Ivy Bridge to Coffee Lake

[Steelfox]

Hello, looking to upgrade my 2013 ivy bridge build to coffee lake, basically in need of a new motherboard/cpu/ram, for graphics i have a gtx 980 which I'm thinking of keeping at least until the next generation of cards make an appearance. I used to overclock my i5-3570k to 4.9ghz but didnt see that much in performance gains so I'm not sure I'd like to go with an unlocked processor this time. I play wow mainly and will be playing the next battlefield when it drops later this year but i'm mostly concerned about wow performance for at least the next 2 expansions. I'm thinking 12gigs of ddr4 but it seems incredibly expensive compared to the old ddr3 stuff. Would love some input, specifically in the processor area, I would prefer to stay with intel.

[Miyagie]

I would wait for icelake.

[Illuman]

I would wait for icelake.

thats 1q 2019, coffee lake is a decent jump from ivy bridge, I'd make the move. In fact, I did.

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Hello, looking to upgrade my 2013 ivy bridge build to coffee lake, basically in need of a new motherboard/cpu/ram, for graphics i have a gtx 980 which I'm thinking of keeping at least until the next generation of cards make an appearance. I used to overclock my i5-3570k to 4.9ghz but didnt see that much in performance gains so I'm not sure I'd like to go with an unlocked processor this time. I play wow mainly and will be playing the next battlefield when it drops later this year but i'm mostly concerned about wow performance for at least the next 2 expansions. I'm thinking 12gigs of ddr4 but it seems incredibly expensive compared to the old ddr3 stuff. Would love some input, specifically in the processor area, I would prefer to stay with intel.

Most gaming systems are running 16 gigs of DDR4, usually 3000/3200mhz.

The i3 8350k, the i5 8600k, and the i7 8700k just tear through WoW, so you cannot go wrong with either processor.

If you do not want an unlocked processor, the i5 8400 seems to be the sweet spot for gamers, as it will turbo all four cores fairly decent on it's own.

[potis]

Hello, looking to upgrade my 2013 ivy bridge build to coffee lake, basically in need of a new motherboard/cpu/ram, for graphics i have a gtx 980 which I'm thinking of keeping at least until the next generation of cards make an appearance. I used to overclock my i5-3570k to 4.9ghz but didnt see that much in performance gains so I'm not sure I'd like to go with an unlocked processor this time. I play wow mainly and will be playing the next battlefield when it drops later this year but i'm mostly concerned about wow performance for at least the next 2 expansions. I'm thinking 12gigs of ddr4 but it seems incredibly expensive compared to the old ddr3 stuff. Would love some input, specifically in the processor area, I would prefer to stay with intel.

Do not upgrade yet.

Any reason to upgrade anything before Ice Lake from Sandy/Ivy/Haswell is because your motherboard died and you cant find one cheaply around you.

Wait it out till Ice Lake.

[Steelfox]

thats 1q 2019, coffee lake is a decent jump from ivy bridge, I'd make the move. In fact, I did.

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Most gaming systems are running 16 gigs of DDR4, usually 3000/3200mhz.

The i3 8350k, the i5 8600k, and the i7 8700k just tear through WoW, so you cannot go wrong with either processor.

If you do not want an unlocked processor, the i5 8400 seems to be the sweet spot for gamers, as it will turbo all four cores fairly decent on it's own.

After some consideration I'm thinking the i5 8600k or the i5 8400, price difference is about 90 dollars and a bit unsure if it's worth the difference.

Waiting till Ice Lake would be the best I believe but one of my pcie slots and a ram slot have burned out and im thinking its just a matter of time before the whole thing goes so im trying to get a jump on it.

[Illuman]

After some consideration I'm thinking the i5 8600k or the i5 8400, price difference is about 90 dollars and a bit unsure if it's worth the difference.

Waiting till Ice Lake would be the best I believe but one of my pcie slots and a ram slot have burned out and im thinking its just a matter of time before the whole thing goes so im trying to get a jump on it.

Ice lake is a ways away, mainly because Intel released coffee lake early to put out AMD's fire with Ryzen.

If you do not want to overclock, go i5 8400. Personally, the IPC gains from coffee lake vs. the previous generations of intel show with this generation, so being able to hold sturdy clocks at high 4s, to low 5s on coffee lake, makes oc'ing worth it to me.

