Upgrade i7-940 to Xeon W3690/X5690 or build new in 2017

iLiptiKal

Honorable
Mar 25, 2013
5
0
10,510
I built my rig in december 2009 and since then haven't really felt the need to upgrade it. I mainly use the tower for Twitch streaming emulators and low gpu intensive games, but have finally upgraded my old GTX465 to a GTX1070 and got a 144hz screen on sale to incorporate newer pc games into my stream. What I found is that I'm maxing out my i7 OC'd@4.09 Ghz without even opening OBS to start a stream.

Now before purchasing the GTX1070 I knew that the CPU & ram would become the bottleneck, and had put together a Kaby Lake/Z270 parts list in case. However I stumbled across the Xeon W36XX or X56XX lineup that would pair nicely with my current P6X58-E board.

The Xeon has higher OC potential, more cores, more cache, and a smaller architecture than my current i7, and a relatively low cost of entry thanks to the used market.The 7700k has the same cores and cache size of my i7, but faster clock than both CPU's and has access to much faster ram and storage speeds.

Either way I go I plan on keeping my case, H110 cpu cooler, SSDs/HDD, 850W PSU, and the new GPU.

What would you do? Should I spend the $2k CAD for shiney new CPU, board, faster ram, and M.2, or keep my board from 8 years ago and drop in a new CPU, and add some ram to keep X58 alive in 2017?

Thanks for reading, lets hear it!
 
Solution
If you're really into performance, then I would go with Kaby Lake, but if you just want to squeeze more life out of your system, the w3690 isn't bad, especially since you will be using OBS the six cores will give you an improvement over the 4core i7's in cpu usage during sessions. However, KL will offer significantly better performance over Westmere in single threaded tasks, which is what most games rely on now.
But one thing to take into consideration is that your games are most likely only using 4 of your cores, which means that you have the other two for OBS to use without infringing on your game's cpu time.

A minor note here, while right now it is nothing more than speculation, it seems that games are going to be much better at...

wertciu

Commendable
Oct 4, 2016
97
0
1,710
If you're really into performance, then I would go with Kaby Lake, but if you just want to squeeze more life out of your system, the w3690 isn't bad, especially since you will be using OBS the six cores will give you an improvement over the 4core i7's in cpu usage during sessions. However, KL will offer significantly better performance over Westmere in single threaded tasks, which is what most games rely on now.
But one thing to take into consideration is that your games are most likely only using 4 of your cores, which means that you have the other two for OBS to use without infringing on your game's cpu time.

A minor note here, while right now it is nothing more than speculation, it seems that games are going to be much better at utilizing more cores in the near future, which could be just the thing to extend the life of your system a little longer.
 
Solution