Well, I am happy with my Intel I7 920 Quad Core with 8 Threads, it's several years old but it meets all my needs so no need to upgrade here. These sound interesting though.   

Next build is a Ryzen 7.  Love AMD.  Have them in 6/8 systems.

backs out of the room slowly...      

Quoting Jafo,

reply 2

The 'use' for AMD is to keep Intel prices more under control so you can keep on using Intel....

+1 my thoughts exactly.

On my end, using a i7 7790k (I think is the model number?) from a handful of years back, I really have yet to see any real need for any more power, although if you were streaming and doing all the cool-kid stuff this might be a diff story.

That all being said, when I finally upgrade (maybe about the time win 8.1 support ends), I may buy into one of the higher-end intel chipsets just because.  I'm also strongly considering going back to linux - especially if someone (steam?) figures out a way to get win games to run natively on a linux/steam launcher. 

TBH, the higher core-count intel chips really intrigue me, but GC3 is really the only application I can think of that'll actually use them.  One of the reasons I settled on the top-of-the line 4-core i7's back in the day, was the price point (about 50% of the cost of a 6-core chip), but also it didn't require the next socket-up MB option with the expensive pimp RAM and stuff, so the entire system must've been only about 1/3 the price.  In addition, I couldn't really justify the power-sink of having all of that hardware sitting around all of the time making my house hot (in the winter (Minnesota) it's fine really, the summer - not so much).  Sort of like having an 8mpg Ferrari as a daily driver.. 

Tid242 the intel i7 7790k would be this years model not from years ago considering when i bought the i7 6700 last year it was the latest.

I have just sprung big bucks for an Intel i9 with a Gigabyte x299 gaming 9 motherboard, 64 GB of 2666Mhz RAM, 2 Samsung 960 Pro 1 TB SSD's (in RAID 0, for a 2TB drive at twice the speed, and in M.2 slots, a newish higher speed bus), and an adequate graphics card (GTX 1050). It will be used for a DAW (digital audio workstation). 64GB of RAM is insane unless you work with high resolution audio (or video, especially). For example, one of my plugins is a piano which is 13GB in size, and needs to sit in RAM to lower latency. I have a lot of other plugins like strings, drums and other instruments which are all measured in GB's. Speed is of the essence; instantaneous is what you need but can't get. I can't report on it because it hasn't been built yet.

As for the present Ryzen CPU's, they aren't up to the i9 in some categories in tests that I have seen, but it looks like the upcoming  Ryzens will be a better bang for the buck than the still-to-come i9's, the best of which will have 16 cores at the cost of $2000 U.S. I can say that the i9 seems to have overheating problems when overclocked and needs the best possible cooling system. My i9, the 7900 ($1000 U.S.), has 10 cores (20 threads) and 44 lanes, all of which contribute to it's speed and efficiency. I'm pretty much an Intel fan, I guess, but not fanatical about it. I did consider a Ryzen as they have made great strides recently in the CPU wars, and are almost certainly going to make a big dent in market share due to their lower prices for equivalent CPU's. However, I couldn't wait for what's in the pipeline. By the way, one of the reasons the i9 overheats is because they use thermal paste instead of solder, which is pretty pathetic in a $1000 CPU. Hopefully all the complaints about that will cause them to rethink that position for the future i9's.

Another interesting thing that I have discovered in my recent research is that all the workstation-capable motherboards are "Gaming" MB's, because the gamers vastly outnumber the workstation crowd, and some of them are willing to spend $3000 on 2 graphics cards alone so that they can play games at 4K resolution at superfast frame rates, or use 3 monitors and so on. The last time I bought a PC was about 5 years ago (a couple of i7's and 2 SSD's each). Since then, (and I don't know how it happened yet), all the higher end MB's are now all decked out in LED lighting, which includes RAM slots, the RAM itself, even a RAM fan that I bought, fans, and various other things. You can set up various light shows in multiple colours and patterns. I'm not a big fan of having all the lighting, but as I had no choice, I bought a case with 2 tempered glass sides (plastic gets scratched easily, and ends up looking cheap and blurred after awhile) so that I could see it. That makes it heavier, but I don't plan to move it, so what the hey. It's a Coolermaster Mastercase Maker 5t with some metallic red paint here and there, and a clever front that has a slope to it and an opening at the top to allow air in or out. It also slides to the front when you need access to the DVD/Bluray drive, or can be removed completely. The top can also be removed for better ventilation.

