Intel Core i5 2500K upgrade? AMD?

[chaosdivine]

So I have been thinking about upgrading my current set up, only just realised i purchased my CPU and mobo back in 2011 and figure maybe its time for an upgrade.

 

My full current set up is:

 

Intel Core i5 2500K 3.3GHz Socket 1155 6MB Cache Retail Boxed Processor

Asus P8P67 PRO REV 3.1 Socket 1155 8 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard

16GB 1600 DDR3

GTX 970

Samsung Evo SSD

View Sonic XG2401

 

Now I've always been an intel kind of guy but I've heard amd lately have been quite good especially when it comes to price & performance. 

 

Someone suggested i try the ryzen 2600x cpu with 16gb of 3000mhz ram and keep my GPU for now. Thoughts? 

 

One thing that always bugged me about intel mobos was I felt the sockets going out of date quick and every new CPU upgrade required a mobo upgrade aswell, is that the case with AMD mobos?

 

Also i'm not really one for overclocking I'm a complete novice at it and id rather not risk anything blowing up lol.

 

If i upgraded to the Ryzen would I see a good increase vs my 8yo CPU or would it be pretty unnoticeable? 

[TH3R34P3R]

Just now, chaosdivine said:

So I have been thinking about upgrading my current set up, only just realised i purchased my CPU and mobo back in 2011 and figure maybe its time for an upgrade.

 

My full current set up is:

 

Intel Core i5 2500K 3.3GHz Socket 1155 6MB Cache Retail Boxed Processor

Asus P8P67 PRO REV 3.1 Socket 1155 8 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard

16GB 1600 DDR3

GTX 970

Samsung Evo SSD

View Sonic XG2401

 

Now I've always been an intel kind of guy but I've heard amd lately have been quite good especially when it comes to price & performance. 

 

Someone suggested i try the ryzen 2600x cpu with 16gb of 3000mhz ram and keep my GPU for now. Thoughts? 

 

One thing that always bugged me about intel mobos was I felt the sockets going out of date quick and every new CPU upgrade required a mobo upgrade aswell, is that the case with AMD mobos?

 

Also i'm not really one for overclocking I'm a complete novice at it and id rather not risk anything blowing up lol.

 

If i upgraded to the Ryzen would I see a good increase vs my 8yo CPU or would it be pretty unnoticeable? 

if you are going to upgrade, do you have a budget for a full upgrade, like cpu, gpu, ram, mobo and psu? if so, I can recommend something. However, if you are just going to upgade the cpu and mobo and ram, perhaps wait until ryzen 3 comes out if you have no issue right now. but if you wanted to upgrade right now, the ryzen 2600, MSI tomahawk b450, and 16gigs of 3000mhz ram should come in at about 400. 

[mxk]

1 minute ago, chaosdivine said:

Someone suggested i try the ryzen 2600x cpu with 16gb of 3000mhz ram and keep my GPU for now. Thoughts? 

Yes, do this. Upgrade the GPU and CPU in the future.

 

And yes, you'll see a pretty big jump in performance. The i5-2500k is pretty meh compared to a 2600X. Zen 2/Ryzen 3000 is going to be released soon (summer, probably) and AMD's new Navi GPUs will probably be released around the end of the year. 

[ki8aras]

3 minutes ago, chaosdivine said:

So I have been thinking about upgrading my current set up, only just realised i purchased my CPU and mobo back in 2011 and figure maybe its time for an upgrade.

 

My full current set up is:

 

Intel Core i5 2500K 3.3GHz Socket 1155 6MB Cache Retail Boxed Processor

Asus P8P67 PRO REV 3.1 Socket 1155 8 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard

16GB 1600 DDR3

GTX 970

Samsung Evo SSD

View Sonic XG2401

 

Now I've always been an intel kind of guy but I've heard amd lately have been quite good especially when it comes to price & performance. 

 

Someone suggested i try the ryzen 2600x cpu with 16gb of 3000mhz ram and keep my GPU for now. Thoughts? 

 

One thing that always bugged me about intel mobos was I felt the sockets going out of date quick and every new CPU upgrade required a mobo upgrade aswell, is that the case with AMD mobos?

