover question

September 24, 2014 7:41:53 AM

I''ll just throw some garbled, random opinions into the melting pot. :) 

There will always be two or more "future tech" product lines - at least as long as technology lasts. The only time it matters is the 30 days before you build. Then you look at what is likely to be announced in those 30 days, knowing that it will be a little more expensive and might still have some wrinkles that needs working out. Also, know that 10 minutes after you build something, the next better thing will be available and your rig will be "older".

That said, Broadwell Desktop will be late (October) this year, and I expect that some chipset will support DDR4 on it. I don't see it otherwise. I expect that Broadwell, depending on the motherboard, will have either DDR3/DDR4 support. THere is already a board that offers that for Haswell-E.

Performance-wise, I think about it as follows. Haswell performance is linear to price. For the majority of consumers, the best boint is the top if the i5 line. Few need to go beyond that. FOr ultimate, non-linear performance, Haswell-E yields better performance at non-linear prices. THe difference between the mid-and top Haswell-E is not 2x the performance, but the price is 2x.

Right now the main focus is on improved performance for data with PCe and M.2 Sata attached SSDs. PCIe 4.0 will not yield much for the next 2 years or so, judging by PCIe 2.0 vs 3.0.

Then there is workstation users. The low end Xeon E3-1231 V3 is very attractive in price/performance being lower priced than any i7, without the unnecessary graphics and a beast at rendering and multitasking.
m
0
l
September 24, 2014 3:10:25 PM

Thank you for the information Karsten75; I will just wait for Broadwell then compare the two and see where to go from there and if there is any more information on Broadwell-E and Skylake. What I probably should have asked more clearly is, is getting a PCIe 3.0 mobo still a good investment for gaming for the next 3-4+ years, and are the 28 lanes that come with the 5280k CPU good enough for instance for dual GTX 9-series SLI, and then from there look at DDR and CPU mockups, but that goes in the GPU forum. :) 
m
0
l
September 25, 2014 10:00:28 PM

phyneas said:
Thank you for the information Karsten75; I will just wait for Broadwell then compare the two and see where to go from there and if there is any more information on Broadwell-E and Skylake. What I probably should have asked more clearly is, is getting a PCIe 3.0 mobo still a good investment for gaming for the next 3-4+ years, and are the 28 lanes that come with the 5280k CPU good enough for instance for dual GTX 9-series SLI, and then from there look at DDR and CPU mockups, but that goes in the GPU forum. :) 


PCIe 4.0 will not be a factor until, at the earliest, mid-2016. The standard is only expected to be finalized sometime in 2015. If you look at PCIe 3.0, current graphics cards can hardly drive them to capacity. The Z97/H98 motherboards and CPUs can only maximally support 16 PCIe lanes - for SLI, top-end boards have an additional chip on board to provide the additional PCIe lanes.

I would definitely not hold a build for what may come in Skylake - that's just too far down the road. Broadwell, maybe.

My biggest issue up till end of August was the rather tired high-end Sandy Bridge-E/Ivy Bridge-E and their associated chipset. I didn't want to build in that space since the overlap with lower-end Core i7 or Xeon processors was confusing. Where possible I urged people to hold off. Now things are looking up.

Broadwell will most probably be nothing special and mostly in line with the regular Intel cadence of maybe 7-10% improvement, some huge power advantages, and maybe improved integrated graphics. Them main focul in Broadwell will be on mobile, with the desktop processors almost an afterthought and probably only early next year.

m
0
l
!