I'm looking forward to getting it running; it's a vast leap in capability's compared to my formerly excellent setup.

 As an aside, in the 2+ years it'll realistically be before I'm looking at rebuilding a machine, it'll be interesting to see if the middle of the market (ie middle of the performance gaming market) moves to >4 core chips.  If, say, the equivalent to the 7790k (or *cough* 4790k) in market positioning terms are 6 or 8 physical core chips if there are insane i9 monsters with 16 cores on the top end..

It would be interesting to know the business model for selling these kinds of things, I'd imagine they're break even, or even loss leaders to keep the fans on board so they recommend intel for their company big-money IT purchases.  That's where the real money is..

Interesting write-up.  Like you I like intel, but am not rabid about it.  I still have an AMD grudge from back in the day when linux was a new thing.  All that insane techno-wizardry is kind of the example of what I don't want/need and why I just went with the 4-core back when I built this box.  I'm waiting for the AC unit that mounts into the side of the case to keep all of that crap cool (and blows hot air on your leg).

The really high-end chips are, like, never worth the money.  Maybe they were 20 years ago when there was a demonstrable difference in everyday things they could run (for example my p-pro 200 ran Diablo way faster than all my friends, you'd already have started clearing the dungeon by the time theirs would even load up), but today... Well, not really.  If I were streaming or using it for work maybe this would be a different story.  But, as I mentioned before GC3 is really the only one that comes to mind, and as it stands now I have no complaints about load times.  My chip was $280 in the box.  Microcenter runs killer chip deals in-store.  Comboing with a mobo gives like $50 off the mobo too.  Way better than Newegg et al. 

Expensive computers are like expensive cars.  Sounds like it'd be nice - but not really worth the bother for me in practice. 

Well you spend as much on a processor as me splurging on a computer. It really depends if your going high end or not. I think that amd is winning low end, maybe middle end, and intigrated graphics.

This is true - but for some dumb scmuck like me, who just plays video games, this equation is quite a bit different.

This is why I bring up streaming, it's the only thing I can think of where /regular/ people might actually need solid performance to avoid desynced audio/video feeds, or needing to chomp a bunch of cpu cycles all at the same time for the game, the video encoding, the audio encoding etc.

Audio production, video production etc. yea, horsepower matters.  But 99% of people will never do either (myself included).

Great example/point tho

Running several VMs at once needs headroom....I've been known to have 4 or 5 running concurrently...

Me, either.  I've owned several AMD units and have been happy with each of them.  Perhaps Intel had higher performing CPUs, but given the lower price to performance of the AMDs, they were the better choice for me at the time.  When I got my i7 4970K finances were better and it was the obvious choice at the time, and yeah, I'm pleased with that purchase as well.

I personally like AMD chips. I've used them in my last two builds and the performance to price comparison is solid. I will be going with a 1800x or Threadripper on my next build. Well, that's if Ryzen 2 isn't going to come out soon.

@Timmaigh Choosing good monitors is a very tough decision. I would honestly set a few necessary criteria and go from there. When i'm shopping around I usually look at cost per monitor that I'm willing to spend, refresh rate, and size. From there I compare what type of panels they have and which ones have the best specs. I know that's not too helpful, but there are some very solid options for panels these days.

I'd highly recommend getting a Philips monitor. They have the biggest and best research labs in the world in the field of electronics; they invented the cassette and CD/DVD/BluRay as well as the digital cassette recorder/player which never caught on, but was actually excellent in audio quality (I have one. I think that it failed because recording with it is a very complicated process). The HD TV specification is largely based on their research.

I have a couple of their 27" monitors, and they have excellent clarity. I bought a 32" LG because I wanted a bigger display, but after using it, I abandoned it because it was very fuzzy compared to the Philips.

Here's 3 that you can check out:

Philips 272S4LPJCB/00272S4LPJCB/00 27-Inch Monitor 275 pounds

Philips 323E7QDAB/00 LCD/IPS 31.5-Inch Monitor 243 pounds

Philips BDM4350UC/00 43-Inch 490 pounds

(I looked on amazon.co.uk) There a lot of other 27" Philips monitors as well.

Aside from the clarity, they have circuitry that enhances motion clarity and other things in their BluRay players that upsample a signal to HD quality and actually work. I have a 65" inch Philips TV that is amazing.