Talk me into it / out of it.

I'm currently on an i7-920 overclocked to 4GHZ thanks to the beastly Noctua NH-DH14 HSF. I've also got 24GB or RAM. An old GeForce 9500 video card. 3 x SSD and a few 2TB Caviar Blacks. Windows 8 is the OS.

I also have an i5-3750k with 32GB of RAM that's running Windows Server 2008 R2 and 4 Hyper-V Virtual Machines. Running well.

For reasons I won't get into here, I need another PC to run a bunch more Hyper-V Virtual Machines. My i7-920 has hardware acceleration support and I run a few Hyper-V Windows 7 Virtual Machines for programming/developmen​t and to act as a client to the servers. Yada, yada, yada...

Sooooo...I was thinking to re-purpose my i7-920 so that it's another Windows Server 2008 R2 machine running a handful of Hyper-V Virtual Machines and buy a new rig for my photo editing PC.

Everyone got that?

So I was looking at the Microcenter deal for the i7-3770k and was thinking maybe that's the chip I should get.

But then there's Haswell of course...due out in June/July. I've read that it's not much of an upgrade from Ivy Bridge procs.

I was also looking at the Hexacore chips but decided the cost outweighs the benefits for photo editing.

I don't play any games on my PC. So it's strictly a photo editing and Hyper-V (host Win7 VMs) machine. Looking for 32GB of RAM. On-board video is probably OK.

So what say you?

I would avoid Haswell unless you want to beta test the x87 for Intel at your expense. The Z77 is a solid platform unless you really need something more brute. So no point on buying into the unknown just yet and no reason to hold back and wait based on what's already been leaked.

http://wccftech.com …oint-lp-chipset-detailed/

isoMorphic wrote in post #15810403
I would avoid Haswell unless you want to beta test the x87 for Intel at your expense. The Z77 is a solid platform unless you really need something more brute. So no point on buying into the unknown just yet and no reason to hold back and wait based on what's already been leaked.

http://wccftech.com …oint-lp-chipset-detailed/

+1 Completely agree

Well, I suppose I can continue using my OC'd i7-920 rig. Perhaps I should get a better video card to take advantage of OpenCL in Photoshop CS6?

i7-3770k (or any other "k" CPU) doesn't support Virtualization technology, so I'm not sure how good it would be as a hyper-v host. Hexacore chips will not help you for photo editing but will be good for VMs. I feel like you got a pretty odd combo there by combing photo editing and hyper-v on the same host

DiMAn0684 wrote in post #15811701
i7-3770k (or any other "k" CPU) doesn't support Virtualization technology, so I'm not sure how good it would be as a hyper-v host. Hexacore chips will not help you for photo editing but will be good for VMs. I feel like you got a pretty odd combo there by combing photo editing and hyper-v on the same host

Hyper-V in Windows 8 and Windows Server 2008 R2 supports vt-x, so that's fine. My i5 3570k is running Hyper-V. So is my i7-920 in fact.

I believe Windows Server 2012 adds support for vt-d. I don't need direct hardware access that vt-d offers. I just need to be able to run Hyper-V at some level, that's all.

I just hate rigging up a PC right before a new CPU line emerges. But I've read the preliminary reports. Haswell won't be a huge leap. And in all honesty, the jump from my OC'd i7-920 to a i7-3770k probably won't be earth shattering either. I wouldn't do it unless I needed another machine to host a bunch of VMs.

It sounds to me like you're thinking about building a new PC for the thrill of building a new PC.

DiMAn0684 wrote in post #15811923
It sounds to me like you're thinking about building a new PC for the thrill of building a new PC.

Actually, I can either build a PC to use as a VM hosting server or re-purpose the current i7-920 I am using as my photo editing machine, then build a new photo editing PC.

Definitely not for the thrill of it. I need another machine, although I admit I do enjoy this.

Went through with the i7-3770k.