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2500k system, continue upgrading GPU?

Things change I've changed said:
I'm very tempted to grab a 1080ti and pair it with my nearly 7 year old 2500k, am I mad!?

I've been having a look at a few 4k gaming cpu benchmarks and the CPU seems to make barely any difference, now I'm running on 3400x1400 with g-sync, is it really worth me upgrading my my CPU vs the performance gain I could get from a GPU upgrade, I know 3400x1400 is still a fair way from 4k but surely I'll still be bottlenecked by the GPU?


Check this video of a i7-8700k vs an i7-2600k,


If you skip to 6:55 where he shows the gaming benches it's really quite impressive even at CPU limited resolutions.


It's going to cost me around £500 to upgrade my system to a 2600x system (intel is no go atm with cpu price hikes)

so, 1080ti @ £600 vs 2600x upgrade @ £500


Which gains me the most performance?, bare in mind I have g-sync as well.
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It depends what you use the PC for, The video you linked shows minimal gaming improvements for the most part and that's compared to the 8700k, I wouldn't upgrading to a 6 core Ryzen especially not for gaming just go for the gpu and do a cpu upgrade in a year or so. Also I 'd suggest going with a 2080 if you can add the extra over a 1080ti, If you want your kit to last for years always go for the current gen. On this forum we had similar discussions related to buying a 980ti or a 1070 just after Pascal released and at the time they were evenly matched nowadays we often see a significant gap favouring the 1070.
 
The 1080ti as upgrade at >QHD is a no brainer. If you look at 1% & 0.1% lows the difference still isn't there for a CPU upgrade. MAYBE if you had a 2080ti, but otherwise nah. Imo you can easily ride out the CPU you have until 7nm CPUs and DDR5 is here.
 
I couldn't play games on my 2500k, the FPS in theory looked ok, but in reality the FPS spiked a lot and the stuttering was noticeable compared to how smooth it is on my 7700k.
 
Roar87 said:
I couldn't play games on my 2500k, the FPS in theory looked ok, but in reality the FPS spiked a lot and the stuttering was noticeable compared to how smooth it is on my 7700k.
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I think it is probably something to do in games that are multi threaded, Nvidia's DX11 driver approach of their software scheduler incurring a CPU overhead hit across multiple cores to split draw calls.

AMD's DX11 driver approach uses hardware scheduler rather than software scheduler, so while performance won't be as good as Nvidia in light-threaded/single-threaded games (i.e. WOW, Starcraft 2), it doesn't suffer the CPU overhead issue in games that are multi threaded as Nvidia would.

As 2500K only have 4 physical cores, so it could explain the issue you had. The 7700K probably helped you resolve this issue probably due the the combination of additional processing power, or the availability of the extra threads (4 cores 8 threads instead of 4 cores only).

Regardless though, if going to up the resolution to 4K, it would still make more sense to upgrade the graphic card first (despite the potential issues), rather than keeping the same graphic card and upgrading the system alone.
 
I have a 2080ti with a [email protected]. The CPU is a major bottleneck.

Add multiplayer and AI (VR simracing in my case) and the GPU is sitting there while the CPU is pegged. I have at my desk a 8086k and some RAM going into a build tomorrow to balance out the setup.

The 2600k and the 980ti I had were a good match but once you get past that combination, your CPU will certainly be an issue. Sandy Bridge had a great run but there's limits to everything.
 
Robert896r1 said:
I have a 2080ti with a [email protected]. The CPU is a major bottleneck.

Add multiplayer and AI (VR simracing in my case) and the GPU is sitting there while the CPU is pegged. I have at my desk a 8086k and some RAM going into a build tomorrow to balance out the setup.

The 2600k and the 980ti I had were a good match but once you get past that combination, your CPU will certainly be an issue. Sandy Bridge had a great run but there's limits to everything.
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A 2080ti with a 2600k! You should seriously do a few game benches before you upgrade, would be very interesting to see difference, we could really see how much the 2600k was holding you back.
 
Robert896r1 said:
I have a 2080ti with a [email protected]. The CPU is a major bottleneck.

