.......is anyone going to reply to the OP?
BIG difference.
A GTX 280 is way more than enough.
Like everyone else said get a Z77 or Z75 motherboard and an ivy bridge cpu, preferably a 3570K. With a good air cooler 4.2 GHz should be easy to achieve. At stock ivy bridge is 10% faster than sandy bridge and 5% faster than sandy bridge-E in single threaded applications.
Sandy Bridge-E has a few advantages:
-quad channel memory bus gives it twice the memory bandwidth of regular sandy bridge at the same memory frequency. Although keep in mind that the memory controllers are running in an unganged configuration. So applications like dolphin that aren't heavily multithreaded won't gain any memory bandwidth improvement.
-support for 1600 MT/s data rate on memory channels without XMP (sandy bridge supports 1333, ivy bridge supports 1600)
-support for up to 64GB of ram (due to having twice as many memory channels)
-PCI-E 3.0 support (ivy bridge supports this but not sandy bridge)
-40 pci-e lanes instead of 16
-up to 6 cores on some models (39xx only)
-up to 15MB of L3 cache (sandy/ivy bridge only go up to 8MB)
-turbo up to 3.9 GHz (3570K/2500K go up to 3.7 GHz, 3770K/2600K go up to 3.8 GHz)
-additional BCLK setting support allows for better overclocking without multipliers, adjusting the BCLK is completely safe on sandy bridge-E, unlike sandy bridge or ivy bridge. Unlike sandy/ivy bridge frequency sensitive components like the pci-e controller are not on the cpu with sandy bridge-E and therefore aren't affected by the bclk. DMI and PEG have programmable clock dividers that are used to keep their frequency from changing when you change the bclk.
-support for VT-d and EPT (helps with high end virtualization, more of a server feature)
-higher memory bandwidth and a larger cache help achieve better clock rate performance scaling
-ability to upgrade to ivy bridge-E and xeon processors
disadvantages:
-higher TDP, 130 watt (vs 95 watt for sandy bridge and 77 watt for ivy bridge), they generate more heat than sandy bridge or ivy bridge and so heat becomes a bigger problem with overclocking. Typically they can clock higher than ivy bridge due to better thermal dissipation but not as high as regular sandy bridge. Expect 4.2 GHz on ivy bridge, 4.5 GHz on sandy bridge-E, and 4.8GHz on sandy bridge.
-no integrated graphics
-extremely expensive
-requires LGA 2011 motherboards, which are also extremely expensive, between this and the cpu your total system cost is likely to double
-ivy bridge has higher IPC due to a more efficient/modern microarchitecture, most applications perform 5-10% better on ivy bridge at the same clock rate compared to a 3820. A 4.2 GHz ivy bridge, 4.5 GHz sandy bridge-E, and 4.8 GHz sandy bridge should all perform about the same.
-3820 doesn't have an unlocked multiplier since it's not an extreme edition
-significantly higher power consumption than sandy or ivy bridge at both idle and load
-no quicksync support (sandy bridge supports quicksync 1.0 and ivy bridge quicksync 2.0)
-ivy bridge supports 200 MHz mem increments, sandy and sandy-E only support 266 MHz mem increments
-ivy bridge supports memory data rates up to 3200 MT/s with XMP while sandy bridge and sandy bridge-E can only go up to 2400 MT/s
-ivy bridge memory controllers are a lot better for OCing memory
-ivy bridge supports random number generator instructions
There are probably more that I missed. Also keep in mind that ivy bridge-E will combine the advantages of both ivy bridge and sandy bridge-E. At this point in time the only reason someone should consider the 3820 is if they plan on upgrading to ivy bridge-E in the future. It doesn't offer a performance advantage over ivy bridge but it costs a hell of a lot more when you factor in the motherboard cost + cpu cost + memory cost.
Quote:Sorry nvidia 280 not 240.
BIG difference.
A GTX 280 is way more than enough.
