Best upgrade from 2500k - single threaded - Dwarf Fortress :p

[FoxEye]

With the new Ryzens now out there's little doubt that AMD have upped their game.

But I'm not sure how many of you know what Dwarf Fortress is... basically it's a single-threaded game that mixes Civ, the Sims, Settlers, Minecraft and... well, it's very unique. In certain cases it will happily bring my 2500k to its knees, too.

I'm about due an upgrade, by my reckoning, but find myself playing less and less triple-A games, and more indie/2d stuff. So the most demanding game is DF, and it's purely single threaded perf that counts there.

So what's the best upgrade from a 2500k @ 4.0 given those constraints? Budget ~£550 for CPU/mobo/RAM.

Also prepared to wait for Coffee Lake, but heard conflicting stories about it. That it won't have architectural differences from Kaby (just 14nm FF process change); that it will have bits of new architecture from Cannonlake (atom replacement?)... etc. In short, not sure if jump is significant enough to warrant waiting.

Cheers

 

[wedrum]

pop in a 3770k

 

[FoxEye]

Strictly for IPC gains, would that be worth it? Though Ivy was only 5% faster than Sandy for IPC, and overclocks worse too.

Unless I'm missing something. Because I remember when Ivy came out everybody was saying "no point in upgrading from Sandy".

Moving to an i7 with similar IPC does not help me at all, as I tried to explain in OP.

 

[wedrum]

overclock the 2500k then, you should be able get 4.8ghz plus depending on the cooler.

 

[DragonQ]

A 3770K would marginally increase IPC and it may well clock higher. However, your current chip is only at 4 GHz. 4.5+ GHz should be easily achievable so this is probably the best option to start with. If it's not enough, an i5-7600K or i7-7700K are probably the only ways you'll get significantly better single threaded performance. Or you could just not support such badly made games.

 

[FoxEye]

Or you could just not support such badly made games.

Pah It's a one-man band, and I challenge you to find anything remotely similar to Dwarf Fortress... It's totally niche tho, most people would probably be turned off by the lack of graphics, for a start...

But there's something uniquely satisfying about nurturing your fortress and watching it develop; building your industry, increasing your wealth, then losing it all to a single rampaging zombie Aardvark-man. Coz I always neglect the military....

 

[DragonQ]

Pah It's a one-man band, and I challenge you to find anything remotely similar to Dwarf Fortress... It's totally niche tho, most people would probably be turned off by the lack of graphics, for a start...

But there's something uniquely satisfying about nurturing your fortress and watching it develop; building your industry, increasing your wealth, then losing it all to a single rampaging zombie Aardvark-man. Coz I always neglect the military....

Sounds a bit like Don't Starve (Together).

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Overclock your CPU a bit more??

Edit!!

Intel really has not responded to Ryzen yet,but I would imagine an overclocked Core i3 7350k or Core i5 7600K would be the best options then,but I wonder if waiting a few months for some price cuts might be worth it??

 

[eddiew]

At this time I think the single best single-thread performance is an overclocked 7700k? It's entirely correct that you can kick your 2500k up to ~4.8ghz with decent cooling, but Kaby will easily hit that, may go on up to 5.1-5.2, and has several generations of small IPC improvements, setting it somewhere around 25-30% ahead at the same clocks, or the equivalent of a 2500k at 6-6.5ghz.

For a lower budget, Ryzen @3.9 or so will easily beat a Sandy Bridge at 4.0, even in single threads. And of course it has way better multi-threading for when you want to do something else, and (apparently) socket compatibility with the next gen of AMD chips in the future, so you get a nice upgrade path

 

[eddiew]

-

(Does anyone else keep accidentally quoting themselves instead of editing a post? Frikking annoying UI!)

 

[FoxEye]

For a lower budget, Ryzen @3.9 or so will easily beat a Sandy Bridge at 4.0, even in single threads.

Any idea what % a Ryzen would be better than a 2500k, in terms of single-thread perf? Most reviews compare it to Kaby/Skylake.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

ARMA3 is very close to being single threaded so might useful to guess performance on your game:

http://www.gamegpu.com/images/stories/Test_GPU/Action/ARMA_III/test/a3_2560_intel.jpg
http://www.gamegpu.com/images/stories/Test_GPU/Action/ARMA_III/test/a3_2560_amd.jpg

This is one of the few benchmarks for the game which has a Core i5 2500K in it:

http://pclab.pl/zdjecia/artykuly/mbrzostek/amd_zen/r7_1800x/wykresy/nv_arma3.png
http://pclab.pl/zdjecia/artykuly/mbrzostek/amd_zen/r5_1600x/wykresy/oc_nv_arma3.png

 

[Andythe Random]

Overclock your CPU a bit more??

