Upgrade advice - stick with haswell or jump to Kaby Lake?

Hey Everyone,

It's time to upgrade my PC. I'm torn between sticking with my existing hardware and getting the Devils Canyon 4790k, or jumping to the new kaby lake chips and getting the 6700k. My current CPU is an i5-4670 (non-k version) and it's starting to bottleneck things.

Although the performance difference between the two CPU's is negligible, this is actually a question of whether I should upgrade my RAM. Since I have a mini-ITX build, I am limited to 16 GB of RAM with my current motherboard, but with a Kaby Lake board I can have 32 GB in an ITX board. So what I'm really asking is, if I upgrade to Devils Canyon, will I start running into the limitations of having only 16 GB of RAM?

I use my computer for gaming, for music production (including VST's), sharing files on my network, for my job in IT, and for studying for IT certs etc. I have a separate machine I'll be using for hosting virtual machines so that's not an issue.

At the current time, I never really seem to be hitting RAM limitations. I'm running a bunch of stuff now and only using 8 of my 16 GB. That said, I'll be getting more into the virtual instruments in the next few years, and 16 GB is getting to be the 'recommended' specs for many games released now.

So what do you guys think? Will 16 GB ride me through a 3 year CPU upgrade, or should I lean towards tossing out my whole chipset so I can bump up to 32?

Neither. Wait for the Zen stuff to hit the market, and decide after Intel's had a chance to adjust their prices.

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If you're not maximizing your current RAM then I don't see the point in upgrading. I see you're saying you may maximize it in the next few years, but in the next few years there will be new CPUs and technologies coming out, so jumping to Kaby Lake from Haswell is really just a waste of money, especially considering the lack of performance increase Intel has had in the last few years.

Going to Kaby Lake will essentially be an expensive side grade at best.

This.

You could also just keep an eye on skylake prices too. They will probably go on fire sale at some point as companies try to unload their stock.

I would say if you really are that limited by RAM the x99 in Mitx is a good upgrade ... but just wait really. Wait until all the new things launch and then see what it does to pricing of current gen hardware, and what the next-gen hardware brings to the table.

I wouldn't upgrade to devil's canyon if you have that cpu already... Wait to see what Zen has to offer, should hopefully cause some fuss in the market prices. IF you really Need the extra corres, more ram, etc. then go Kaby Lake (though from your description it doesn't seem like it's a necessity...). As far as the 16GB is concerned... it's a non issue at this point since you're barely using over half that. Also... are you sure it's the CPU and not another component in the system that's bottlenecking? (I hate that term btw... there's always going to be a bottleneck if the program being run can utilize anything in the system to it's full potential and there's always a program that can do that).

Thanks for the feedback so far guys, it's really appreciated.

A couple of things to note:

  • AMD is not an option for me because I run OS X in addition to Win10 and Ubuntu. AMD is highly unstable with OS X.
  • I also forgot to mention in my list of use cases that I just got an HTC Vive for a super good price. I like it but it's hammering the hell out of my CPU / GPU. I think my current amount of RAM is still fine though.
  • Keep in mind that my goal would be to not upgrade my CPU / mobo for about 3 years after purchasing a new one.

Keep the replies coming, I love hearing everyone's perspective on this :-)

i have 4790k in a itx overclocked. I dont have any issues with lag even with VM's running, but like you ive now moved to over the network vm's so i dont have to keep booting an instance of one.. since you are wanting to upgrade so soon, im pretty sure you can afford just swapping the 2x ram slots for 32gb sticks. CPU increases have not been enough over the last few years to make me want to upgrade and im not looking to save power for the environment.

normally if you are a gamer/ extreme high end pc enthusiast. buy the current year and switch to the newest in 4. If intel is about to release something in 3 months then wait. if not buy kaby lake w/ a nice motherboard to OC. braggin rights dont last long

I gamed with just an a10-7850k for 6 months. I have a much nicer system now but when I think minimum and recommended hardware requirements are a little over the top :)
I would not buy any more DDR3. Have you checked out some of the new monitors that are a steal compared to a year ago?

Oh trust me I am allll over the monitor thing :-) Currently leaning heavily towards the Crossover 32u75 - pretty sure it's a rebranded BenQ 3201ph. No reviews yet but it's a good price and I've had a great experience with my current monitor which is a Crossover. You can get a pixel perfect one on ebay for $150 - $200 less than the BenQ.

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You probably aren't going to use 32GBs if you need to ask

the haswell i7 will be fine assuming you're getting it cheap and have a Z97 board

or better yet hold out for ryzen, if it's decent apple will probably start getting semi-custom stuff given their use of AMD GPUs

Only because the only CPUs that have been used for a while have been intel for apple. If any products come out with AMD CPUs that will change.

other than that i'd recommend waiting... as I've said, when everything comes out over the next year, pricing should change for the better. Hopefully anyway. So it should allow for you to be getting a much better spec for the money.

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I have an h87 board not z97. However I have the latest BIOS updates and it is supposed to support Devil's Canyon (I just verified this). Any reason why that should be an issue?

do we know for a fact that Ryzen will beat whatever Intel is offering?

Couldn't overclock, kind of defeats the purpose

@Goblin
Price probably
Performance, should be close enough
features? well they all overclock so that's nice, you also don't need a high end board to overclock either

Even though I can't overclock the 4790k is a major jump up in performance and clock speed. The 4790 not so much.

okay, i was curious if it was actually more powerful stock or not.

Won't know until it's actually out, but it has been competitive with broadwell-E in the few tests they've shown of course

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Kaby lake is crap. It's literally the same IPC as Skylake.

Keep your Devils Canyon one more iteration at least. X99 is old, Ryzen has IO bandwidth constraints with PCIe lanes.

Next gen enthusiast in a year or so maybe?

Worst case, buy a new motherboard and more RAM.

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I dont have devils canyon - im weighing whether to buy it or go to kaby lake instead. Because buying into kaby lake will mean upgrading my mobo etc.

Like I said, I get that the performance difference is small. Thats why I'm phrasing this more as a RAM upgrade question than a CPU upgrade question. I'm limited to 16GB if I stick with Haswell/Devils Canyon.