Upgrade now to SB, or wait for Bulldozer?

[rjkucia]

I plan on upgrading my motherboard, RAM, CPU, and possibly adding an SSD sometime between now and September. My current configuration is a C2D E8400 @ 3.6GHz, 4GB DDR2 RAM, and a Radeon 5850. The main stress put on my system would be gaming at 1680x1050, but upgrading to 1080p or 1920x1200 in the near future. If I were to upgrade today, I would purchase these parts:

Core i5 2500K http://bit.ly/oSn5Jo $180
Asus P8Z68-V http://bit.ly/qWwVjK $140 (combo deal)
8GB DDR3 RAM (~$70)
Maybe a cheap SSD to use Z68's Smart Response (<$100)

My main concern is, should I wait for AMD's Bulldozer, and see what happens then? I heard it was supposed to come out in June, but I haven't heard anything else. There also doesn't seem to be any performance numbers out there anywhere, so it may not even be what I'm looking for (either too expensive or too slow). Also, if I decide to go with Sandy Bridge, what is a good SSD in my price range? Thanks in advance!

 

[jaguarskx]

If you can wait until September, then you might as well wait for Bulldozer reviews. Just "suffer" your slightly limited performance just a little while longer.

 

[jimmysmitty]

Bulldozer was delayed due to, well really unknown reasons. The rumor is that it was delayed due to clocking and performance issues.

Honestly I don't see a reason to wait. Based on what info we have right now, The top end BD CPU will probably perform close to a Core i7 2600K.

And if you plan to game at 1920x1080, a 2500K even at stock is well more than enough. In fact the HD5850 will bottleneck it first.

I say go for the SB system. Waiting until AMD releases BD, which is unknown right now, is pointless.

 

[jaguarskx]

Bulldozer was delayed due to, well really unknown reasons. The rumor is that it was delayed due to clocking and performance issues.

????

Bulldozer has been delayed yet again since Rick Bergman's presentation at CES 2011 on June 1st 2011?

 

[jimmysmitty]

????

Bulldozer has been delayed yet again since Rick Bergman's presentation at CES 2011 on June 1st 2011?

The original release was supposed to be last month, per rumor. Then it was "delayed", and the reasoning was OEMs wanted Llano over BD so AMD delayed it but others said it was performance and others said it was clock related. Thats why I said rumor.

As for release, it was said to be about 90 days from June 1st BUT not deffinative time or date has been set which means they don't have to adhear to anything. That means September may not be the release date. It may not come out until winter.

 

[rjkucia]

As for release, it was said to be about 90 days from June 1st BUT not deffinative time or date has been set which means they don't have to adhear to anything. That means September may not be the release date. It may not come out until winter.

This is what I'm worried about - I don't want to wait until winter! I'm going to college in September, and this really isn't something I want to be worried about when I'm settling into my dorm... And since AMD doesn't exactly have a (recent) history of blowing Intel's chips out of the water, I don't really see a reason to wait at this point.

 

[Overclocked Toaster]

The only thing I think is worth waiting for at this point is Ivy bridge, coming next spring. if you are satisfied with your current gaming performance, wait till then to upgrade. if not, upgrade now to sandy bridge.

 

[purple stain]

I'd say the only reason for waiting would be the price point.When AMD release's Bulldozer it's possible it could cause prices to drop for either Intel or AMD.I remember when the 68xx series GPU's was released they dropped the prices of the GTX460 a lot but then brought it back up again.

I hate waiting too I say just go fo the 2500k build.

 

[rjkucia]

Thanks guys, I'll probably upgrade in the next couple of weeks then. Now, for Z68's Smart Response, what is a good, cheap SSD that I should use? I was thinking either the Vertex 2 60GB http://bit.ly/oY92Jc for $115 or the 40GB Intel X25-V http://bit.ly/nMRvU8 for $80. Any suggestions?

 

[purple stain]

I have that Vertex 60GB SSD and it's really great.Like any SSD tho it's a huge improvement over a regular HDD.

 

[demoth2000]

AMD is shitting bricks because early black-ops type overclocks on leaked Bulldozer 8 core black-box editions slated for only $320 are air-cooling to 5+GHz with a good enough PSU and just a decent top end heatsink. At default clocks, it seems to equal top end intels and this is with no driver optimizations. It will be the software driver makers that will enable Bulldozer to dominate which will take several months. Meanwhile, OCed, a $320 chip would make obsolete anything released for the next few years onced OCed to 5+Ghz. This is the delay.

 

[jimmysmitty]

Thanks guys, I'll probably upgrade in the next couple of weeks then. Now, for Z68's Smart Response, what is a good, cheap SSD that I should use? I was thinking either the Vertex 2 60GB http://bit.ly/oY92Jc for $115 or the 40GB Intel X25-V http://bit.ly/nMRvU8 for $80. Any suggestions?

I have a 80GB Intel X-25-M G2 and its fast enough for what I want but its an OS drive only. If you want it for the Z68s SSD caching ability, a 60GB SSD would be a bit of a waste so I would go for the 40GB Intel.

AMD is shitting bricks because early black-ops type overclocks on leaked Bulldozer 8 core black-box editions slated for only $320 are air-cooling to 5+GHz with a good enough PSU and just a decent top end heatsink. At default clocks, it seems to equal top end intels and this is with no driver optimizations. It will be the software driver makers that will enable Bulldozer to dominate which will take several months. Meanwhile, OCed, a $320 chip would make obsolete anything released for the next few years onced OCed to 5+Ghz. This is the delay.

Yea but Sandy Bridge also overclocks to 5GHz+ on air with high end air cooling. I doubt it would make anything obsolete for the next few years. You can overclock a Phenom II X4 to 4GHz and it wont beat a stock SB unit and when that same SB unit is overclocked to 4GHz its beaten.

