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680 Sli with i5 2500k

Boldie007

Boldie007

Boldie007

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Joined
26 Mar 2012
Posts
156
Hi

I remember reading a thread in this GFX section a while ago (May time I think) that showed an i5 2500k "bottle necking" a 680 Sli with 3 x monitor setup, the OP posted graphs with the i5 and then a i7 2600k showing a reasonable FPS improvment in BF3.

I've searched the forum and can not find this info.

Does any one have experience of upgrading thier CPU from i5 to i7 with a simular setup as mine? Would it be worth the upgrade, my system is only used for surfing and and gaming (BF3, Skyrim @ 5760 x 1080).

Cheers in advance.
 
I would expect to see very little difference in games going from a 2500K to a 2700K even with 680 SLI's

I went from a 3570K to a 3770K, there is no difference at all except benchmarks that utilise HT. In fact I actually turn off HT because it makes my games stutter. That is all on a single 670 though so not really comparing eggs with eggs
 
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Boldie007 said:
Hi

I remember reading a thread in this GFX section a while ago (May time I think) that showed an i5 2500k "bottle necking" a 680 Sli with 3 x monitor setup, the OP posted graphs with the i5 and then a i7 2600k showing a reasonable FPS improvment in BF3.

I've searched the forum and can not find this info.

Does any one have experience of upgrading thier CPU from i5 to i7 with a simular setup as mine? Would it be worth the upgrade, my system is only used for surfing and and gaming (BF3, Skyrim @ 5760 x 1080).

Cheers in advance.
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I had a 2500k before the 2700k and there was definitely an increase in min frames and utilisation of the GPU's was more balanced out and increased aswell, this was at 1080p. IME at 5760x1080 the CPU was not a bottleneck since that res eats GPU's.
 
Actually I went from a 680 SLI set up with an i5 2500k to an i7 3770k and the cards were definitely bottlenecked by the CPU. They still are in some games but in BF3 the usage is much more consistently in the high 90's after upgrading.

You have to factor PCI-E 3.0 into it as well though.

I must caveat and say that the bottleneck is nowhere near the realms of playable/unplayable. Few FPS at the very, very best.
 
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There is a minor bottleneck

See the 3dmark thread. I have the top score for a single 680 @ 1377/+630, but I am 5th place in the multigpu chart with 2 @ 1350/+595/+605 iirc. With top place for single and dual gpu only score.

My processor is at 4.8 and my ram is stock 1600mhz cas 8, so physics score is nothing compared to the guys with sb-e / faster ram. Everyone above me on the multigpu chart has sb-e.

Jury is out on whether it affects games. Wouldn't be able to tell as it could be mistaken for driver issues atm
 
Boldie007 said:
Thanks for the comments, perhaps the right question to ask would haven been will an i7 increase my minimum FPS over the i5?
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I doubt you will see worthwhile increase going from Sandy i5 to Sandy i7...if you are going from Sandy i5 to Ivy i5/i7 however....

But I don't think it's worth the "upgrade", unless the games you play are hugely CPU dependent and are written to run in low number of threads...(for example pretty much almost ALL mmorpgs out there...)

BF3 is one of the few rare games out there which uses 6 cores (or may be more), so having HT "might" give you slight better frame rate. But you have to bare in mind vast majorty of the games out there are still using 3 cores or less...

Personally, I would just clock the i5 2500K higher from 4.5GHz to may be 4.8GHz.
 
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I think the only upgrade that you would see a difference in would be going to SB-E, so get yourself a 3930K or something and then once overclocked I think you'd have trouble bottlenecking that with even Tri-SLI, Quad-SLI would probably still be bottlenecked because there just isn't enough processing power in a CPU to contend with 4 graphics chips.
 
Rooster212 said:
I think the only upgrade that you would see a difference in would be going to SB-E, so get yourself a 3930K or something and then once overclocked I think you'd have trouble bottlenecking that with even Tri-SLI, Quad-SLI would probably still be bottlenecked because there just isn't enough processing power in a CPU to contend with 4 graphics chips.
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3930K seem like a waste of money though for gaming though, considering most games uses 3 cores or less.
 
Rusty0611 said:
Actually I went from a 680 SLI set up with an i5 2500k to an i7 3770k and the cards were definitely bottlenecked by the CPU. They still are in some games but in BF3 the usage is much more consistently in the high 90's after upgrading.

You have to factor PCI-E 3.0 into it as well though.

I must caveat and say that the bottleneck is nowhere near the realms of playable/unplayable. Few FPS at the very, very best.
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This is true, utilisation increased about ~15% in BF3 64 player MP for me. Smaller servers have less issues with scaling though, but for me it could be due to latency since I have a crappy 1.5mb connection. PCI-E 3.0 only gives about a 3-5% increase at 1080p but at multi-monitors it can help a lot.
 
Unable to resist the urge to upgrade my system I've now chopped the 2500K in for a 3770k and a Z77 setup.
In BF3 64 man I can defo tell the difference, simular FPS (with better minimums) but finaly the smoothness I've been longing for! Dont know if its PCIe3 or the HT but I can say I believe it is worth it if your running 1080p x 3 and SLI.
 
At my res of 5760*1080, my I5 @ 4.6 bottlenecks my SLI 680's on BF3. Unless scaling is poor in SLI of course. Not enough to warrant me swapping chips out though.
 
gregster said:
At my res of 5760*1080, my I5 @ 4.6 bottlenecks my SLI 680's on BF3. Unless scaling is poor in SLI of course. Not enough to warrant me swapping chips out though.
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I see you've spent enough already this month :).

Sold the old mobo and CPU on fleaBay so £200 to upgrade wasn't too bad.
 
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