Upgrading i7 3770k to 7700k for VMs+ gaming, thoughts/compatibility?

[Raintech]

Hey guys

 

I've been using my old i7 gaming rig for... Holy cow, its been 5.5 years already?!?
Planning either to upgrade now, or possibly wait until after a new generation from Intel comes out, especially with AMD threadripper on the horizon. I'm not a big fan of using AMD processors in my personal rig.

I have around a $1,000 AUD budget and recently undertook a side-project that requires me to run 2 Virtual Machines 24/7, which is testing my old build to it's limits. It's been a while and I may be due for an upgrade soon anyways.

Considering an upgrade because it's cheaper than doing a full, from-scratch build of a new system. But I'm having doubts that even an i7-7700k can handle what I require from this personal rig.
 

 

Required Workload:
2 Virtual Machines need to be run 24/7 (yes even at night) and enough processing juice leftover for whatever I wish to do during the day, that is, gaming. Probably low requirement games, but would preferably still want at least 30+ FPS.

Current issue with the old rig is the CPU gets to 100% load, the VM's are quite laggy, and my games run in the 20-something frame rate range. Acceptable, but not ideal. I'm wishing to get just a smidge better performance if possible.

 

Current components:
i7-3770k

ASUS z77 Sabertooth motherboard

DDR3 G.Skill Ripjaws 2133 mhz

 

Planned upgraded components:

i7-7700k 

z270 of any series that is reliable enough for 24/7 useage, and offers good features for overclocking. I tend to overclock pretty aggressively, within reason.

16gb or 32gb DDR4 RAM, whatever I can find on the cheap, or whatever is recommended.

 

Sample Price range:
I7 7700k for $480

Corsair Vengeance Black 16gb RAM for $189

ASUS STRIX Gaming z270H motherboard for $235

Total: $904 AUD

 

This is just a sample price as I haven't gone price-comparing, and I've still not decided on components. That's still over $900 AUD! I might even need a 2nd set of ram to total it to 32gb, which puts it at almost 1.1k Aus dollars!

Is it even worth it?
But then.... we come to the performance benchmarks, and in comparison. The numbers don't really look really look too great
http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-7700K-vs-Intel-Core-i7-3770K/3647vs1317
Quoting 33% effective speed in the i7-770k vs my old i7-3770k. And this costs me almost 1k? Pfft, talk about crap performance per dollar.

I'm considering some cost cutting margins, hence some questions:
1) Is my old Noctua NH D14 air cooler still compatible with the new LGA socket and motherboard designs? I will definitely be overclocking to maximize performance.

2) Can the new motherboards accept my old DDR3 RAM? I'm guessing not, but if they can, how bad for system stability is running 2 DIFFERENT memory kits together in case I want 32gb capacity? Say, same brand kits, difference brand kits, etc. I might start with 16gb then upgrade another 16gb in later on.
 

3) Has there been any news on a release date for new CPU's which might have higher performance? In general, I'm adverse to using AMD products (yes I'm an Intel fanboy) so I'm not sure if the Threadripper is even a product that I want to consider. Is an ~8700k or something similar in the works? I don't have the budget for the new i9s, and I don't mind waiting for a new lineup of CPU's to come out.

 

4) Perhaps I can just build a whole new, somewhat budget-conscious rig as a 2nd computer? I'm worried about the ~future upgradeability~ of an approach of using 2 weaker Rigs.
It may be that I dont need to run the Virtual Machines anymore in about 3-4 months, in which case I'll have a useless 2nd rig with bad future-upgradability prospects.
An approach like this probably needs to tone down the CPU to an i5 or lower, with a budget motherboard, so that an adequate GPU, SSD and tower and PSU can be brought into the equation for the rig. Decent, but not a solution that'll server me very well in another 5 years from now. Not sure if this would be a good solution.

