Should I wait for Haswell to rebuild my PC?

[Kutt]

I read that the next-gen "Haswell" Intel processors are going to offer roughly 50% more performance than the current Ivy-Bridge architecture. Although I'm not sure how valid that statement is because someone on a PC hardware forum told it to me.

Clock for clock, the jump from Nehalem to SB and IB was 15-20% at best. I think it's time that Intel puts out a processor that offers a major performance gain like the Core 2 quad to the first-gen Core i7, which was around 50%.

I am hesitant to build a new 3770K gaming rig for Christmas knowing that the Haswell processors are right around the corner in Q1 2013.

Should I wait for the Haswell to build a new gaming rig?

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

GPU is far more important than CPU for gaming. So no. :) Go build that monster. You'll be set for a long time!

 

[Kutt]

GPU is far more important than CPU for gaming. So no. :) Go build that monster. You'll be set for a long time!

The next generation of graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia won't be available until circa 2014.

A 3770K combined with dual SLI GTX 680's will bulldoze through anything, except Metro 2033.

 

[Borek]

Next generation will be even faster. Waiting you will never build anything.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

except Metro 2033.

Why pay $4k to play a mediocre game on max? :)

My $1.5k (one year ago) ASUS G47S laptop will run most games now on high settings.

Not trying to discourage you if this is your "vice", but as Borek said, you'll always be playing catch up. Just buy the rig and enjoy the games :)

 

[Kutt]

Why pay $4k to play a mediocre game on max? :)

My $1.5k (one year ago) ASUS G47S laptop will run most games now on high settings.

Not trying to discourage you if this is your "vice", but as Borek said, you'll always be playing catch up. Just buy the rig and enjoy the games :)

My build is around $2,200. I've priced everything.

The PC port of Grand Theft Auto 5 is going to be a performance hog that only the fastest hardware setups will be able to run smoothly on high graphics settings.

This is one of the reasons why I'm building a new PC.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

This is one of the reasons why I'm building a new PC.

If it's a big reason, then why not wait for to buy the updated rig in summer?

 

[Kutt]

If it's a big reason, then why not wait for to buy the updated rig in summer?

Crysis 3, Metro The Last Light, Battlefield 4, and several other future PC titles are going to run slow on my current 2 year old gaming rig. I need a new rig if I am to play these games smoothly.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Crysis 3, Metro The Last Light, Battlefield 4, and several other future PC titles are going to run slow on my current 2 year old gaming rig. I need a new rig if I am to play these games smoothly.

I say buy the rig then. GTA5 will still run great.

 

[Kutt]

GTA 4 and 5 for the PC are extremely VRAM intensive.

For example, you cannot max out the view distance slider in GTA4 without having 2GB of RAM on your graphics card. GTA 5 has much better graphics than the previous game so I'm guessing that it will require even more VRAM to run smoothly.

 

[wuliheron]

Greg is right and you should just go for the i7 for now which is already overkill for gaming. The first version of Haswell will be the 10w portable version with a built in gpu, while the high powered desktop cpu for gaming rigs will not be available until late next year.

The big advantage of Haswell is it will use a transposer to add serious ram to the chip. Despite being underclocked the portable offerings will have twice the graphics power of current offerings and the desktop overclocked version some estimate could have five times the graphics power. That's a big deal in an industry where 15% improvements are average but, like I said, it will only apply to portable devices until late next year at the earliest. What Intel intends to do with the high powered desktop cpu version nobody knows.

The next two years should be very interesting indeed. There are already SoCs like Haswell used in smartphones and servers, but this will be the first attempt to start replacing cpu processors for most commercial devices. In 2014 Intel will add unified memory to the chip architecture which could make another significant difference. Beyond that all bets are off. These "Frankenstein" chips as I like to call them are impossible to predict. Heat is the biggest physical limitation and if someone can get that under control and work out the technical and cost problems you could literally stack a hundred of them together and build a supercomputer the size of a walnut.

 

[Kutt]

Off-topic, but how much faster would two GeForce GTX 680's be compared to my current system which has two Radeon HD 5870's in crossfire?

Someone told me I could get 3x the performance if I overclock them.

The 3770K won't bottleneck that setup, will it?