[Sandwich]

I'm needing to upgrade my aging Core 2 Duo E6600 / DDR2 800 system... yeah, I know. 

Anyway, I've had my eye on a Core i5 as recommended by Ars Technica's System Guides for the "Hot Rod" bracket for quite some time now. However, seeing as I need to do a complete CPU/RAM/Motherboard swap, I figured I might as well skip the sunsetting DDR3 in favor of a DDR4 platform.

The only problem is that so far, I can only find info on the Core i7 line of Haswell-E, which are kinda outside of my budget. So... does anyone know of / has anyone heard rumors about when(ish) the DDR4-based Core i5 line of processors might launch? Even an educated guess would be welcome...

[Grizzly]

Considering that Intell renews it's lineup every one or two years, i'd say spring next year as my educated guess.

[Fury]

DDR4 is not worth waiting for. For one it will have initial price premium over DDR3, second it will take a while until memory manufacturers and chipsets support highest practical bandwidth of the spec.

Bottom line is that going with first generation of DDR4 gives you no discernible advantages over DDR3 and you'd have to upgrade your motherboard and RAM to take advantage of bandwidth increase in later generations.

Get fast DDR3 now and you'll be golden. By the time you have to upgrade again, I doubt DIMM slots/sticks are a thing anymore. Memory is moving on-die with CPU and GPU.

[TechnoD11]

DDR4 is not worth waiting for. For one it will have initial price premium over DDR3, second it will take a while until memory manufacturers and chipsets support highest practical bandwidth of the spec.

Bottom line is that going with first generation of DDR4 gives you no discernible advantages over DDR3 and you'd have to upgrade your motherboard and RAM to take advantage of bandwidth increase in later generations.

Get fast DDR3 now and you'll be golden. By the time you have to upgrade again, I doubt DIMM slots/sticks are a thing anymore. Memory is moving on-die with CPU and GPU.

+1 to this. I build a lot of computers and can tell you first hand that the DDR4 platform has not matured enough to show any viable speed gains over DDR3.
Also, If you see this today and have the money today, Newegg.com has two very good "shell shockers" on their website - Crucial M500 240GB for $90 and a Radeon R9 290 For $250 after mail in rebate.

In addition, here are the latest two Newegg daily deals emails with still-viable promo codes.
http://promotions.newegg.com/neemail/guerrilla/LP/14-NOV/index-blkkick03.html?utm_medium=Email&nm_mc=EMC-GD110314&cm_mmc=EMC-GD110314-_-index-_-Header-_-ClickHere&et_cid=12622&et_rid=9029183&et_p1=

http://promotions.newegg.com/NEemail/Oct-0-2014/FrankensteinFriday-31/index-landing.html?nm_mc=EMC-IGNEFL103114&cm_mmc=EMC-IGNEFL103114-_-EMC-103114-Index-_-E0-_-PromoWord&et_cid=12552&et_rid=9029183&et_p1=

The second link has a very good PSU deal (750 watt gold rated for $60) and some other great stuff.

Good luck, PM me if you want help / other deals
TechnoD11

[CP5670]

An i5 Haswell-E will probably come out eventually, but the main reason to get a Haswell-E is to have more than 4 cores. As the others said, DDR4 gives very little improvement over DDR3 except for lower power usage, and costs far more. The X99 boards also cost around double what the Z97 ones do.

[Sandwich]

Hmm... very interesting input - thanks, guys. I kinda do want to be convinced that sticking with DDR3-based platforms is still the way to go for the next few months, but I think I'm being so wary about the idea because it's closer to its end-of-life. If I get a current platform with DDR3, won't that limit my options in a few years when I need to swap out something due to HW failures or whatnot?

TechnoD11, thanks for the links. I live in Israel, so generally speaking, NewEgg's not an option for me. However, my dad's actually travelling in the US right now, and I had seen that M500 SSD deal through other avenues earlier today, so I went for it already. Had to go via Amazon instead of NewEgg since the latter had already run out of stock by the time I got to it, but the deal was the same.

[pecenipicek]

Hmm... very interesting input - thanks, guys. I kinda do want to be convinced that sticking with DDR3-based platforms is still the way to go for the next few months, but I think I'm being so wary about the idea because it's closer to its end-of-life. If I get a current platform with DDR3, won't that limit my options in a few years when I need to swap out something due to HW failures or whatnot?

i know its completely anecdotal, but ddr2 became a ***** to get in croatia only about 2-3 years ago, so you should be good there for a while.

[Grizzly]

Hmm... very interesting input - thanks, guys. I kinda do want to be convinced that sticking with DDR3-based platforms is still the way to go for the next few months, but I think I'm being so wary about the idea because it's closer to its end-of-life. If I get a current platform with DDR3, won't that limit my options in a few years when I need to swap out something due to HW failures or whatnot?