 

Also i'm not really one for overclocking I'm a complete novice at it and id rather not risk anything blowing up lol.

 

If i upgraded to the Ryzen would I see a good increase vs my 8yo CPU or would it be pretty unnoticeable? 

yeah best practice would be to wait for ryzen 3

[chaosdivine]

4 minutes ago, TH3R34P3R said:

if you are going to upgrade, do you have a budget for a full upgrade, like cpu, gpu, ram, mobo and psu? if so, I can recommend something. However, if you are just going to upgade the cpu and mobo and ram, perhaps wait until ryzen 3 comes out if you have no issue right now. but if you wanted to upgrade right now, the ryzen 2600, MSI tomahawk b450, and 16gigs of 3000mhz ram should come in at about 400. 

I mean i have the budget for a full upgrade i'm just not entirely sure whether its needed right now? I think my GPU is kinda solid for the games I play right now (Apex, HOTS, rocket league,overwatch)

 

What you've said is exactly what i was looking at but unsure of ryzen 2600 vs 2600x

 

I could wait but do we know how big the difference in performance would be?

 

also for arguments sake if i got that setup now and the new ryzens came out could I buy one and put it on the same mobo? then i could give the 2600 to my brother.

[SenKa]

1 minute ago, chaosdivine said:

I mean i have the budget for a full upgrade i'm just not entirely sure whether its needed right now? I think my GPU is kinda solid for the games I play right now (Apex, HOTS, rocket league,overwatch)

 

What you've said is exactly what i was looking at but unsure of ryzen 2600 vs 2600x

 

I could wait but do we know how big the difference in performance would be?

 

also for arguments sake if i got that setup now and the new ryzens came out could I buy one and put it on the same mobo? then i could give the 2600 to my brother.

AM4 socket is supported until 2020 confirmed, so yes. It would just require a BIOS update.

[TH3R34P3R]

3 minutes ago, chaosdivine said:

I mean i have the budget for a full upgrade i'm just not entirely sure whether its needed right now? I think my GPU is kinda solid for the games I play right now (Apex, HOTS, rocket league,overwatch)

 

What you've said is exactly what i was looking at but unsure of ryzen 2600 vs 2600x

 

I could wait but do we know how big the difference in performance would be?

 

also for arguments sake if i got that setup now and the new ryzens came out could I buy one and put it on the same mobo? then i could give the 2600 to my brother.

We (as a community) are not sure of what ryzen 3000 will bring. also, the 2600 is very good. I wouldn't suggest the 2600x if you are going to be overclocking. 

[chaosdivine]

Just now, TH3R34P3R said:

We (as a community) are not sure of what ryzen 3000 will bring. also, the 2600 is very good. I wouldn't suggest the 2600x if you are going to be overclocking. 

I've never overclocked in my life and i'm very scared of it if i'm honest! 

[chaosdivine]

3 minutes ago, SenpaiKaplan said:

AM4 socket is supported until 2020 confirmed, so yes. It would just require a BIOS update.

so grabbing say MSI tomahawk b450 would be a good investment if i wanted to upgrade the CPU to the new 3000 later? would it still be good if i went for the new AMD GPU's released later this year?

[TH3R34P3R]

1 minute ago, chaosdivine said:

so grabbing say MSI tomahawk b450 would be a good investment if i wanted to upgrade the CPU to the new 3000 later? would it still be good if i went for the new AMD GPU's released later this year?

I mean, as of right now, if you went from the 970 to say, the 2060, you should probably see (theoretical) 71% gain in performance. (per userbenchmark) 

 

the ryzen 2600 should offer a 25% increase (per userbenchmark again) but the 3x more threads will be very big in terms of change. 

 

the ddr4 ram, well, its ddr4 vs ddr3. self explanatory. just go for 3000mhz plus. 

[SenKa]

2 minutes ago, chaosdivine said:

so grabbing say MSI tomahawk b450 would be a good investment if i wanted to upgrade the CPU to the new 3000 later? would it still be good if i went for the new AMD GPU's released later this year?

