ivy bridge now, or wait for haswell?

[firewist]

I was wondering if i should wait for a haswell CPU to get released around april, or to just upgrade my current CPU? (athlon x4 635 @2.9ghz, stock fan)

I know haswell is mainly focussed on power reduction, but haswell still gets about 2x increased onboard GPU (not like i'll use that or anything, just FYI) and about 10% increased speed compared to ivy bridge.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6355/i...l-architecture for reference.

So, my question is, is it actually worth it to wait for the new haswell line or should i get a ivy bridge now?

[Keller]

I see no reason why you would want to upgrade your CPU, except if you play wow / do a lot of CPU-intensive stuff such as photoshop.

Either way, i'd say wait for haswell.

[Nab]

I say wait for haswell as well.

[Deleted]

I think Haswell is just another revision of the SB core again rather than something completely new. Nothing has changed much except the gpu part and 2 years worth of optimizations really.

Long time to wait for a tiny performance difference.

[yurano]

Unless you really can't stand your current CPU, I recommend you wait for Haswell. At the very least, we can hope for solder instead of thermal paste in the IHS.

Plus, new chipset means new stuff, maybe utilization of faster RAM. Sandy to Ivy let us use 1600 instead of 1333. Maybe we'll move up a rank to 1866 RAM.

[Deleted]

what do you play allot is better to go by instead of just waiting.
once you try sandy/ivy you will forget amd cpu's excisted in the first place (for gaming that is ofc)

[Faithh]

I would say Id wait. Intel is going to release Haswell within a few months for sure.

Haswell is not only focused on Power reduction btw.

With every new chipset they improve the Memory controller and trying to make it smarter. Nowadays the memory controller and pciexpress controller are in the CPU, not on the MB anymore. With every new architecture Intel is trying to implent the controllers in their CPU, this time we are getting the voltage controller in the CPU and an additional new function a SOC.

IB was just a 22nm version of SB with trigate transistors the tick actually. The tock is a new architecture (in this case 22nm) with a lot of improvements. They're adding 2 more execution units btw with haswell for big improvements.

To see the performance improvements on the cores -> http://uk.hardware.info/reviews/3142...powerful-cores

Very interesting architecture but sucks that they don't give us an octacore for the price of 300eur :<

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

I would say Id wait. Intel is going to release Haswell within a few months for sure.

May-June 2013 is what most sources seem to believe.

Very interesting architecture but sucks that they don't give us an octacore for the price of 300eur :<

There will probably be xeon type octacores on Haswell (so probably multiplier locked on the "enthusiast/flagship" socket like with the 2011 Xeons.

[Deleted]

I went from first generation i5 (730 i think) to my SB i5 and the performance difference is noticeable in games. It does make a difference in terms of how much clutter you can have on the screen at 1440p and how well games play. If you have the money spare and can sell your old chip then go for it is my advice

[Powerninja]

I think Haswell is just another revision of the SB core again rather than something completely new. Nothing has changed much except the gpu part and 2 years worth of optimizations really.

Long time to wait for a tiny performance difference.

Haswell is basically catch up time for AMD, since it seems intel are aware of how badly they beaten them. As far as I know CPU power in gaming is far under utilized, and way too much focus is being put on GPUs to the point where they'll even try to make GPUs do physics even though there is plenty of CPU power waiting to be used. It's like devs are trying to make everything run off the GPU.

[Milkshake86]

Haswell is basically catch up time for AMD, since it seems intel are aware of how badly they beaten them. As far as I know CPU power in gaming is far under utilized, and way too much focus is being put on GPUs to the point where they'll even try to make GPUs do physics even though there is plenty of CPU power waiting to be used. It's like devs are trying to make everything run off the GPU.

How badly they beat them at what? Performance? Yea remember the home market is NOTHING, opteron server cpu's have seen no falling back in shipping intel only has a home/workstation based performance edge not total domination.

[firewist]

Running physics on the GPU is typically significantly faster than running physics on the CPU. That's why they run the PhysX on the GPU.

[Xuvial]

Rumors go that Haswell is ~10% ahead of Ivy Bridge.

So if we're talking gaming builds, buy an i5 3570K + Z77 mobo now and call it a day. You're set with a highly overclockable quad-core gaming beast and PCIe 3.0 which will serve for multiple generations of graphics cards from now.