Edit!!

Intel really has not responded to Ryzen yet,but I would imagine an overclocked Core i3 7350k or Core i5 7600K would be the best options then,but I wonder if waiting a few months for some price cuts might be worth it??

Seconded for the 7350k, it is basically half a 7700k (except no turbo but can still be overclocked). Almost identical per core performance as the 7700k, should be the best price V performance for a truly single threaded game.
Apparently rimworld has a similar feel to dwarf fortress, with graphics though.

 

[Overlag]

pop in a 3770k

I did this but it caused issues. I had the p67 chipset and while it supported it, it didn't allow overclocking so I actually lost performance. I had to source a Z77 board from eBay so it might not be as simple.

 

[eddiew]

Any idea what % a Ryzen would be better than a 2500k, in terms of single-thread perf? Most reviews compare it to Kaby/Skylake.

*edit* Misread your post.

IIRC, it looks to be a little over Haswell, clock for clock, which is something like 20-25% over SB? I admit, I'm inferring from multiple benchmarks, but common opinion on these forums is that you need a very high clocked SB to beat a Ryzen at 3.9 in anything. Could be akin to SB at 5ghz.

(I can't clock mine higher due to thermals. With less ram, I can do 4.5 comfortably or 4.8 scorching hot, but 4x8gb of 1866 forced me to really push the memory controller voltage and it was drop to 1600, or reign in the cpu clocks down to 4.2. I have no doubt that Ryzen will give me "a little better" performance in single thread, and it's just going to blaze ahead in multi threaded tasks. At the moment, I'm waiting to see what happens with high speed memory vs Ryzen, since a lot of people are struggling to push high ram frequencies with 32gb or more. Really want to see that ironed out with some bios updates before I commit...)

 

[pastymuncher]

Whatever you decide to do don't go and waste money on a i3 7350k. A dual core cpu for £180 is a complete joke. I couldn't care less if it can overclock, that's £21 more than I paid for my 4670k. Shopping around will get you a 7600k for another £40 but even that is overpriced. I was dubious about the i3's before the launch of Kabylake but now that the Pentiums have HT I don't see why anybody would even consider a i3 now. Either Pentium G4560 or bite the bullet and go i5/i7.

 

[FoxEye]

Whatever you decide to do don't go and waste money on a i3 7350k. A dual core cpu for £180 is a complete joke. I couldn't care less if it can overclock, that's £21 more than I paid for my 4670k. Shopping around will get you a 7600k for another £40 but even that is overpriced. I was dubious about the i3's before the launch of Kabylake but now that the Pentiums have HT I don't see why anybody would even consider a i3 now. Either Pentium G4560 or bite the bullet and go i5/i7.

Yeah I dual core in 2017 isn't something I'm looking at. It'll either be an i5, i7 or Ryzen.

Ideally I'd like to go back to AMD for the good feels, but not if the Intel alternative is better for my needs. Would be nice if there were more concrete Coffeelake info available.

 

[Jumper118]

Free 20% upgrade from a proper oc on a cpu worth £45 or spend £100's to get maybe 40% on a newer platform........ Hmmm

 

[DragonQ]

Whatever you decide to do don't go and waste money on a i3 7350k. A dual core cpu for £180 is a complete joke. I couldn't care less if it can overclock, that's £21 more than I paid for my 4670k. Shopping around will get you a 7600k for another £40 but even that is overpriced. I was dubious about the i3's before the launch of Kabylake but now that the Pentiums have HT I don't see why anybody would even consider a i3 now. Either Pentium G4560 or bite the bullet and go i5/i7.

It's actually under £160 but in general I completely agree. However, the i3-7350K seemingly has one fairly useful purpose: a dedicated emulator machine (which could include playing games like Dwarf Fortress). Most emulators are single-threaded, or rely heavily on a single thread, and the i3-7350K can potentially clock 1-1.5 GHz higher than a Pentium G4560. It's still three times the price though, and if you're going to be using the machine for anything else at all, including other games that do use more threads, it's definitely better to get at least an i5.

 

[Bollse]

overclock the 2500k then, you should be able get 4.8ghz plus depending on the cooler.

Do this, I've found my sandybridge easily OC'd to 5GHz even, without much fiddling. A nice free performance upgrade for you.