I can't say for certain if you would see the full brunt of Zen 2. Supposedly it would bring PCI-E 4.0, and we are unsure if that would bring a revision to the slot that would allow a Zen 1 board to be compatible with PCI-E 4.0. We simply don't know, as TH3R34P3R said. 

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

I honestly wouldn't be too worried about Intel's socket changes interfering with your ability to upgrade.  After all you've been happily using the same CPU for 8 years now.  Whatever brand you buy now, by the next time you'll feel the need to upgrade they will have switched to another socket.

[Sovek]

26 minutes ago, Captain Chaos said:

I honestly wouldn't be too worried about Intel's socket changes interfering with your ability to upgrade.  After all you've been happily using the same CPU for 8 years now.  Whatever brand you buy now, by the next time you'll feel the need to upgrade they will have switched to another socket.

The problem is that if you want to hang on to the platform a little longer with a used CPU, you can't upgrade very far, not with Intel anyways. Someone with a Ryzen 1500X can at least upgrade to the very promising Ryzen 3xxx CPUs and maybe even a Ryzen 4xxx chip if he feels his CPU is holding him back. For the OP, his only option is flash the BIOS and grab a ivy bridge i7 which is a minimal upgrade to be sure. 

 

To the OP. 2600 vs 2600X, yeah, the X is slightly faster, but is it worth $30-$50 more (location depending)? To give you some food for thought, I went from an i5-6500 to a Ryzen 2600, and faster RAM (Dual Channel actually) and kept pretty much everything else. I can honestly say I saw some improvment, especially in The Division and Subnautica. I'd drop frames quite frequently in The Division especially when it got hairy. Subnautica was fine, up until you got a base going, a small base, it was fine, any bigger..... chug chug chug. I only noticed frame drops in Subnautica when I was streaming my game and in the base with like 20+lockers, posters ect.  This is with a GTX 1070 FE so your milage may vary

[chaosdivine]

26 minutes ago, Captain Chaos said:

I honestly wouldn't be too worried about Intel's socket changes interfering with your ability to upgrade.  After all you've been happily using the same CPU for 8 years now.  Whatever brand you buy now, by the next time you'll feel the need to upgrade they will have switched to another socket.

this is actually very true lol. Just want to make sure the £400 upgrade I'm looking at is a substantial upgrade rather then meh lol.

 

 

[chaosdivine]

2 minutes ago, Sovek said:

The problem is that if you want to hang on to the platform a little longer with a used CPU, you can't upgrade very far, not with Intel anyways. Someone with a Ryzen 1500X can at least upgrade to the very promising Ryzen 3xxx CPUs and maybe even a Ryzen 4xxx chip if he feels his CPU is holding him back. For the OP, his only option is flash the BIOS and grab a ivy bridge i7 which is a minimal upgrade to be sure. 

 

To the OP. 2600 vs 2600X, yeah, the X is slightly faster, but is it worth $30-$50 more (location depending)? To give you some food for thought, I went from an i5-6500 to a Ryzen 2600, and faster RAM (Dual Channel actually) and kept pretty much everything else. I can honestly say I saw some improvment, especially in The Division and Subnautica. I'd drop frames quite frequently in The Division especially when it got hairy. Subnautica was fine, up until you got a base going, a small base, it was fine, any bigger..... chug chug chug. I only noticed frame drops in Subnautica when I was streaming my game and in the base with like 20+lockers, posters ect.  This is with a GTX 1070 FE so your milage may vary

 

Yeah in the UK its £50 more so not sure if worth it. 

 

oh so you had a better I5 then me and you upgraded and everything was a lot smoother? 

[Sovek]

Some benchmarks I'd found comparing the two showed a 8-12 FPS improvement. I tend to notice that for some reason. 

 

If I were you, (and if I'd been smarter), I'd wait till the Ryzen 2 launch and see what kind of performance vs price you get. 

[chaosdivine]

Just now, Sovek said:

Some benchmarks I'd found comparing the two showed a 8-12 FPS improvement. I tend to notice that for some reason. 

