your opinion.

[steve bal]

few months ago I put together this configuration:

i5 2500k
asus p8p67
8 gb skill
xfx hd5670

now I need to get another, I'm between buying the same configuration to have some redundancy (interchange components) or an AMD FX 8 core. 20% cheaper but 16% faster according cpu benchmarks.

[Julian Bransky]

What is the PC for? Gaming or 3D/video work?

[steve bal]

all of them on a budget.. except for gaming.. for now..
I decided to go for the i5, now Im looking for a good mother board. I'm looking at the new Z77 chipset. ASUS or gigabyte.

[John Dollus]

I always try and stick to the same cpu family. For motherboards, both are good. I'd go with asus if you tweak a lot and gigabyte if you are more a plug and play kinda person.

[steve bal]

Well, I bought the i5-2500k and one day after, the 3rd generation of i5 were released, so I'm returning the 2500k and getting a 3570k for $10 less.
in a few days I will be running some benchmarks to compare the 2500k and 3570k.

[Dimitris Tolios]

One of my concerns with the newer mobos, is that Ivy bridge is a bit less power demanding, thus power circuits use less phases of regulation and blah blah blah...
I am trying to get to the assumption that perhaps Z77 mobos are more than enough for Ivy, but maybe a bit "short" if you are wishing to overclock Sandy on...that for the "redundancy" between the two architectures: be cautious if you even wish to o/c push your sandy on a Z77...
I haven't seen anybody doing it and having problems, just sayin...

[steve bal]

Thanks Dimitrios, good to know that point. I'm not an overcloker, I live in arizona and heat is always an isuue, even with A/C on. I can not leave a render during the night w/ overclok, someone could turn off the A/C and the room goes to 90F in no time.

For me less power is better and according to preliminary benchmarks IVY is 15-20% faster for comparable models of Sandy consuming less power, that means less heat.

I don't like to buy the latest tech. I always like to be 1 step behind, for price and possible issues of new products. but this time I was buying at the same time the tech came out, at same or even lower price than the 2nd generation.

[Dimitris Tolios]

Steve,
Ivy bridge is a step forward - no doubts about that. But its a revamped / shrinked Sandy in essence...I will use i7 numbers cause those were easier to find but are relative to the i5 changes.

22nm made the CPU smaller...actually quite a bit smaller if you consider that 30% of the 3770K's die is occupied by the new, much bigger GPU unit.

The 3770K is rated @ just 77W, much lower than the 95W of the 2600/2700K. That is great, but it's not the whole story.
The actual die got smaller, shrinking from 216mm^2 to 160mm^2. That means that heat density to be dissipated from the 2600K/2700K was 95W/216mm^2 = 0.439W/mm^2, while on the Ivy series is 0.481 W/mm^2.

The consumption drop was not enough to equalize the massive shrinking of the die.
Thus Ivy does not run much cooler than the Sandy, especially when stressed. In extreme scenarios, when you overclock (and over-volt) the 3770K it might even run hotter than Sandybridge equivalents, despite the less volts applied.

In your case, I would suggest a proper (big) aftermarket cooler, and trying under-volting your processors a tiny bit. It's a common practice for a lot of years, especially for DIY mobile, small enclosure and HTPC applications. Ivy bridge is very receptive to that thus far, and can run stable @ stock clocks with less voltage than the factory spec (just like it can overclock with very light increase).

[steve bal]

Excellent information, and that undercloking for long renders in summer days, is a really nice idea..