Workstation

Back in the day I once again fell for AMD meme and built a computer with FX9590. It served me relatively well as I'm doing a lot of stuff that require CORES, but it's getting pretty old nowadays. I was waiting for Zen but it seems like it won't be around until 2017 and even then only the 8-core one.

So, Sup Forums, is it possible for me to sell out to Intel and upgrade without losing cores? From what I've seen hyperthreading works pretty well for my purposes, so i7 quad core would be a better equivalent to what i have now. I was also looking into i7 6800k and Xeons, but there are so many and I have no idea about Intel stuff as I haven't had one since P4. Any recommendations? Anyone doing any computational work?

You will rekt shit with an i7 or xeon but it will cost you an arm, a leg and your firstborn.

>Back in the day I once again fell for AMD meme and built a computer with FX9590
So 2 years ago?

>I was waiting for Zen but it seems like it won't be around until 2017 and even then only the 8-core one.

There's a 4c/8t and a 8c/16t


>so i7 quad core would be a better equivalent to what i have now
An i3 can beat what you have

I have shekels, but I don't want to pay $2000 for gayming 10-core if there is a cheaper alternative
3 years.

Maybe 8-core i3, but I don't see any

>in 2014 I fell for the AMD meme and bought literally the most expensive card they offer
Holy shit you fucked up. You could OC an 8320 to the same specs for almost a third of the cost.

The Skylake i3's single-thread performance is so much better than the 9590 that it's pretty much identical in performance for a general consumer. What exactly are you doing that requires all these CORES?

I got it for the price of 8350 at the time, so I thought why not + it came with water cooler.

This, most games can't even take advantage of 4 cores let alone 8

>general consumer
You actually mean gamer.

I mean literally anybody who isn't trying to run a VM server in their basement

I'm a physics grad student and most of the codes I use for my research can use cores, but also need shared memory, so it's not worth the pain to get them on a cluster. Plus some hobbies in related areas which I can't use lab's computational resources for.
>[current year]
>games

Compiling software
Databases
Photo and video editing
Full disk encryption (uses all cores on Linux)
Music production / sound synthesis
Fractals
Neural networks
Raytracing

The 6700K has the same number of threads, and performance per thread puts FX-series to seppuku levels of shame. You said you didn't want to spend a shitload of money on a hexa-octa-deca-whatever core i7, but those are the only logical steps up from the 6700K. If you are in the market for an upgrade, with the constraints you are describing, you are looking at an i7 6700K with a new mobo or you are looking at nothing. There are n-core Xeons and whatever, but the performance per dollar is not the same.

>compiling software
>media editing
>music production
>encryption
Does not scale with number of cores when single-thread performance is a major factor

>databases
So a server; basically what I have described

>ray tracing
If you are using enough source material that this can't be done on a GPU, you are not a general consumer and this has nothing to do with my argument

>neural networks
>fractals
Fuck off please

Compilers do scale with cores
encryption CAN scale depending on the algorithm you use

I only really need CPU+motherboard+memory as everything else is still good. From what I've seen 6700K + stuff is around $550 and 6800K + stuff is around $750. I'm willing to go up to $1000 and take a hit in clock speeds if it gives me more cores, but I looked at xeons on newegg and got really confused. Also I don't know if it's worth buying LGA2011 since it seems pretty old, or maybe it's better to hold out.

>stop liking what I don't like

If your budget is $1000 I'd get a 6850K and call it a day desu. Six hyperthreaded cores with a shitload of PPT; best you're going to do without spending an unreasonable amount of money.

If you want CORES and don't care about single thread performance, you can pick up a dual cpu sandy bridge board off ebay. E5 2690's for less than 200usd, can't get a better deal for your application.

For highly parallel workloads an old 2690 Xeon roughly performs 40% better than a new 6700k for half the cost. You could have two. At the very least it's worth looking into.

Thanks! That's pretty much exactly what I was looking for

If you want to go even cheaper for a small loss in performance you can even pick up the 2680's for less than an i3. Old xeons are really the best price/perf for parallel workloads and you'd still have an upgrade path to the v2 Ivy Bridge xeons using the same board when the 12 core variants come down in price eventually.