Should I wait for ZEN ?

Gh0sT-NoVa · Sep 4, 2016

Should I wait for ZEN or should I just jump aboard to the Skylake train.
Though I'm not entirely sure now is my CPU is able to pull it's weight.

But I know at least I think it's still not bottlenecking my GPU ?
Based on how it performance in games, no weird random FPS drop, some games it does pegged at 90% ++ on 4 Cores, but GPU seems to be still working at 100% as well.
I'm guessing my CPU is still fine ? ( I'm seeing this in DooM, Battlefield 1 BETA, Fallout 4 for Fallout 4 I think it's more of an Optimization issue, people actually recommending i7 for this game yet even with an i7 you be suffering terrible FPS drop )

As I know, ZEN is a whole new Architecture, now I can pretty much say that almost NONE of the new Tech stuffs these days have a SMOOTH launch.
Even if ZEN were to release, I doubt it be actually " stable " for least few Months or maybe even Years wouldn't it ?
Ranging from Mobo issues to CPU even. Have you guys seen Gigabyte Z170 boards ? People had to constantly update their BIOS to fix all sort of problems.

As for CPU wise, I guess Skylake didn't had any real issues, mostly are on the boards, but what was that about your CPU cooler may damage your CPU?

So guys what's your opinion? Just go for Skylake or wait for ZEN to release or maybe " stable " even...
But what made me hesitated from moving to Skylake is because honestly, Intel CPU and Mobo pries now are just disgustingly expensive...it's sickening !

mackerel · Sep 4, 2016

If you should upgrade now depends on if you feel a need to upgrade now. There will always be something new around the corner. Both Kaby Lake and Zen aren't expected in volume (for desktop parts) until next year.

The cooler thing was due to it being thinner than previously, so excessive pressure has more chance of crushing it. You basically don't hear of problems of it happening now.

Zen is still an unknown, but what you could say is if it is competitive against Intel, they will also try to charge Intel like pricing, at least in the mainstream. They'll still have to undercut a little due to their branding but don't expect a massive difference. Maybe in the very high end they have more chance of being disruptive in pricing.

Tír na nÓg · Sep 4, 2016

What I would do, to get a good extra performance at lower cost is sell the 3550, grab a used 3770k, take it to 4.5GHZ+.

You should be a $100 out of your pocket and will have a config that can last for a while more.

Long enough to wait for KL/Zen for sure.

EarthDog · Sep 4, 2016

I won't even spend the 100 dollars... wait it out is my suggestion as I am sure your ivy bridge based cpu is holding its own and will for the next few months until these chips come out.

Gh0sT-NoVa · Sep 5, 2016

EarthDog said:
I won't even spend the 100 dollars... wait it out is my suggestion as I am sure your ivy bridge based cpu is holding its own and will for the next few months until these chips come out.

Hmm honestly I feel bit lost now at the moment because I myself am unsure do I actually need or want an upgrade. I feel like it's like I'm just looking for an excuse for an upgrade instead of actually needing one lol.
Since my CPU and Mobo etc it's about 4 Years old or so now.
For one that is the Z170 do provide alot of new neat features, but I doubt I have any use for most of them. What were the major features that I be getting again ?

1) NVMe SSD
2) USB 3.1 / USB Type-C ( I don't own any this kind of USB Storage Device yet though or do I even need such fast storage for backing up stuffs most the time ? )
3) M.2 SSD ( This is the interesting part, as I know M.2 is able to push pass 500Mb/s but of course that will cost more for the SSD, then again I only use SSD for Boot Up for now I'm pretty content with the current speed )
4) Thunderbolt 2.0 or was it 3.0 now ? ( What do I even do with this thing lol....? )

Anything else I missed out ?

Ok on CPU side, I think I will see a boost in performance when gaming, if I were to upgrade to the i5 6600 ( non-K I don't OC ).
But question is, how significantly ?

