Ivy Bridge-E vs Haswell vs Haswell-E

[tucansam]

Gang,

 

I am posting this here because I have come to trust the knowledge of the userbase on this forum, and because most of us are enthusiasts who build more than just unraid servers.

 

Looking to build a new PC in the next six months. Each PC I've built as my primary workstation has lasted 5+ years, and I'm looking for the same out of this build.  Actually, I am looking for an upgrade path that will hopefully take me beyond 5 years.

 

I was ready to start pricing configs using Haswell-E, but started doing some reading. Looks like Ivy Bridge-E would get me reasonable performance for less money. My idea would be do drop an i7-4820K in a MSI X79A-GD45 with 32GB RAM now. This would leave me with a lot of room for upgrading RAM (board supports 128GB but CPU supports 64GB), and in five years time, when I can buy a 10 or 12-core Xeon for $200 on ebay, I can keep the system going for much longer than my typical 5 years.

 

But Haswell-E has certain draws, like DDR4, and Haswell-E Xeons, and low power draw (the CPU I was looking at is still 130w, however it has six cores). But I'm told that generation changes in DRAM generally mean trouble, and first gen boards and RAM should be avoided.

 

Then there is Broadwell...

 

Anyone here recently do an Ivy Bridge-E or Haswell-E build?

 

Haswell still has appeal but Haswell-E supports more cores, and I have a few applications that would use them all. And I think the 2011 socket is more future proof in terms of Xeons with lots of cores, even though some are already calling the socket dead.

 

The M2 standard for SSDs means nothing to me (I'm still on spinners so a SATA-III SSD will be plenty to knock my socks off), and I can get quad-channel DDR3 at 2400 at half the price of DDR4, which means I can buy twice as much.

 

I'm presently on a Phenom-II X6, up from an X4, up from an Athlon X3, and my current system is getting a little long in the tooth and needs to be re-purposed.

 

Wondering if a quad-core 2011, with later upgrade to an 8, 10, or 12-core 2011, would be a better fit right now vs 2011-3.  I've never been an early adopter of bleeding edge stuff, and Ivy-E seems more mature right now, with a large variety of motherboards (and most importantly mature BIOSes) and CPUs on the upgrade path.

 

Suggestions welcome.

[bkastner]

While this is not specific advice, I usually use cpubenchmark (http://cpubenchmark.net/) as a gauge when looking to buy a new CPU - or a video card, and sometimes even a SSD drive for that matter since they benchmark all of them. I find that site gives a great means of determining performance vs. price.

 

Additionally, any Intel CPU I am looking at (I only buy Intel as a rule), I will look up on http://ark.intel.com as it will provide details on all the feature sets it supports.

 

Again, this doesn't specifically answer your questions, but should help you decide whether it's worth investing the extra $XX to buy a newer gen CPU, or a faster, current gen CPU.

 

Looking at ark.intel.com at the new v3 Xeon processors that were just released, they are all LGA2011 based, so if you can find a reasonable CPU today that fits that socket type, you are well positioned for the future.

 

If you want to step a generation back, you can again use ark.intel.com to look at the Xeon processors you may want down the road, and use that to help make your current decision.

 

Personally, I do tend to be fairly leading edge, but am not sure if I would jump into DDR4 today With new cpu, chipset and ram type it's just a bit too much perfect storm for me to try - unless you are buying HP Servers (or equivalent) where you have solid support/maintenance to back you up.

 

Hopefully the above is at least somewhat useful in your decision making process.

[garycase]

Tough choice.

 

Personally I'd go a 2011v3 board and a Haswell CPU, simply for the increased performance and better potential upgrade path with a future drop-in CPU replacement.    But I DO agree that's a bit of a risk due to the early stage of DDR4 modules ... although I don't think that'll be an issue in 3 months or so, which is well within your "in the next six months" timeframe for building your next system.

