i5 2500k upgrade

Vish Petrol · 7 Jan 2017 at 17:54

I've gopt the upgrade itch as I have to turn down settings on forza 6 apex, GTAV, NBA 2k17 and battlfield 1 to keep a steady 60hz with a gtx 1070 at 1440p ultrawide.
I can either get a 2600k for around £50 if i sell my 2500k. A 6700k setup for around £150 if I sell my old computer with a 7950 and keep the 1070, or build a Ryzen PC next month.

Or should I try overclock my CPU to 4.5ghz with my coolermaster 412s. My current 4.3Ghz overclock is on stock voltage.

Troezar · 7 Jan 2017 at 18:32

If it was me and I had the spare cash I'd go Ryzen, subject to the first independent reviews. Always nice to be on the new platform

Vish Petrol · 7 Jan 2017 at 18:48

The reason i'm hesitant to do that is that when i have the drops its only to around 50-55 fps depending on the game, and this only happens on a few games, i'd basically be spending a net of £200-£300 to avoid this, when it may be better off going towards a gpu upgrade.
Which is why i don't want to make the choice because of a new platform which will be outdated by next year because it doesn't have the latest and greatest features.
My motherboard already has sata 3 and usb 3.0 support, both of which I have no use for, and I have just bought a 960gb ssd to load all of my games onto instead of having a boot drive with a hdd for my games. I doubt this will have an effect on ingame fps.

When I overclocked my 2500k from 3.3Ghz to 4.3ghz the minimums in nba 2k17 went from 51 to 56fps, so im hoping either a 2600k overclocked would solve the issue, but i guess overclocking my 2500k further would not be enough.
The games where I am dropping frames are the ones which benefit from more threads from what I have read. If a 2600k isn't enough then i'd be willing to go for Ryzen or a 6700k.
I can get a used 6700k for £210 which is why an upgrade to the z170 platform would only end up costing around £150 including the mobo and ram.
With Ryzen I would have to pay full price, and those prices are unconfirmed, as well as the question of which processor would be best for my money.

I'm not looking at this in the long term as im hoping that there will be ultrawide hdr 100hz monitors soon, and if they come out I will jump to vega

harney · 7 Jan 2017 at 18:56

Vish Petrol said:
The reason i'm hesitant to do that is that when i have the drops its only to around 50-55 fps depending on the game, and this only happens on a few games, i'd basically be spending a net of £200-£300 to avoid this, when it may be better off going towards a gpu upgrade.
Which is why i don't want to make the choice because of a new platform which will be outdated by next year because it doesn't have the latest and greatest features.
My motherboard already has sata 3 and usb 3.0 support, both of which I have no use for, and I have just bought a 960gb ssd to load all of my games onto instead of having a boot drive with a hdd for my games. I doubt this will have an effect on ingame fps.

When I overclocked my 2500k from 3.3Ghz to 4.3ghz the minimums in nba 2k17 went from 51 to 56fps, so im hoping either a 2600k overclocked would solve the issue, but i guess overclocking my 2500k further would not be enough.
The games where I am dropping frames are the ones which benefit from more threads from what I have read. If a 2600k isn't enough then i'd be willing to go for Ryzen or a 6700k.
I can get a used 6700k for £210 which is why an upgrade to the z170 platform would only end up costing around £150 including the mobo and ram.
With Ryzen I would have to pay full price, and those prices are unconfirmed, as well as the question of which processor would be best for my money.

I'm not looking at this in the long term as im hoping that there will be ultrawide hdr 100hz monitors soon, and if they come out I will jump to vega

As zen is a little while off yet

I would test a 2600k at least..... even if it does not give you want you want you should not lose much if you decide then to go zen when it does arrive ..

http://www.overclock.net/t/1578480/i5-2500k-4-5ghz-vs-6700k-4-5ghz-in-games

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDo-j00vUtw

Drollic · 7 Jan 2017 at 19:01

Wait for zen. If it's not up to much, I'd by a good clocking 2600k. This would last you through to 2018 easily at which point you could look to upgrade to 6 core coffee lake. If you don't want to buy zen regardless, just buy the 2600k now. Still decent at 4.0+ ghz

Vish Petrol · 7 Jan 2017 at 19:04

harney said:
As zen is a little while off yet

I would test a 2600k at least..... even if it does not give you want you want you should not lose much if you decide then to go zen when it does arrive ..

http://www.overclock.net/t/1578480/i5-2500k-4-5ghz-vs-6700k-4-5ghz-in-games

I didn't even think of just buying it and trying it out to see how I performs :eek:

I think thats what I will do.

