Will Ivy Bridge be worth it?

[llguitargr8]

I know everything is speculation and rumor right now, but from the leaked info given so far, do you guys think Ivy Bridge will worth getting? I am going to be building my first PC, for around $1800, a little after Ivy is expected to come out, and I just thought: should I get the new motherboards that are going to be released with Ivy for the new chipsets and just get a Sandy Bridge i5 since I'm sure they should drop in price? What would the advantages be of getting the new processor? And since the Sandy Bridge prices SHOULD drop, maybe I should just forgo LGA 1155 altogether and get a Sandy Bridge-E i7 and a good X79 motherboard?

Just a little question I had and thought maybe someone could help me out! Thank you in advance!

Btw: The pc will be exclusively for gaming.

 

[Devastater6194]

It will be worth it unless you already have a first or second gen i5/7. Just get a i5 3570k with either a gtx 6xx or hd 7xxx and you'll be set.
Btw don't even consider x79 for gaming it's not worth it. It's made for servers and workstations.

 

[WR2]

It's not clear what the pricing differences will be - as in - if or how much Sandy Bridge prices will drop.

I think that any price difference would be recaptured when it's time to sell an Ivy Bridge system and get your next gaming build. IB would get a better price than SB in the resale marketplace a few years down the road.

 

[chesteracorgi]

With the preview of the Z77 mobos, it looks like they have litle advantage over the Z68s gen3s. So there are pleanty of mobos available for the IB.

Whether IB is an advantage to you depends on your need to get PCI 3.0 graphics. SB CPUs are limited to PCI 2.0, but there is no available comparison for PCI 3.0.

I don't think that you will have a good answer for your question until there are som CPUs that can provice PCI 3.0.

 

[Maxor1]

It's not clear what the pricing differences will be - as in - if or how much Sandy Bridge prices will drop.

I think that any price difference would be recaptured when it's time to sell an Ivy Bridge system and get your next gaming build. IB would get a better price than SB in the resale marketplace a few years down the road.

Honestly do you even recoup half of your cost of your pc when you sell your old personal builds? I know I never have. If I sell a computer I built for me I usually am getting around 25% of what I paid for the system. Then again I usually keep my own personal computers for 3 to 5 years.

 

[WR2]

No, you don't.
But the cost difference between SB and IB - can be recouped.

 

[jaguarskx]

Generally speaking, the prices of Ivy Bridge CPUs will be close to their Sandy Bridge counterpart prices as of now. I don't expect Sandy Bridge prices to drop buy more than $5; $10 at the extreme end.

If your current PC pre-dates the Core i3/i5/i7 series, then I would say it is worth building a new PC. My current PC was built back in 2008 around the Q9450. While upgrading to Ivy Bridge will give me a good performance boost. I deem it to still be a viable PC since it can compete with AMD's Phenom II X4 955 / 965 CPUs. Therefore, I'll wait for Haswell next year.

 

[HostileDonut]

Ivy Bridge should bring anywhere from 5-10% performance gain is what seems to be going around from leaked benchmarks and hear say. Ivy Bridge is planned to take Sandy Bridge's price range, so if you don't have a Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge is worth it.

Ivy Bridge works on a smaller die, which gives it lower heat production and will most likely be able to overclock further. I think I heard something about Intel bringing back BCLK overclocking to Ivy Bridge, which would be pretty neat. I know I would use it.

Intel works on a "Tic and Toc" system. The tic is a big performance improvement and the toc and basically refining the tic and giving it lower heat, smaller die, etc. Sandy Bridge was the tic which gave major performance gains, and Ivy Bridge will be the toc. Ivy Bridge is basically a refined Sandy Bridge with a minor performance increase.

Here are some sources

- http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Intel-Ivy-Bridge-CPU-LGA1155,14325.html

- http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Benchmarks-Intel-Ivy-Bridge-CPU-sandy-bridge,14144.html

Reading helps a lot, but it is still ALL rumors.

 

[llguitargr8]

With the preview of the Z77 mobos, it looks like they have litle advantage over the Z68s gen3s. So there are pleanty of mobos available for the IB.

Whether IB is an advantage to you depends on your need to get PCI 3.0 graphics. SB CPUs are limited to PCI 2.0, but there is no available comparison for PCI 3.0.

I don't think that you will have a good answer for your question until there are som CPUs that can provice PCI 3.0.

I plan on going for a gtx 6xx gfx card, maybe two and put in SLI depending on what model I decide on.

 

[llguitargr8]

Generally speaking, the prices of Ivy Bridge CPUs will be close to their Sandy Bridge counterpart prices as of now. I don't expect Sandy Bridge prices to drop buy more than $5; $10 at the extreme end.

If your current PC pre-dates the Core i3/i5/i7 series, then I would say it is worth building a new PC. My current PC was built back in 2008 around the Q9450. While upgrading to Ivy Bridge will give me a good performance boost. I deem it to still be a viable PC since it can compete with AMD's Phenom II X4 955 / 965 CPUs. Therefore, I'll wait for Haswell next year.

Right now, I have only, and currently am using a laptop. It's great, and gets everything done productivity wise, but I'm building a PC strictly for games, and this will be the first desktop I will own. So, technically I've never even used a desktop-class cpu.

 

[jaguarskx]

If you can wait until the end of April for Ivy Bridge benchmarks then wait. If you have a overwhelming desire to play games ASAP, then just build a Sandy Bridge PC.

 

[llguitargr8]

If you can wait until the end of April for Ivy Bridge benchmarks then wait. If you have a overwhelming desire to play games ASAP, then just build a Sandy Bridge PC.

I HAVE to wait until summertime, because that's when I should have enough to pay for the PC lol

 

[jaguarskx]

I HAVE to wait until summertime, because that's when I should have enough to pay for the PC lol

Problem solved then.