Like everyone else said get a Z77 or Z75 motherboard and an ivy bridge cpu, preferably a 3570K. With a good air cooler 4.2 GHz should be easy to achieve. At stock ivy bridge is 10% faster than sandy bridge and 5% faster than sandy bridge-E in single threaded applications.
Sandy Bridge-E has a few advantages:
-quad channel memory bus gives it twice the memory bandwidth of regular sandy bridge at the same memory frequency. Although keep in mind that the memory controllers are running in an unganged configuration. So applications like dolphin that aren't heavily multithreaded won't gain any memory bandwidth improvement.
-support for 1600 MT/s data rate on memory channels without XMP (sandy bridge supports 1333, ivy bridge supports 1600)
-support for up to 64GB of ram (due to having twice as many memory channels)
-PCI-E 3.0 support (ivy bridge supports this but not sandy bridge)
-40 pci-e lanes instead of 16
-up to 6 cores on some models (39xx only)
-up to 15MB of L3 cache (sandy/ivy bridge only go up to 8MB)
-turbo up to 3.9 GHz (3570K/2500K go up to 3.7 GHz, 3770K/2600K go up to 3.8 GHz)
-additional BCLK setting support allows for better overclocking without multipliers, adjusting the BCLK is completely safe on sandy bridge-E, unlike sandy bridge or ivy bridge. Unlike sandy/ivy bridge frequency sensitive components like the pci-e controller are not on the cpu with sandy bridge-E and therefore aren't affected by the bclk. DMI and PEG have programmable clock dividers that are used to keep their frequency from changing when you change the bclk.
-support for VT-d and EPT (helps with high end virtualization, more of a server feature)
-higher memory bandwidth and a larger cache help achieve better clock rate performance scaling
-ability to upgrade to ivy bridge-E and xeon processors
disadvantages:
-higher TDP, 130 watt (vs 95 watt for sandy bridge and 77 watt for ivy bridge), they generate more heat than sandy bridge or ivy bridge and so heat becomes a bigger problem with overclocking. Typically they can clock higher than ivy bridge due to better thermal dissipation but not as high as regular sandy bridge. Expect 4.2 GHz on ivy bridge, 4.5 GHz on sandy bridge-E, and 4.8GHz on sandy bridge.
-no integrated graphics
-extremely expensive
-requires LGA 2011 motherboards, which are also extremely expensive, between this and the cpu your total system cost is likely to double
-ivy bridge has higher IPC due to a more efficient/modern microarchitecture, most applications perform 5-10% better on ivy bridge at the same clock rate compared to a 3820. A 4.2 GHz ivy bridge, 4.5 GHz sandy bridge-E, and 4.8 GHz sandy bridge should all perform about the same.
-3820 doesn't have an unlocked multiplier since it's not an extreme edition
-significantly higher power consumption than sandy or ivy bridge at both idle and load
-no quicksync support (sandy bridge supports quicksync 1.0 and ivy bridge quicksync 2.0)
-ivy bridge supports 200 MHz mem increments, sandy and sandy-E only support 266 MHz mem increments
-ivy bridge supports memory data rates up to 3200 MT/s with XMP while sandy bridge and sandy bridge-E can only go up to 2400 MT/s
-ivy bridge memory controllers are a lot better for OCing memory
-ivy bridge supports random number generator instructions
There are probably more that I missed. Also keep in mind that ivy bridge-E will combine the advantages of both ivy bridge and sandy bridge-E. At this point in time the only reason someone should consider the 3820 is if they plan on upgrading to ivy bridge-E in the future. It doesn't offer a performance advantage over ivy bridge but it costs a hell of a lot more when you factor in the motherboard cost + cpu cost + memory cost.
"Normally if given a choice between doing something and nothing, I’d choose to do nothing. But I would do something if it helps someone else do nothing. I’d work all night if it meant nothing got done."
-Ron Swanson
"I shall be a good politician, even if it kills me. Or if it kills anyone else for that matter. "
-Mark Antony
-Ron Swanson
"I shall be a good politician, even if it kills me. Or if it kills anyone else for that matter. "
-Mark Antony