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I am struggling with the decision to upgrade

PitViper
Level 7
I am struggling with the decision to upgrade. I am currently running a (gen3?) i7 4820k @ 4.5ghz with 2x GTX 1080's (3440X1440 PG348Q monitor) on a Asus Rampage IV extreme black edition mobo. I can't decide if I want to go x99 or z270. I want to get at least one PCIE m.2 SSD, and run both GPU's.

If I get Kabby Lake i7-7700k i'm looking at 24 PCIE lanes available, that should be enough right? GPU's will use 8 each for 16 total, and 4 for the SSD...


If I go with the x99 the GPU's will run at 16x instead of 8x, I hear the difference is very small. Quad channel memory and 6 cores are also an option not available on z270. The x99 has been around along time now though, I don't know if I'm wasting my time going that route? I'm looking at an i7-6850k (40 PICE lanes) if I go this route

I'm a gamer and I try to upgrade only every 2 years or so, right now I feel like I'm missing out on DDR4 and m.2, something my x79 doesn't have. Plus I'm not sure if my CPU is holding back my 1080's? I's been a great machine but I feel it's time to upgrade, I'm just not sure which way is better. Money isn't a big concern, this is my main hobby this is where my fun money goes.
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7 REPLIES 7

kkn
Level 14
there is coming out a new gen of cpu's witch will replace 2011 with 2066.
im not shure if its this summer or winter but its been posted that it is going to get released this year. ( google around and see ).

the current z270 have 2x m.2 slots on them compare to Z170 witch have 1, same whit the x99 boards ( i got the x99 strix and only have 1 ).

WHO_FARTED_
Level 10
I would go with z270. Honestly the m.2 doesnt make it much faster (like couple of seconds) over a SIII SSD. I have an intel 750 pcie add in card, its not m.2. Which is fast for booting. But when it comes to games its only 3 to 4 seconds quicker than the SIII ssd. That 3 or 4 seconds come at a ridiculous price. I think you would like it more than the x99, and the money you save you can put towards new gpu's, if the new gtx's do what they say they will, you'll only need one. 2066 looks promising, but z270 will be available soon, not Q3. Besides games now-a-days seem to be more gpu intensive rather than cpu. If you weren't a gamer then you might could wait, either way its a viscous cycle,

I didn't realize 2066 (x299?) was that close. I may wait for that, I was going to wait until march to do my build anyway.

I'm running on 3 year old tech, I keep telling my self its time to upgrade but my system runs fine. I think it would be worth waiting.

PitViper wrote:
I didn't realize 2066 (x299?) was that close. I may wait for that, I was going to wait until march to do my build anyway.

I'm running on 3 year old tech, I keep telling my self its time to upgrade but my system runs fine. I think it would be worth waiting.


Similar here. I realized all the games I want to play run fine and my CPU is even older than yours. All I needed were GPU upgrades. So I spent my fun money on a laptop instead.
A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station…

My prediction for Skylake-X is July. August at the very latest. Its not that far away.
With Intel's tick tock system for high performance CPUs there will be a much smaller wait between Broadwell-E and Skylake-X compared to the long wait between Haswell-E and Broadwell-E.

If having the latest greatest SSD is the main thing you want then Kaby Lake has Intel Optane support. If gaming is all you want to do then the 7700K does an amazing job without any additional overclocking. Even the 4820K will be perfect for gaming for the games coming out during the next six months.

However if you want to live stream your games at a quality above 1600x900 30FPS then a 6-core system would help a lot.
For normal recordings that you upload to youtube later an i7-7700K is also perfect without the need for more than 4 cores.

Don't worry too much about RAM speeds either. 4820K can do 1866MHZ RAM speeds just fine and it makes a very small difference to games. You can run 1333MHz RAM and as long as you've got 16GB in dual channel you will still be fine for all gaming.

As far as PCIe lanes X8 is plenty enough for a GTX 1080. An overclocked GTX 1080 isn't powerful enough to need more than 6PCIe lanes. So even if the standard was X6 you would still be fine. Even Pascal Titan X is fine with PCIe X8. My guess is that if a card comes out in the future (say 2018 Nvidia Volta flagship) that needs X16 you will probably be happy with just the single card and won't go back to SLI. I mean, the current Pascal Titan X can already handle your resolution at 60FPS.

Hope that info helps! Best of luck!

ireadtabloids wrote:
With Intel's tick tock system


Just a small correction, no more tick tock. So it's likely that optimizations and process shrinks will happen when yields look good and if/when Intel feels any heat from AMD. Even though Intel likes having a road map I wouldn't be surprised to see things slip as the difficulty of process shrinks ramps up.
A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station…

Tick tock hasn't ceased yet for their higher end CPUs like Skylake-X. The major change is they are bringing quad cores back to those motherboards with Kaby Lake-X.
They might shift to optimisation, smaller process, new architecture pattern after that, but for now its holding steady. Usually you would expect a big gap between Skylake-X and Cannonlake-X so tick tock might even hold after this, but that far ahead is pure speculation.
Besides, they need a new higher end CPU so they can sell us Intel Optane and regain their advantage over AMD who looks set to match their Broadwell-E lineup.