Skylake or wait?

[ASOT]

If u have the money go Skylake or wait for Zen.

 

[silentbogo]

My wife's PC is crying for an upgrade as well with its bullshit socket 1156 board. I am actually thinking to upgrade it with Skylake hardware rather than anything newer, because it's a budget office-like PC and performance is not a priority. The price kind of is though. Do you think we can expect noticeable price drops on boards and CPUs at some point in near future, or no sooner than around the end of the year (when is Kaby lake supposed to be released into the wilds again?)? If not, I might just as well just buy the stuff right away. It's not that it doesn't work and wouldn't for a few more years, but it's annoying to do anything on it, and the integrated GPU really sucks ass even for watching films.

I'd say Skylake right now is as good as anything.
My cousin's fiance asked to build a cheap office PC with provisions for longevity (she doesn't care much about performance), and when it came to checking prices on new hardware I concluded that entry-level Skylake cost about the same as an entry-level Haswell (I'll spend overall $15-20 more on $200 rig incl. wireless KB/mouse)... All they do is type documents and use proprietary software from the turn of last century, so you see why performance is not an issue.

If her computing needs are close to what you've described, then get Pentium G4400 and be happy. It can do lots of things, including hardware-accelerated 4K playback (not as good as HD530, but still adequate).
And if you sell your LGA1156 hardware and reuse the remaining stuff(case, hdd etc.), you might actually make it under $100.

 

[Grings]

I'd say build her a skylake (or even haswell if the price is good enough) i3, newer ones are hyper threaded, and for the most part will perform as well as a quad core.

given a few more years, with a 2 core 2 thread chip you will just have another sluggish old nail like the current 1156 rig

 

[Octopuss]

The question is when, though. Can we expect anything somewhat important (price drops, significantly improved new board revisions or whatever) in the next few months?
Whatever I'm going to build is supposed to last another five years, so I want to make it as best as I can.

 

[cracklez]

CPU won't be a big upgrade in regards to performance, it'll mostly be for the features like other people said (USB 3.0/3.1, M.2 capable MBs, etc..). Changing to a new platform is always an expensive endeavor, so I'd suggest the biggest upgrade to keep longevity at the maximum would be a fast SATA 3 SSD. I don't know what components the rig you plan to upgrade has, therefore I can't elaborate any more than that.

 

[Flow]

I doubt intel will drop prices due to new cpu's, they never did in the past either.
Hm, if you really want to upgrade the other pc, then just get the parts you're interested in, and can afford ofcourse.
Then when new cpu's are released you can upgrade your main pc.

As for speed in os and general, I run dual boot win 7 and 10, and imo 10 runs the same as 8/8.1 with the exception of the start menu, which I really like. You can translate that back to the speed difference between 7 and 8 in desktop mode.
My benches are more or less the same on either platform so DX12 should make the difference.
Having rebuild an old amd system myself recently, with a 965BE, I found general windows operation smooth enough. Again imo, there isn't much difference overall in speed.
Only the new tech ofcourse like ssd etc. which does require newer os and hardware.

Games will show the most difference with old and new hardware, as always.

ps. if it's the other build, you could take the non K cpu and some cheaper ram + an average motherboard with limited overclocking possibilities.
This would make it a bit cheaper while still being competitive for the next 5 years.

On the other hand, building an amd system could be refreshing and definitely cheaper.
As for your main rig, as you already said, it's good for another couple of years.

 

[silentbogo]

The question is when, though. Can we expect anything somewhat important (price drops, significantly improved new board revisions or whatever) in the next few months?
Whatever I'm going to build is supposed to last another five years, so I want to make it as best as I can.

Doubt that. Haswell is no cheaper than it was last year, Skylake is still a fresh platform and only half of announced SKUs are on the market today.

 

[overclocking101]

Buggy in what way?

I am keeping the 3770K for the time being - that's my PC I don't intend to upgrade with Skylake (after all).
I just used the thread to expand on the idea of upgrading another PC (which has the crappiest original i3 CPU I believe).

