After having read the sandybridge reviews over the net, primarly the anandtech one, i've decided to look into a sandybridge system for my next upgrade. But i do have a few things going through my mind, my idea for the upgrade would have to include a new motherboard, new cpu and cpu memory. in this round i'll stick with my current 9800gtx+ (bios modded to gts 250), for a lil while yet, considered a gtx570, but im a bit of a cheapskate. so i might wait a few months. Plans are to get CPU: Either the i7-2600K or the i5-2500K. The 2600k comes with 8mb of l3 cache and hyperthreading giving 8 threads support, but also has an MSRP of little over 300dollars. Whereas the 2500k "only" has 6mb l2 cache and no HT support. but its also about 100 dollars cheaper. and will still easily do 4.5ghz 24/7 oc on decent air. Im a leaning a bit towards the 2500K, its not that i cant find the money for the 2600K, but i'm just not sure its enough value. thoughts? Motherboard: Since i don't really care about the built-in graphics processor i'm going for the P67 chipset, the problem is deciding on a motherboard. There's no real pricing information available out there atm, altho a few brands have put forth specs on their motherboards for the new p67/h67 platform. Considering the asus p8p67 pro, one of the lower priced mobo in the asus p67 lineup, with the p8p67 deluxe and the maximum iv rog motherboard over it. Has 6Gbps sata ports and usb3 ports, not that i currently own a device that can take advantage of either, but i might in the future. And i reckon it will overclock fairly well. But its hard to decide without any real pricing information available. my preferred mobo brands are evga, asus and gigabyte, but if you see a sharply priced well performing mobo with the p67 chipset, don't hesitate to give me a link. Memory: Here i'm a bit more at a loss. ive used ddr2 memory for a long time. my plan is to get a 2x4GB kit, but thats kind of where i stop. Should i be getting DDR3 1333mhz, 1600mhz or even higher? What is a good Cas latency, or generally a good kit? I'm not certain what memory voltage is proper compatible with the i5-2500k and the i7-2600k, i see kits with both 1.5v and 1.65v labelled on them, does it matter or? I've also seen a few kits on newegg labelled as p67 ready/compatible. (forgot to look what voltage those kits were at) Also my brand loyalty when it comes to ram is a bit weak, ive used to like kingston, but these days there's a lot of nice manufacturers, and truth be told they all get their chips from the same couple places. samsung etc. So i'd rather people argued a good chip on the ram blocks rather than brand. To wrap it up / TLDR. Im fairly set on a i5-2500k, unless you can convince me the 2600k is worth the 100 dollar premium Ive seen good things about the Asus p8p67 pro, but any motherboard with the new uefi and a p67 chipset, could probably persuade me. usb3 is not a must, but it wont hurt to have. And as far as memory, a good kit of DDR3 2x4gb kit, im unsure what speed/latency to get. please suggest som good kits. My current setup: Core 2 Quad Q9550 running at the stock 2.83GHz 4x1GB Kingston hyperx DDR2 1066mhz cl5 Gigabyte EP45-DS3L motherboard. gts250 stock oc. 22" screen @ 1680x1050 80Gb X25-M g2 SSD 1.5TB Seagate 7200rpm Corsair VX550W Asus Essence STX + Sennheiser pc350 Secondary screen / tv - 40" Sony KDL-40W4000 fullhd. What im considering upgrading aswell Definatly be getting a new graphics card, possibly the gtx570 or the 6970, or wait a bit longer. altho my 9800gtx+ is during a proper job at 1680x1050. Then again im considering upgrading my screen, but it might be a while since im finding it hard to choose between a really nice ips panel, or a 120hz panel. and wether or not i actually need 24" where my current 22" inch is fine. but im also wanting to get into the 1920x1200/1080 resolution. so this is prolly going along with a new graphics card as said above. And with a new graphics card i might have to up my PSU, considering a Corsair AX750 or 850. So a new screen, psu and gfx card.. might come as an upgrade bundle for me in 2-6 months time, want to focus on the sandybridge upgrade first. so please dont suggest any of these as an alternate upgrade.
If your primary use is gaming the 2500k will do great. If you do alot of encoding the 2600k with HT. Considering I primarily game, the HT of the 920 is of little value. Some games actually take a fps hit with HT on. Intel's pricing on the SB's is looking pretty good and the 2500k is a really great gaming cpu when you compare price versus performance.
I was thinking of sandy bridge myself, but I will get little benefit as I have an i7 930 at 4.2ghz. IMO if you just want to game get the 2500K and OC it. If you plan to do video encoding, or photoshop,studio work then get the 2600K. It seems to be the opinion of many.
Well yeah im still mostly convinced for the 2500k While i do tend to encode a little now and then, its mostly just transcoding video from 720p or 1080p down to a smaller format more suitable for my phone at 800x480. And currently i use badaboom, takes advantage of cuda to do about 80 frames pr second conversion, pretty decent. And intel is coming with the new quick sync or what its called, internal fixed function hardware used to encode/decode video at a much accelerated speed. and the tests ive seen are quite decent, either way i dont need raw thread performance for that. More likely i'd use it for par2, winrar, better multitasking and whatever games might get a tiny bonus from the HT. don't really know if its gonna equate to any proper noticeable difference for everyday desktop use or gaming. Atleast anything worth the 100dollars. so no prolly sticking to the 2500K. Anyone with any insight/advice on motherboard and a memory kit, been trying to read up on all the reviews coming out these days. but im just not sure.
No need to go overkill on the highest end board out there. Asus and Gigabyte make very good quality motherboards. MSI has been improving in the last couple of years. Get a board with 6Gbps and USB 3.0, you are upgrading after all. No need to kick yourself later for not getting it now. Lot's of good memory out there; Corsair, Crucial, OCZ etc. Get the lowest latency possible and 1600MHz at a minimum. Be sure to verify any memory compatibily charts once you have decided on the motherboard, can be found on the motherboard manufacturers web site.
+1 for the 2500K. SMT (or HT) is basically trading off latency for better throughput. At least in theory. Some applications benefit from it, some applications will perform worse because of it. It really depends on what you're doing. deltatux
Aha, that kind of explains why i was seeing some odd results on the anandtech gaming benchmarks.. in a few games/resolution the 2500k actually beat the 2600k.. must've been quirks with HT. i was a bit put off from the 2600k after seeing it get bested by the 2500k. Also HT wouldnt that eventually affect the limit of the overclocking potential, i reckon its something most serious overclocks might disable?
Overclockers tend to disable SMT on their processors during overclocking but you don't have to, I've seen Intel CPUs overclocked with SMT enabled. However, SMT isn't guaranteed to increase performance, it's not suitable in cases of some games and not suitable in applications that deal with database transactions (even though you don't run a SQL server, some programs like Mozilla Firefox uses SQLite to do cataloguing and etc.) Basically software that can use the CPU's pipeline efficiently, SMT is detrimental since the CPU is segmented as two logical cores. The whole point of SMT is to assume software won't use the CPU's pipeline efficiently by allowing those gaps where the CPU thread stalled out and allow other threads to use that pipeline while the other thread is stalling due to a memory or user action request that hasn't been fulfilled yet. deltatux