Overclocking is a small part of the market. It will depend on the market how well it will do.

 

[BeCoolBro]

AMD is shitting bricks because early black-ops type overclocks on leaked Bulldozer 8 core black-box editions slated for only $320 are air-cooling to 5+GHz with a good enough PSU and just a decent top end heatsink. At default clocks, it seems to equal top end intels and this is with no driver optimizations. It will be the software driver makers that will enable Bulldozer to dominate which will take several months. Meanwhile, OCed, a $320 chip would make obsolete anything released for the next few years onced OCed to 5+Ghz. This is the delay.

You did read the news about the pseudo-unlocked multiplier,didn't you?Overclocking via the multiplier is not supported with these chips and while programs like cpuz may report higher clock speeds,it doesn't offer a performance improvement.Only overclocking through the fsb equivalent give a performance increase.
Now about the SSD,the 40GB Intel should be just perfect,although I'd prefer installing the OS in it instead of using SmartCache or whatever it's called.

 

[mdd1963]

Meanwhile, OCed, a $320 chip would make obsolete anything released for the next few years onced OCed to 5+Ghz. This is the delay.

So the same person who is fearless enough to show a video of BD hitting 5 GHz on air is also hesitant to show any worthwhile benchmarks, due to what.... an NDA?

I sincerely hope BD can easily hit 5 Ghz, and scales as well or better than SB...

A few game timedemos run at 1920x1080 will quickly tell the tale.

 

[mdd1963]

At default clocks, it (BD) seems to equal top end intels and this is with no driver optimizations..

'Seems' to equal top end Intel rigs at...what, exactly?

Even the leaked/suspect/no credibility/Photoshop 'leaks' that I have seen show it behind in high res/dual GPU/ SLI gaming benhmarks by up to 12-14%; admittedly, this might be better than Phenom II.

The real tests, in my opinion, will come with results from credible testers (HardOCP, THG, AnandTech, etc.) in a variety of 1920x1080 gaming benchmarks, SuperPi, H.264 decoding, Cinebench, etc, with the 2500k/2600k vs. BD 4,6, and 8 'core' cpus...

I will consider BD 'successful' if at least matches the older i7 960 rigs on a clock for clock basis, and 'very successful' if it matches 2500k in gaming benchmarks on a near clock for clock basis, even allowing an 8 core vs 4 core, or, FX8030 vs 2500k.

 

[rjkucia]

For the SSD - I will probably stick with the 40GB Intel one, and I'll use the Smart Response because I don't want the hassle of managing programs and data on multiple drives and such.

For BD - I would imagine that if AMD could take down Intel with their new chips they would do it ASAP, as they don't really have anything to compete with SB right now.

 

[mdd1963]

...they don't have anything much to compete with older i5/i7 models either..

 

[jitpublisher]

I have been hearing about bulldozer for how many years?

 

[ghnader hsmithot]

I have been hearing about bulldozer for how many years?

4 years(2007 formally announced) with Sandy Bridge being 2 years.

 

[Wisecracker]

I plan on upgrading my motherboard, RAM, CPU, and possibly adding an SSD sometime between now and September. My current configuration is a C2D E8400 @ 3.6GHz, 4GB DDR2 RAM, and a Radeon 5850. The main stress put on my system would be gaming at 1680x1050, but upgrading to 1080p or 1920x1200 in the near future. If I were to upgrade today, I would purchase these parts:

Core i5 2500K http://bit.ly/oSn5Jo $180
Asus P8Z68-V http://bit.ly/qWwVjK $140 (combo deal)
8GB DDR3 RAM (~$70)
Maybe a cheap SSD to use Z68's Smart Response (<$100)

My main concern is, should I wait for AMD's Bulldozer, and see what happens then? I heard it was supposed to come out in June, but I haven't heard anything else. There also doesn't seem to be any performance numbers out there anywhere, so it may not even be what I'm looking for (either too expensive or too slow). Also, if I decide to go with Sandy Bridge, what is a good SSD in my price range? Thanks in advance!

That rig is fine. At 16x10 max settings you should hit 50-60 FPS no problem in most games. And where you can't (some games are simply poorly-coded resource hawgs), simply drop your settings back a notch.

An SSD may make things launch a bit more quickly if that is important to you.

For the SSD - I will probably stick with the 40GB Intel one, and I'll use the Smart Response because I don't want the hassle of managing programs and data on multiple drives and such.

For BD - I would imagine that if AMD could take down Intel with their new chips they would do it ASAP, as they don't really have anything to compete with SB right now.

AMD is busy shipping tens of thousands of Bulldozers to Cray

 

[purple stain]

I think they know that Bulldozer can't match up to Intel's high end processor so they launched Llano first beccause they knew it would outperform the i3 to make an impression.

 

[rjkucia]

That rig is fine. At 16x10 max settings you should hit 50-60 FPS no problem in most games. And where you can't (some games are simply poorly-coded resource hawgs), simply drop your settings back a notch.

An SSD may make things launch a bit more quickly if that is important to you.



AMD is busy shipping tens of thousands of Bulldozers to Cray

That's just it though - for some reason all of my games lag on higher settings, even older ones like TF2. Not really low fps, but more like stuttering. Maybe it's a background application doing it or something, but it's done it for as long as I've had this computer, and it's pretty annoying. I figured that a quad core might help fix that.

 

[purple stain]

The micro stutter is GPU releated.

 

[rjkucia]

I thought that too, but I just got this GPU a couple of months ago, and before that I had a GeForce 9800GT that had the same problem.

 

[andrews013]

SB. bulldozer is a lie.