This is just based on my own knowledge, but I think my i5 3550 is still pulling it's weight, but does it actually ?? Because I'm unsure myself.
So I guess end of the day, I think the biggest question is, do I need a CPU upgrade ? Not the Z170 features, rather than is my CPU still good for now. How do I find out ?

Actually I almost made my move jumping aboard to Skylake. Till I saw AMD Demo their ZEN CPU, it actually able to compete with the Broadwell-E 5820K was it ?
So I was kinda surprised. I'm hoping maybe I could jump to AMD for a cheaper solution, but sadly as of now, we know almost nothing about ZEN.
Also well I must admit I'm more of an AMD fanboy myself lol.

- - - Updated - - -

Tír na nÓg said:
What I would do, to get a good extra performance at lower cost is sell the 3550, grab a used 3770k, take it to 4.5GHZ+.

You should be a $100 out of your pocket and will have a config that can last for a while more.

Long enough to wait for KL/Zen for sure.

Hmm hard to even find used ones these days.
And I don't feel comfortable buying used hardware, biggest worry is dying on me all sudden.

But let's say if I were to move to Haswell 4690 ( non-K, I don't OC ), is there even any improvement from my current IB 3550 pairing with my Fury Nitro ?
Not many games are CPU intensive either honestly, even there are mostly I don't play them.

mackerel · Sep 5, 2016

Gh0sT-NoVa said:
Actually I almost made my move jumping aboard to Skylake. Till I saw AMD Demo their ZEN CPU, it actually able to compete with the Broadwell-E 5820K was it ?
So I was kinda surprised. I'm hoping maybe I could jump to AMD for a cheaper solution, but sadly as of now, we know almost nothing about ZEN.
Also well I must admit I'm more of an AMD fanboy myself lol.

So we have one data point, that Zen will be IPC competitive against Broadwell-E in that one application running that task. We don't know eventual clocks, we don't know pricing, we don't know... much at all. Part of me says, AMD probably cherry picked the benchmark to use, so will it be worse in other areas? If you don't need to upgrade right away, then you can afford to wait longer to see what else comes along. There is talk there might limited supply of Zen by end of this year, if so we'll have a better understanding of performance then, and you can decide to go for it or not.

Alaric · Sep 5, 2016

I feel like it's like I'm just looking for an excuse for an upgrade instead of actually needing one lol.

That I understand. All I really needed was a $250 graphics card. A couple thousand dollars later I have the rig in my sig. LOL. From what I've been able to gather from reviews, interviews, various tech articles, and some of the smart folks here, there aren't likely to be any major improvements over Haswell for at least a couple years (except core counts). Some minor bumps in IPC and speed, but nothing earth shattering, and that includes Zen. If AMD sticks with their historic model they may grab the bang-per-buck title back but bleeding edge performance is likely to stay Intel's market share. If you can wait for Zen and get a better idea of what it offers then that's the route I would go. Otherwise, your chip isn't "bad" at all. If it's upgraditis, the Skylake is a nice chip and a non K i5 is a pretty decently priced bundle of performance. IMO

Gh0sT-NoVa · Sep 6, 2016

Exactly how do I know that my CPU is finally showing it's age that's it's unable to catch up with my GPU ?
Cause as I mentioned many times before, I just felt that it's still doing well, but what's everyone opinion ?
Anything I should monitor to get my answers ?

Meanwhile let's enjoy this Meme of CPU being bottleneck by the GPU

https://imgur.com/T3okxc3

Tír na nÓg · Sep 6, 2016

The question I would ask myself is: "Do the frame rate on the games I play is satisfying?".

If the answer is yes, I would not change anything.

If the answer is no, I'd dig deeper...

Above 1080p, it is going to take a while before your CPU bottlenecks the Fury.

Check the CPU usage when gaming, if the 4 cores hit 100%, it is a bottleneck.

