Should I wait till Haswell's launch to build my next Gaming PC?

[sharpnova]

I'm sporting an i7-950 with a 470 GTX and 6 gigs of RAM.

In short I'm sporting shit. I had to run Tomb Raider on High, Crysis 3 on Medium. And for me that's unacceptable. When I have to forego an awesome feature like tessellation, I know I'm behind the hardware curve.

I'm looking to build a new computer. Haven't decided if I want to go for a 690 or a Titan yet. I know that SLI ready applications are going to get more out of the 690 than the Titan, but non-SLI will get more out of the Titan. I need to research more.

My main question is, should I wait for the Haswell's to launch before building this PC?

When I built my current computer, the 2600K's came out right after I bought the i7-950. That was not a good feeling.

But I'm looking at benchmarks of Haswells (preliminary obviously) and they only seem to be hitting #'s in the 5-10% range as far as performance increase over the Ivy's.

If I built my computer now, I'd get the 3930K which is an awesome pricepoint for me. When Haswell's launch can I expect the 3930K to plummet in price? Or something much better to come out for not too much more?

[n0cturnal]

The release of Haswell will have no impact on 3930K, you would have to wait for Intel to release Ivy Bridge-E for that which is said to be at Q4.

What is holding you back right now is your GPU, it is pretty old and fairly weak, why don't you start by replacing that and see if you feel like you need more performance after that?

[sharpnova]

This is also something I'm considering.

The issue is that.. money isn't really a limiting factor. But at the same time I like to absolutely maximize bang for buck and build lifespans.. because I'm cheap like that.

But it wasn't just the potential price reduction of current models that was motivating my concern. It was the chance of there being a Haswell offering that was better than the 3930k performance wise and an almost-as-good-if-not-better price/performance point.

[Starbrand]

i have an i5-650. as soon as i got a gtx 660 ti, i was completely fine and running nearly everything on ultra.

so i think just upgrade the GPU and wait. haswell has some issues still, and im starting to think to wait just to see if i7-3770k goes on sale. haswells new socket, LGA1150, will take time for major brands to make good rated mobo's too i assume. think of it this way, intel's cpu trend comes and goes just like apple products. you sort of have to go with what you want at the moment, or else you're gonna keep waiting for the next. Check this out:

Haswell (late 2013) ---> Broadwell (2014) ---> Skylake (2015) ---> Skymont (2019)

if you check my sig, im sorta in the same boat as you. i wanna upgrade my mobo/cpu/ram/cooler, but duno when. but been doing small upgrades through the year. So I'm sticking with my suggestion. Upgrade GPU for sure and see if you're satisfied with that or not. I personally am fine waiting and upgrading/collecting when i see sales its more fun for me that way.

[glo]

When Haswell releases (soon), the 3930k will be out performed in gaming by a $200~ i5-4570k, or whatever they decide to call it. Basically, spend $800-900 on x79 now, or wait a couple months and spend $350 for better performance.

Same goes for Titan. While an awesome card, it only performs 20%~ better than the 680 or 7970. Come Q4 this year, it will be bested by $450~ cards.

What am I getting at you ask? Buy an i5-3570k and a 7970(Ghz) now, and the next gen equivalents when they release. All for the same price as you would pay for x79 and Titan.

[n0cturnal]

This is also something I'm considering.

The issue is that.. money isn't really a limiting factor. But at the same time I like to absolutely maximize bang for buck and build lifespans.. because I'm cheap like that.

But it wasn't just the potential price reduction of current models that was motivating my concern. It was the chance of there being a Haswell offering that was better than the 3930k performance wise and an almost-as-good-if-not-better price/performance point.

Well the 3930k is a hexacore and this far there is no info about Haswell-E which should be a long way to go.

You are comparing different segments of the market right now. What is being released with Haswell are the socket 1150 CPUs which are home computer/gaming CPUs. 3930K is a workstation/enthusiast CPU and what is coming next in that segment is Ivy Bridge-E at the end of this year.

---------- Post added 2013-03-25 at 04:46 PM ----------

When Haswell releases (soon), the 3930k will be out performed in gaming by a $200~ i5-4570k, or whatever they decide to call it. Basically, spend $800-900 on x79 now, or wait a couple months and spend $350 for better performance.

3930k is already outperformed slightly in single core performance by 3570k, 4670k will be another step up from that.

[vesseblah]

What am I getting at you ask? Buy an i5-3570k and a 7970(Ghz) now, and the next gen equivalents when they release. All for the same price as you would pay for x79 and Titan.

Better not buy i5-3570k now, rather wait for the Haswell release, or even Haswell-E if one comes up. R7970Ghz is safe purchase though.

