I5-2500K time to upgrade??

[KNiVES]

I replaced my 2500k with a 6600k - both run at 4.4ghz - simply because of the memory speed. I was on 1600mhz before, now it's on 2666mhz and the difference is massive. Around 20fps more in Novigrad in The Witcher 3. There's no stuttering anymore either moving from area to area. Programs load faster. That's something to consider.

 

[Plec]

I replaced my 2500k with a 6600k - both run at 4.4ghz - simply because of the memory speed. I was on 1600mhz before, now it's on 2666mhz and the difference is massive. Around 20fps more in Novigrad in The Witcher 3. There's no stuttering anymore either moving from area to area. Programs load faster. That's something to consider.

Thanks -good to know.

Knives - do you think the lack of stuttering in games is due more to the increase in memory speed, the CPU or combination of both?

Would be interested in results if you could check - but understand if that's a PITA.

EDIT: I should clarify - I just meant check the difference by lowering memory speed - not removing your CPU

 

[KNiVES]

I can't do the memory thing at the moment but I'm fairly confident it's a combination of the memory and the CPU. Each generation of i5 is 10% faster than the last as a general rule of thumb (ie, Haswell is 10% faster than Ivy Bridge which is 10% faster than Sandy Bridge at the same clock speeds), so going from 2500k to 6600k is a big jump - about 30-40% faster I believe - and of course, going from 1600mhz to 2666mhz on the memory is going to be huge as well.

I was curious about this as well and looked into it a bit more and found this handy video which came to pretty much the same conclusions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er_Fuz54U0Y
It demonstrates gameplay with a i5 6500k and various memory speeds, there are clear FPS jumps the faster the memory gets. For instance, GTAV is seen running at 69fps at 2133mhz memory, but 92fps at 3196mhz memory. That's a huge difference!

 

[Johnz0r]

Went from a 2500k @ 4.2 to a 7700k @ 4.8 and the difference in the minimums is massive. I paired this with some DDR4 3200 ram and you are good to go.

 

[Plec]

I can't do the memory thing at the moment but I'm fairly confident it's a combination of the memory and the CPU. Each generation of i5 is 10% faster than the last as a general rule of thumb (ie, Haswell is 10% faster than Ivy Bridge which is 10% faster than Sandy Bridge at the same clock speeds), so going from 2500k to 6600k is a big jump - about 30-40% faster I believe - and of course, going from 1600mhz to 2666mhz on the memory is going to be huge as well.

I was curious about this as well and looked into it a bit more and found this handy video which came to pretty much the same conclusions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Er_Fuz54U0Y
It demonstrates gameplay with a i5 6500k and various memory speeds, there are clear FPS jumps the faster the memory gets. For instance, GTAV is seen running at 69fps at 2133mhz memory, but 92fps at 3196mhz memory. That's a huge difference!

Thanks KNiVES, appreciated.

Yes, i've been looking into the same phenomena due to forum banter and helping members in other threads.

A significant increases in memory speed (obviously coupled with a healthy CPU), does seem to have a major impact on some games - especially CPU intensive games like GTA V. This is obviously expected to a degree - but it's the degree of the benefits that's surprising.

Even if the FPS hasn't been massively affected stuttering issues have sometimes been resolved/reduced - which is also a huge benefit for some gamers. Although these issues sometimes can be reduced with setting tweaks; whether in the BIOS/Windows/GFX app/Game etc. So it's hard to know, 'in some cases', if the increase in hardware MHz just powers its way over issues that could have been resolved with setting tweaks (your GTA V example not being one of them)...

But, regardless, the results are there in multi-colour (thanks for the link - i've seen similar but not as well done) - significantly higher memory can have a major impact with some games. (Similar to the SSD affect for curing stuttering in some games.)

Would have been interesting to see the results had it been possible to get 3000Mhz+ memory working in a Sandybridge format. As the consensus was that anything over 1600MHz gave diminishing returns - wonder if the consensus would have been slightly different if you had been able stick in 3000Mhz memory in while retaining 4.5+GHz clock.

 

[DarkHorizon472]

Some of the stuttering also comes from Quad cores having nothing left to give if a windows process starts up in the background while gaming taking CPU time. Worst case it could take a whole core causing FPS to drop. Its a bit like the much earlier move from dual to quad cores.

I went from an i5 to the Ryzen 1700 and everything is really smooth now in comparision, partly I assume due to having 8 cores and 16 threads available.

 

[Plec]

Some of the stuttering also comes from Quad cores having nothing left to give if a windows process starts up in the background while gaming taking CPU time. Worst case it could take a whole core causing FPS to drop. Its a bit like the much earlier move from dual to quad cores.

True.

I went from an i5 to the Ryzen 1700 and everything is really smooth now in comparision, partly I assume due to having 8 cores and 16 threads available.

That and it's a mighty CPU

But this is another phenomena that seems to have been thrown up with Ryzen - users are mentioning everywhere how much smoother game play appears to be, even if FPS hasn't been improved, when compared to similar rigs (trouble is it's hard to filter between the unbiased enthusiast and the excited user whose 'unintentionally' blinkered and eager to see any benefits in their new purchase.)