Gh0sT-NoVa · Sep 9, 2016

Tír na nÓg said:
The question I would ask myself is: "Do the frame rate on the games I play is satisfying?".

If the answer is yes, I would not change anything.

If the answer is no, I'd dig deeper...

Above 1080p, it is going to take a while before your CPU bottlenecks the Fury.

Check the CPU usage when gaming, if the 4 cores hit 100%, it is a bottleneck.

Hmm the most demanding game I can find in my Library would be Withcer 3, honestly I'm quite satisfied and happy with the upgrade from 290X to Fury.
I went for Fury ( didn't wait for Vega ) is because I needed more FPS, and boom I did after just by upgrading my 290X to Fury.
Gaming on 1440p, with smooth FPS over 60, while my 290X couldn't before. ( Well it's not too bad ranging from 50 - 60 FPS but not good as my Fury, it's more constant and almost never dip below 60 )

Hmm CPU Usage wise, if the game is properly optimized I don't think so, like in Witcher 3, many did claimed the game is rather CPU demanding, but my CPU is kinda having a breeze in the game.
At most was DooM with Vulkan, hitting 80% ++ but I was pushing way over 90 - 120 FPS most the time. Never dip at all, smooth from first Mission till the end even in MP !

I even tried BF 1 BETA recently, 64 Players filled map. GPU is still pushing out alot of FPS no issues, but CPU is being push hard ! About 90% ++ most the time. But I don't think it's bottlenecking, since I didn't have FPS dipping.
Long story short, I'm not experiencing any unreasonable weird FPS drip in games I guess my CPU still good then ?

Except in Fallout 4, I think it's the game issue...and seems like if you have an i7 CPU you really benefit from it in Fallout 4, but some claimed you shouldn't even require i7 to run game like Fallout 4 and the game it's actually poorly optimized
rather than being our hardware not able to keep up.

wingman99 · Sep 9, 2016

Looks like your doing just fine with your i5 3550.

Techspot is a site that benchmarks what you like to know. link Fallout 4 http://www.techspot.com/review/1089-fallout-4-benchmarks/page5.html

Gh0sT-NoVa · Sep 10, 2016

wingman99 said:
Looks like your doing just fine with your i5 3550.

Techspot is a site that benchmarks what you like to know. link Fallout 4 http://www.techspot.com/review/1089-fallout-4-benchmarks/page5.html

Well this is a shocking result lol and on the list it's actually a i5 3450 ! A step down from my CPU...well just about 0.1 Ghz I think lol...my 3550 is actually the 2nd fastest i5 CPU back then. The fastest is a i5 3560 if not mistaken. I think it goes up to 3.9 Ghz Turbo Boost. Just another 0.2 Ghz not much of a different. But the PRICE is....
I guess my i5 is able to serve me bit longer. Really was a great decision getting this i5 back then lol...and Tks for the site I didn't know there's such a site which did so much CPU testing in games.

Gh0sT-NoVa · Sep 11, 2016

I don't want to start too many new thread. So I'm just gonna ask here.
Let's say if I were to upgrade to Skylake. Which board would you guys recommend? I most probably be pairing it with an i5 6600 non K I don't OC. But I would still prefer a Z170 board.
Any good solid bang for buck board you guys would recommend? Best if it's a board you have experience with.
I think my budget be around 200$ USD range.

And RAM. Is 16GB enough If strictly for gaming?? I think frequency doesn't matter right when comes to gaming?

Also what's with the deal with Killer Ethernet I heard it's really bad? But alot boards these day only come with Killer.

wingman99 · Sep 11, 2016

I like my Gigabyte Z170 HD3 it has Realtek Ethernet, I just use windows 10 drivers the board works sweet.

