i5 2500 non k upgrade

[harz_marz]

Hi all

New to here... Go easy on me!

A number of years ago I purchased a PC with the following build:

- i5 2500 (non k) and not overclocked
- GTX 570
- 8 ram

Since then I have put in a GTX 970 and got a great boost as you would expect! A few games however have struggled to reach 60 fps (gaming on a 1080p) screen. Games like Ryse, Project Cars etc.

Fast forward a little... I have just purchased an Acer Predator 1440p screen and decided to upgrade to a 980 ti which have yet to arrive.

My question is whether my i5 2500 is simply too old and slow to keep up, regardless of my gpu. Is this the case?

I've considered either keeping it, or waiting on Sky Lake but that means a new motherboard too. Alternatively, I could buy an i7 3770k now and use with existing board.

I have no idea how to overclock.

Any advice?

 

[harz_marz]

Does your motherboard support overclocking? If you don't know, then what motherboard is it?

Your CPU will bottleneck some games. On most it probably wont. I'd want somthing with a bit more power if I had something of the calibre of a 980ti I think.

It's the Asus P8Z68-V

The issue is that I've read my i5 2500 won't overclock. Though some sites seem to think it can. Hence the confusion!

 

[harz_marz]

No you cant overclock it. The board will overclock though.

I would buy a used 2500k off a popular aution site, or 2600k/2700k if your feeling baller but its not really needed. Sell the 2500k and it will cost you very very little.

Overclock your new 2500k and no more CPU bottleneck worries.

Thanks for the advice. Though I have never overclocked before and would be very wary! Though I guess there are a lot of guides online.

What about the other options...

i7 3770K?

Waiting for Skylake?

 

[harz_marz]

3770k/2600k/2700k is your best bet. You can OC to 4 speed bins higher on your 2500, but Sandy can generally do much better than that - I'd do what new boy said and sell up the 2500 while it has some value

Thanks.

I heard that you can do what you just said... but how do I do it? There doesn't seem to be any easy guide online.

Leaning towards the 3770K me thinks...

 

[harz_marz]

Thanks guys, great advice! Think I will see how my 980 ti performs with my i5 2500 then probably do a cheap upgrade.

Damn this PC business is expensive!!

 

[harz_marz]

you can take advantage of having higher GPU power than CPU power by use of the graphics settings. high AA etc hits the GPU hard, but not the CPU hard.

That way you can have a high fidelity game and 40fps instead of a average looking game at 40fps lol.

CPU more effects the bare minimum frames you can achieve and putting down most settings doesn't really help. So might aswell get rid of all those jaggies.

Thanks again!

I just installed my 980 ti and decided to test it with Ryse. I am very disappointed! Game still varies between 40-60fps... is this just a poorly optimised game in general?

 

[harz_marz]

Oh and my cpu cooler is - "SUPER QUIET 22dBA TRIPLE COPPER HEATPIPE CPU COOLER"

Is this sufficient for overclocking?

 

[harz_marz]

Investigate if you need to do ini tweaks for said game

Thanks I will give this a go! Have cleared the game anyways (used the fps lock) but was more to test the card!