Upgrade choice

[Umbaalo]

Well, it is actually 12 cores with HT

I'm happy with the performance, just wished I could have waited and saved a few hundred in cash. Regardless, ivy bridge is going to put a lot of chips to shame in the next year.

[Kekkerer]

Indeed, I would wait for a DDR3 & 6+ core Ivy Bridge as well but if you're looking to upgrade now I wouldn't go down to DDR2.

Parallisation: CPUs are optimized to run a single thread per core therefore they have a lot of cache and are able to perform complex processes such as solving partial differential equations. Wow in essence is a single thread process, yes i know they've patched it so that it can split into multiple threads however the main reason you're seeing performance increases is because load has been taken off your cpu cache not because your cpu was running out of clock cycles. (this is a guess because there seems to be no fps difference between running wow on ultra on 1 core as opposed to deafult settings, i've got a 990x that has 12MB of cache in comparison to 8MB on the 2600k.) Wow is not truly a parallel process and you are also wasting resource on communication when using multiple cores.

Umbaalo, you are looking at benchmarks that do not represent what multiboxing is in reality, be very happy with your 980x.

[Sam DeathWalker]

HT can maybe get you 30percent more CPU speed under ideal conditions. Its far from clear if multiboxing will take advantage of this but Fenril tests seem to say that it will. Multiboxing is a very nich application though and most benchmarks are not going to tell us how we will do. Best to let someone else buy something and report here as to how well it is for multiboxing (lol).

It would appear on its face though that if you have 6 real cores and are 5 boxing on that computer and you can assign 2 cores to your main and 1 core to each alt that you should be doing well, but that is just speculation. Not sure if running an application on a real core and a virtual core is going to help at all.

I would not consider DDR2 at this point prices are falling on DDR3 and are dirt cheap ($10 a G with 4G chips). And DDR2 will go up in price as more manufacturing facilities move from making DDR2 to DDR3.


The new chip sets will be better but if you only use one video card nothing earth shaking.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4318/i...r-point-ssds/2

[Noids]

What makes you say that 1155 is not as powerful as X58? I'm also curious as to what benefits more PCIe lanes
and quad channel memory will provide to people over what we currently have. Real world benefits not the idea
that more is better.

Yeah poor choice of words with the sandy bridge/X58 comparison. The point I was trying to make was that the various Sandy Bridge chipsets offer no significant advantages over X58 other than being able to utilise the new generation CPUs which are definitely superior.

With regards to the potential (who actually knows until we can test the gear) benefits of the sandy bridge e chip/platforms, I would suggest they may be similar to the benefits seen upgrading from the OPs current system to a 2600k.

I am not generally one to recommend waiting for new technology before upgrading but in the OPs case he has what is a pretty amazing system to start with. The upgrades he is considering are probably only slightly more than side grades and I think in this particular case it would be better to wait another 6 months for a new generation of hardware before investing in it.

Saying that if you absolutely want to upgrade now, knyte, definitely go sandy bridge as I mentioned initially and seems to be the general consensus of this thread. On a sidenote, I have absolutely no idea how talk of DDR2 memory got started considering none of the platforms we are discussing support it...

[Knytestorme]

Thanks for the replies all, some good points made that echoed my own feelings as I thought more about the question.

I think that the upgrade is just a case of wanting to spend money and having the newest toys but it is effectively a side-grade at the moment from what I have...hell, even a single 580 is the same benches as the 460sli according to Anand, though I think the 3Gb framebuffer will give a bigger impact then they test for in the case of boxing.

Going to a Z68 chipset was enticing as Ivy Bridge will slot in to the mobo when released but do I really want to spend the time and money now for a 6-9 month stop-gap?

I think unless a really overpowering argument comes out I will likely just replace the 460's with a 580 and maybe switch the 60Gb SSD for a 120Gb SATA 3 SSD and call it a day until after Ivy comes out.....unless I wilt and go with 580 SLI for BF3, Rage, Skyrim, etc

[MiRai]

I am not generally one to recommend waiting for new technology before upgrading but in the OPs case he has what is a pretty amazing system to start with. The upgrades he is considering are probably only slightly more than side grades and I think in this particular case it would be better to wait another 6 months for a new generation of hardware before investing in it.

Exactly. If you wait for Ivy Bridge... then Haswell will be right around the corner. I normally recommend going
with an upgrade every other generation of CPU.

Going to a Z68 chipset was enticing as Ivy Bridge will slot in to the mobo when released but do I really want to spend the time and money now for a 6-9 month stop-gap?

Unless the Ivy Bridge CPUs for the 1155 chipset prove to be beasts, I'm sticking with this 2600K until a dual
CPU LGA2011 motherboard is released.

I think unless a really overpowering argument comes out I will likely just replace the 460's with a 580 and maybe switch the 60Gb SSD for a 120Gb SATA 3 SSD and call it a day until after Ivy comes out.....unless I wilt and go with 580 SLI for BF3, Rage, Skyrim, etc

That sounds like a good plan and then start an Ivy Bridge fund now in time for an extra sexy upgrade next
year. I have been toying with the idea of picking up another one of these 3GB cards for SLI testing. We'll see
what the next few weeks bring.