Haswell or Sandy Bridge?

1. Don't really know for sure, but 25% better than SB shouldn't be out of the question.

2. Yes. Haswell will be on LGA 1150.

3. No.

4. If you're upgrading within the next few months, a 3570K would be my choice (not really a 2500K, unless you want to try for HUGE OC's). Haswell should come sometime in Q2 of next year (April-May).

wait for Haswell, you'll be much better be patient.

What about the current 1155 sockets? Will they be compatible with Haswell because you're talking about the future 1150 sockets. Also, even if I buy a 2500k (or the 3570k that you guys are suggesting), will my setup be able to run games on high settings and good frame rates in the future and still compete with architectures such as Haswell and Broadwell.

Nope. 1155 is dead with Ivy.

interesting chart.

I edited a previous message to ask this but since Haswell's still ages away, it would make sense to order a good CPU now. My question is will the 3750k for example, be able to compete with new Haswell and Broadwell CPUs and still run future games on high settings with good frame rates?

Also, I'll try to ask this as clearly as possible, will the 1155 socket MOBOs still support components that need to be plugged into the MOBO in the future or will component makers just make their components compatible with new 1150 MOBOs. OR, has the CPU socket got nothing to do with the connections for other components e.g. graphics cards, HDDs, RAM etc.

First question, ABSOLUTELY. The 3570K will be good enough for gaming (and anything else) for MANY years.

Second question, again, yes. Socket type has absolutely nothing to do with any other component besides the CPU (and sometimes, RAM). DDR4 RAM will eventually exist in the consumer segment, but not with LGA 1150 (as far as I'm aware). By the time it IS used, it'll be time to upgrade again anyway.

Ok. So basically, although they are releasing new CPU architectures, they aren't going to be MASSIVE improvements on what we've already got (3570k for example). We will still be able to game on CPUs like 3570ks despite them not being the newest on the market.

Thanks everyone for your help  

At 1920x1200, many games end up GPU-bound even with an i3-2xxx so i5-3xxx should be good for a good while longer for people who are not obsessing over running games at over 9000 fps.

I would hope Haswell-E uses LGA2011 since there may never be an Ivy Bridge-E...

Honestly, if a E8400 (which is what I have) with a single 560 448 cores can play ANY game at max/ultra settings with min FPS at 30 and max through the roof (Crysis/Skyrim) at 1920 x 1200 resolution, then a 3570K (or even a 2500K) will handle games for many years to come (as some have already said).

Toms mentions in their Best CPUs for the money, that its pointless to upgrade anything unless its two or more tiers above what you have. I go by that and I say its pointless to upgrade within two years. Sure, there are enthusiasts out there with deep pockets who want the best no matter what, but as far as I am concerned its really just a waste of money to upgrade that fast.

From what I read, IB-E will be coming out in late 2012.

Since mainstream Haswell is going LGA1150 presumably for legitimate technical reasons, the same reasons would most likely apply to its Extreme variant so I seriously doubt Haswell-E will use LGA2011.

Many of the people who want a 3570k which is already overkill for nearly all games and overclock it on top are those who want to play games at 60+ fps.

Casual gamers like us who are fine with anything over 30fps can make-do with much slower CPUs.

Honestly, my E8400 is good enough for my tasks. But I'm upgrading to a 3570K here in a month. Granted, I won't upgrade again until around 2017/2018, but I don't *have* to yet.

Hey

Haswell won`t deliver much better processing performance.
I have i7 2600k and I know I don`t have to upgrade until another generation of CPU after Haswell comes out.
If you look at CPU benchmark you will see only about 10 % increase in performance over 2nd generation of CPUs.
That is based on benchmarking software results so the actual in game peformance may actually be the same, not to mention that 2500k or 2600k are overclocking much better than new CPUs
You can expect another 10% increase in performance in Haswell so that would make around 20-25% gap in performance between Sandy Bridge and Haswell, which in my opinion is not worth it. ( and again, in games there might be hardly any difference, especially when you have OC`d Sandy Bridge like I do over 4.0 Ghz)
Leaked information says that new Haswell CPUs won`t exeed 4.0 Ghz on stock. To be honest, Intel is not focusing with Haswell on better CPU performance but on lower power consumption and increasing the built in graphics performance.
There will be much better performance improvement (maybe 100% over Sandy Bridge) with 4th generation of CPU in 2015 or 2016.
I will buy new mobo with new CPU then. Probably best thing you can do as well.
Save some money on SSD. 250 GB is expensive. Just use it for windows and 60GB-120GB will be plenty.
For the CPU, search for some good deal and get i5 2500k with good coolingand OC the hell out of it. If you are not very keen on overclocking then you can get i5-3570k which is slightly faster on stock settings but doesn`t overclock as good. It will do nicely for next 3 years at least.