[Vynny]

Hello, looking to upgrade my 2013 ivy bridge build to coffee lake, basically in need of a new motherboard/cpu/ram, for graphics i have a gtx 980 which I'm thinking of keeping at least until the next generation of cards make an appearance. I used to overclock my i5-3570k to 4.9ghz but didnt see that much in performance gains so I'm not sure I'd like to go with an unlocked processor this time. I play wow mainly and will be playing the next battlefield when it drops later this year but i'm mostly concerned about wow performance for at least the next 2 expansions. I'm thinking 12gigs of ddr4 but it seems incredibly expensive compared to the old ddr3 stuff. Would love some input, specifically in the processor area, I would prefer to stay with intel.

It depends on if you're going with an i5 or an i7. The unlocked i7 is only 16% more than the locked i7, but the unlocked i5 is about 30% more than the locked version. Basically, the unlocked i7 is worth it for the relative value, but if you're more looking at the i5's then I'd suggest getting the locked i7 over the unlocked i5. I know it's a price jump from i5's, but if you're willing to spend 30% more for higher clocks and overclocking then you should seriously consider spending 55% more for similar clocks and hyperthreading. I switched from an i5 3570k to an i7 7700k and I can tell you that hyperthreading makes a huge difference in performance.

As far as RAM goes, if you're stretching your budget a bit as it is then it's easier to add two more sticks of ram later than it is to upgrade a processor or something like that later, so I'd get two sticks of 4gb RAM, put the $80-$100 that you would've put into RAM into your processor to get the locked i7 at least, and then add in two more 4gb sticks later.

[Coldkil]

I made the swap from a Lynnfield to Coffee Lake and i would be lying if i said that the difference isn't there.

However given how you have to buy mobo/cpu/ram at least you're going for a hefty price mostly because RAM is expensive as hell right now. I've bitten the bullet, but currently is not really a good time to build a new pc. As other said, i'd wait for next generations and hopefully smaller component prices.

[Livevil]

Ryzen+ is set to release in april in case you're interested. If not, i'd also advise to wait for icelake.

[Deleted]

Hello, looking to upgrade my 2013 ivy bridge build to coffee lake, basically in need of a new motherboard/cpu/ram, for graphics i have a gtx 980 which I'm thinking of keeping at least until the next generation of cards make an appearance. I used to overclock my i5-3570k to 4.9ghz but didnt see that much in performance gains so I'm not sure I'd like to go with an unlocked processor this time. I play wow mainly and will be playing the next battlefield when it drops later this year but i'm mostly concerned about wow performance for at least the next 2 expansions. I'm thinking 12gigs of ddr4 but it seems incredibly expensive compared to the old ddr3 stuff. Would love some input, specifically in the processor area, I would prefer to stay with intel.

building a coffee-lake system only makes sense if u go with the 8600k or the 8700k processor. the reason for that is, the only chipset available for the coffee-lake CPUs are the z370.
it is expected that ALOT of new hardware will be released within the next 3months. CPUs from AMD, motherboards from Intel and possibly GPUs from Nvidia. it is possible we will get new info on GPUs from AMD aswell.. specificly a polaris refresh.
so if you desperately need a new computer right now, go buy one ofcourse!
but if you dont need one right now, it is recommended to wait and see what happens during march and april

[pansertjald]

building a coffee-lake system only makes sense if u go with the 8600k or the 8700k processor. the reason for that is, the only chipset available for the coffee-lake CPUs are the z370.
it is expected that ALOT of new hardware will be released within the next 3months. CPUs from AMD, motherboards from Intel and possibly GPUs from Nvidia. it is possible we will get new info on GPUs from AMD aswell.. specificly a polaris refresh.
so if you desperately need a new computer right now, go buy one ofcourse!
but if you dont need one right now, it is recommended to wait and see what happens during march and april

There will be no new AMD desktop GFX cards from AMD in 2018, so i don't think we will see any new Nvidia cards before the end of the year. They have no reason to put out new cards, as long as AMD has nothing to compete with.