The thing with Intell is that they refurbish the CPU sockets every few years - if your mobo goes down, you end up replacing all those components anyway.
That being said, There's DDR2 compatible mobo's being released even today. My PC uses one.

As an aside, I found that when it comes to upgrading PCs, it's never a good idea to "wait untill something better comes out". Something better will always come out, and the price/performance gains really aren't worth waiting for if you spent months aganozing over how your current PC can't handle games anymore

[Spicious]

If you want DDR4 now, you're going to have to pay the premium for Haswell E - historically the E versions have been i7 only and priced accordingly (http://ark.intel.com/products/codename/63378/Sandy-Bridge-E, http://ark.intel.com/products/codename/67456/Ivy-Bridge-E, http://ark.intel.com/products/codename/79427/Haswell-E). The earliest you'll be able to get DDR4 support on a budget is Skylake, which is probably 9-12 months away and rumoured to support both DDR3 and DDR4. It'll be using a new "socket" too.

[Fury]

If I get a current platform with DDR3, won't that limit my options in a few years when I need to swap out something due to HW failures or whatnot?

By the time component availability becomes an issue, it's high time to do proper upgrade. I suspect you'd be more or less in the same boat even if you decide to go with DDR4, and by the time DDR4 is generally available, there is something else juicy coming "soon".

[Sandwich]

If you want DDR4 now, you're going to have to pay the premium for Haswell E - historically the E versions have been i7 only and priced accordingly (http://ark.intel.com/products/codename/63378/Sandy-Bridge-E, http://ark.intel.com/products/codename/67456/Ivy-Bridge-E, http://ark.intel.com/products/codename/79427/Haswell-E). The earliest you'll be able to get DDR4 support on a budget is Skylake, which is probably 9-12 months away and rumoured to support both DDR3 and DDR4. It'll be using a new "socket" too.

Ah! That's exactly the kind of info I needed to hear I think. Helps to know that the mainstream platform change is still so far off, and may even work with DDR3 for a while.

Also, I knew about how it's never worth waiting to upgrade until the next best thing comes out, although I still believe that complete platform switches might be an exception to that under the right circumstances.

I guess I've made up my mind thanks to all you guys' input. I'll most likely be aiming to get a current Core i5 - probably either the 4460 or 4690 - although the raw mhz bump of the Core i7-4790 is also tempting... thoughts? In addition to gaming, my workload is comprised of a lot of heavy multitasking - I have two 24" monitors and really could use a third, and I usually have 20+ Chrome tabs open, along with Sublime Text 2 (text editor), Prepros (a SASS compiler), GoodSync (automated FTP sync), and various smaller utilities. Into that mix I occasionally need to open Photoshop, RIOT (image optimizer), WinSCP, Firefox, Internet Exploder, etc. My 4Gb of RAM is almost constantly maxed out, and I seriously have doubts if 8Gb would be enough, so I'm generally planning on getting 16Gb.

Anyway, all that to say that I need both raw horsepower (for gaming and that SASS preprocessing) and parallel processing all those apps vying for CPU time. I don't plan on overclocking at all. Thus the debate between the aforementioned CPUs.

Suggestions?

[The E]

I think your plan is sound; an i5 sounds perfectly sufficient for that kind of workload. I do hope you're either planning to or are already using an SSD, those things will speed up your system far more noticeably than a couple extra MHz on the CPU.

[Grizzly]

i7's main advantage lies in it's hyperthreading which is very usefull if you use programs that can use 8 cores.

In those cases an AMD processor can net you similar performance gains for the smae price as an i5, but your single thread performance suffers.

Or you can indeed spend it on an i7 but that could mean that you spend a lot of extra money for a feature that you hardly use. I know of only two games that actually use 8cores or hyperthreading: Rome 2 total war and Battlefield 4, even though 8 cores have been around since 2011...

Anyway
Just get the i5

[Fury]

Sandwich, it's a solid plan and all those i5's should serve you well. 16GB RAM is also good choice and as many others have recommended, so would be an SSD.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8260/best-ssds-july-2014
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-recommendation-benchmark,3269.html

I would strongly recommend getting a GPU that has 4GB GDDR5, Radeon R9 270X or GeForce GTX 760 would be good choices for budget conscious who still want decent gaming performance. If you have a bit more money to spend, then you really should aim for a GeForce GTX 970 though.

You should also carefully examine what ports are available on each GPU, most GPU's have one DVI-I, one DVI-D, one DisplayPort and one HDMI. If that's sufficient for your needs, then you have plenty to choose from. Otherwise your options become a lot more limited. I recently bought a GTX 970 and went with Gigabyte since Gigabyte has the only model with three DisplayPorts.

