Originally Posted by
Kagthul
If he's going with an i5 now, then there ARE going to be clear upgrades for his socket - he could find performance lacking in some area (maybe he wants to heavily multitask, stream at 1080p, edit video, whatever) - he'd want to add an i7.
In socket 1151, which has about another 2 1/2 years of life at a minimum (provided Intel can stick to their usual timing on the Tick/Tock cycle, which theyve already warned investors theyll be unlikely to do - Cannonlake is apparently going to run at least six months late) - probably more like 3 1/2, he can easily upgrade to whatever i7s are available (Skylake or Cannonlake as the case may be).
In that Haswell/1150 setup... he's pooched. Socket 1150 i7s are already out of production. In a year or two if he decides he needs more oomph for whatever reason - get ready to pay MORE than Skylake/Cannonlake chip, and maybe not be able to find one new at all.
And there's the added benefit of DDR4 RAM (unlike Haswell/Broadwell and earlier, Skylake is showing MUCH better scaling with RAM speed), and newer motherboard technologies (USB 3.1, M.2 support, better NIC, VRMs, more PCIe lanes on the chipset AND the CPUs).
For the extra ~45$, its a no-brainer.
And yeah... i mean, i'm generally an nVidia fanboy, but a GTX 970 is not a good option right now. When it launched, it dominated the price/performance bracket by a clear mile and then some...
these days AMD has compelling offerings at that price point (vanillla R9390) that are better, and for just a little more (way less than the cost jump to a vanilla GTX 980) the R9390X which is comparable to said GTX 980 but about 90-120$ cheaper.
nVidia really only has the crown at the high and low ends right now, with AMD rather easily holding midrange firmly in their grasp (R9380, 380X, 390 and 390X all are better price/performance than their nVidia counterparts). If you aren't buying a GTX 950 (which is kicking the snot out of AMDs low end) or a GTX 980Ti... AMD is where the dollar value is.