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Realistically how long will a 3rd Gen i5 last?

MrRockliffe

MrRockliffe

MrRockliffe

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So the title may be a little misleading. How long do you think an i5 3470 will be able to compete with the newer versions of CPUs in terms of gaming performance? I'm off to University (hopefully) next year and because of that, I was thinking it'd be a good idea to upgrade my PC while I have the money to as when I'm at Uni, I won't :D

I've currently got it paired with a 760.
 
It'll be a while before the cpu holds you back if you game at 1920*1080+, the gpu will be the deciding factor in most cases. I'd say 3+ years myself, by that point all games will be multi-core sensitive :)
 
JediFragger said:
It'll be a while before the cpu holds you back if you game at 1920*1080+, the gpu will be the deciding factor in most cases. I'd say 3+ years myself, by that point all games will be multi-core sensitive :)
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3 or more years sounds reasonable - it'll only become outdated once Intel finally make 6-core mainstream, or improve on the IPC enough that the performance falls back noticably from the latest products.

There's very little perfomance difference as it stands between Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge (the chip the OP has) and Haswell. Broadwell (next year for desktops) is just a die-shrink, so I doubt there'll be much improvement there. Even Skylake (2016), according to the leaked slides, will only be quad-core for mainstream chips, meaning it's odds-on that its successor die-shrink (2017?) will still be quad-core. If (and it's a big if!) Skylake sees a decent boost in IPC performance then your Ivy Bridge chip will seem dated - but going on the last few years, that's unlikely!

As JediFragger says, the GPU will age far more quickly than the CPU. I moved from a Geforce 460 to a 670 in the past 3½ years - GF104 to GK104 in terms of GPU chips - and that was a far bigger boost than moving from an i7-2600K to Haswell-E, at least in terms of gaming. I daresay the same sort of performance improvement will happen again when the new GM204 chips come out later this month.
 
I'd wager that you could complete a master's and get started on a PhD before your CPU really starts to feel dated.
 
The non-K i5 should still last a while, but if you main games were CPU demanding light-threaded games (such as mmos and rts that don't use more than 2 cores), then it would certainly hold you back in someway...even the Anniversary Edition Pentium that can be overclocked to around 4.50GHz would be quicker.
 
For gaming your gpu will hold you back before your cpu does.

It will be good for a while yet and even better when paired with a more powerful gpu if you need extra performance.
 
Problem with 6 cores at the moment is higher power consumption and heat (obviously) which means less speed per core to keep heat down. From benchmarks, 6 cores, at least at the moment, doesn't appear to affect the game positively.

My only issue is keeping update with Mac. I run OSx on my machine and I can't get mavericks installed on it for some reason. 10.8.5 runs a little weird (10.8.3 perfect). I can't afford a mac so I have to be able to keep up to date for Logic.
 
In terms of CPU performance it hasn't really gone up much, Intel seems more interested in power consumption and GPU performance. Unless someone suddenly comes up with a high performing CPU that can compete with them, I can't see any major CPU performance increase in the future.

I was planning to jump to Skylake but Haswell was quite a small performance jump...
 
3 benchmarks i seen today with the 295x2 gpu were using 3570k they are the 2500k stars. good for 2 or 3 years yet. most games are going to be down to gpu . so just grab a bug gpu and your sorted.
 
CPU you won't need something extra. Make a piggy bank and save some money for a future gpu upgrade as the one you have is fine for 1080p. I am still on a very old platform (q9550 + a 680GTX ) and i cannot see much bottleneck in the games I play in 1080p. Intel without having proper competition is just giving us a 5% increase in performance every year with some extra features (some good, some i wouldn't need to use).

Only CPU upgrade i could think of is, and this is ONLY if you can source VERY CHEAP a 3570K or a 3770K and are willing to overclock them. If they are not cheap or you are not willing to OC then stay where you are, for gaming you won't notice any difference with any of the 3 cpu's.
 
I've just sold my 1080P monitor and plan upgrading to 1440p soon. My MBPr display is so good that the more I used my PC the more I despised the monitor I used with it (1080P TN panel).
 
Then new gpu ftw! i am not familiar with gaming at 1440 and up and someone else can confirm so i would think a 290 /290x - 780/780 ti would suffice

Of course if you are going for 4k (i dont think we are there yet, my humble opinion) then you need multi gpu and lots and lots of money :D

I would wait it out and see how the new Nvidia GPUs are doing and you could get a 780/290 cheaper than now or even get the proper 880 or 980 how they will call them
 
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Anybody know how long my 3570k will last until bottleneck?

I game at 1440p.

I was hoping to wait for Broadwell or Braswell. Also does anybody have any idea of when we're likely to see Broadwell/Braswell, and how they will perform?
 
Rexton said:
Anybody know how long my 3570k will last until bottleneck?

I game at 1440p.

I was hoping to wait for Broadwell or Braswell. Also does anybody have any idea of when we're likely to see Broadwell/Braswell, and how they will perform?
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Broadwell is just a die shrink, don't expect much from its performance, like 10% more than what you have (in benchmarks not day to day use), or at least that is what Intel the recent years is being doing.

Braswell i thought it was the baytrail successor (atom processors) which has nothing to compare with the proper desktop processors.

I don't see a reason for you to change the processor in the future if you have the bottlenecking in your mind even when skylake comes out you should still be good. If you need the extra features (sata express, m.2 x4 etc) then by all means go for an update but you wont see much of a difference and no bottleneck what so ever. Gather the money and spend spend on gpus.
 
apostolis_kt said:
Then new gpu ftw! i am not familiar with gaming at 1440 and up and someone else can confirm so i would think a 290 /290x - 780/780 ti would suffice

Of course if you are going for 4k (i dont think we are there yet, my humble opinion) then you need multi gpu and lots and lots of money :D

I would wait it out and see how the new Nvidia GPUs are doing and you could get a 780/290 cheaper than now or even get the proper 880 or 980 how they will call them
Click to expand...

I'm gaming at 1400p (Well 1600 vertical with my aspect ratio) using a 290 and a first gen i7. So I think that CPU will last you a while yet.
 
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