Add multiplayer and AI (VR simracing in my case) and the GPU is sitting there while the CPU is pegged. I have at my desk a 8086k and some RAM going into a build tomorrow to balance out the setup.

The 2600k and the 980ti I had were a good match but once you get past that combination, your CPU will certainly be an issue. Sandy Bridge had a great run but there's limits to everything.
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But what res are you gaming on though? Is your bottleneck on 4K res?

Also sim and racing games are exceptions that are always going to be CPU bounded one the graphic card is fast enough to a certain extent, due to those games generally are not very graphic intensive (like how games such as CS and Overwatch, Rocket League are also not very graphic demanding).

Also older sim games have a reputation of their date engine being low-threaded and only using 1~2 thread of the CPU. Not sure what games you are referring to specifically when you say "VR simracing".
 
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Marine-RX179 said:
But what res are you gaming on though? Is your bottleneck on 4K res?

Also sim and racing games are exceptions that are always going to be CPU bounded one the graphic card is fast enough to a certain extent, due to those games generally are not very graphic intensive (like how games such as CS and Overwatch, Rocket League are also not very graphic demanding).

Also older sim games have a reputation of their date engine being low-threaded and only using 1~2 thread of the CPU. Not sure what games you are referring to specifically when you say "VR simracing".
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Sim racing: Assetto Corsa, Race Room, Rfactor 2. They all suffer with the rift using my CPU. When I move to an Odyssey or Pimax 5k+ that's even more pixels to push. In VR they need graphics horsepower compared to a 2D screen. I have a 3008wfp (2560x1600) and maybe will replace that with a 32inch 4k screen just for fun but I honestly don't do any serious PC gaming anymore due to limited time so 2D performance in normal benchmarks has little relevance to my use case.

Things change I've changed said:
A 2080ti with a 2600k! You should seriously do a few game benches before you upgrade, would be very interesting to see difference, we could really see how much the 2600k was holding you back.
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I don't have too much time for extensive testing sadly but what I've done so far:

https://www.racedepartment.com/thre...ful-graphics-card.158165/page-10#post-2837425

You can also see in that thread "Andrew_Wot" who is getting much better performance in the same benchmarks with having a better CPU.
 
imginy said:
But from my experience with a [email protected] when I stuck a gtx 1080 in there and turned the settings up the games ran horrible real real bad stutter fairly unplayble on the demanding games.
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Same experience as me. I tried swapping from a 4.5Ghz 3570K to a 4.5Ghz 2600K which helped with stuttering but did not solve the low minimums. Maybe it was the 1600Mhz RAM or the lack of oomph but it wasn't worth pouring more money into 1155. 5820K solved all the issues.
 
Going from a 4690K with a 980 Ti to an 8700 K yielded big oerfoperfor increases in many games (mainly minimum FPS) but then I run at 144hz. At 60hz it will make a big difference in some titles but won't be as noticeable.
 
I was in the exact same situation recently.

The 2500k will struggle, I've had mine since release and it's been a fantastic chip but was struggling a bit in BF1 so I swapped it out for a 2600k - problem solved.

A lot of die hard upgraders who insist on upgrading constantly will say upgrade but if you're smart about it and look online you'll see that for 1080p and 1440p there is about 5fps difference between an 8700k i7 and the 2600k i7. Intel has done very little in terms of progress except milking the consumer (thank lack of competition till Ryzen and the people who'll pay it regardless just to say they have it).

Once you start pushing 4K the gap widens but for everything else, save yourself the £500 and stick a 2600k in there.

Mine is at 4.8GHz with just a bit of extra voltage and I'm sure it'll do me for years to come get. It won't bottleneck.

Edit - got my 2600k for £70 on eBay and sold my 2500k today on the bay of E for £40....£30 to future proof your machine for a few more years is a no brainer IMO.
 
Yep I upgraded from a 2500k to a 2700k and gained a crap load of extra performance. Extra cores makes so much difference. You can pick them up for £50-£80 and it’s so worth it

God bless my old 2500k. A masterpiece of longevity in computing.
 
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