AMD press release ces 2018

wccftech amd radeon update 7nm vega 2018 navi 2019/

[Deleted]

There will be no new AMD desktop GFX cards from AMD in 2018, so i don't think we will see any new Nvidia cards before the end of the year. They have no reason to put out new cards, as long as AMD has nothing to compete with.

AMD press release ces 2018

wccftech amd radeon update 7nm vega 2018 navi 2019/

those links are specificly about vega and navi... we alrdy know what there is to know about those 2.

[Kagthul]

building a coffee-lake system only makes sense if u go with the 8600k or the 8700k processor. the reason for that is, the only chipset available for the coffee-lake CPUs are the z370.

Actually, getting the i5 8400 with Z370 is also a good idea. You can set the "All-core optimization" option to "on" and it will force all six cores to run at max turbo (4.0Ghz) 24/7 so its a pretty decent "ghetto" OC over the base clock, basically for free.

And it's not like lower-end Z370 boards are exactly massively expensive. You can get a decent ASUS or GB board for ~90 on sale (which is frequently), or even less if you live near a MicroCenter.

That being sai.. coming from Ivy Bridge, you're not going to see a giant IPC gain with Coffee Lake. It's about 8-10%, tops.

Wait for Ice Lake, at the very least. Ivy Bridge (especially if you have an unlocked chip from the Devil's Canyon refresh) is still extremely capable. You could easily get another 2-3 years out of it without it being a bottleneck.

You can still get well over 120fps @ 1440p even in ultra-modern games with an i5 2500K that is overclocked, FFS.

[eastwicksavag3]

Switched from 2012 ivy to 8700k and the difference is huge especially if you sync all cores or OC to 5.0 which almost all of them can do easy with low voltage. Worth it, don't bother waiting another 3-4 months just for prices to be inflated. the 8700k is worth the extra 90 bucks but I've seen them go for 340.

Didn't think the upgrade would be that significant but man it was way more than i expected.

[SLSAMG]

I recently went from a devil's canyon build (4690k) to coffee lake (8700k) a couple days ago, and the difference in performance is staggering. I realize upgrading now wasn't the "ideal time" but unfortunately I couldn't be bothered to wait because my previous system was causing too many problems.

It's rather sad though: it seems 3-4 years is the average life expectancy for computers these days.

[Kagthul]

I recently went from a devil's canyon build (4690k) to coffee lake (8700k) a couple days ago, and the difference in performance is staggering. I realize now wasn't an ideal time to upgrade but unfortunately I couldn't be bothered to wait because my old build was causing too many problems.

I'm going to go with the panacea affect here. (and for the guy above you)

I went from a 4790K @ 4.5 Ghz to an 8600K @ 4.9ghz (i could probably do 5.1, but im getting 4.9 at absurdly low voltages - 1.19v, so im fine with it), and benchmarks before and after show a performance difference that is solely the result of the extra 400mhz. And not all that big - single digit percentages.

The benchmarks on dozens of reputable sites (including GN, whose testing methodology is absurdly detailed) back that up. There just isn't that much performance difference between like chips. Skylake and Kaby Lake were only ~5-7% faster than Ivy Bridge, at identical clocks (as there was no IPC difference between SL and KL) Coffee Lake is only about 5% faster than Kaby Lake, IPC wise.

Unless you're leverage heavily core-dependent workloads, (where going from a four-core, four-thread machine to a six-core, twelve-thread machine would rather obviously produce massive performance gains) i'd suggest you're merely "feeling" the "extra power" because you spent the cash on it, or that there was something else wrong with your old machine causing issues.

The benchmarks just dont show that much difference in single-core performance between Ive Bridge and Coffee Lake, and single-core performance is still the primary determinator of game performance.

It's rather sad though: it seems 3-4 years is the average life expectancy for computers these days.

... Wut? That'd still put it far higher than it was during the majority of the lifetime of personal computing. Prior to the last 8-10 years, Moores Law meant your computer life expectancy WELL below 4 years.

We're still easily at 7+ years right now - with GPU upgrades. People can still get well over 100fps in modern games on Sandy Bridge CPUs paired with modern GPUs. I'm using a 2012 MacBook Pro as my daily driver, and it's not noticably slower than my gaming rig (aforementioned 8600K) for all the tasks i throw at it. The only time i'd see a real performance difference is if i was doing video encoding or something else extremely CPU intensive, and even then, it'd largely be because of the clock speed difference. (The i7-3820QM maxes out at an all-core boost of 3.5Ghz (3.7 single core), significantly slower than my 8600K).

