3770k vs 3930k ?

[Akrian]

Ok, so here's the questions : which one to get?

Currently I'm running i7 2600k. Last year I was running it at 4.9 ghz stable, fabruary 2012 it stopped being stable and I was forced to push back to 4.8 ghz, well now I can't reach stability at 4.8 anylonger, and 4.7 seems to be holding atm.
I'm running a 7970x3 and if the trend continues I will soon be getting some nice bottlenecking to do CPU.
So I was looking at "replacements" - a quick replace for 3770k while having same P67A UD7 B3 board, or go all the way and get 3930k and asus maximus IV for it ?
Cooling the system atm with 1x120mm 1x140mm 3x120mm rads in one loop with Koolance 7970 blocks and XSPC Raystorm on CPU

Primary use : a) gaming with eyefinity b) photoshop

P.S. got a place where I can get 3930k for 470$. So can't make a decision here.

 

[MasterInvader]

So I was looking at "replacements" - a quick replace for 3770k while having same P67A UD7 B3 board, or go all the way and get 3930k and asus maximus IV for it ?

I think you meant to say Asus RAMPAGE IV, the Maximus IV it´s LGA1155 and doesn't support the 3930k.

And if you decided to go with 3770k / GA P67A UD7 dont forget to update your bios to the F7 version first.

 

[johnnyfiive]

3930k is NOT worth it unless you will be doing really intense rendering, encoding, decoding, anything intensely multi-threaded.
I know this all to well, look at my sig.

I recommend a the 3770k. It's a drop in replacement and will overclock fairly well. Don't expect to get 4.7+ with ease though. As you probably already know, IB chips get much hotter and can be a little more difficult to get stable (passed 4.6).

 

[Joe Public]

Only a select few games today make use of quad cores, many only two cores and games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R actually only run on one single thread. A hex core for gaming is pretty much pointless.

 

[radrok]

From a hexacore user who has been using i7 980x and 3930k I strongly recommend you to get either an i7 3820 for 16x/16x/8x native or i7 3770k with a motherboard that sports a PLX chip to double PCIe bandwidth.

Hexacore is nice if you render on Maya(Vray) or similar programs like me daily but if you game only that's a waste.
Photoshop doesn't need lots of cores, just lots of RAM especially when working with plugins like Perfect Resize (former Genuine Fractals) get 16GB+ of RAM.

 

[Aquinus]

From a hexacore user who has been using i7 980x and 3930k I strongly recommend you to get either an i7 3820 for 16x/16x/8x native or i7 3770k with a motherboard that sports a PLX chip to double PCIe bandwidth.

I second that. My 3820 has been plenty powerful, just you might not see clocks as high as you did with your 2600k. The PLX chip doesn't "add bandwidth" it consolidates the links and efficently switches the packets. There is no more or less bandwidth, it's just shared. If you want a real 40 lanes of PCI-E, go with a 3820 and SB-E. Even the 3820 likes multi-threaded tasks more than others, so unless you do a lot of multithreading or will be running 2 or more video cards, I would stick with the 2600k.

 

[Lionheart]

I would just keep what you got TBH