i7 990x vs i7 3930K

[sharrensen]

Hi All,

I've been pondering about this for almost a week now and i would really like to hear the communities input on this.

So, first of all, my current setup:

Intel® Core™ i7 920 2.67 GHz @4.00GHz, 1.28V (watercooled)

ASUS® SABERTOOTH X58

CORSAIR® XMS3 DHX Dominator 1600Mhz, 8-8-8-24 16GB @ 1601Mhz, 8-8-8-24

GIGABYTE®/MSI® GTX 480 (2way SLI "EK" watercooled)

intel® SSD 520 120GB

Western Digital® 300GB Velociraptor

Samsung® 1.5TB Story Station Plus

Enermax® REVOLUTION 85+ 1250W

Corsair® Obsidian 650D

Next, the "problem" at hand:

I can pick up, either a i7 990X or i7 3930K, both for the same price. Now, the "problem" is:

a. If i go the 3930K way, i would have to, basically, change the whole platform, CPU, MoBo and RAM, which isn't really an (money) issue but... this brings us to the second part...

b. there really isn't much difference between the two... "besides" DMI vs QPI, quad vs triple channel and the AVX instruction set (on the 3930K)

Now, because this is my gaming rig (work platform is provided by the company i work for) i'm thinking either of them would, pretty much perform the same. Furthermore, from what i've read about the AVX instruction set, it's not really "finished/mature"... meaning, at this moment it would perform as a "moderate" boost for the SSE instructions and only on the Haswell platform, with AVX2, would it really "mature". Also, because i'm always running an SLI config in my system, QPI, because of the DMI's PCIe lanes bandwidth limitations, would be better suited (although, personally, i tend to believe that DMI does the job aswell). And last, but not least, QUAD vs TRIPLE channel... really now... for games, even DUAL channel is overkill :)

As far as OC-ing goes, i would OC to a stable and efficent ~4.1GHz for 24/7 use and the "hardcore" OC-ing would only happen when i'm feeling adventures and want to play around with the CPU and RAM to see how far i can push them, but only for benchmarking/bragging rights and not for 24/7 use.

Also, i want to mention that i personally prefer the 1366 platform and the "old fashioned" BIOS over EFI for OC-ing... but that's just a "stupid", personal preference :)

In conclusion, what i would do is, get the i7 990x, keep my current SLI setup aswell, since it performs great still, and only upgrade when the 14nm (Broadwell) platform comes out.

What do you guys think ?

PS: Im not interested in upgrading to 2600K, 3770K, etc., personally, i don't find them all that jaw-dropping... but again, personal preference :)

[LimeDk]

i would do the same thing get the 990X my reason is i dont want to upgrade my platform because i do no like the new types or UEFI bios

[TheBigTroll]

id just get a new platform. if you dont plan on overclocking, you can even pick up a xeon 8 core. but then depends if you can actually use all those thrreads

[EChondo]

I would like to note that not all 1155 boards or 2011 boards have a UEFI BIOS. My Gigabyte UD4 Z68 still has an old fashioned BIOS(And I prefer the old fashioned one too).

[sharrensen]

actually i do plan on overclocking. As i said in the post, a stable and efficient overclock at about 4.1GHz for 24/7 use and then, on occasion, play around with it and push it as far as it can go but that would be only for benchmarking purposes. An 8 core Xeon would cost as much as an entire 2011 platform upgrade (CPU, MoBo and RAM put together) so that isn't really smart, not to mention that Xeons are way to overkill for gaming.

Secondly, that's the whole point of my thread: is a i7 3930K really more powerful (performance) than a i7 990X given the fact the only "real/useful" difference is the AVX instruction set - ofc there are other differences between the two CPUs, but none are really relevant for gaming performance, such as DMI vs QPI, quad vs triple channel, etc

[MegaTechPC]

Sounds like you really would rather go for Gulftown which would be fine, although you definitely don't need a six-core processor solely for gaming. I would think that your 920 is still plenty powerful enough for just gaming and if you really want to upgrade you should really upgrade the entire platform. Just my opinion though...

[LimeDk]

I would like to note that not all 1155 boards or 2011 boards have a UEFI BIOS. My Gigabyte UD4 Z68 still has an old fashioned BIOS(And I prefer the old fashioned one too).

okay did not know that Gigabyte made new boards without uefi bios but im more of a Asus motherboard kind of guy (=