Haswell or 3970X?

[render-freak]

Building a PC, what chip is better? Building it in july by the way. I need it for rendering videos, 3D animations and some photoshop work. Mainly 3D animations and Videos. I am going to game as well. I need it before September.

 

[aramisathei]

x79 is generally better for rendering workstations.

Haven't heard anything on a next gen x79 CPU, so unless a new Ivy or Haswell comes out (there's talk about skipping Ivy for x79) then I'd go with a 3930k. You'll save 500$ for a drop of a couple hundred mhz (which can be made up in OCing) and a slightly larger L3 cache, which won't make any real difference.

If you aren't making the purchase until July though, wait and watch what happens in June.