Do you already have a decent GPU with your Phenom processor? If not, buying a decent nvidia GPU (I'm not sure if it supports AMD these days, if so, they're nice too) might be a better bang for your buck than going to a Xeon. It depends entirely on whether the plugins you're using are GPU optimized or not. In general, though, you should look to maximize your price:performance ratio. The performance boost of going to an i7 vs an i5 isn't enormous, even in apps that can load up all 8 threads on the i7. Maybe consider a 4590k instead of a 4790k and put the extra $100 into a nice GPU.

Currently using an Nvidia 670 with a heap of CUDA cores. Cheap, but damn, it works well.

So the consensus seems to be that the XEON won't be appreciably faster than the 4790k, and the only thing that would be faster enough to make it worthwhile would besome as-yet-unissued ultrafast CPU: so, it's best to get the 4790k, a great graphics card, and an SSD drive for my current projects. Editing multicam 4K footage would require editing a lower-res proxy. Is that about right?

also check this link http://ppbm7.com/index.php/tweakers-page

Is the i7-5960x Haswell 8-core worth the premium?

@Brian_Siano not all codecs generate the same decoding load. The multicam requirement is a function of I/O bandwidth not CPU. Find the CPU that plays back/cuts fluidly your 4k recording (native) codec and work from there, beefing up the I/O (invest in SSDs not in mega number of cores).

Even with the latest Adobe CC, higher Ghz trumps multicores (4core/HT x 4GHz > 8core/3GHz for most tasks); multithreading scales well for only a subset of tasks (rendering/encoding, which should be mostly on the GPU anyway). Get used to watching the CPU load in the Task manager while you edit/export and you'll get a feel for this. Just upgrade to the latest CC suite on your current machine and see for yourself, sometimes not even 4 cores are used, even if the task at hand is not I/O bound. Don't spend money for hypothetical future gains that almost always don't pan out, instead optimize the current pain points. I would get multiple SSDs at the best cost/size ratio currently available (probably 256 GB) and fast but reasonably priced DDR3 memory (CAS9) if I were you.

Premiere has decent threading so I would echo support for the newer 6-core Haswell-E. When I spec'd it out performance was pretty close to the Xeon Mac Pro (trashcan) we also have in the office. It's what I've got on my desk at work now with a 780 Ti which offers stellar bang-for-buck. Not as good as the Mac Pro but a healthy percentage of its sticker comes down to that dual-GPU.

You have to spend a lot more to get significantly better Nvidia GPU performance from a single card. I'd rather have an AMD board boasting much higher OpenCL performance (3-5x) for the same money but I don't have a lot of faith in their drivers right now.

Key to the success of the 6K Gone Girl editorial done in Premiere was their SSD setup.

Hey man...back in the day when editing DV footage on my crusty old PC tower i took a leap and bought a MATROX RTX100 Extreme card that simply turbo charged my PC as the Matrox card did all the hard work! The only thing i had to upgrade was my Graphics Card! so instead of just getting realtime playback of just 1 DV clip in premiere i could get: 1xDV clip with color correction 3x titles/text, multiple transitions + Matrox own effects playing ALL IN REAL TIME! ok it did drop 1 or 2 frames here and there but transformed my PC big time. Not sure what they currently have at the mo, as i do all my editing on my Sony laptop but i know they have realtime HD H264 cards that drop into a PC slot and do all the work with help from your graphics card, i did spot a NEW 4k card, not sure if thats an accelerator (turbo charger for editing) or JUST a Encoder, Transcoder ? hope this helps, stu. http://www.matrox.com/video/en/products/#io_devices Just make sure your PC fits to their requirements, that is vital for the card to work to its maximum !

WOW that is a beast of a graphics card! and a i7 with Premiere cc utilizing both of those....i think your covered. Just make sure your Motherboard can handle the extra work load...I shot my self in the foot many times by getting a beefy graphics card and my motherboard would HANG up / Bottle Neck because it could not keep up with the graphic cards and CPU requests.

@BurnetRhoades So the GTX 770 no good?

@eatstoomuchjam Can you make a recommendation on what would be a great upgrade from my current 770?

@SuperSet There's nothing wrong with your 770. It's just weird to call it a beast. Otherwise, as Burnet suggested, the 780 ti is faster. Otherwise, a GTX 980 will be faster, will have 4GB of video RAM (vs 2 on the 770), and should be a lot faster.

Note - if you're going to need all 4GB of the video memory, avoid the GTX 970 since the last 512MB of video memory is really slow.

I'm coming back to this thread because I'm probably going to make my upgrade choice Real Soon Now: had a small windfall this week. I've boiled this down to the following.

If I upgrade to a 4790k system, then all it'll cost me is roughly $600 for CPU ($200), mobo ($200), and cooling system ($150). I can use the rest of my existing system.

If I upgrade to a 5960x system, that'll require a CPU, mobo (bundle $1200-1400), plus the cooler and DDR4 memory (32 gig, maybe $400 or so). That's closing in on $2000... which means that buying a new system entirely wouldn't be too much extra.

So the real question is whether the 5960x is more future-proof than the 4790k path. Right now, the speed and power isn't that different. But are we expecting Adobe to really exploit the 5960's features in future releases, where the added expense would be rewarded with greater power?