I mainly play games, browse and at times do a bit of video editing. What i currently have: i7 Xeon 5670 CPU (replaced an i7 920), Asus P6T Deluxe motherboard, 8gb of 1600mhz ram, 512gb Samsung 840 Pro SSD, and a GTX 970 in an Antec 1200 case with a Corsair 750w PSU. I was wondering if the CPU is going to bottleneck any games, or if i should do a simple swap of the motherboard and CPU to z97 and keep the rest to keep cost down. I did consider x99 but i feel it's a little expensive at the moment. Or if Skylake is expected to bring a large performance boost i could wait for that? But it seems the K variants won't be due until at least a year from now. Basically if what i have is good enough, or not limiting performance of games much compared to newer CPU's then i can wait. But if the wait is a bit pointless for the % increase over what's out now then i could buy a z97 board and CPU now.
I would say keep it until Skylake and OC it a bit.. Found this with quick google http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Xeon-X5670-vs-Intel-Core-i7-4770K Single threaded performance is a bit low and newer games might lag behind a bit but nothing really serious.
I'm on a W3680 (980X). Still more than enough for games at 4 GHz. 12 threads are still faster than haswell 8 threads. Runs nicely at 1.2 V.
I would wait. OT: How do you have 8GB of RAM in a tri-channel board? Are you running in dual channel?
Dual channel, my 3gb triple kit was getting old and was too little, and was faulty.. Triple channel kit prices were quite a bit higher in price when i checked not long back and not as easy to find, so i just bought a dual channel 8gb kit instead.
I would wait because you have a 6core 12 thread cpu even though it it is based off of the i7 980 or 980x.
Games which were carelessly ported like watch dogs will be better but I'd advice you to wait unless a game you really love isn't running satisfactorily or many games are dropping fps due to a cpu bottleneck. The games I'm playing on my 920 are running fine so I'm waiting for Skylake.
Any new info on when Skylake-k is due or is it likely to be late 2015 still? Are we expecting a 10% performance boost or more with it?
Who the heck knows. Only testing later in 2015 will reveal the performance of this chip.On paper new chips are stronger than others.
Your guess is as good as mine. Even if it is only 10-15% faster than a Haswell/Broadwell chip, you will gain a lot more than that over your current CPU and it might even be needed at that time.
I would say to keep what you have as well. The minimal upgrade path for you in my opinion would be a 5820K. Instead, I would pick up 2 more 8GB kits and get that triple channel ram working for you. (24GB of ram would be great too.)
Stick with what you have and wait. I just bought a second hand Xeon x5650 to tide me over until skylake. Next to no bottleneck with my 920 @4ghz and 780ti, should be none with the Xeon if I can get it to 4.2ghz
1st there will be Broadwell-E @ X99, yeah probably some time mid 2015.. Then intel milks that to the max and only after that we will see Skylake-E with new chipset, probably X179. Normal Skylake will have Z170 chipset.
Pick up another 4gb stick. Sb is a tad faster in dual than x58 tri channell at the same ram speed. You eould probably have some increased performance. I would keep what you have for now cpu wise.