 

If I were you, (and if I'd been smarter), I'd wait till the Ryzen 2 launch and see what kind of performance vs price you get. 

Yeah i'm trying to force myself to wait as in reality I play all the games i have now with no issue, only thing i was thinking was if i upgraded now I could always grab a new CPU come summer and give my old one to my brother.

 

outside of benchmarks do you feel a big improvement in your current set up vs the i5?

[Mister Woof]

1 hour ago, chaosdivine said:

so grabbing say MSI tomahawk b450 would be a good investment if i wanted to upgrade the CPU to the new 3000 later? would it still be good if i went for the new AMD GPU's released later this year?

You say Intel bugs you, and you cite their frequent requirement to change motherboards. Your CPU is 8 years old. Given that history I think "upgrade path" is not really applicable to your situation. I think you should consider what you are trying to achieve now, and make a judgment based on that.

 

Since you have a high refresh monitor, I hesitate to recommend any AMD CPU's at this point. If you don't care about high refresh (144fps), then AMD is fine by all rights. If you are planning on streaming your gameplay, then AMD is a better option. If you are using software that is heavily multi-threaded, then AMD is a good option.

But if you are strictly gaming, something like an i5-8600k/i5-9600k are going to give you better gaming results (especially high refresh 1080p) compared to any AMD chips.

 

Edit: You haven't mentioned what graphics card you are using? Unless I missed it? This plays a big part as well. If you are using anything less than GTX 1080 class, then you won't see much benefit of high refresh with either CPU without heavy GPU-bound settings concessions. In that case, the 2600 is probably a better bet. But moving forward, if you upgrade your GPU, expect to still yield lesser 1080p/FPS results with the 2600 vs. the intel.

 

Edit 2: See it now. GTX 970. Okay, just get the 2600 then. It won't matter with that GPU, unless you upgrade to a GTX 1080 or better card. In that case, the newer Intel chips will give you better performance. Also, depends on the game. In something like say, WoW, CPU is going to matter way more than GPU. When FPS drops in that game, its not usually from GPU limitation, but CPU. In that case, the intel is going to be far superior.

[Sovek]

3 minutes ago, Plutosaurus said:

You say Intel bugs you, and you cite their frequent requirement to change motherboards. You haven't upgraded your PC in over 11 years. Given that history I think "upgrade path" is not really applicable to your situation. I think you should consider what you are trying to achieve now, and make a judgment based on that.

 

Since you have a high refresh monitor, I hesitate to recommend any AMD CPU's at this point. If you don't care about high refresh (144fps), then AMD is fine by all rights. If you are planning on streaming your gameplay, then AMD is a better option. If you are using software that is heavily multi-threaded, then AMD is a good option.

But if you are strictly gaming, something like an i5-8600k/i5-9600k are going to give you better gaming results (especially high refresh 1080p) compared to any AMD chips.

But that option is like $150 more for some granted rather sizeable increase in gaming and only really applicable at 144Hz or faster. Plus the Ryzen would be better for streaming and video encoding which he might do. Plus, we have no idea how Ryzen 2 is going to perform and with a lower wattage requirement. 

 

I'm not fanboying for AMD here, but we don't know all his requirements. Is the budget going to be a factor, is $150 more for better gaming worth it in the tradeoff for multi-threaded applications, does the games he play cares? does he have a high refresh monitor, and its a 970.... honestly, Its not like its pumping out lots of  frames, its a low end 1440P card, and mid 1080P considering the 3.5GB GDDR5.

[Mister Woof]

2 minutes ago, Sovek said:

But that option is like $150 more for some granted rather sizeable increase in gaming and only really applicable at 144Hz or faster. Plus the Ryzen would be better for streaming and video encoding which he might do. Plus, we have no idea how Ryzen 2 is going to perform and with a lower wattage requirement. 

 

I'm not fanboying for AMD here, but we don't know all his requirements. Is the budget going to be a factor, is $150 more for better gaming worth it in the tradeoff for multi-threaded applications, does the games he play cares? does he have a high refresh monitor, and its a 970.... honestly, Its not like its pumping out lots of  frames, its a low end 1440P card, and mid 1080P considering the 3.5GB GDDR5.