 

While I'm sympathetic to your "M.2 means nothing to me" comment, I'd reconsider that.  Once more PCIe x2 M.2 units are available, the real potential of these slots will be apparent.    Most current M.2 drives are still interfaced with SATA-III, but a few PCIe x2 units are becoming available, and these really shine.  I set up a system for someone about 2 weeks ago with one of the Plextor PCIe x2 M.2 units and it boots to Windows 8.1 in ~ 6 seconds !!  [Granted, a SATA-III unit would still do this in perhaps 10 seconds]

 

On the other hand, moving from a Phenom II x6 to ANY of these is going to blow-away your current performance by enough that it probably doesn't really make a lot of difference.

 

... but I'd nevertheless go with a 2011v3 board => your comments about being able to drop-in a 10, 12, 14, or even more core CPU in the future are more likely to be true if you have the v3 support.  Whether they'll be down to the price level you'd like in 5 years is another story altogether -- but they might be.

 

 

 

[tucansam]

Thanks to all.

 

I am upgrading my current Plex/Sab/SB server first, and am gonna upgrade it over time piece by piece, and then run my Handbrake stuff on that, so my Phenom will get me by for a little while longer (its taken twelve days to compress about 50 mkv files so far, but if I drop a Xeon or i7 in my 1155 Plex motherboard, I can offload that stuff from my desktop/space heater and won't have to run it 24/7).  So by the time I get around to upgrading my desktop, you guys are right, the tech will be that much more mature.  I will be patient and wait a while longer.

 

Just hope Win7 is still available then.

 

[garycase]

Just hope Win7 is still available then.

 

Two thoughts on that comment ...

 

(1)  If you're concerned, just buy a copy of Win7 now.  You can install it whenever you want ... next year, the year after, etc.  It's going to be supported through Jan, 2020.  "Mainstream" support ends next year; but that's really a meaningless date.

 

(2)  Windows 10 does a VERY nice job of integrating the best features of '7 and '8.  It's much more "7-like" than you might expect.    You may want to install a copy of the Tech Preview on a spare system or in a VM and look at it.    My main system is still '7, but I may very well move to '10 next year when it's released.

 

... the '10 Tech Preview ISO's are available free:  http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/preview-iso

 

[tucansam]

Thanks for the link, I have been meaning to download it to put on an old C2D machine to test.  But with its keylogger, it won't be going on my network anytime soon.  Hopefully the release version doesn't include spyware from the NSA.  Win7 does everything I need it to do (I'm still running an XP machine, and retired my last Win2k machine three years ago).  I have learned not to adopt Microsoft products until at least a year after official release (and will be avoiding Win8 altogether).

 

 

 

[garycase]

I understand completely.  I bought two copies of Win8 Pro when Microsoft had a very special price on it right after the initial release (I think it was $45) ... but they're still sitting on my shelf unopened -- and will likely remain there until I finally toss them.

 

I agree '7 is a very good OS choice => I have it on my main system; both of my HTPC's; etc. -- none of which will ever be migrated to '8.      I plan to build a new system in a few months; and will also put '7 on it.    I DO, however, think '10 looks fairly promising, so will likely install it on at least one system after it's released.  A MUCH better "look and feel" than '8 had/has.

 

[bkastner]

I understand completely.  I bought two copies of Win8 Pro when Microsoft had a very special price on it right after the initial release (I think it was $45) ... but they're still sitting on my shelf unopened -- and will likely remain there until I finally toss them.

 

I agree '7 is a very good OS choice => I have it on my main system; both of my HTPC's; etc. -- none of which will ever be migrated to '8.      I plan to build a new system in a few months; and will also put '7 on it.    I DO, however, think '10 looks fairly promising, so will likely install it on at least one system after it's released.  A MUCH better "look and feel" than '8 had/has.

 

While the initial release of 8 was not keyboard/mouse friendly, the update to 8.1 helped a lot. I've been using 8.1 exclusively since it became available (though I used 8.0 prior to that). There is really nothing wrong with it, much like there was really nothing wrong with Vista. it's perception.

 

I am now running Windows 10 on my primary work laptop and if anything I miss the start screen now and feel rather limited by the start menu.

 

Like anything else you gripe about it for a few days, then adjust and move on.

[garycase]

I am now running Windows 10 on my primary work laptop and if anything I miss the start screen now and feel rather limited by the start menu.

 

Interesting thought.  I'd have though the medium or large icons to the right of the new Start menu would be fine as a replacement for the entirely separate Start screen.    Are you using a touchscreen display?