DaveB · Sep 11, 2016

Get 2 x 8 GB so you can expand to 32 GB later if necessary. Most any Z170 board is fine - pick one with the features you need. For my Skylake experiment, I bought the cheapest Z170 Microcenter had, the ASRock Z170M Pro4S, which was $79 after rebate. It is an mATX board that was rock solid with my i5 6600K OC'd at 4.6 GHz while running DDR4-3000 RAM. I ran it with a Zotac GTX 980 and a Sapphire R9 Fury with no issues at all. You really don't need to spend anything near $200 for a Z170 motherboard.

deathman20 · Oct 11, 2016

Sounds like where I was but I was questioning waiting for the next Intel process or just sticking with my slightly older i5 2500k. I jumped to the Skylake instead and enjoying it

I'd say if you have an older proc like mine, it might be more beneficial to upgrade right now, but, you have a slightly newer version than what I had so you'd be looking at maybe a 15% increase in performance some times (assuming you went with a i5 6600k). I got roughly a 20%+ and then some increase in performance with my upgrade pending on the tasks I do. I've been waiting almost 6 years and figured it was time for an upgrade for me.. well 5 years 8 months. Couldn't resist any longer hehe.

Really if you have the itch do it, otherwise if you can resist just a bit longer I'd wait at least til the new ones come out you have the selection potentially between both the new intel and amd platforms. And hopefully AMD will make it exciting again.

Theocnoob · Nov 11, 2016

Gh0sT-NoVa said:
Hmm honestly I feel bit lost now at the moment because I myself am unsure do I actually need or want an upgrade. I feel like it's like I'm just looking for an excuse for an upgrade instead of actually needing one lol.
Since my CPU and Mobo etc it's about 4 Years old or so now.
For one that is the Z170 do provide alot of new neat features, but I doubt I have any use for most of them. What were the major features that I be getting again ?

1) NVMe SSD
2) USB 3.1 / USB Type-C ( I don't own any this kind of USB Storage Device yet though or do I even need such fast storage for backing up stuffs most the time ? )
3) M.2 SSD ( This is the interesting part, as I know M.2 is able to push pass 500Mb/s but of course that will cost more for the SSD, then again I only use SSD for Boot Up for now I'm pretty content with the current speed )
4) Thunderbolt 2.0 or was it 3.0 now ? ( What do I even do with this thing lol....? )

Anything else I missed out ?

Ok on CPU side, I think I will see a boost in performance when gaming, if I were to upgrade to the i5 6600 ( non-K I don't OC ).
But question is, how significantly ?

This is just based on my own knowledge, but I think my i5 3550 is still pulling it's weight, but does it actually ?? Because I'm unsure myself.
So I guess end of the day, I think the biggest question is, do I need a CPU upgrade ? Not the Z170 features, rather than is my CPU still good for now. How do I find out ?

Actually I almost made my move jumping aboard to Skylake. Till I saw AMD Demo their ZEN CPU, it actually able to compete with the Broadwell-E 5820K was it ?
So I was kinda surprised. I'm hoping maybe I could jump to AMD for a cheaper solution, but sadly as of now, we know almost nothing about ZEN.
Also well I must admit I'm more of an AMD fanboy myself lol.

- - - Updated - - -

Hmm hard to even find used ones these days.
And I don't feel comfortable buying used hardware, biggest worry is dying on me all sudden.

But let's say if I were to move to Haswell 4690 ( non-K, I don't OC ), is there even any improvement from my current IB 3550 pairing with my Fury Nitro ?
Not many games are CPU intensive either honestly, even there are mostly I don't play them.

You can't go to Haswell without upgrading your motherboard. Different socket. Not compatible. Also if you're going to Haswell you might as well go to Skylake or Kaby Lake or Zen (different socket(s) again. Not compatible with Haswell or Ivy).
Do you NEED to upgrade? No. But that's never stopped me

We know more or less what the performance of the new AMD ZEN chips will be in terms of instructions per clock. They are going to (allegedly) match Skylake clock for clock. What stock clocks and pricing will be of both chip and platform, I don't know. Many people are hedging their bets that ZEN will provide = perf to Intel for less money. That's not a sure thing, but a lot of people are holding out to see if it is true.

