Should I Upgrade My Motherboard for My Haswell i7 or Stick with My AMD FX-4100?

[Vanadium 50]

I have two residences, and at one I am using an AMD FX-4100. It's about 6 years old. It replaces a Q6600, at least ten years old, which was showing its age: incompatibilities between chipset drivers and my cell phone and video card were causing regular crashes. Switching to the FX/970 chipset MB seems to have fixed everything. No complaints on speed.

I also have a Haswell i7-4770K on the shelf. I am tempted to buy a motherboard for that, while I can still get them. Even now their availability is dropping. This would be about twice as fast (more for floating point), but I can't say that speed is presently an issue. It would use a little less power, particularly if I replaced the video car with the onboard Iris graphics.

Thoughts?

 

[jedishrfu]

Id go with a new computer and not mess with matching components to a motherboard.

I did it once with an Ice Box case and had thermal issues where the computer would shutdown no matter what I adjusted.

 

[Vanadium 50]

I'm happy with the enclosure, power supply, disks and memory. And I have the CPU. So a whole new computer is an order of magnitude more expensive.

 

[phinds]

The i7 is a great chip BUT ... the onboard graphics is poor for anything above very basic use and the onboard sound (can't remember if this is my motherboard or the chip) is AWFUL.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Yeah, but the FX-4100 has no graphics at all. So that's not a good reason for me to avoid switching.

Onboard sound is handled by the MB, not the chip.

 

[phinds]

Oh, I wasn't suggesting you not switch. I LOVE my i7 system, I was just pointing out issues, which as it turns out it just the graphics.

 

[UsableThought]

Thoughts?

You don't say what OS you're running, but I assume some version of Windows given the chips you mention. This relates to what I consider the key decision in upgrading an existing computer rather than buying a new one - namely, will upgrading the hardware provide sufficient lifespan for software/OS upgrades down the road?

To give a Mac example, I have a mid-2010 MacBook Pro which I have previously done a couple of operations on: replacing a motherboard that went bad last year, and replacing the old hard drive with an SSD drive. I am now about to give the OS what will likely be its last feasible upgrade, moving from Mavericks to Sierra; and to help this along will also double the RAM, bringing it up to 16G. The extra year or possibly two years this will buy me in keeping everything current with the applications I favor seems to me a good value.

But when I think about it, it seems you've already answered this question to your satisfaction, and what you're asking about is just to do with opinions on the Haswell?

 

[Vanadium 50]

what you're asking about is just to do with opinions on the Haswell?

That's more or less right. If I ever intend to use it, I need to buy a motherboard for it before they dry up completely.

 

[jim mcnamara]

If you want to go ahead, get your butt in gear, now. Don't dither. Monday Nvidia announced a whole new series of graphics cards. That appears to have caused caused a panic buy of older model cards and motherboards. My hardware guy is having a fit finding some motherboards. Sort of a vendor created shortage with malice aforethought.

Consider buying an entire older used PC at prices approaching the cost of a single card being phased out. I've done that just to get components.

 

[Fervent Freyja]

I think you should invest in the new motherboard, otherwise it's a loss. It'll make you less tempted to buy a whole new computer sooner. It can only improve performance and prevent future wear or damage on other components if it starts to go bad (possible regrets). You also won't be thinking about it anymore and it's one less item taking up space. Isn't all that reason enough?

 

[Vanadium 50]

Thanks everyone - MB arrived Monday, and I did the swap yesterday. All is working, and I didn't even have to reinstall Windows.

 

[Mark44]

The i7 is a great chip BUT ... the onboard graphics is poor for anything above very basic use

I'm running an i7 3770 Mhz (Ivy Bridge). I sidestepped the builtin graphics with an nVidia card. You can get the low- to middle-end cards for about $100 or so.

 

[phinds]

I'm running an i7 3770 Mhz (Ivy Bridge). I sidestepped the builtin graphics with an nVidia card. You can get the low- to middle-end cards for about $100 or so.

Yep, that's exactly what I did too. I got a GeForce GTX 750 Ti DirectX 11 GTX750TI-OC-2GD5 2GB 128-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 HDCP Ready Video Card for under $100. Since I'm not a gamer, it's more than I need.

 

[Vanadium 50]

I was wrong about two things - one was that the 4770K has HD4600, not Iris - and I agree, Iris does about as well as a low-end video card, but this doesn't have it. The other is power economics. On a light load, the video card draws about 14W, but the CPU is drawing next to nothing: it parks 4 cores, and throttles to 770 MHz (!). While I am not set up to test this, I think a mid-end video card actually conserves power by letting the CPU slow down.

 

[Routaran]

I have two residences, and at one I am using an AMD FX-4100. It's about 6 years old. It replaces a Q6600, at least ten years old, which was showing its age: incompatibilities between chipset drivers and my cell phone and video card were causing regular crashes. Switching to the FX/970 chipset MB seems to have fixed everything. No complaints on speed.

I also have a Haswell i7-4770K on the shelf. I am tempted to buy a motherboard for that, while I can still get them. Even now their availability is dropping. This would be about twice as fast (more for floating point), but I can't say that speed is presently an issue. It would use a little less power, particularly if I replaced the video car with the onboard Iris graphics.

Thoughts?

According to the intel website, the 4770K is a socket 1150 processor. You shouldn't have any trouble at all finding a mobo to fit this. I did a quick search on newegg.com and i found this asus mobo that looked pretty good to me.

It will last you a good little while. My 10 year old gen 1 Lynnfield is still my main driver and I have no real complaints. I'd get a discrete video adapter as most everyone advises, onboad video is just awful. You don't need to spend more than a hunded bucks on a video card if you're not playing any high end games. If you are playing high end games, 200 bucks is plenty to have a good experience.

As long as you've got a 500W power supply, you're aces!

 

[rcgldr]

4770K has HD4600... video card

Note that there is a potential issue using AMD / ATI based video cards if the processor includes a graphic option like the HD4600 in this case, and the motherboard doesn't support it. This is my situation, an Intel 3770K (3.5ghz) processor on an Intel DP67BG motherboard. The AMD/ATI cards I try see the processor video graphics support, and assumes this is the primary video interface, even though the motherboard doesn't support the processor graphics. The end result is at boot up the AMD / ATI video cards will assume they are secondary video interfaces and only display a "0" or a "1" in the lower right corner on the monitor(s) during the BIOS boot sequence, preventing access to the BIOS boot up menu if you need to access it. Nvidia / Geforce video cards do not have this problem.