5) If my i7-3770k is struggling this badly under the required workload, what hope does an i7-7700k have?
My i7 3770k is scoring, if i would have to give it an arbitrary score on the VMs for the workload they're running, about a 6/10 while my main computer is gaming at 20~25 FPS. That is, under its FULL, all-out workload.
When I'm not using my computer, and the rig is simply just running the 2 VMs, I'd give the VM's running at a fairly smooth 8/10.
It's currently not TOO shabby, especially for a 5+ year old rig! What performance increase can I expect from the i7-7700k? Is it worth the 1k pricetag?
 

 

 

Am I missing any other, really simple alternatives here? My full rig can be found in my signature. The VM's are planned to be run for another, anywhere from 3~7 months, or whenever I decide I can't be bothered doing it anymore. I'm making back a little bit of money for this side project, not alot, but just enough to cover the electricity costs.
That said, once I'm done with this project it'd be really cool to just have a really kickass PC for gaming that'll last me years into the future. 

I'm thinking that even if I do upgrade the CPU+motherboard and RAM, I'll have a perfectly working i7-3770k, and it's motherboard and ram just lying around on a backshelf unused, possibly waiting for a future-paycheck to rehouse them into a 2nd, more budget computer which may in future take the strain of 1 of the 2 VM's I'm required to run, or give away to one of my parents as a spare rig or something.

What do you guys think is the best long term solution here? What products are available? I'm not too well versed in the latest components available on the market since its been over 5 years since my last build, and I've not really been keeping up with the latest tech-trends.
At the moment I'm leaning 75% towards upgrading to a 7700k, 20% to holding off for a stronger generation CPU, and 5% mix between Threadripper, or saving money for a 690x/ i9 or other more suitable, but expensive product, or not even upgrading at all and dealing with gaming at 20FPS for the next few months.

[Mi26]

X299? 

[tom_w141]

18 minutes ago, Raintech said:

2 Virtual Machines need to be run 24/7

Why is this not an R7 1700 build? If you give these machines 1 core then that leaves you with a dual core cpu for gaming...

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 7 1700 3.0GHz 8-Core Processor  ($428.00 @ Shopping Express)
Motherboard: ASRock - X370 Taichi ATX AM4 Motherboard  ($289.00 @ Shopping Express)
Memory: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory  ($189.00 @ IJK)
Total: $906.00
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-07-04 20:02 AEST+1000

Edited July 4, 2017 by tom_w141

[Raintech]

Just now, tom_w141 said:

Why is this not an R7 1700 build?

Honestly, because I don't even know what an R7 was until just now. I've not really been keeping up with the new lineups of CPUs that have been released - I have a slightly workable knowledge of the current Intel series, but 0 info on the AMD lineup. Unfortunately, back when I did my build 5 years ago, AMD was in a really weak position and I've become incredibly biased towards Intel components now.

I'm happy to consider the AMD side if someone can convince me that they're better, but in my mind their reputation is one of a low performance, budget-grade products company. I know this has changed recently, and heck, wasn't even necessarily true in the past. But i  guess the damage has been done 

Do you think the R7 is better suited for this workload?

[tom_w141]

19 minutes ago, Raintech said:

Can the new motherboards accept my old DDR3 RAM?

No

19 minutes ago, Raintech said:

Has there been any news on a release date for new CPU's which might have higher performance?

Coffeelake 2018.

 

20 minutes ago, Raintech said:

I'm adverse to using AMD products

Fanboyism without reason can lead to a bad purchase like a quad core when  you need at least 6 cores for your use case. Judge CPUs on their merits not who makes them.

 

21 minutes ago, Raintech said:

 If my i7-3770k is struggling this badly under the required workload, what hope does an i7-7700k have?

Little improvement as nothing shocking has happened since Sandy Bridge really.

[tom_w141]

2 minutes ago, Raintech said:

Unfortunately, back when I did my build 5 years ago, AMD was in a really weak position

True but they aren't now. An R7 1700 suits your use case perfectly. Give the VMs 1 core each, leaving you with 6 cores 12 threads for your every day use. Or 2 cores each and you are left with a 4 core 8 thread machine for every day use. The 7700k starts with just 4 cores 8 threads and that's before you give any away. You will be disappointed and see little difference to your current i7 build.

