This isn't intended to be an AMD vs Intel battle. I am considering doing a CPU upgrade this year and I am trying to be open minded about my options in that regard, but when I went to look at the AMD options there didn't seem to be anything that was enough of an upgrade over my current i7 2600K to justify spending the money. Is there that big of a disparity or am I just missing something?
Nope, there isn't really (without going into ludicrous power consumption territory).
The 2600k was an extremely powerful chip when it came out and really is a testament to how powerful the platform is/was.
The FX-8350 for example, is a little more powerful than a 2600k. However relies much more heavily upon multithreading to get the same amount of workload through it.
Also there is little point to switching to AMD's FX platform. The 8350 will be 3 years old this year and its built onto the 990FX platform which will be 4 years old shortly. Although gutsy, it simply isn't a platform that should be bought into at this point.
IMO, stick with the 2600k or move onto another Intel platform.
or jump to the FM2+ platform and get a Kaveri or the new line.
I can't tell if you're joking or not. The i7 2600K will beat any Kaveri chip in pretty much anything ever.
Anything on the FM2+ would be a downgrade compared to a 2600k.
Call me old school but I think the last good CPU AMD made was the hex core Phenom II. After a few months with a FX8150 I turned to the dark side. As a confirmed AMD fanboy I thought a hole would open up in the floor of the store when I bought my Sandy-e two and a half years ago. I think that there is something deeply flawed with the shared cache architecture of the FX CPU's. AMD went from king of the hill, the enthusiasts champion, the Intel slayer. To a good choice for the budget minded builder, WTF! it still feels like a betrayal.
The 8150 (Bulldozer arch) had very short life, it was replaced about one year later with the 8350 (Piledriver arch). And there is quite a big difference. Bulldozer should never have been release in my opinion.
The 2600K is basicly better, then anything AMD has to offer right now, for gaming.
Also upgrading to one of the newer intel cpu´s for gaming is not worth it. the Sandybridge i7 is still a very sollid cpu.
Stick with your 2600K, unless you do allot of productivity and rendering stuf, Then something like a 5820K could be worth it. But yeah thats an expensive platform.
The only thing in which a FX8350 or FX9590 for example, will shine over a 2600K is Virtualization. But other then that, AMD wont be an upgrade for you.
I agree.
It could be worth it to upgrade to Z97 for the better features those motherboards offer. More SATA-600, M.2 etc. But it would probably not make a world of a difference in CPU performance. You need one of those golden sample 4790K that can reliably do ~5 GHz for that, and those are expensive.
Yeah X99 is the obvious thing if you actually have use for many threads. But also expensive, especially that new fancy RAM.
Phenoms were amazing. I have a Phenom II X2 555 that can unlock to an x4, literally with the bush of a button, and my brother has my old X4 965 that was overclocked to 4.0 GHz at one point.
I wish AMD would drop the whole shared-resource-core-module-thing and go back to each core having their own resources. The X4 965 is roughly as powerful as an FX-4300 "quad core", but it's clocked lower and is 3 1/2 years older. I bet the X6 1090T could give the FX-6300 a run for its money even though the 1090T is 2 1/2 years older than the 6300 and is clocked lower as well.
agree.
It could be worth it to upgrade to Z97 if you need some of the specific feutures indeed. In terms of gaming performance, there wont be much of a diffrence between both cpu´s.
But in some specific rendering applications, the 4790K with avx2 instruction set, can save allot of time. But yeah that again, depends on the rendering applications you are using. Still like is said, if you do allot of rendering and productivity stuff, in my opinnion X99 would be the platform to aim for right now.
But for gaming, and general use, it wont be worth it.
Ehh, I'm not sure if a Z97 with applicable processor would be worth it. OP's profile says EVGA P67 FTW, which is actually a fairly feature rich motherboard even by today's standards. The only thing it's really missing are more SATA3 ports and M.2, which are moot unless OP is using more than 2 regular SSDs or an M.2 SSD. And M.2 hasn't really gotten "big" yet, there are very few drives available in that form factor right now.
Yeah like i said. The 4790K is faster in rendering, But that again highly depends on the rendering application.
But thats basicly it, For gaming and general use its not worth it.
2600K is still a very sollid cpu,
The only upgrade if he does realy allot of productivity and rendering stuff. would be a 5820k.
"if skylake hits the market this year" then DDR4 will be come a standard for MS-platforms, And i assume, that the DDR4 prices will come down till that time.
So i would say, stick with the 2600K for now.
Thanks guys, I really appreciate the insight. I'm waiting for at least Skylake to do it anyway. It was more of a "I'm bored at work so I'm going to investigate it" type question. It just struck me as odd that I couldn't find anything comparable, so I figured I would ask.