i5-2500k used or wait for future upgrade?

[clyeong]

Hi guys,

My friend recently upgraded his rig and gave me his used P8Z68-V LX motherboard so I was thinking to buy a used Sandy Bridge processor to upgrade my current 955BE + MA770T-UD3P (3.6Ghz OC) setup. I came across a local tech forum and one of the forumer is selling his used i5-2500k that is used for about 4-5 years at a price around USD100. Is it a good buy or a good upgrade over my current setup? I'm afraid the processor had some beating from the previous owner though. I've done some googling and some said that the i5-2500k offers more performance than the 955BE. I am planning to upgrade my setup for a while now, looking at skylake/haswell but my budget don't allow me to upgrade at the moment so I am looking at this as my other alternative. Should I take the i5-2500k or wait till I get enough budget to buy a new skylake/haswell processor and motherboard? 

Sincere thanks for all replies!

[AresKrieger]

The 2500k is still a good chip but I'm not sure about buying one this far down the line, I think @Slick still uses one in his gaming PC with two gtx 980s (some one correct me if I'm wrong because the search isn't showing the topic it was referenced) so it's still viable but I'm sure any chips being sold have a fair amount of heavy use by now so it has some risks that I'm not comfortable with.

[DragonTamer1]

2500k is a good CPU IMO. I'm using it in my current computer and it is still capable of playing every game that I throw at it. If you can try to talk him down a bit then go for it, but $100 is still a pretty good deal. A quick look on google shows it anywhere between $120 and $200.

Edit: I've noticed the 2500k is a bottleneck in only one of my games. In Planetside 2 if there are more than 400 people in the area it starts to choke.

[clyeong]

So I figure that the i5-2500k would be better than my 955BE... though the question of CPU lifespan is hard to answer. Maybe I'll give this a pass and see what other forumers have to sell in the future. Though for the sake of knowledge, how much performance boost in game would there be if I upgraded to the 2500k? 

[unidentical]

9 minutes ago, clyeong said:

So I figure that the i5-2500k would be better than my 955BE... though the question of CPU lifespan is hard to answer. Maybe I'll give this a pass and see what other forumers have to sell in the future. Though for the sake of knowledge, how much performance boost in game would there be if I upgraded to the 2500k? 

CPU doesn't do much for modern games. Pop open task manager while playing, unless your CPU is working real hard, moving to a newer chip is unlikely to improve game performance.

[clyeong]

1 hour ago, AresKrieger said:

The 2500k is still a good chip but I'm not sure about buying one this far down the line, I think @Slick still uses one in his gaming PC with two gtx 980s (some one correct me if I'm wrong because the search isn't showing the topic it was referenced) so it's still viable but I'm sure any chips being sold have a fair amount of heavy use by now so it has some risks that I'm not comfortable with.

 

 

1 hour ago, DragonTamer1 said:

2500k is a good CPU IMO. I'm using it in my current computer and it is still capable of playing every game that I throw at it. If you can try to talk him down a bit then go for it, but $100 is still a pretty good deal. A quick look on google shows it anywhere between $120 and $200.

Edit: I've noticed the 2500k is a bottleneck in only one of my games. In Planetside 2 if there are more than 400 people in the area it starts to choke.

 

 

19 minutes ago, unidentical said:

CPU doesn't do much for modern games. Pop open task manager while playing, unless your CPU is working real hard, moving to a newer chip is unlikely to improve game performance.

 

Mine had roughly 100% playing AC tho...

[Glenwing]

1 hour ago, unidentical said:

CPU doesn't do much for modern games. Pop open task manager while playing, unless your CPU is working real hard, moving to a newer chip is unlikely to improve game performance.

Depends on graphics card. The X4 955 is a pretty old chip and can bottleneck high-end graphic cards (or even low-end ones depending on the game). The 2500K is between ~50-100% faster from game to game.

[unidentical]

5 hours ago, Glenwing said:

Depends on graphics card. The X4 955 is a pretty old chip and can bottleneck high-end graphic cards (or even low-end ones depending on the game). The 2500K is between ~50-100% faster from game to game.

But since we didn't have information on either of those factors, I chose not to base my recommendation on an assumption. 

Further to that point, given that we only know that op plays one of the AC games, and don't have info on GPU, claiming he'll get 50 to 100% better performance might be a smidge reckless.

[Darkseth]

Depends of the Price you pay for it...

 

Remember, an Skylake i3 is in many newer Games even SLIGHTLY faster than the 2500k (without OC!)

 

 

[clyeong]

37 minutes ago, unidentical said:

But since we didn't have information on either of those factors, I chose not to base my recommendation on an assumption. 

Further to that point, given that we only know that op plays one of the AC games, and don't have info on GPU, claiming he'll get 50 to 100% better performance might be a smidge reckless.

 

 

1 minute ago, Darkseth said:

Depends of the Price you pay for it...

 

Remember, an Skylake i3 is in many newer Games even SLIGHTLY faster than the 2500k (without OC!)

 

 

 

Well if it mattered, I'm using a Asus GTX750TI OC. For me to upgrade to Skylake that would require a new processor, motherboard and new RAM. That would requires more budget

[Darkseth]

Oh damn true...

Should read better, you have a board already.

 

In that case, i would try finding an i7 2600k, instead 2500k (in Case the price difference is not that much higher!).

HyperThreading might serve you better for the next years, if you already are using a 5 year old CPU.

 

(Just as comparison, in games/benches, an Haswell Xeon (hyperthreading) with 3.4 ghz is on par with an i5 skylake, OCed to 4.5 Ghz.)