[tom_w141]

6 minutes ago, Raintech said:

Do you think the R7 is better suited for this workload?

Absolutely. I can't link any resources due to this being a work PC but take a look around youtube. Straight up gaming and nothing else? Can't beat a 7700k. Workstation & Gaming in 1? Ryzen. Excellent performance/$

[Raintech]

3 minutes ago, tom_w141 said:

Fanboyism without reason can lead to a bad purchase like a quad core when  you need at least 6 cores for your use case. Judge CPUs on their merits not who makes them.

Well said. I'm prepared to leave my fanboyism at the door in the interests of making a well-informed decision here. It's pretty overwhelming to stick my head back into the "Tech-World" after 5+ years and I've gotten swamped with all sorts of new products and things I've never even heard of. And the market is quite different now too it seems. 

 

 

6 minutes ago, tom_w141 said:

Little improvement as nothing shocking has happened since Sandy Bridge really.

It's sad to see that have so many years such small steps have been made by Intel. Honestly, I was expecting the newest i7 to lap circles around my old hardware by now, but that clearly isn't the case.

I'll have a look into the AMD side now, thanks for your replies

[Nils3D]

as everyone said, R7 1700 will get your needs sorted.

[mikat]

1 minute ago, Raintech said:

Well said. I'm prepared to leave my fanboyism at the door in the interests of making a well-informed decision here. It's pretty overwhelming to stick my head back into the "Tech-World" after 5+ years and I've gotten swamped with all sorts of new products and things I've never even heard of. And the market is quite different now too it seems. 

 

 

It's sad to see that have so many years such small steps have been made by Intel. Honestly, I was expecting the newest i7 to lap circles around my old hardware by now, but that clearly isn't the case.

I'll have a look into the AMD side now, thanks for your replies

If you can score a cheap X99 board + cpu 2nd hand that would also be a good option since I recon many people are selling their X99 stuff rn

[tom_w141]

Just now, Raintech said:

It's sad to see that have so many years such small steps have been made by Intel.

AMD was in a bad place for a decade which meant Intel took their foot off the R&D gas pedal. Now AMD have come back swinging with Ryzen, Intel will have to start up again. Competition brings innovation. Intel had a monopoly so why spend the money to innovate? Now they have to because AMD are hitting them in all sectors hard. This is good for the consumer and should finally allow use to move out of the quad core stagnation that Intel had us sat in for so long...

[tom_w141]

1 minute ago, mikat said:

If you can score a cheap X99 board + cpu 2nd hand that would also be a good option since I recon many people are selling their X99 stuff rn

Why buy used and an obsolete platform? Broadwell-E is around Ryzen performance, but the benefit Ryzen has is its current. The AM4 socket is guaranteed for 4 years meaning you can upgrade to the latest Zen CPU in 4 years time without a new motherboard. The upgrade path for X99? Nothing.

[Nils3D]

1 minute ago, mikat said:

If you can score a cheap X99 board + cpu 2nd hand that would also be a good option since I recon many people are selling their X99 stuff rn

or better yet, if you wanna go real cheapo get an old lenovo C20 thinkstation on lga 1366 with dual Xeon E5649's
12 cores and 24 threads to work with @ 2,53 GHZ
add 48 gigs of ddr3 ram and this whole thing will set you back at around 500 USD on ebay

The reason i'm talking about this, I have one and it works wonders even on heavy 3D rendering and VM's

[ravenshrike]

6 minutes ago, tom_w141 said:

Straight up gaming and nothing else? Can't beat a 7700k.

Assuming you're trying to push 100 fps on max settings in processor intensive games; 150+ FPS in twitch games on max; and don't mind random intermittent stutters in a rather large amount of games.

[tom_w141]

Just now, ravenshrike said:

Assuming you're trying to push 100 fps on max settings in processor intensive games; 150+ FPS in twitch games on max; and don't mind random intermittent stutters in a rather large amount of games.