If you want to upgrade now, you can go ahead and buy a Skylake based system with a 6700K and a Z170 motherboard. Kaby Lake will have the same IPC as Skylake so it's really not an upgrade. Intel is more focused (as with many new CPU releases) on mobile with this new family of chips. They will be socket 1151, like Skylake, so if you ever wanted to upgrade your 6700K to a 7700K for little gain besides turning the little 6 into a little 7, you could do that.

Basically, no matter which way you go right now (skylake/kabylake/zen) you're looking at about the same performance per clock no matter which way you turn. You can buy any of those 3 platforms with confidence. By the way with all chips ending in (K), intel no longer includes a heatsink. You must provide one yourself. All socket 1155/1150/1151/1156 heatsinks are the same spacing and intercompatible.

Kenrou · Nov 12, 2016

Theocnoob said:
We know more or less what the performance of the new AMD ZEN chips will be in terms of instructions per clock. They are going to (allegedly) match Skylake clock for clock.

IPC will match Haswell not Skylake unless something changed in the last couple months and it will do it at a much lower clock speed as it's normal with 8 cores + HT (projected is around 3.5ghz). Skylake has 10% IPC on top of Haswell and Kaby Lake has another 10% on top of Skylake.

But ofc much can change until the launch. Check out the Zen thread if you're really interested : http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php/758183-AMD-ZEN-Rumours

mackerel · Nov 12, 2016

The only claim we've seen out of AMD comparing with Intel is the Blender test they did claiming a light lead over Broadwell in IPC. Everything else has been leeks with people trying to work back to CPU performance from GPU heavy benchmarks. Also lower clocks with more cores is more due to controlling overall package TDP and isn't a good indication of maximum clocks of the architecture. Finally, Kaby Lake is same IPC as Skylake outside of some new video decode functions, the main change being offering a bit more clock for a given power budget.

Kenrou · Nov 12, 2016

mackerel said:
Also lower clocks with more cores is more due to controlling overall package TDP and isn't a good indication of maximum clocks of the architecture. Finally, Kaby Lake is same IPC as Skylake outside of some new video decode functions, the main change being offering a bit more clock for a given power budget.

8 core + HT, starting off at 3.2ghz-3.7ghz, it's a good bet it wont OC much higher then 4ghz/4.2ghz without some serious cooling. Had a review on another thread that said Kaby Lake was 10% over Skylake, was that a rough estimate ?

http://www.pcgamesn.com/amd/amd-zen-release-date-specs-prices-rumours/#performance

"The major caveat here though is that 40% architectural IPC gain will only translate into an actual 40% performance boost if we’re looking at chips with equivalent clockspeeds. That IPC improvement is compared with the existing Excavator cores, used in the Athlon X4 845 for example. That’s a 65W quad-core CPU running at between 3.4GHz and 3.8GHz and delivers a Cinebench single-threaded index score of just 96.

Doing some rough, back-of-the-napkin maths, if a Zen quad-core is running at 3.8GHz then we could expect to see a score or around 134 in Cinebench’s single-threaded benchmark. Extrapolating that further you’d see the current engineering samples, running at an operating peak of 3.2GHz, performing somewhere around the 113 mark. That’s only a potential performance boost of less than 19% over the Excavator core.

It’s going to be important for AMD to release their Zen CPUs with much higher final clockspeeds if they really want to provide a tangible alternative to Intel’s Skylake chips. The Core i7 6700K clocks in at 4.2GHz, spitting out a single-thread Cinebench score of 172 and even running at the i5 6600K’s 3.9GHz it nets 158. By my messed up maths Summit Ridge would need to launch at near 4.5GHz to hit the sort of single-threaded performance the current Intel Core i5 sports. Zen still has a lot of ground to make up then..."

Should I wait for ZEN ?

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