Holy shit. I kind of regret having bought my samsung 850 now.

#29
Forget about SATA Express for now. And M.2 aswell. They're limited to two PCIe 2.0 lanes, 10Gb/s (1000MB/s), compared to 6Gb/s (600MB/s) for SATA 6G (aka SATA III). I don't even know of any SATA Express SSDs. M.2 got the same speed so it never made sense to make any SATA Express SSD that are:
-bigger
-using an interface that no one uses
-only get the full speed when using said interface and when plugged into a SATA 6G port, which 95% of the customers would do, are limited to 600MB/s, which will only lead to a ton of customer complaints

There's only the Intel SSD 750 and DC P3000 Series with SFF-8639 aka U.2 which use four PCIe 3.0 lanes -> 4000MB/s (even with PCIe 2.0 you still get 2000MB/s), but there's two significant drawbacks:
1. You won't get that speed unless you have an M.2 32Gb/s port, which is as rare as unicorn blood and the motherboards it's on are appropriately expensive, and an M.2 -> U.2 adapter.
2. Unless you are made of money you probably won't appreciate paying 400$ for a 400GB SSD that only gets you 900MB/s write (or 550$ for a 400GB SSD that gets you 1000MB/s).

So I say: Fuck that.

You could just get the Samsung SM951 which is faster and half the price.
But again you'd need an M.2 32Gb/s port.

So fuck that too.

Might aswell just get a proper PCIe SSD and be done with it.
But those are expensive.

So guess what: Fuck that aswell.

Just get two 850 Pros or whatever and put them in RAID0.
It's cheaper than any other option, you get the same performance and none of the interface bullshit. Any motherboard should have 2 SATA 6G ports.
You should move all finished renders off of the SSDs anyway and if an SSD dies mid render you'd have to redo it either way, RAID 0 or not.

Could we move this to the PC Build Thread though?

Am I right to assume PCI-e and m.2 SSDs haven't reached maturity yet, both in terms of the interface and value for money? Also, I haven't really kept track of trends regarding either of them(or SATA-e), but I'm also wondering which one will most likely achieve maturity first, and if it makes sense to future-proof(my upgrade cycle is roughly 2.5-3 years) with respect to motherboard+CPU for any of the three interfaces.

There's nothing wrong with either, PCIe SSDs have been used in Server for years now and the SM951 is an amazing M.2 SSD.
The PCIe SSD are just aimed at a completely different market and fairly uncommon for consumers. Finding a 2TB SSD with 2000+MB/s read and write with decent $/GB isn't a problem. Now try finding one with just 256GB. You're lucky if you can find one with 50% higher $/GB that gets past 800MB/s. It's getting better but I don't think they're worth it yet.

The SM951 is great, only 30-40% more expensive than the 850 Pro and you get three times the speed. But try finding a motherboard with an M.2 32Gb/s port. If it's just a 10Gb/s port you're down to 1000MB/s. Two 850 Pros in RAID0 would be cheaper and faster. Not to mention that you can add a third one and catch up with even an SM951 on a 32Gb/s port. Try adding another M.2 SSD. Not happening you've got just one port. I mean you've only got 16 PCIe lanes, you can't just use half of them on 2 SSDs. It's possible but I don't see the point of going LGA2011 just so you can use M.2 SSDs.

There's no such thing as future proofing.

Unless it starts raining M.2 32Gb/s ports with the release of Skylake you'll get what you need (sequential write) cheaper and easier (without drastically limiting your choice of motherboards to certain high end ones) by just using 2 or 3 SSDs in RAID0.

Ok, that makes sense. I do really like the idea of getting the SM951, but you're right about the motherboards. Even the one or two with m.2 32Gb ports I saw that weren't too expensive aren't available around here.

So what would be the best cpu for tf2? I'm thinking about getting an i5 4790k, I currently use a FX-6300. Thoughts?

1.

So you'd be able to get the same performance for less money.

2. There's no such thing as an i5 4790K. I admit my experience is limited in that regard, but I don't think TF2 runs well on imaginary CPUs.

I'm also still waiting for someone to post their results with -threads 1-8 to find out how many threads TF2 actually uses.

I meant i5 4690k, sorry I'm retarded.

Well apart from waiting being the better option I don't think it's a good idea.
I don't feel like installing windows on another pc just to test it when there's enough people with >=3 cores on this forum.
You could do it. :D
Just run timedemo on the same demo at least once with -threads # in the launch options, # going from 1 to 6, and post the results.

The problem is that my testing indicates TF2 can only use 2 threads effectively, which I hope is a bug on my side.
If it were true an overclockable dual core (right now only the Pentium G3258) would get the same fps as an overclockable quad core (e.g. i5-4690K) with the same architecture and at the same clockrate, at a fraction of the price.
If TF2 uses 3 threads, like the myth says, or ideally 4 or maybe even 5, an overclockable i5 would be a good idea.
If however TF2 uses >5 threads, possibly even >=8, which is what I'm hoping for (#Iwanttobelieve) then a low end Quad Core Xeon with Hyperthreading (e.g. E3-1231 v3) would win hands down while being cheaper than an OC i5 + cooler, not even counting the motherboard.

But right now I really don't know. And I'm not recommending anything based on beliefs, so until someone can verify or disprove my test results, I'm not recommending any CPUs for TF2.

I recently upgraded from an older i5 2500k (oc'd to 4.2ghz) to an i7 4770k (3.9ghz). For both builds I had the same 7870 XT GPU, and didn't notice much any difference in my FPS between the two CPU's, and I kept the settings all at "High". I didn't upgrade for TF2, I upgraded because I multi-task, and wanted a speed bump in render time on After Effects / Premiere.

Unless there is another game, or another reason to go for an i7 the i5 will do just fine.

And here's the followup, thanks to quintosh:

Keep in mind it's only one run each so it's not terribly accurate.
But the point is, TF2 multithreading is absolutely fucked. There's almost nothing to gain beyond two threads.
So apparently the Pentium G3258 is the best CPU for TF2 now.
May Source 2 save us all.

I've never been so upset over having an 8 core cpu before honestly.

.

The only iteration of the Source engine I've seen to properly utilize more than two threads was the version that SFM uses, and even then, only when rendering.

We're all doomed.

I just did a check there as well with a 2500k @4.5ghz. -threads 2 gave me 170fps in the benchmark, and -threads 4 gave me 170fps. I ran it a few times and the only time I saw a "real" difference was on one timedemo I got 169 fps on -threads 4, so no real difference between the two, for me at least.