Streaming is entirely different then you'd want the R7. But in todays climate with games suited to quad cores and strong single core performance you can't beat a 7700k for gaming. No point being in denial about it (I'm an R7 1700 user and I love it). In the future gaming should become more multicore focused then you will see the R7 beat the i7, but until then if all you are doing is gaming with no multitasking/streaming/etc you can't beat the 7700k.

[mikat]

15 minutes ago, Nils3D said:

or better yet, if you wanna go real cheapo get an old lenovo C20 thinkstation on lga 1366 with dual Xeon E5649's
12 cores and 24 threads to work with @ 2,53 GHZ
add 48 gigs of ddr3 ram and this whole thing will set you back at around 500 USD on ebay

The reason i'm talking about this, I have one and it works wonders even on heavy 3D rendering and VM's

OP is talking about gaming and vms

for gaming that thing will suck ass

[Raintech]

Welp, so seems like alot of people are suggesting the R7.

I have UTTERLY no clue what I'm doing with the AMD lineup I'm afraid

What Chipset motherboard should I be looking into for this build? I know the 7700k performs optimally on a z270, what am I looking for to chamber the R7? Is there a big difference between the B350 and X370?

Also, as an avid overclocker, does the R7 overclock nicely? The i7s were a cinch and pleasure to oc, just up the multipliers a bit, up the bus speed by 1 or 2, multiply out the numbers to achieve the ghtz you wanted. Easy peasy. Hows the R7 in terms of bus speed/ multipliers? Is the overclock methodology the same?

Also in terms of future-proofing, how future proof is the R7 in regards to what AMD have announced so far? 4 years more of the same socket motherboard? That sounds very promising.
On the flip side, I assume Coffeelake i5s and i7s won't be out until next year, and they'll be on a a different socket than what the 7700k runs?

[Raintech]

2 minutes ago, mikat said:

OP is talking about gaming and vms

for gaming that thing will suck ass

Yeah, primarily the rig is intended as a gaming rig - It'll run VM's for a few months, but it'll be a gaming PC for many years to come, at least 3+ years before any other major upgrades.

Any solution that's bad for gaming? No bueno.

[mikat]

24 minutes ago, Raintech said:

Welp, so seems like alot of people are suggesting the R7.

I have UTTERLY no clue what I'm doing with the AMD lineup I'm afraid

What Chipset motherboard should I be looking into for this build? I know the 7700k performs optimally on a z270, what am I looking for to chamber the R7? Is there a big difference between the B350 and X370?

Also, as an avid overclocker, does the R7 overclock nicely? The i7s were a cinch and pleasure to oc, just up the multipliers a bit, up the bus speed by 1 or 2, multiply out the numbers to achieve the ghtz you wanted. Easy peasy. Hows the R7 in terms of bus speed/ multipliers? Is the overclock methodology the same?

Also in terms of future-proofing, how future proof is the R7 in regards to what AMD have announced so far? 4 years more of the same socket motherboard? That sounds very promising.
On the flip side, I assume Coffeelake i5s and i7s won't be out until next year, and they'll be on a a different socket than what the 7700k runs?

X370 has SLI/xfire support B350 does not

[ravenshrike]

1 hour ago, tom_w141 said:

But in todays climate with games suited to quad cores and strong single core performance you can't beat a 7700k for gaming. No point being in denial about it (I'm an R7 1700 user and I love it).

Sure for max FPS. I however find that apart from multiplayer FPS's smooth framerates are more important than high framerates so long as you're in the 60-75 FPS range. Which the Ryzen gets in pretty much everything apart from Benchmark of the Singularity. The 7700k has random stutters in quite a few modern games. Not constantly but it gets a bit annoying at times to be playing and suddenly the game will hang for less than a second or so. This is an issue with it only having 4 cores and there's nothing that can be done to stop it. I have little doubt that the 4 core Ryzen's suffer a similar effect.