If i could plug a modern GPU into it (which i guess i could, but itd be bottlenecked by only having TB2) it would be still be a perfectly good gaming system.

[SLSAMG]

I'm going to go with the panacea affect here. (and for the guy above you)

I went from a 4790K @ 4.5 Ghz to an 8600K @ 4.9ghz (i could probably do 5.1, but im getting 4.9 at absurdly low voltages - 1.19v, so im fine with it), and benchmarks before and after show a performance difference that is solely the result of the extra 400mhz. And not all that big - single digit percentages.

The benchmarks on dozens of reputable sites (including GN, whose testing methodology is absurdly detailed) back that up. There just isn't that much performance difference between like chips. Skylake and Kaby Lake were only ~5-7% faster than Ivy Bridge, at identical clocks (as there was no IPC difference between SL and KL) Coffee Lake is only about 5% faster than Kaby Lake, IPC wise.

Unless you're leverage heavily core-dependent workloads, (where going from a four-core, four-thread machine to a six-core, twelve-thread machine would rather obviously produce massive performance gains) i'd suggest you're merely "feeling" the "extra power" because you spent the cash on it, or that there was something else wrong with your old machine causing issues.

The benchmarks just dont show that much difference in single-core performance between Ive Bridge and Coffee Lake, and single-core performance is still the primary determinator of game performance.



... Wut? That'd still put it far higher than it was during the majority of the lifetime of personal computing. Prior to the last 8-10 years, Moores Law meant your computer life expectancy WELL below 4 years.

We're still easily at 7+ years right now - with GPU upgrades. People can still get well over 100fps in modern games on Sandy Bridge CPUs paired with modern GPUs. I'm using a 2012 MacBook Pro as my daily driver, and it's not noticably slower than my gaming rig (aforementioned 8600K) for all the tasks i throw at it. The only time i'd see a real performance difference is if i was doing video encoding or something else extremely CPU intensive, and even then, it'd largely be because of the clock speed difference. (The i7-3820QM maxes out at an all-core boost of 3.5Ghz (3.7 single core), significantly slower than my 8600K).

If i could plug a modern GPU into it (which i guess i could, but itd be bottlenecked by only having TB2) it would be still be a perfectly good gaming system.

Nope.

Given that my old computer was clocked at 4.4ghz and now I'm running at 5.1ghz - you better believe I'm seeing significant gains. There's no voodoo going on here, mate. I should note that I was using the 1080ti in my old build as well.

Secondly, I realize it's based purely on my anecdotal experience but over the last 12 years I've had to replace faulty/dead computer components within that 3-4 year mark. It made absolutely no sense to only upgrade the piece of hardware that failed because you'd be bottle-necking somewhere. The fact I can now stream also made it a worthwhile, and justified purchase.

[Deleted]

Actually, getting the i5 8400 with Z370 is also a good idea. You can set the "All-core optimization" option to "on" and it will force all six cores to run at max turbo (4.0Ghz) 24/7 so its a pretty decent "ghetto" OC over the base clock, basically for free.

And it's not like lower-end Z370 boards are exactly massively expensive. You can get a decent ASUS or GB board for ~90 on sale (which is frequently), or even less if you live near a MicroCenter.

That being sai.. coming from Ivy Bridge, you're not going to see a giant IPC gain with Coffee Lake. It's about 8-10%, tops.

Wait for Ice Lake, at the very least. Ivy Bridge (especially if you have an unlocked chip from the Devil's Canyon refresh) is still extremely capable. You could easily get another 2-3 years out of it without it being a bottleneck.

You can still get well over 120fps @ 1440p even in ultra-modern games with an i5 2500K that is overclocked, FFS.

you do realise the 8400 only runs at 2.8ghz during avx workloads yes? and i also believe its not all motherboards that has this optimization option to begin with.
as far as specific ipc numbers versus ivy bridge, i dont know.
but i do know that singlecore performance is upwards of 40% better on coffee lake and if we talk multicore performance it absolutely destroys everything else intel has on the mainstream platform

[Evildeffy]

Please ignore Kagthul's statement of the locked chips working with "Enhanced Multi-Core Performance" option.

