Which Intel LGA series should I choose?

[Andrew DeLong]

I'm planning on building a new rig (for low-mid level Adobe editing/compositing) in a few months. Right now I'm stuck on two socket choices, LGA 2011 and LGA 1150. To my knowledge, only the LGA 2011 series of processors can support upwards of 64 GB of RAM, whereas the 1150 series can max out at 32 GB. The trade off being that LGA 1150 has motherboards out that house dual Thunderbolt 2.0 ports, whereas LGA 2011 does not have TH supported motherboards (at least as far as I can find)

My question: Is the trade off in RAM worth the gain in connectivity? Or is there some type of add-on (such as an expansion card) that would allow me to go with the 2011 setup and then add TH 1.0 or 2.0 ports afterwards?

 

[CTurbo]

I don't see any reason why you would want to go with LGA2011. Most of them support 128GB of RAM and some even 256GB of RAM, but when would you ever need more than 16-32GB for "low-mid level editing/compositing"? The only reason I would choose 2011 is if I wanted to use more than 2 video cards, or if I need more than 4 cores.

 

[bnn]

Question is will you ever use 64GB RAM? if you aren't just go with LGA 1150

 

[Andrew DeLong]

Question is will you ever use 64GB RAM? if you aren't just go with LGA 1150

Well the idea is to start on the lower end with 16-32GB of RAM (mainly combined After Effects and Premiere Pro use) and then upgrade later on if the need arises.

The real issue I'm having is trying to decide if the short term loss in RAM expansion is worth the gain in Thunderbolt connection. I guess this is more of an issue of choosing between a good option and a darn good option...

 

[Andrew DeLong]

I don't see any reason why you would want to go with LGA2011. Most of them support 128GB of RAM and some even 256GB of RAM, but when would you ever need more than 16-32GB for "low-mid level editing/compositing"? The only reason I would choose 2011 is if I wanted to use more than 2 video cards, or if I need more than 4 cores.

I plan on starting out with a GTX 770 (3GB) card and 16GB of 1866 RAM (non-ECC). And I should have mentioned, I do like the hexa-core option. But as I said, I also like Thunderbolt for external expansion. Would you know of any PCIe Thunderbolt cards that would work on an LGA 2011 / X79 platform?

 

[CTurbo]

You could wait a few months when Haswell-E is released along with a new chipset to replace LGA2011.

 

[Andrew DeLong]

You could wait a few months when Haswell-E is released along with a new chipset to replace LGA2011.

In fact, the time table for this build is at least 4 months out (at least two eternities in technological time), so that is an option I'll reserve. Any chatter on what that chipset will support yet?

 

[CTurbo]

The new X99 platform is expected to be released at the start of the 3rd qtr of this year. It's supposed to support DDR4 RAM and Intel is releasing a bigger variety of 6 core cpus and a couple 8 core beasts.

 

[Andrew DeLong]

The new X99 platform is expected to be released at the start of the 3rd qtr of this year. It's supposed to support DDR4 RAM and Intel is releasing a bigger variety of 6 core cpus and a couple 8 core beasts.

I assume you mean 6 and 8 core i7's. Any idea if they will be K-class or X-class? (either way, this sounds like a nice jump forward)

 

[CTurbo]

Yeah supposedly the first 8 core extreme i7