Intel Core i5-2500K Vs Intel Core i5-4440/4570/4690

[SkilledRebuilds]

Well they think If I pair a R9 390 Or GTX 980 I might bottleneck due to the i5 being locked and non-overclockable

That absolutely hilarious....

I've had a 290x/970 (1080p) & TitanBlack (1440p) in my sig-rig (locked i5) and its been fine with 99-100% GPU usage in my games.

 

The i5's are AMPLE for 97% of gaming usage.

The only time it gets bad, is when the game is hugely demanding on the CPU (past 60% on all cores) (BF4/GTA5) and yet I'm still rocking 95-100% usage on the GPU, barely happens but only minor dips back n forth between 95-100% usage.

[Lays]

Kek - they are dumb. Show them this comment.

i5 4460 is fine with a Titan X

 

 

I think it depends on the game, but it is 95% good enough IMO.

 

I had to borrow my cousin's 4690 for a little bit, and it struggled occasionally on full 64 person BF4 maps, operation firestorm stuttered every so often and 1 or 2 cores would hit 100% usage, rest of the time it was hovering in the 75-90% range depending on what was going on.  I had a lot of background things running though, like Telegram / TS3 / Spotify / sometimes a few chrome tabs and a few other programs.

 

Once I went back to my 4770k though, all these issues were gone.  So I think depending on how heavy of a user you are, the low end locked I5's will be OK if you don't open 1290341234 things while playing super populated multiplayer maps on bf4.

[Hans Power]

I would definately go for an Ivy bridge CPU, simply because of DDR3. As far as I know, Sandy Bridge still only supports DDR2 and at least here in germany those are waaay to expensive. Also, you might get some compatability issues in the longrun because of the old architecture in terms of gaming performance and mainboard driver support. Ivy Bridge is still rather "fresh" in terms of its feature set.

 

Edit: oops, I meant haswell! I was a generation behind in thoughts but everything I said about Ivy Bridge counts double for haswell - this is still a pretty up to date and relevant platform.

[BrightCandle]

pcper.com did a decent video about the impact of moving from a 2600k to a 6700k recently which you might find insightful:

 

[Dive5885]

I think it depends on the game, but it is 95% good enough IMO.

 

I had to borrow my cousin's 4690 for a little bit, and it struggled occasionally on full 64 person BF4 maps, operation firestorm stuttered every so often and 1 or 2 cores would hit 100% usage, rest of the time it was hovering in the 75-90% range depending on what was going on.  I had a lot of background things running though, like Telegram / TS3 / Spotify / sometimes a few chrome tabs and a few other programs.

 

Once I went back to my 4770k though, all these issues were gone.  So I think depending on how heavy of a user you are, the low end locked I5's will be OK if you don't open 1290341234 things while playing super populated multiplayer maps on bf4.

Yeah I never have anything running in the background when I use to play games on my two previous builds.

 

So maybe the locked i5 wouldn't be all that bad

[SkilledRebuilds]

I think it depends on the game, but it is 95% good enough IMO.

 

I had to borrow my cousin's 4690 for a little bit, and it struggled occasionally on full 64 person BF4 maps, operation firestorm stuttered every so often and 1 or 2 cores would hit 100% usage, rest of the time it was hovering in the 75-90% range depending on what was going on.  I had a lot of background things running though, like Telegram / TS3 / Spotify / sometimes a few chrome tabs and a few other programs.

While I've NEVER had issues with my i5, ^this is pretty important^ as I myself....NEVER have more than what I need open when playing games.

I close most of my excess to play games, always have, even with my i7 2600k, never kept things open that were not needed.

 

 

Yeah I never have anything running in the background when I use to play games on my two previous builds.

 

So maybe the locked i5 wouldn't be all that bad

I posted this above, but again now as it is a direct response to this.

The i5's are AMPLE for 97% of gaming usage.

The only time it gets bad, is when the game is hugely demanding on the CPU (past 60% on all cores) (BF4/GTA5) and yet I'm still rocking 95-100% usage on the GPU, under 100% barely happens but only minor dips back n forth between 95-100% usage.

When you have 80-120fps, the 95-100% usage variance isn't seen or felt anyway.

[Dive5885]

pcper.com did a decent video about the impact of moving from a 2600k to a 6700k recently which you might find insightful:

 

Intresting, With SLI the Skylake Cpu was better but with a single gpu they were about even.

[BrightCandle]

Intresting, With SLI the Skylake Cpu was better but with a single gpu they were about even.

 

I don't agree that is what they said. At 1080p they showed a sizeable impact of Skylake, not just on the average frame rate but also on the frame times and stutter improving the gameplay in a noticeable way. At 1440p on a single GPU the frame rate was more limited by the GPU and the distance reduced and then adding SLI/crossfire showed even more difference due to the inherient CPU overhead of using two cards. All in all they showed Skylake is quite a bit better due to the accumulative effect of incremental upgrades.

[Dive5885]

I don't agree that is what they said. At 1080p they showed a sizeable impact of Skylake, not just on the average frame rate but also on the frame times and stutter improving the gameplay in a noticeable way. At 1440p on a single GPU the frame rate was more limited by the GPU and the distance reduced and then adding SLI/crossfire showed even more difference due to the inherient CPU overhead of using two cards. All in all they showed Skylake is quite a bit better due to the accumulative effect of incremental upgrades.

I would get Skylake if motherboards for that socket weren't so damn expensive

[Luke]

I can get a 2500K for around $150 USD and I can get a Locked i5 for around $160+ USD and a 3570K for around $170 USD

 

If you're able to find a 1155 motherboard i can sell you my i5 2500K. I upgraded to a 3770 for some reason.