I'm going to build a new game machine, but it's been a while so I looked into the SSD route for a primary drive. I'm thinking about the Plextor M.2 M6e and a (hopefully) 390X, once it's out. All the research I did said the 4790 and 5820 were basically a wash - except for PCI lanes, which I don't understand too much about but I know the M.2 takes up some of those lanes. Any recommendations? I play mostly battlefield, but will play the upcoming star wars game and possibly GTA5 etc. Thanks, Howard
Here's the problem, one is a LGA 1150 CPU (4790k), and the other is an LGA 2011-v3 CPU (5820k). The ram, motherboard, and CPU are significantly more expensive once you go the X99 chip-set route (LGA 2011-v3). The X99 chipset does support quad channel memory while the Z97 chipset only supports dual channel. That's a big difference in memory bandwidth. I have the new Z97-A motherboard from ASUS and I am raking in an easy 60+ FPS in GTA 5 with my 4770k and 290x at 1440p. I would personally go with the Z97 since you don't seem to do too much workstation related work. At the end of the day, you have to choose what is better for your budget. www.pcpartpicker.com
I would definitely go with the Z97 Chipset with the i7-4790. As guppysb said, going the X99 route gets expensive quick and I feel that you won't see enough of a framerate increase to warrant the much increased cost.
Ah shoot, I forgot my specs were listed - for a second there, I thought Prefix was a prophet This build is actually for my son, who plays a lot of BF4 and Call of Duty with me. His machine is as follows; AMD Phenom 2 X4 965 Black, with an HD 5870 Eyefinity video card. Thanks, Howard
I wouldn't recommend X99 for any pure gaming purposes. I would recommend the I5 4690K (or Broadwell is just about to be released) and overclock it. Save the money on the rest of the system and spend it on the graphics card! You can build a Z97 I5 system with a Titan X for ~ same price as an X99 with a GTX960 PS. You'll have no issues with PCI lanes on the Haswell. PPS. The Plextor M6e is an old and slow PCIE 2 x2 SSD (PCI SSD speaking) nowadays. Definitely look at getting a newer PCI 2 x4 drive.
I personally would not buy an enthusiast setup like the x58 or x99 again, at least anytime soon. I used to have x58 back in 2009, and my ram started failing in about 2011ish. It was out of warranty and similar ram was not cheap. Also, the Gigabyte x58 board started giving me tons of BSODs a year later. By this point, in 2013ish, it was hard to find replacement x58 motherboards. Some of the 4 year old motherboards cost almost as much as when they first launched in 2008. I think the best analogy is with a car. The Z97 chipset is like a nice luxury car, and the x99 is a new Lamborghini. Replacement parts for the Lamborghini are going to be expensive, and not that common as a luxury car. This is why I have dual Xeon setup at work and Z97 at home
Thanks for the recommendations guys - I think I will stay with the Z97 route and a great heads up by southamptonfc on the X4 version of the PCIe Drive. The only problem is that the Asus boards, which is all I've ever used, only have a X2 port. ASrock has an Extreme6 with a Z97 chipset and a X4 M.2 port and, as far as I can tell, they're the only board that's out there. I've always thought ASrock was a low end board and to stay away from it, but maybe I'll give it a try - I don't know why I have such an obsession for this M.2 port and fast boot times - probably because I've never had an SSD before.
:bang: An i5 4690k in BF4 benchmarks is good enought that the rest of a typical system can do well. CPU usage is high and if you use Battlescreen (full battlefield map on another screen) it exceeds the capability of an i5. I purchased an i5 4690 (May 2014) to run with a R9 290 and it runs fine at high CPU usage but runs smooth most of the time. With a Battlescreen running on a second monitor it maxed out the CPU and was having frequent large frame drops. Tried Mantle drivers (and API selected ingame) and Mozilla for the Battlescreen internet browser but the i5 was still overwealmed. I upgraded to a i7 4790k (currently not overclocked) and it runs at high CPU usage with no overclock dx11 API and Battlescreen in Mozilla at 1280x1080. Highly recommend the 4770(k)/4790(k)/their replacements as a real world minimum to run BF4 as it allows you to run Battlescreen and get the best experience out of BF4. p.s. Hardcore mode/some servers do not allow you to use Battlescreen map (so I don't play on them normally). Mozilla uses less CPU than the other browsers for Battlescreen. dx11 uses more cpu than Mantle giving an lower average but more consistent frame rate. I use my old LCD off the integrated graphics (1280x1080) and a 1920x1080@144hz monitor for my gaming screen. You can use another computer/tablet/good smartphone for Battlescreen but it runs at high lag/low frame rate. Apparently I can not post links yet, but my name in BF4 is PeteBeMe on battlelog.
Honestly I don't think you can go wrong with either platform. Its not exactly accurate to say that the Haswell-E / LGA2011-3 platform 5820K build would be more expensive then a 4790K build. Its perfectly conceivable to build similarly priced systems so its not necessarily true that there would be a significant price difference. It is likely that an 4790K system would be cheaper through. Especially so since DDR3 prices are at a relative low (lowest they have been in 26 months or so I hear). So an 8GB DDR3 1600 DIMM might cost about ~$55 or so and a DDR4 8GB 2400 might cost about ~$77. Still as manufacturers transition their hardware for DDR4 fabrication and as more motherboards start to use DDR4, DDR3 prices will start to go up again. Although if you normalize the RAM to something like 2400 rather then a differential between DD3 1600 and DDR4 2400 then the price difference could get even smaller. BTW, for what its worth, Asus seems to charge a bit more for their motherboards then many other manufacturers. I like Asus boards too. My newest boards are the X99-A and Z97-E. Z97 is mainstream for a reason though and most people will be perfectly well served with it. But just to illustrate my point. I bought my Core i7 5820K from Microcenter for about ~$299. The lowest price X99 motherboard I've seen was an ASRock Extreme4 for ~$160. The Core i7 4790K at Microcenter is ~$279. One of the more expensive Z97 motherboards is the Asus Maximus VII Formula and Asus Rampage V Extreme (USB 3.1) at about ~$350 and ~$540 respectively (depending on where you go). So an expensive LGA1150 motherboard can definitely offset the difference in price for moderate DDR4 and the ~$20 difference in price with respect to the 5820K vs 4790K.
Update: Ok, so I did get the 4790 and the AS Rock Extreme6 along with a Samsung SM951 M.2 drive. Everything went well and even the M.2 Drive loaded up with Windows 7 with only a few hiccups - 1 being that AS Rock doesn't provide any rear USB 2.0 ports. Anyway, is there a special driver or additional software recommended to keep the SM951 running in top order? I don't see any special drivers for the port and I don't remember loading any from the AS Rock driver disk. Thanks for all the help so far guys. Howard
I wasn't aware that an SSD needed anything other then Garbage Collection and TRIM both of which should be functional in any modern SSD (and modern OS). If you have a Samsung M.2 SSD you can try the Samsung Magician Software Utility but technically you shouldn't need to do anything else,... Edit: A little amendment,... The cheapest X99 motherboard I have seen so far is now the Gigabyte GA-X99-UD3 for ~$139.99 USD,........ Not that it matters much now,.....