1. Price, yeah, there's that. Doesn't seem like he upgrades often though, so that might be worth his while.

2. I already mentioned that.

3. I made some edits after the fact. Somehow the 970 missed me.

[Sovek]

Hmmm... You mention WoW, I wonder if MS2 would see an improvement. Though the difficulty in upgrading and GS kinda turned me off from playing it

[chaosdivine]

thanks for your replies guys.

 

so it is mostly for gaming I mean id like to stream my gameplay if i could, it would allow my brother who moved away abroad to watch me and my other brother game  

 

in terms of games I play: Apex / Heroes of the storm / wow rarely / rocket league / dead by daylight / spellbreak / overwatch are my main games right now 

 

I don't upgrade my build much, the reason I haven't really upgraded this current build other then putting in the 970 a year or 2 ago is that it runs all the games fine on atleast med settings. I was just hoping to push everything to high or atleast get decent enough FPS on medium that my 144hz monitor actually gets its worth unless i'm completely misunderstanding 144hz monitors lol (you need atleast 144fps in game right?) 

 

but like i said mostly mostly gaming and watching a streamer / tv show on my secondary screen right now. 

 

I'm just trying to gauge how much of an improvement id see with possibly going down the amd root and upgrading for a new GPU later in the year.

[Mister Woof]

2 minutes ago, chaosdivine said:

thanks for your replies guys.

 

so it is mostly for gaming I mean id like to stream my gameplay if i could, it would allow my brother who moved away abroad to watch me and my other brother game  

 

in terms of games I play: Apex / Heroes of the storm / wow rarely / rocket league / dead by daylight / spellbreak / overwatch are my main games right now 

 

I don't upgrade my build much, the reason I haven't really upgraded this current build other then putting in the 970 a year or 2 ago is that it runs all the games fine on atleast med settings. I was just hoping to push everything to high or atleast get decent enough FPS on medium that my 144hz monitor actually gets its worth unless i'm completely misunderstanding 144hz monitors lol (you need atleast 144fps in game right?) 

 

but like i said mostly mostly gaming and watching a streamer on my secondary screen right now. 

 

I'm just trying to gauge how much of an improvement id see with possibly going down the amd root and upgrading for a new GPU later in the year.

 

It's difficult to get 144 fps even at 1080p in EVERY game. It requires you to have a powerful CPU (not just more cores, but very powerful cores) and also a very powerful GPU (or reduced settings).

 

In games like WoW, nothing you do will get you 144fps at all times; but with a stronger CPU you will raise your minimums. Example my wife's 1600 at 3.8ghz will slog down into the 50s in the same raid whereas mine drops into the 70s. Both GPUs aren't fully utilized, so it's on the CPU end. 

 

In games like Overwatch, I beleive it's a lot easier to get higher FPS with a wider array of hardware. As far as Apex Heroes, it seems FPS is all over the place for everyone.

 

A new CPU might help you with the secondary monitor, but it does take up GPU power too. Example I run 3x 1080p monitors and with netflix running it does cause FPS drops.

[chaosdivine]

1 hour ago, Plutosaurus said:

 

It's difficult to get 144 fps even at 1080p in EVERY game. It requires you to have a powerful CPU (not just more cores, but very powerful cores) and also a very powerful GPU (or reduced settings).

 

In games like WoW, nothing you do will get you 144fps at all times; but with a stronger CPU you will raise your minimums. Example my wife's 1600 at 3.8ghz will slog down into the 50s in the same raid whereas mine drops into the 70s. Both GPUs aren't fully utilized, so it's on the CPU end. 

 

In games like Overwatch, I beleive it's a lot easier to get higher FPS with a wider array of hardware. As far as Apex Heroes, it seems FPS is all over the place for everyone.

 

A new CPU might help you with the secondary monitor, but it does take up GPU power too. Example I run 3x 1080p monitors and with netflix running it does cause FPS drops.

ah yeah i get what you're saying. So i guess right now as i'm not experiencing actual issues i should probably just leave it a while maybe till my pc actually starts causing me issues.