After learning that my 2 year old system takes a few hours to render stuff in UE4 …
I do not want to hold back by waiting times, thus tempering with a buy and saw that Intel’s 2011-3 is currently the best, but is it worth it, or should i get a decent 1150 system? Or should i wait for the next generation, which is to be brought late this summer, i read somewhere.
GTX 980, SSD250, 32GB (DDR3 or DDR4), 4, 6 or 8 core CPU …
Decisions 
Anyone with 2011 here, and or with 8 core CPU?
I am running 5960x (8 core) with 16gb DDR4. It does have a nice, noticeable improvement on complete compile from source (hot-reload has little to no improvement), Compiling shaders, and Baking huge lighting.
However, know that running/playing games (for now) will have lower performance compared to 4790k (probably 3-5%, nothing major) because higher clock speeds is better than all the amazing cores/thread.
My improvements were coming from a 4core/4 thread i5 (ivy bridge). Is it worth the price tag… eeek its hard to justify, It may be worth the while to go with a 4790k to be honest. I think the only time those extra cores and threads are really that much more helpful is if you are constantly recompiling the engine (rare in general), or baking huge lightmaps.
I got i5-3450 Processor, well and because building lighting in UE requires RAM, and because i read that DDR4 is noticeable faster than DDR3, i looked up the 2011-3 socket offer…
I would need X99 motherboard system, getting 16GB DDR4, swap my current 100GB SSD, add another 250SSD (for ~120$ ish), but the processor is expensive…
The GTX could be a 970, i.e. 4096MB ZOTAC GeForce GTX 970 AMP! Omega Core Edition Aktiv PCIe 3.0 x16 (Retail) € 376,85
And i could sell my current CPU, mainboard, GFX (GTX 650 TI)
When factoring in resell value, i may be actually good with buying either of two options (improving my 1150 setup, or going with 2011-3…)
My problem atm:
Long lightning build times in UE, in a low poly count environment (Noticeable performance loose - can not use computer)
Frequent driver crashes in Substance painter
From the reviews/benchmarks/researchs i’ve seen, there seems to be little improvement from ddr3 to ddr4 (synthetic benchmarks show nice gains), but there doesn’t seem to be large “real world” performance gains (using programs, and games) because of ddr4. Its up too you and how much money you willing to spend.
I’ll say this, if i had to do it over again (me personally) I’d probably get the 4790k (or upcoming 5790K?) and save the money (5960x is silly expensive, and ddr4 is a bit expensive too) and put the extra money towards a titan x (980, or rumored 980ti?). I think you’d get more return on a better video card, more ram (16gb ddr4 vs 32 ddr3).
Can’t go wrong with an 8 core / 16 thread, or 6 core /12 thread behemoth. Just trying to help with the “bang for the buck” factor and get more out of your machine if you “only” have $700-1400 to spend on upgrades.
I would go with the i7-4790k and GTX980. (And 32Gb RAM).
Thanks for the input guys! Well, i probably will opt for the upgrade option, since overall I’m quiet satisfied with my current system. A Titan would be great ofc, but the price is like over 1100€ atm.
The faster CPU will benefit mostly for code compiling and light baking, playing a game will not benefit much since that relies more on the GPU. You generally get only like a couple FPS difference between CPU’s in games.
5820K gets my vote, it’s basically the same price as the 4790K anyway.
You’re probably not going to ever need DDR3 RAM again as well so buying it is kind of wasting money.
As far as I know LGA 1150 now has no upgrade path, but Broadwell-E might work on 2011-3 (I’m not sure where I read that though).
Buy faster CPU for nearly the same price, if broadwell-e turns out to be good you only need to swap the CPU.
But since your system isn’t that old maybe just wait =]