Is now a terrible time to upgrade?

[Zeitec]

I was super hyped for Coffee Lake, being 6 cores 12 threads with great IPC. Seemed like a great gaming chip. Now I'm seeing people who are stating that Ryzen will be like 12 cores 24 threads @ 5ghz within H1 2018 and that the 8700k will be equal to a pentium in 4 years time. Is this a bad time to upgrade? Or should this chip last me 5 years of decent gaming, or will it be potato before I can say "Coffee Lake"?

[vanished]

It's a great time to get a CPU (well, once Intel's 8000 series is out) due to Ryzen and the new Intel chips it inspired, but it's a terrible time for GPUs, RAM, and SSDs

[Zeitec]

1 minute ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

It's a great time to get a CPU (well, once Intel's 8000 series is out) due to Ryzen and the new Intel chips it inspired, but it's a terrible time for GPUs, RAM, and SSDs

I'm confused as to what to do now. If what people are saying is true and CPU's are going to begin accelerating at a rate similar to GPU's then should I go Ryzen so I can upgrade my CPU when I upgrade my 1080 in 2-3 years? From what I understand X370/AM4 will support Zen 2, but Z370 won't support Ice Lake. Should this affect my decision today?

[vanished]

Just now, Zeitec said:

I'm confused as to what to do now. If what people are saying is true and CPU's are going to begin accelerating at a rate similar to GPU's then should I go Ryzen so I can upgrade my CPU when I upgrade my 1080 in 2-3 years? From what I understand X370/AM4 will support Zen 2, but Z370 won't support Ice Lake. Should this affect my decision today?

I think Ryzen and the associated platform probably does have more of a positive upgrade path ahead of it at this point, since we've heard they plan to make new chips work on existing boards, meanwhile Intel is basically doing the opposite, but that said, I wouldn't buy in to the hype about what future Ryzen's could be.  Products - especially anything from AMD - tends to be way overhyped, and it[s just too far away to know what they will actually accomplish.  If they do actually pull off 12 cores at 5 GHz I will be absolutely shocked and amazed.

[SquintyG33Rs]

1 minute ago, Zeitec said:

I'm confused as to what to do now. If what people are saying is true and CPU's are going to begin accelerating at a rate similar to GPU's then should I go Ryzen so I can upgrade my CPU when I upgrade my 1080 in 2-3 years? From what I understand X370/AM4 will support Zen 2, but Z370 won't support Ice Lake. Should this affect my decision today?

if you want to upgrade now yes it should affect your decision. but CPU will only evolve at a maximum rate. top end will still be good in a few years the low end is what will be most affected. so only worry if you're on a very tight budget

[dizmo]

As soon as the 8000 series from Intel comes out, it'll be a great time to buy. I really doubt that AMD is going to come out with a Ryzen chip like that, and if they do it'll likely be on the X399 platform...but really, I just don't see it happening.

 

If you're always looking forward at what's rumored to come out and what's on the horizon, you'll never buy.

[Zeitec]

2 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

I think Ryzen and the associated platform probably does have more of a positive upgrade path ahead of it at this point, since we've heard they plan to make new chips work on existing boards, meanwhile Intel is basically doing the opposite, but that said, I wouldn't buy in to the hype about what future Ryzen's could be.  Products - especially anything from AMD - tends to be way overhyped, and it[s just too far away to know what they will actually accomplish.  If they do actually pull off 12 cores at 5 GHz I will be absolutely shocked and amazed.

Yeah that's what I was thinking. I was expecting 12 cores @ 5ghz closer to like 2020-2021 with Ryzen 3 when my Covfefe Lake would be reaching the end of it's lifespan. I'm a college student, just nervous about the possibility of having to replace my entire MOBO RAM CPU combo

[TahoeDust]

11 minutes ago, Zeitec said:

Now I'm seeing people who are stating that Ryzen will be like 12 cores 24 threads @ 5ghz within H1 2018 and that the 8700k will be equal to a pentium in 4 years time.

lol...who are these people?  Sounds like a scared AMD shill.

[SuperShermanTanker]

Well I have a i5 kabylake system and I feel it's going to last me quite a few years because think of how long dual cores lasted with a few of the very popular games still being playable on a dual core so think on how that will happen with quad cores they are so popular dating back on the intel consumer platform to the Core 2 Quads (which still can play games with medium to high settings with a lower midrange GPU) and due to the popularity developers will take that into mind just as they did with dual cores not too long ago.

 

EDIT: PS developers are still just started intergrating support for more cores and some still even with 6-8 core CPUs being more abundant don't even take advantage of that.

[SquintyG33Rs]

2 minutes ago, TahoeDust said:

lol...who are these people?  Sounds like a scared AMD shill.

i think the core count on AMD won't change much in the next few years. maybe a more varied lineup with 8core no SMT or other options like that but they'll get their process node under control and speed will rise a bit to match closer to intel's right under 5ghz

[SquintyG33Rs]

4 minutes ago, SuperShermanTanker said:

Well I have a i5 kabylake system and I feel it's going to last me quite a few years because think of how long dual cores lasted with a few of the very popular games still being playable on a dual core so think on how that will happen with quad cores they are so popular dating back on the intel consumer platform to the Core 2 Quads (which still can play games with medium to high settings with a lower midrange GPU) and due to the popularity developers will take that into mind just as they did with dual cores not too long ago.

yes but the availability of more than 4 core machines (which until ryzen was the only thing on the market) means that they will also start to use more cores when available and little by little the optimization work needed to make the 4 cores work will get dropped. it's a question of what the norm is what the majority have. devs aim for that and ryzen is only barely starting to open the door for it to shift. i don't think we can really predict what's going to happen in the coming years. it depends on how many of the old school sandy bridge gamers finally upgrade because they never had a reason to up to now.

[Zodiark1593]

The only bit not terrible are the CPUs. Everything else... Could be better.