[Discuss] Ivy Bridge -> Haswell

[adler at stephenadler.com (Stephen Adler)]

Dear Blu,

I upgraded my home desktop to an Ivy Bridge class system. (E5-1650 v2) I
have an ASUS p9X79 WS motherboard with 64 gigs of DDR3 1866 memory. The
system seems to run OK, but I kinda went nuts last winter and got three
4K displays. I got two nvida quadro 2200 cards, which was the only way
to drive 3 4K displays under linux... :/ The quadro cards are pcie 2.0.

I run 3 virtual system (vmware) which is my standard working
configuration when bouncing between windows, and my linux software
development system.

With the three 4K monitors, I've notice my virtual systems are starting
to lag a bit making my keyboard strokes when editing documents etc a bit
annoying. It typically becomes noticeable when I've been working in my
linux virtual system developing code for several hours.

So... the big question is will upgrading to a Haswell class system, with
DDR4 memories etc, solve my problem. My initial check kind of shocked me
at the price of the CPUs. Especially if I want to get the faster 2133
memories. Not all E5-26xx v3 cpu's support 2133 and there seems to be a
big price difference between 2133 and 1866.

I was thinking up going all out and getting a dual CPU system but I'm
now thinking that to get the specs that I want will run me over $2K in
CPU's alone.

I'm wondering if all I need is to get a GPU upgrade. Nvidia's GeFores
GTX 970 CPU seems like it may give the the graphics kick. pcie 3.0 and
it supports up to 3 4K monitors using its 3 DP 1.2 ports.

Any thoughts?

Thanks.