[Sandwich]

SSD - yes, I've had a Samsung 830 Series 120Gb SSD for nearly three years now. It's faster than my system can handle (SATA speed). I've also had it partitioned into 80Gb and 40Gb partitions for dual-booting my "Work" and "Gaming" Windows, respectively. Both partitions have less than 10Gb free though, which is why I jumped on the chance to get another, larger SSD as I mentioned a few posts up.

i7's main advantage lies in it's hyperthreading which is very usefull if you use programs that can use 8 cores.

In those cases an AMD processor can net you similar performance gains for the smae price as an i5, but your single thread performance suffers.

Or you can indeed spend it on an i7 but that could mean that you spend a lot of extra money for a feature that you hardly use. I know of only two games that actually use 8cores or hyperthreading: Rome 2 total war and Battlefield 4, even though 8 cores have been around since 2011...

Anyway
Just get the i5

I'm more likely going to get more use out of multiple cores/threads due to multitasking rather than through a highly multithreaded app, so when push comes to shove, 4 cores/4 threads is probably going to be just as effective as 4 cores/8 threads. The only reason I could see to go for an i7 would be the higher clock speed, but practically, I don't think it makes enough of a difference.

Sandwich, it's a solid plan and all those i5's should serve you well. 16GB RAM is also good choice and as many others have recommended, so would be an SSD.

I would strongly recommend getting a GPU that has 4GB GDDR5, Radeon R9 270X or GeForce GTX 760 would be good choices for budget conscious who still want decent gaming performance. If you have a bit more money to spend, then you really should aim for a GeForce GTX 970 though.

You should also carefully examine what ports are available on each GPU, most GPU's have one DVI-I, one DVI-D, one DisplayPort and one HDMI. If that's sufficient for your needs, then you have plenty to choose from. Otherwise your options become a lot more limited. I recently bought a GTX 970 and went with Gigabyte since Gigabyte has the only model with three DisplayPorts.

Until about a year ago, I was still running a GeForce 8800 GTX. It finally gave up the ghost though (in all fairness, I did let butter drip all over it like 6 years ago...), so I replaced it with a GeForce GTX 660 Ti. It's "only" got 2Gb GDDR5, but like my SSD, I'm pretty sure my Core 2 Duo and/or motherboard have been preventing it from performing at full speed. Anyway, I'm not planning to upgrade that anytime soon, especially since for whatever reason, 3D monitors haven't really taken off here at all - they're simply not available. Ah well.

One thing that occurred to me today though is power... my PSU is a Thermaltake Litepower 600W, and I honestly have no idea if that will be sufficient for my upcoming upgrade. From what I can tell, the TDP of my E6600 is 65W, and the potential Core i5 processors are around 84-88W. I suspect that by itself will be fine, but what about the other system components - motherboard and RAM? Do those somehow consume massive amounts of power?

[CP5670]

Hyperthreading is an odd animal. It actually reduces performance a bit in some single-threaded programs, but makes a big difference (30-40%) in some specialized computational software I've written. It would be worth it for programs like Photoshop, but not necessarily just general multitasking. I have a lot of stuff open all the time too, but only one or two programs are using the CPU at a given time.

You should also carefully examine what ports are available on each GPU, most GPU's have one DVI-I, one DVI-D, one DisplayPort and one HDMI. If that's sufficient for your needs, then you have plenty to choose from. Otherwise your options become a lot more limited. I recently bought a GTX 970 and went with Gigabyte since Gigabyte has the only model with three DisplayPorts.

I got a 980 for partly this reason as well, but the DP support on these cards is wonky with the current drivers. There are many people having DP-related issues, especially with waking from sleep. It works for me but only if I don't turn off my monitor while it's on sleep.

[Phantom Hoover]

My (ill-informed) impression is that there are so many badly-coded, performance-intensive applications, especially in gaming, that single-core speed is actually a pretty significant bound in day-to-day use.

[deathspeed]

The GPU is usually the single largest consumer of power.  This article on Anandtech about power supplies is a bit dated, but the principles still hold true.

[Fury]

I got a 980 for partly this reason as well, but the DP support on these cards is wonky with the current drivers. There are many people having DP-related issues, especially with waking from sleep. It works for me but only if I don't turn off my monitor while it's on sleep.

Sadly this is true. Whenever I use DP, Windows would use standard VGA res on cold boot, taking its sweet time to detect native res. After warm boot (restart) I could no longer get signal to monitors. I can't believe NVIDIA QA would miss these DP related issues, but they did.

Have to use DVI until these issues are sorted.

[deathspeed]

I didn't even think about my PC issues with waking from sleep possibly being driver related.  I just thought something had gotten corrupted in Windows itself, since it used to work fine.