I know that with my board its really weird I still have not been able to properly reset the cmos via jumper, also it has very cruddy fan speed options like normal or full speed no in between and the pwm features don't function properly either. I tried their SIV software and it just makes the fans pulsate for some reason unless I turn them up to 100%. my post speaker goes off randomly for no reason at all. and if I disable turbo it hangs, if I try to set most oc features manually it just doesn't post and hangs forever and like I said I cant reset cmos so I have to wait for the board to post and shut down until it finally resets its self and posts. just stupid little things that seem to be overlooked because my board isn't top end nor bottom but somewhere in between. hopefully future bios releases fix this as I have reached out to gigabyte and haven't gotten response yet.
I cant speak for all boards/ manufacturers because this is my first 1151 board but I will suggest don't buy this board= Gigabyte z170x G1 Gaming 6

 

[overclocking101]

CPU won't be a big upgrade in regards to performance, it'll mostly be for the features like other people said (USB 3.0/3.1, M.2 capable MBs, etc..). Changing to a new platform is always an expensive endeavor, so I'd suggest the biggest upgrade to keep longevity at the maximum would be a fast SATA 3 SSD. I don't know what components the rig you plan to upgrade has, therefore I can't elaborate any more than that.

i know its off topic but nice avatal lol

 

[erocker]

With a 3770k, I'd wait. I'd still be using mine if I didn't wreck my socket. I'm waiting until at least the end of the year for the next round of CPU's from Intel and AMD.

 

[Octopuss]

So after some thinking, I ordered
MSI Z170-A PRO
i3 6320
8GB of Kingston HyperX Savage Black DDR4 3000MHz

Total cost: €347
Everything else is reusable (and that CoolerMaster HAF XB case looks really awesome)

 

[silentbogo]

So after some thinking, I ordered
MSI Z170-A PRO
i3 6320
8GB of Kingston HyperX Savage Black DDR4 3000MHz

Total cost: €347
Everything else is reusable (and that CoolerMaster HAF XB case looks really awesome)

Excellent!

This is pretty much what I planned for my new work PC, except I will probably go with an i3-6100, since it is the cheapest Skylake with HD530 graphics.
Maybe it's just me, but 200MHz advantage and some extra cache will not make any noticeable difference to justify almost $50 premium.
In productivity software and multimedia you'll get at most 10% increase over 6100... same goes for gaming on an IGP [!].

Couldn't find a review in English with both CPUs on the same chart, but here are some benchmarks from 3dnews.ru:

Spoiler

 

[Octopuss]

Well, I can't be arsed to try to overclock locked CPU, so I bought the fastest thing I could. You're right though. The CPU isn't horribly expensive anyway, so why not.
I hope the performance of the integrated GPU is light years ahead of that of i3-530.

 

[P4-630]

I hope the performance of the integrated GPU is light years ahead of that of i3-530.

Hmm, don't expect much from intel HD530, I can play games such as GRID, Prison Architect and game dev tycoon with it.

Older games should work fine though.

 

[Octopuss]

Actually, in relative numbers, LOL! http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compar...vs-Intel-HD-530-Desktop-Skylake/m7702vsm33102

No it's not supposed to run games (at least not the usual demanding games we play), I just wanted to know how much faster it was.

 

[silentbogo]

Well, I can't be arsed to try to overclock locked CPU, so I bought the fastest thing I could. You're right though. The CPU isn't horribly expensive anyway, so why not.
I hope the performance of the integrated GPU is light years ahead of that of i3-530.

The overall difference is not that noticeable. i3-6320 is the fastest i3 on the market, but even in a gaming rig with a dedicated GPU it won't give you as much advantage as you'd expect from base level i5.
If your budget allows you - go i5-6400, if not - i3-6100 is your best option.

 

[P4-630]

The overall difference is not that noticeable. i3-6320 is the fastest i3 on the market, but even in a gaming rig with a dedicated GPU it won't give you as much advantage as you'd expect from base level i5.
If your budget allows you - go i5-6400, if not - i3-6100 is your best option.

So after some thinking, I ordered
MSI Z170-A PRO
i3 6320
8GB of Kingston HyperX Savage Black DDR4 3000MHz

Total cost: €347

So he already ordered the new hardware, so I guess he has to do it with that i3-6320.

 

[Octopuss]

Too late now, but anyway - the i5 is hugely slower. Yes it's twice as many cores, but 2.7GHz compared to 3.9 on the i3. Considering it's not supposed to be a gaming PC...