[DrMikeNZ]

1 hour ago, mikat said:

If you can score a cheap X99 board + cpu 2nd hand that would also be a good option since I recon many people are selling their X99 stuff rn

I really don't get why people are selling X99, it is still an awesome platform. My 6900K is still faster than my 1700, selling such an expensive system at a loss for slightly less performance makes no sense to me.

1 hour ago, Raintech said:

Welp, so seems like alot of people are suggesting the R7.

Yes, and they should.

1 hour ago, Raintech said:

Also, as an avid overclocker, does the R7 overclock nicely?

Almost all Ryzen processors will hit a wall at 3.8-4.0 GHz. You may be able to squeeze a tiny bit extra with baseclock adjustment (I recommend getting a motherboard which allows baseclock overclocking). It is still fun to overclock, it is worth spending a little bit of time on it, and particularly focusing on memory overclocking can help in some applications due to the infinity fabric being tied to memory clock speeds.

1 hour ago, mikat said:

X370 has SLI/xfire support B350 does not

B350 is labelled as supporting crossfire in many of the AMD marketing materials. What they don't specify however in B350 boards is the PCIe X16 slot is not shared with a second PCIe X16 slot for x8,x8 configuration, and it looks like the only way I can see to crossfire on B350 is using an x4 slot through the chipset.

1 hour ago, tom_w141 said:

The upgrade path for X99? Nothing.

Secondhand 2699 V4 in a few years when their prices drop.

[tom_w141]

1 hour ago, Raintech said:

Also, as an avid overclocker, does the R7 overclock nicely? The i7s were a cinch and pleasure to oc, just up the multipliers a bit, up the bus speed by 1 or 2, multiply out the numbers to achieve the ghtz you wanted. Easy peasy. Hows the R7 in terms of bus speed/ multipliers? Is the overclock methodology the same?

Yes but 4.1GHz is the limit for most people using conventional cooling methods. My 1700 is at 4GHz.

 

2 hours ago, Raintech said:

Is there a big difference between the B350 and X370?

BCLK overclock on the X370 and SLI support. Other than that no.

 

2 hours ago, Raintech said:

Also in terms of future-proofing, how future proof is the R7 in regards to what AMD have announced so far? 4 years more of the same socket motherboard?

Correct

 

2 hours ago, Raintech said:

I assume Coffeelake i5s and i7s won't be out until next year, and they'll be on a a different socket than what the 7700k runs?

Also correct.

[tom_w141]

38 minutes ago, ravenshrike said:

Sure for max FPS. I however find that apart from multiplayer FPS's smooth framerates are more important than high framerates so long as you're in the 60-75 FPS range. Which the Ryzen gets in pretty much everything apart from Benchmark of the Singularity. The 7700k has random stutters in quite a few modern games. Not constantly but it gets a bit annoying at times to be playing and suddenly the game will hang for less than a second or so. This is an issue with it only having 4 cores and there's nothing that can be done to stop it. I have little doubt that the 4 core Ryzen's suffer a similar effect.

I've seen this happen with the i5 not the i7. I think you are getting mixed up, for todays games 4 cores/8 threads is fine.

[tom_w141]

23 minutes ago, DrMikeNZ said:

B350 is labelled as supporting crossfire in many of the AMD marketing materials. What they don't specify however in B350 boards is the PCIe X16 slot is not shared with a second PCIe X16 slot for x8,x8 configuration, and it looks like the only way I can see to crossfire on B350 is using an x4 slot through the chipset.

AMD slides actually show SLI/crossfire being X370 only. Its the mobo manufacturers that are putting crossfire on their marketing because it does work, sort of... At the end of the day though if you are looking for a solid board to last you years and are looking at Z270 comparisons then you want a decent X370 like the crosshair or taichi. Those boards are rock solid and great.

[mikat]

1 hour ago, DrMikeNZ said:

 

Secondhand 2699 V4 in a few years when their prices drop.

the 12-20 core xeons are also fine tho