So, I'm planning a PC build for the summer, and while I want it to be as low cost as possible (doesn't everyone?) I really want it to be future proof (i.e. not needing upgrades for a few years, but with the potential to upgrade).
I've been seriously considering the I7 4930K, but would really rather not spend quite so much money on a CPU. I acknowledge it's socket 2011, and so has great support for huge bandwidth devices (both RAM and GPU) and I know it's a HT'd Hex chip, so could be an absolute monster for CPU intensive tasks.
But is there an AMD equivalent of the Intel socket 2011 platform, or am I forced into it if I want to make a build as future proof as possible? I do not begrudge the idea of the 4930K (it's an awesome CPU) but the current price of £419.99 makes it a very painful choice too.
amd's sever socket it currently socket lga 1944/ socket g34, but if you're looking for cheaper opterons aint cheap by any measure, the 2 platforms are also aimed at very different types of processing, with a 2011 i7 focusing on single thread performance while still giving a lot of multithread performance, opterons of focused entirely on mass parallelization
So the relatively limited PCI and memory bandwidth of an i7 4770k coupled with the four cores would be good enough to allow me to run a system that runs game servers, does photo and video editing, screen capture, maxed out gaming of intensive games (read Watch Dogs) with capture of footage, software development, emulation of a PS2 and Win7 simultaneously for approximately 3 years before needing an upgrade?
I think the issue with the answers you are getting are because of the way you worded your post. You said you wanted it to be as low cost as posible. Which socket 2011 is definitly not. Also you didnt list what you needed it for. But now that you have cleared up those issues it seems like socket 2011 is what you need.
Its really hard to go wrong with a CPU that will hold its own for many years. Even with a larger initial cost it will not need upgraded for some time. Which could actually save you some money over a period of years.