[sharpnova]

Had no clue about the performance differences between 3570 and 3930 when it came to gaming. Looks like even if I did build a new rig now, it would make more sense to get a 3570.

I probably put too much stock in Passmark's benchmarks which took 3570 completely off my radar.

In the meantime I suppose I can put in a 5xx or 6xx to tide me over.

[Tahapenes]

Thing to keep in mind, Haswell, as of right now, is only showing about a 7% increase over Ivy Bridge processors of the same configuration (so i5 4670k is about 7% faster than i5 3570k). Your best bet is just to upgrade the video as others have said and wait for Haswell to get a little be more cooking done (typically, processors don't really hit their true maturity until around 3 to 4 months after they launch when the chip maker gets a chance to work out the kinks in the processor and release a new revision).

[googz]

Thing to keep in mind, Haswell, as of right now, is only showing about a 7% increase over Ivy Bridge processors of the same configuration (so i5 4670k is about 7% faster than i5 3570k). Your best bet is just to upgrade the video as others have said and wait for Haswell to get a little be more cooking done (typically, processors don't really hit their true maturity until around 3 to 4 months after they launch when the chip maker gets a chance to work out the kinks in the processor and release a new revision).

I've yet to see any OC testing. I'm very interested in seeing how HW will do compared to IB.

[vesseblah]

I probably put too much stock in Passmark's benchmarks which took 3570 completely off my radar.

PissMark does not measure gaming performance in any shape or form. 90% of that benchmark comes from office programs running multithreaded math, only very few parts of it are even remotely game-like.

Thing to keep in mind, Haswell, as of right now, is only showing about a 7% increase over Ivy Bridge processors of the same configuration (so i5 4670k is about 7% faster than i5 3570k). Your best bet is just to upgrade the video as others have said and wait for Haswell to get a little be more cooking done (typically, processors don't really hit their true maturity until around 3 to 4 months after they launch when the chip maker gets a chance to work out the kinks in the processor and release a new revision).

Most important thing with Haswell is that it comes with new CPU socket so if you get i5 now you're fucked with zero upgrade options, but if you wait 2 months you get new socket that will be compatible with the new stuff for a while.

[Faithh]

HW doesn't seem to be that interesting to me really unless I can get clocks of 6GHz with very low voltages. Besides performance I don't really trust first revision boards and first revision steppings, so if I'll be upgrading I rather wait a halfyear to get confirmation there aren't issues. Intel made so many mistakes with their chipsets and flicked me once with a Q9550 C1 with cache issues. That cpu was literally underperforming like 52% in C11.5 than a normal Q9550 should do.

[sharpnova]

I ordered five Titans for 5x SLI to hold me over until HW's launch. When they launch I'll get my hands on whatever makes sense with the intention of having the socket needed to grab the next iteration of HW's 4-6 months down the line.

[googz]

I ordered five Titans for 5x SLI to hold me over until HW's launch. When they launch I'll get my hands on whatever makes sense with the intention of having the socket needed to grab the next iteration of HW's 4-6 months down the line.

Curious as to what MoBo you plan on using to accomplish this task

[sharpnova]

Sorry I left out the part where there are five PC's in question. Mine which has the 470, three others that have 1xTitan each already and one that has dual Titans. So I'm buying two for me, and three so the three with singles can go sli.

[Faithh]

5x SLI won't really work no.

[sharpnova]

5x SLI won't really work no.

?

I assure you five computers each running an SLI bridge between two video cards will work just fine.

[Deleted]

I've yet to see any OC testing. I'm very interested in seeing how HW will do compared to IB.

There's a few topics on overclock.net that are saying one of the latest batches of 3570K's are overclocking like a beast. I haven't read the whole thing, but one would almost assume that if it's the case... Intel is trying some stuff out in preparation for the Haswell's to release. If it's any indication of how the new ones will OC, we might be in for a treat.

(This coming from a guy that bought a 3570K this month. I need to get a proper mobo before I can make any actual statements, but I'm on a fairly stable 4.5GHz now with 1.088v peaks.)

[Majesticii]

Tomb Raider and Crysis 3 both heavily rely on your graphics card. Try swapping that first, the i7-950 is not "shit".

[flarecde]

I have the same question, but with an i7-930 and a 5870 instead (nothing is overclocked, I've had bad experiences with that). Rather than posting a duplicate thread hopefully the OP won't mind if I ask here. Performance is barely tolerable, newer games are starting to dip below my personal limit of 30 FPS and I would like to actually turn on shadows some day. I can only afford to upgrade once every couple of years though, so I need the biggest bang for my buck.