[Test] Is It Time To Upgrade Your Core i5 2500K?

I just priced out what it would cost me to buy a new i5-7600k, z270 motherboard, and some ram from my local Microcenter and it works out to be almost exactly what I paid for my i5-4670k, Asrock z87 Extreme4, and 16gb DDR3 back in the day.

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Oh.. you're in norway. Im guessing the weakening of the Euro is why it costs so much more there.

 

After much debating over a few weeks I've just upgraded from an i7 3770k @4.2Ghz with 1600 DDR3 to a i7 7700k with 3200 DDR4 and for me its been very much worthwhile.

Whilst there were many games where the 3770k was fine, some games like Total War and Forza ran poorly. With the 7700k not only have I been able to max all graphics settings in Forza, but it also never ever stutters anywhere even around surfers paradise.

In Total War Attila, I've been able to increase settings but also again eliminate occasional stutters.

For me its not always about boosting average frames but stopping low minimum frames and stutters.

That's my findings anyway. One other improvement for me with my specific i7 7700k is that it doesn't have the heat issues of Ivy. On air under IBT max temp is 63C @ 4.5Ghz.

 

Still very happy with mine but would like a second hand 3500k to unlock PCI-E 3.0 on my system. The 2500k is hindering GPU bandwidth to PCI-E 2.0.

 

2600k also tested now

 

3570k to 7700k no perceptible difference whatsoever in gaming. But I didnt upgrade to game, rather to have a more up-to-date platform (4 years, longest I've been on a CPU). I can appreciate slight improvements in multi-tasking, archive unpacking, but nothing to qualify as upgrade-worthy in itself. Ah! I do recall one game where there is a nice improvement, chess! Not in FPS but in the time to analyze moves. Noticeably quicker there.

 

I'd like to see a test of a 2600k/2500k at 5.0-5.3ghz vs a 6600k/7600k since I've read most chips can do 5ghz+ if you have good water cooling and aren't afraid of 1.5v+

 

I built my 2500K system at the start of 2012, I immediately overclocked the system to 4.8GHz, coupled with 16GB of DDR3 ram and a speedy SSD I remember the build feeling lightning fast. Over the next 5 years that i5 did a fantastic job of running all manner of games. I think originally I was running a pair of GTX 470s, by the time I eventually decided a new build was required my 2500K was feeding a 980Ti (recently RMAd that card).

I won’t start a red vs blue debate here but certainly in the past 12 months my i5 SB was feeling its age. BF1 at launch was pretty unplayable; in fact gaming meant closing down everything none essential when trying to play 2017 titles.

I have seen a night and day improvement in upgrading throughout my system. A fresh install of Win 10 I’m sure played its part but it’s awesome to have system resources to spare when either gaming or using Premiere etc.

4 threads in 2017 is starting to feel really limiting IMHO. I think there are some decent upgrade options available this year either with Kaby Lake or Ryzen..

 

Nice vid!

 

Exactly what it boils down to is what games you play or what else you use your PC for and what resolution and eye candy that you use with each game. With the games that I play I know that my i7 will last me for quite some time as I don't care for alot of modern titles.

 

The question for most people was whether it's really worth upgrading from a Sandy Bridge i5 to the latest i5. 4 cores to 4 cores.

The answer to that is "probably still not worth the cost". You gotta pay for a whole new platform (CPU + mainboard + RAM). When you have to pay for all that, then why not upgrade to the latest i7 instead and get a more substantial performance boost.

I think Ryzen might tap into that market. That 6-core looks really tasty right now...

 

The extra cost for i7 is pretty substantial. I say just wait like the rest of us, unless your system fails.

 

It's just 100-120 bucks more. It's not that substantial compared to the total cost of the upgrade, since you need mainboard and RAM too.

For the i7 upgrade, I'd need to pay somewhere around €600. For an i5, it's about €500. Not much of a difference in percentage between the two.

(Well, unless I go out of my way to buy the cheapest possible RAM and mainboard, which I wouldn't.)

 

I'm in the same boat. Have an i5-2500k @ 5.0ghz with an H115i.

I want to upgrade since it's been so long and my 1080 w/ Hybrid AIO coupled with the 2500k is kind of bottle necking my 1440p 144hz Gsync monitor :/

 

I don't think that's true. It can bottleneck you at 1080p, but at 1440p, I don't see how. Unless you play games with all graphics settings set to "low" or something, there shouldn't be any major bottlenecking going on.

 

Sorry I meant the CPU is bottlenecking sort of.

It's always at 100% :/

 

If your FPS is good enough, then that doesn't matter. If you get low FPS, then it's a problem.

Also, at 5GHz, it's possible you're getting throttling when the CPU thinks it's OCed too much. So make sure you're not running into that issue by doing a 10-15 minute stress test with Prime95 and with CPU-Z open and observe the CPU frequency.

 

Think ima go with r5 1600, Asrock Taichi, TridentZ 3200mhz 14-14-14

 

Still not convinced

It's been 6 years, dammit. Where's my 100% more performance upgrade? How long do I need to wait?