 

[bkastner]

I am now running Windows 10 on my primary work laptop and if anything I miss the start screen now and feel rather limited by the start menu.

 

Interesting thought.  I'd have though the medium or large icons to the right of the new Start menu would be fine as a replacement for the entirely separate Start screen.    Are you using a touchscreen display?

 

No, it's a traditional laptop without touch.

 

I am the first to admit that the 8.0 implementation of Metro apps sucked - the fact that it defaulted to Metro apps even when you lived in the desktop, and the pain to close apps was annoying, but 8.1 fixed a lot of that (and 10 is even better with being able to minimize and close metro apps).

 

As I said... it's funny how you perspective changes after to adapting to something for a little while, which is why I tend to laugh when people throw out the "I'd never run 8!" or "Friends don't let friends run Windows 8" which someone told me over the weekend. I just kind of looked at him like he was an idiot. It's one thing to seriously try something and decide you don't like it, but blindly assuming something based on marketing hysteria is something else.

 

8.1 is different than 7 - no doubt, but I'd suggest giving it a serious try and you might be surprised. I do technical presales for Microsoft professional services (among other vendors), so am always willing to invest time into the new desktop OS's since I help clients implement new technologies, so I always dive right in (hence why I am running Win 10 on my primary work laptop). Once you get past the hype and BS nothing is usually as bad as the media and naysayers make it out to be.

 

[garycase]

I do use '8 (actually 8.1) on one of my systems, and don't "dislike" it.  It's just not a compelling switch for my main system.    I've built quite a few systems for others that have '8 on them, and have helped a lot of folks set up their new computers => and virtually everyone wants the traditional Start menu back ... a simple fix with Start8 or one of the other shells that are readily available.

 

If you have a touchscreen display, it's a bit different, although most folks I help are "e-mail/internet" users with a touch of Quicken and Office usage, so they're still very much keyboard/mouse oriented.  But in general they like their touchscreens.

 

My view is that 8.1 is fine ... just as Vista SP2 was a perfectly good OS.  The problem in both cases is that the initial implementations (the original Vista and Windows were flawed in some key ways, and although the flaws were largely overcome, the damage had already been done.    Kinda like a lemon car ... after the 6th, 8th, or 10th visit to a dealer to get it repaired, no matter how good it is when it's finally fixed, it'll probably always have a sour taste -- so you're likely to trade it in anyway [i've had that exact experience].

 

Microsoft's well aware of their problems with '8 => that's why they significantly extended the availability of '7; and I suspect is why they're jumping from '8 to '10 for the next release ... to put a bit of distance between the perceived "closeness" of the releases.

 

[bkastner]

I do use '8 (actually 8.1) on one of my systems, and don't "dislike" it.  It's just not a compelling switch for my main system.    I've built quite a few systems for others that have '8 on them, and have helped a lot of folks set up their new computers => and virtually everyone wants the traditional Start menu back ... a simple fix with Start8 or one of the other shells that are readily available.

 

If you have a touchscreen display, it's a bit different, although most folks I help are "e-mail/internet" users with a touch of Quicken and Office usage, so they're still very much keyboard/mouse oriented.  But in general they like their touchscreens.

 

My view is that 8.1 is fine ... just as Vista SP2 was a perfectly good OS.  The problem in both cases is that the initial implementations (the original Vista and Windows were flawed in some key ways, and although the flaws were largely overcome, the damage had already been done.    Kinda like a lemon car ... after the 6th, 8th, or 10th visit to a dealer to get it repaired, no matter how good it is when it's finally fixed, it'll probably always have a sour taste -- so you're likely to trade it in anyway [i've had that exact experience].

 

Microsoft's well aware of their problems with '8 => that's why they significantly extended the availability of '7; and I suspect is why they're jumping from '8 to '10 for the next release ... to put a bit of distance between the perceived "closeness" of the releases.

 

Agreed, both Vista and 8 needed some refining, but MS did a good job of fixing them - though perception was reality and they were a lost cause.

 

Windows 10 they need to get right as it's supposed to be the last client OS Microsoft will produce - they are only going to patch/update it moving forward. Should be interesting to see how that goes.