With all those CPU coming out, Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, 32mm-22mm etc. what currently is the top of the line Intel CPU? and is it worth buying it now or wait for Ivy Bridge, say i7 3770K? Thank for any explenation.
Top of the line? Well I'd say it's Sandy-Bridge-E, 6 cores, all the good stuff, but also insanely expensive and not really "worth it" for people who aren't hardcore benchers. Sandy Bridge kicks ass, it's cheap, powerful, OC's insanely well, 5GHZ on AIR!, can run anything without dropping a sweat. Ivy Bridge is a die shrink, less power, better IGP, but PPC is estimated to be the same, and threaded performance increases won't turn any heads either. If you can wait, and judging that you have an i7 @ 3.5GHZ, you can, I'd wait for Ivy. Or if you really want to hold out, wait til near the end of the year for Ivy Bridge-E, 8 Core Processors, 22nm !
Oc that nehlam chip to 4ghz and wait for ib. You can wait for that NP. 1155 flagship CPU will be hundreds less than 2011 IB you have to figure out if you want an 1155 quad or a 6 or 8 core IB-e
I've currently got a Nehalem i7-950 at 4.2. Perfectly happy with it for the mean time. I may upgrade in 6 months or so to IB or something else good. Give your CPU a bit more of an overclock, assuming good cooling etc. etc. Should be able to hit 4 GHz (relatively) easily. If you want an overclock template/any advice on the matter PM me.
you forgot to mention one more awesome thing about the die shrink - lower temps. ivy bridge will make it a lot easier to hit high overclocks on cheap air coolers. the only thing limiting ivy bridge OC will be chip quality and whatever intel decide to set the max multiplier at. iirc, i7 2600k are capped at 54x and the 2700k are capped at 57x?
Ivy Bridge CPUs are said to be 20% more efficient than Sandy Bridge ones, e.g. a 3.2 GHz IB CPU would be equivalent to a 3.8 GHz SB CPU. I'm more than happy to wait on the promise of more performance with lower power and heat from a 22nm die-shrink, particularly as my own 38 month old Core i7-920 @ 3.6 GHz is still an absolute beast for every game I play. I can't see anything coming out games wise in 2012 that would need anything more powerful either. Buying a 6-core CPU would be a complete waste of money for gaming as well since few games use four threads nevermind six so my only reason for upgrading earlier rather than later would be to finally have SATAIII, USB 3.0 and PCI-E 3.0. Things will probably change with the release of the new consoles but they're likely 12-18 months away at least. I suspect I could probably get away with not upgrading for another year if I really wanted to but I have my heart set on upgrading toward the back end of this year depending on what is available.
Ivy is so close and possibly even better than Haswell in some respects. so you really should wait for Ivy! At the moment I would say a i52500k is the best CPU a gamer can buy as they will save a fortune. But if you need to do multithreading, I recommend an i72700k, not the best but do you REALLY need more?
You'll need a new motherboard though, Haswell and its successor will be using socket 1150 (instead of SB/IB socket 1155. If you do get a Ivy Bridge, and don't already have a socket 1155 motherboard, you should get one based on the new IB chipset (Z77/Z75/H77). Technically you may say the i7-3770K is top of the range, but in a sense, the i5-3570K is actually the top of the range. Why? The i7-3770K is almost 50 percent more expensive than the i5-3570K. For that you get hyperthreading, an extra 0.1Ghz clockspeed and 2MB extra cache (8MB instead of 6MB). The i7-3770K would only be potentially better in very specific circumstances. The extra 0.1Ghz base speed and turbo speed is negligible, and is probably actually a slight overclock by Intel to differentiate the i7-377K from the i5-3570K. The 8 threads is only useful for applications that can take advantage of it, and even then it may be at best only a few percent depending on core utilisation of the application. When overclocked, the i5-3570K should overclock very similar to the i7-3770K. The i7-3770K is an enthusiast product, for those only wanting the 'best of the best', and is therefore charged as such. Not sure how much 2MB cache and hyperthreading adds to the manufacturing cost, I'm sure its definitely not validated by a 50 percent price hike! The i5-3570K is therefore the 'top of the line' product, taking into consideration cost.