By that time you can make a decision based on actual benchmarks rather than people's guesses (including my own).

nVidia's GTX 600 series should be hitting retail in April (to the best of my knowledge) so you can decide if AMD or nVidia is the way to go.

 

[llguitargr8]

Problem solved then.

By that time you can make a decision based on actual benchmarks rather than people's guesses (including my own).

nVidia's GTX 600 series should be hitting retail in April (to the best of my knowledge) so you can decide if AMD or nVidia is the way to go.

Well, really, this question was aimed on peoples' personal plans. As of now, does anyone think going for an Ivy Bridge over a Sandy Bridge think it would be a good or bad idea. I know that there will be no definitive answer until the products are actually released. I just want to do as much component planning as possible before purchase, and have it all figured out lol

 

[jaguarskx]

Overall, it's better to go with IB due to possible lower power consumption, slightly better and supposedly easier overclocks and (in my opinion) a modest performance improvement of around 6% assuming same clock speeds. The biggest improvement will be the Intel HD 4000, which is expected to be 60% faster than the Intel HD 3000.

I already, mentioned my plans... Haswell in 2013 and either GTX 700 or Radeon HD 8000 series.

 

[aqe040466]

I know everything is speculation and rumor right now, but from the leaked info given so far, do you guys think Ivy Bridge will worth getting? I am going to be building my first PC, for around $1800, a little after Ivy is expected to come out, and I just thought: should I get the new motherboards that are going to be released with Ivy for the new chipsets and just get a Sandy Bridge i5 since I'm sure they should drop in price? What would the advantages be of getting the new processor? And since the Sandy Bridge prices SHOULD drop, maybe I should just forgo LGA 1155 altogether and get a Sandy Bridge-E i7 and a good X79 motherboard?

Just a little question I had and thought maybe someone could help me out! Thank you in advance!

Btw: The pc will be exclusively for gaming.

With $1800.00 budget you can build a solid gaming rig. If I were you I will build Sandy Bridge-E(E-for Extreme) that will probably last for 2-4 years.

 

[llguitargr8]

With $1800.00 budget you can build a solid gaming rig. If I were you I will build Sandy Bridge-E(E-for Extreme) that will probably last for 2-4 years.

I heard that the i7 isn't really necessary for simply gaming, which apparently only uses 3-4 cores. So sure, if I wanted the 8 virtual core goodness, I could go with a standard Sandy Bridge, but wouldn't 12 (6 actual cores in Extreme models, besides the 3820, which has 4) be wayyyy unnecessary? I've heard that the best bang-for-buck cpu for gaming would be the i5-2500K (or 3570K for Ivy Bridge). Again, I am strictly using this for gaming, as I have my laptop for literally EVERYTHING else. It just isn't a good gaming computer, and I want the best I can get, without getting anything unnecessary and overpaying. I mean, if you DO think I should get an i7 for gaming, please explain. I'm still planning out these components, so any and all advice would be extremely helpful!

 

[xninelives]

It will be worth it unless you already have a first or second gen i5/7. Just get a i5 3570k with either a gtx 6xx or hd 7xxx and you'll be set.
Btw don't even consider x79 for gaming it's not worth it. It's made for servers and workstations.

dude I run x79 and it rocks for gaming. Don't put it down just because it's expensive. Only buy x79 if you are an enthusiast.

 

[aqe040466]

I heard that the i7 isn't really necessary for simply gaming, which apparently only uses 3-4 cores. So sure, if I wanted the 8 virtual core goodness, I could go with a standard Sandy Bridge, but wouldn't 12 (6 actual cores in Extreme models, besides the 3820, which has 4) be wayyyy unnecessary? I've heard that the best bang-for-buck cpu for gaming would be the i5-2500K (or 3570K for Ivy Bridge). Again, I am strictly using this for gaming, as I have my laptop for literally EVERYTHING else. It just isn't a good gaming computer, and I want the best I can get, without getting anything unnecessary and overpaying. I mean, if you DO think I should get an i7 for gaming, please explain. I'm still planning out these components, so any and all advice would be extremely helpful!

What I'm saying is with that budget in hand, I would prefer i7 3930K, you just wouldn't know maybe in the future, you might ending up doing some heavy stuff like video rendering, video conversion and editing. Get a high end X79 chipset motherboard, coupled with Nvidia 580 or HD radeon 7970 GPU's, 32 GB 2133 MHZ quad channel memory, a 128 GB SSD SATAIII for OS and 2 TB WD Caviar Black HDD, get 1000 watts PSU and a full tower ATX PC case. That would be a solid build great for gaming and other heavy stuff that will last for 2-4 years
The 3820 is a locked CPU, so you can't overclock it, unlike 3930K "K" means unlocked and unleased you can overclock it up to 5.3 GHZ depending on your motherboard and CPU cooler(air or liquid). Once again, with that budget? I'll go with this kind of build.

 

[HostileDonut]

dude I run x79 and it rocks for gaming. Don't put it down just because it's expensive. Only buy x79 if you are an enthusiast.

Yes, because the x79 is going to be at least as good as a regular SB system, but in gaming they are still pretty close.

 

[HostileDonut]

There is no need to go LGA2011. I would stick with a 2500k, save some money, as the 2500k should be good for a good 3 years to come when OCed. Later, you can just pop in a new board and CPU and be good to go. Games won't use more than 4 cores for a good while, accept for a few games.

 

[HostileDonut]

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/288?vs=552

Games are at the bottom, and as you can see, games are not using more than 4 cores and will not be for a good while. 2500k is my vote, with a really good cooler and some epic video cards, you can just pop in a new CPU and board later. (4th Gen Core i)

 

[llguitargr8]

Best answer selected by llguitargr8.