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

 

[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.

 

[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....

 

[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.

 

[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.