Should I wait until Haswell to rebuild?

Don't know where you read "50%".

I believe it will be less than 10% increase over Ivy Bridge assuming same clock speeds. Intel is focusing more on power consumption than they are performance. They won't likely ramp up performance until Broadwell in 2014 and I think it will be around 12% - 15% increase over Haswell.

Haswell isn't expected to be released until April at best so that means credible benchmarks won't be released until March. If you think your current rig will give you enough performance to carry you through April (if rumors are true), then you might as well wait. Otherwise go with Ivy Bridge.

The jump from Nehalem to SB was 12% on average. SB to IB is 6% on average. I don't believe going from Core 2 Quad to 1st gen Core i5/i7 was anywhere near 50%. It was definitely less than 20% (assuming same clock speed), and I'm pretty sure it was close to a 15% gain.

i7 is more than enugh for gaming for about 2 years its a great cpu.

50% more "performance" (maybe 15-20% faster and 15-20% less temp)...could be.
50% "faster" no way.
They say Haswell will be available maybe in June, then you would have to maybe wait to see some benchs, then see if it is available...blablabla...
What CPU do you have now?

Personally, I'd wait until Haswell at this point. While it isn't going to be "ZOMGBBQPWNED" versus last generation, it will still be an increase for the same price you would pay anyway.

Also, if you do decide to stick with current gen, dump the 3770K and stick with a 3570K. Unless you are an animator and need to render something or need the threads for something. Otherwise, you are pissing money away.

Should I just get my 3770K now or is it worth waiting for the Haswell/4770K?

If the only thing I'm using my computer for is gaming, will the Haswell offer a noticeable improvement in performance?

You'd be lucky to see a 5% difference.

Haswell isn't a die shrink nor a performance oriented architecture change, it's designed to lower power consumption and reduce heat, SB to IB was 5-6% performance increase(according to tomshardware) and IB was much hotter when overclocked, in some cases Sandy is actually better than Ivy.

However since the socket is changing I'd actually reccomend waiting until LGA1150 so the future performance oriented CPUs are compatible without needing to buy a 100-200 dollar motherboard.

Well, it isn't going to happen.

Core 2 didn't just magically appear. It was in parallel development on the mobile side for years before it hit the desktop in 2006. Anybody following mobile at the time wasn't surprised by it.

The Core I7 in 2009 was just on-die memory controller and hyperthreading. Both well established technology intel had elected not to add up to that point.

Both were unusual situations and are not likely to be repeated anytime in the near future. Anybody who thinks that new architectures are going to produce 50% speed bumps without "extenuating circumstances" is kidding themselves. There is no low hanging fruit out there right now that would enable such a jump.

No, don't get a 3770K. You are pissing money down the drain. Get a 3570K and spend the money you save on a SSD or better GPU. The 3770K will be of no benefit to games over the 3570K, and may even hurt performance in some cases.

Since a new report says that Haswell is going to be released 6 months from now, you can go ahead and get the 3570K (or, if you still want to throw money away, the 3770K) now. Honestly, Haswell will probably be no more than 15% over Ivy (if that even). Even if it was, Ivy will still last you for a few years. Hell, my dual-core desktop still kicks butt in games (with a obligatory GPU upgrade after 4 years). She'll be 5 years old when I (hopefully) replace her with Haswell.

The jump from Nehalem to SB was 50% on average and took 40% less electricity.

ambam: I think it's time that Intel puts out a processor that offers a major performance gain like the Core 2 quad to the first-gen Core i7, which was around 50%.
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There was virtually no improvement at all. In fact all i7 werehyper threaded power hungry cpu's. I think the performance per watt went down with negalem over core 2 quad 45nm. core 2 quad to i7 was no real difference, they increased power consumption to slightly beat core 2 quads at stock. Only the i7 980x based on next gen 32nm 6 core 12 thread was actually a real upgrade over core 2 quads.

In essence a core 2 quad vs i7 nehalem was like a pentium sandy bridge cpu to a core i3 sandy bridge cpu or be it the i7 nehalem took a lot more electricity then core 2 quad.

Nothing in the following benchmarks shows a 50% increase in anything.

I compares the i5-760 @ 2.8GHz vs. the i5-2400 @ 3.1GHz.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/191?vs=363

Here's the Core i7-970 @ 3.2GHz vs the Core i7-2600k @ 3.4GHz.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/157?vs=287


Therefore, the claim about a 50% performance increase going from Nehalem to Sandy Bridge is pure BS.

The average performance increase from....

1. Core 2 Duo / Quad -> 1st gen Core i3/i5/i7 (Nehalem / Lynnfield) = 10%
2. Nehalem / Lynnfield -> Sandy Bridge = 12%
3. Sandy Bridge -> Ivy Bridge = 6%

That assumes the same clockspeed between CPUs.

on stuff like memory bandwidth stuff sisoft whestone dhrystone media encoding 3dmark scores etc it is. Sandy bridge32nm providing like 80% better performance per watt over nehalem 45nm.

core 2 quad 45nm vs i7 45nm cpu there was no real improvement performance per watt in fact it got worse if anything.

Those are synthetic benchmarks and not worth the pixel space they take up on a computer screen. Actual performance is less. Much less.

If you are going to use worthless synthetic benchmarks, then at least post a link to them showing the difference.

As for media encoding, look at the Anandtech links I posted which compares x.264 HD Encode Test - Pass 1 and Pass 2. The differences between the i5-760 vs i5-2400 / i7-970 vs i7-2660k are far less than a 50% increase in performance.