It does not, it will turbo @ maximum 3,8GHz assuming no AVX workload.
This has been debunked multiple time by Tech sites/YouTubers.

Unless somehow all the major brands can get away with it from Intel without consequences as they magically made microcode public that would allow non-K SKUs to actually overclock properly, would mean we can easily make our own modified microcodes available soon!



Here's a specific YouTuber who checked it out just to address this as an example.

The 8400 is still good and 3,8GHz is still good as well provided you have a board allowing it, chances are good that cheaper boards will not sustain this budget.
As the Z boards allow for power control and going full tilt 3,8GHz for a long time exceeds the 65W rating which in turn requires Z boards to allow.

Just keep that in mind whilst making decisions instead of blindly assuming it from 1 guy claiming it can whilst the tech world itself says it cannot.

Also as a random sidenote ... it seems not all of you understand what IPC is.

IPC = Instructions Per Cycle

This is a fixed number associated with a certain uArch... Skylake, Kaby Lake and Coffee Lake are all identical IPC.
This means that if clocks are identical ... so will performance be per core.

IPC does NOT mean 4,0GHz vs. 4,7GHz and the latter being stronger (assuming same uArch)... that's Single Thread Performance (STP)

Please use this distinction properly.

There is 0 difference in IPC between Skylake, Kaby Lake and Coffee Lake, only frequency and core count is the major difference.
Single core 4,0GHz on all 3 = Equal Performance.

[Kagthul]

you do realise the 8400 only runs at 2.8ghz during avx workloads yes?

If you forget to take two seconds to change the AVX offset, yeah. Not that this matters for 99.9% of the people considering buying an 8400, as anyone who needs to seriously leverage AVX workloads aren't looking to save cash on budget CPUs. Theyre looking at i7s and i9s.

and i also believe its not all motherboards that has this optimization option to begin with.

They do. Some of them call it something else. Intel's official term is MCE (Multi-Core-Enhancement) but ASUS calls it "all core optimization", for instance. May be called something different, but they all have it, and have for a few generations now.

as far as specific ipc numbers versus ivy bridge, i dont know.

Thankfully there are tons of sites out there with benchmarks where you could educate yourself.

but i do know that singlecore performance is upwards of 40% better on coffee lake

As we just covered.. no it isnt. Coffee Lake has only tiny marginal improvements over Skylake and Kaby Lake (which were identical) - small enough in some cases to be within the margin of error and in most cases less than 5%.

Skylake/KL were only about ~10% faster, clock-for-clock, than Ivy Bridge. So Coffee Lake, absolutely best case scenario, is 15% faster, and in most cases, more like 10%.

and if we talk multicore performance it absolutely destroys everything else intel has on the mainstream platform

Because it has more cores. Dur. But multicore performance isn't exactly critical to game performance past about 3 cores, and no one who needs serious multi-core horsepower is considering an 8400.

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Nope.

Given that my old computer was clocked at 4.4ghz and now I'm running at 5.1ghz - you better believe I'm seeing significant gains. There's no voodoo going on here, mate. I should note that I was using the 1080ti in my old build as well.

Right, but we're talking the difference in clock speeds giving you the boost. Not the architecture itself, which is just not that much faster. Which i said, earlier.

Secondly, I realize it's based purely on my anecdotal experience but over the last 12 years I've had to replace faulty/dead computer components within that 3-4 year mark. It made absolutely no sense to only upgrade the piece of hardware that failed because you'd be bottle-necking somewhere.

Myth. It takes a SERIOUS mismatch in parts to even begin to truly bottleneck. (There are instances where your hardware will "bottleneck" somewhere, of course, but in 99% of those cases, going to newer hardware wouldnt clear this bottleneck up - like WoW's dependence on CPU, for instance. Even the fastest liquid cooled OC'ed CPUs still bottleneck the GPU and always will). Jayz2Cents did a great video on this a while back. He had to go back to like... Quad Core AMD parts from 8 years ago and modern GPU to get bottlenecking.

The fact I can now stream also made it a worthwhile, and justified purchase.

You could stream before. Quicksync is a thing.