Thoughts regarding i5-2500K

[Mahde232]

Hey there,
I've bought this i5-2500K quite a while ago, And I'm not quite sure about its power anymore, Especially with all the new architectures like Skylake and Haswell-E being released to the market, also because of the higher RAM speeds allowed by those new CPU's
I would like to know some of the expert's opinion regarding this.
Current rig is:
i5-2500K OC'd to 4.2ghz

16 Gigs of G.SKILL Ripjaws DDR3 1600

ASUS R9 390X

ASUS Z77 Sabertooth.

 

EDIT:

I didnt really experience any SERIOUS bottlenicks with this setup, I really love it and it plays the newest titles exceptionally well

its just that nowadays I see faster and faster RAM speeds coming up and mine just feels outdated and slow compared to them.

[RedJamaX]

I am running pretty much the same thing...   I've got an i5-2500k @4.3GHz....

At this point, yes, it will be worth the upgrade to a 6600k or a 6700k....  IF... you are playing the latest games, or doing things like Audio and video editing...  (then get the i7 for sure)


I am simply "planning" my upgrade at this point because I am still working on several games from last year and the i5-2500k with my 980ti is running them like butter!  I should also mention that I am connected to my 47" TV @1080p and not a 4K PC monitor  (which is in the planned upgrade)

[Mahde232]

10 hours ago, RedJamaX said:

I am running pretty much the same thing...   I've got an i5-2500k @4.3GHz....

At this point, yes, it will be worth the upgrade to a 6600k or a 6700k....  IF... you are playing the latest games, or doing things like Audio and video editing...  (then get the i7 for sure)


I am simply "planning" my upgrade at this point because I am still working on several games from last year and the i5-2500k with my 980ti is running them like butter!  I should also mention that I am connected to my 47" TV @1080p and not a 4K PC monitor  (which is in the planned upgrade)

I did edit the original post, I hope you take a look. It isnt giving me SERIOUS bottlenicks at all, it just feels like the CPU is a bit outdated although its quite powerful still, but the RAM speeds it supports is kinda slow compared to nowaday speeds

[RedJamaX]

I agree....   there are really no bottle necks for me either....  so much is based on your video card.   My kid is using a GTX 960 on an E8400 and has no problems.... granted, she isn't playing Witcher 3 or The Division...   but the 2500k isn't useless for sure....

I just like being future proof... and if I have the money to upgrade every 3 - 4 years.... I like to stay above 60fps     I've held off because any upgrade previous to the 6600k was not worth it at all....  the 6600k is "worth" it, at least.... (speaking in terms of Bang-4-Buck)

 

[Abaris]

Intel second gen CPUs are still pretty darn good nowadays. I still have a 2600k and it runs smoothly.
I'm going to upgrade to skylake this summer tough.

 

Just as RedJamaX said above. If you have enough cash to upgrade every 3-4 years, go for it. That's what I've been doing without issues and I'm still running stuff like The Witcher 3 without flaws.

 

I think skylake is a very good candidate to upgrade but if you bought your chip recently, don't rush. There is a lot coming like broadwell-e, kabylake and so on. So upgrade only when your system demands it.
Higher frecuency RAM is not noticeable unless you're into serious editing/rendering.

Hope that helps

[incarnate]

Performance increases dropped off significantly after Sandy bridge, it is still a great cpu. Don't worry about ram speeds, in most uses, it makes very little to no difference. I'd wait for kaby or canon lake before upgrading, but that's just me.

[RedJamaX]

So.... I'm reconsidering my upgrade... might wait another generation, as incarnate suggested..

 

About 6 months ago I upgraded from a GTX 970 to a 980Ti...  My old 750W PSU couldn't handle it so I upgraded to an EVGA B2 850...  I never bothered re-running the ASUS AI Auto-OC until today and I just hit 4.9GHz, cool and stable...  Since I only really care about gaming performance... it seems that if I got a 6600k, and only got a low OC out of it, then gaming performance wouldn't really be worth the $450 upgrade costs...  money would be better spent on a PCIe m.2 SSD, and selling the 980ti to get a 1080...

[incarnate]

1 hour ago, RedJamaX said:

So.... I'm reconsidering my upgrade... might wait another generation, as incarnate suggested..

 

About 6 months ago I upgraded from a GTX 970 to a 980Ti...  My old 750W PSU couldn't handle it so I upgraded to an EVGA B2 850...  I never bothered re-running the ASUS AI Auto-OC until today and I just hit 4.9GHz, cool and stable...  Since I only really care about gaming performance... it seems that if I got a 6600k, and only got a low OC out of it, then gaming performance wouldn't really be worth the $450 upgrade costs...  money would be better spent on a PCIe m.2 SSD, and selling the 980ti to get a 1080...

Yeah for sure. One suggestion I have is to keep an eye on the voltages for a bit to make sure that don't jump too high with the auto oc.

[Nena Trinity]

Why not get a SSD?

[BrightCandle]

Really depends on what you play. You can find some games that get nearly half the frame rate on a 2500k than on a 6600k, but they are few are far between. Most games are GPU limited most of the time up to 60 fps and its only really those either pushing more than that or playing games with problems (Arma 3) that find such a CPU is delivering below reasonable performance. A few games show the cracks, GTA V, Witcher 3 and in time an ever increasing set of games are going to show more and more problems as the CPU bottleneck becomes more obvious.

 

Whether its worth an upgrade really depends on what you play and your other hardware, for now at least with your current GPU I would say its very unlikely you need an upgrade, but just remember a "bottleneck" isn't just there or not, its different in every single game they all behave differently being unique pieces of software.

[Mahde232]

On 5/12/2016 at 1:09 PM, Nena360 said:

Why not get a SSD?

I've got a Samsung 850 Pro
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To all the others, Thanks for the valuable tips, I was afraid of the low RAM frequency bottle necking my PC, In general its still a great machine, runs games like Crysis 3  and other demanding games on very high and respectable settings with no problems whatsoever, RAM was my concern, Also, I was looking forward for an upgrade sooner or later because my sibling's PC is quite old now, Core duo quad with 4 gigs of ram, and a GT 440, I thought i would give them my MoBo with the CPU and upgrade my own PC.
Might consider my options with the new gens coming up, Thanks again all.

 

On 5/12/2016 at 2:53 PM, BrightCandle said:

Whether its worth an upgrade really depends on what you play and your other hardware, for now at least with your current GPU I would say its very unlikely you need an upgrade, but just remember a "bottleneck" isn't just there or not, its different in every single game they all behave differently being unique pieces of software.

I do realize that, you can read the reply above this.

Thanks !

[RedJamaX]

On 5/12/2016 at 8:53 AM, BrightCandle said:

Really depends on what you play. You can find some games that get nearly half the frame rate on a 2500k than on a 6600k,

It also depends on the resolution you want to play at....  If your are staying at 1080p...  Based on results I've seen, it looks like the Skylake will be an noticeable improvement.  But at 4K...  I'm not sure it would be worth it...  Time will tell.

One other factor.... if you are going to stick with your 390x, then I say the upgrade to skylake won't do much good (in terms of Bang-4-Buck), you've got a good balanced match there.   But... if you like to juggle your upgrades back and forth so that you're not spending $2000 each time you upgrade...  then it might be worth it to upgrade your CPU platform now, then balance out the graphics next year.  Just a thought.