I've still got some arctic silver 5 thermal paste from about 8 years ago, which has only been opened and used 3 times. Do you think it will still be up to the job, or should I replace the old thermal paste. (Don't know if it can expire or degrade over time)

Troezar · 7 Jan 2017 at 19:06

I've thought about a 2600k myself but I don't think it's worth putting more money into an already old platform. It's your money but I think if you're going to go for more performance a new longer lasting one will be a better investment in the longer term. I agree a GPU upgrade really makes the difference but I can only see >4 cores being the way forward in the next few years.

Whatever you choose you want have worse performance so you can't really lose

mistersprinkles · 7 Jan 2017 at 19:30

You can go to a 2600K but you still won't have/will lack:

USB 3.1
USB 3.0 on chipset
M.2
U.2
PCIE 3.0
More than 16 PCIE lanes from the CPU
Not very many PCH PCIE lanes (and they're slow)
Inferior audio solutions
Only 2 SATA 6gbps ports vs 6

xs2man · 7 Jan 2017 at 19:42

mistersprinkles said:
You can go to a 2600K but you still won't have/will lack:

USB 3.1
USB 3.0 on chipset
M.2
U.2
PCIE 3.0
More than 16 PCIE lanes from the CPU
Not very many PCH PCIE lanes (and they're slow)
Inferior audio solutions
Only 2 SATA 6gbps ports vs 6

Sure. But he will only have spent £50 to try and see if it fixes his current problem of dropping 5 fps or so (if I read that right?).

And if it doesn't work, he should get most of that £50 back I'd imagine. So really, it's not much of a loss to try it.

And then he does talk of moving to a newer system at some time in the future anyway, so if this solves his problem just now, then in a year or so time, once all the Zen hype has died down, he can look at the market as it sits then, knowing what AMD is capable of, and upgrade at that point.

If it were me, that's what I would do. For the sake of £50.

harney · 7 Jan 2017 at 19:55

xs2man said:
Sure. But he will only have spent £50 to try and see if it fixes his current problem of dropping 5 fps or so (if I read that right?).

And if it doesn't work, he should get most of that £50 back I'd imagine. So really, it's not much of a loss to try it.

And then he does talk of moving to a newer system at some time in the future anyway, so if this solves his problem just now, then in a year or so time, once all the Zen hype has died down, he can look at the market as it sits then, knowing what AMD is capable of, and upgrade at that point.

If it were me, that's what I would do. For the sake of £50.

Agree

ED209 · 7 Jan 2017 at 20:15

first off try and overclock some more and see if it helps then try the £50 route as the OC may last till AMD release

im still using a I7 950 @ 3.4ghz

mattyc1977 · 7 Jan 2017 at 20:17

Could try a 3770k if the board supports it?

imginy · 7 Jan 2017 at 20:36

Battlefield and gta would run much better on the 2600k

IvanDobskey · 7 Jan 2017 at 21:28

I just went for a 6700k z170 upgrade to replace my 2500k in the end. Happy enough with it.

Vish Petrol · 7 Jan 2017 at 22:04

mistersprinkles said:
You can go to a 2600K but you still won't have/will lack:

USB 3.1
USB 3.0 on chipset
M.2
U.2
PCIE 3.0
More than 16 PCIE lanes from the CPU
Not very many PCH PCIE lanes (and they're slow)
Inferior audio solutions
Only 2 SATA 6gbps ports vs 6

I have usb 3.0 on my asrock pro4m, and havent really found it of any use, and I only use an ssd and hdd so i dont need more than 1 sata 6gbps port.
From what ive seen PCIE 2.0 at x16 is still enough for modern GPU's.

So i'll try the 2600k and see how it goes.

But like I asked earlier, would my old Arctic silver 5 still be ok to use despite being 8 years old?

Vish Petrol · 7 Jan 2017 at 22:41

Would it be worth me upgrading to a better air cooler like a noctua dh14?

Simm84 · 7 Jan 2017 at 23:33

I did this exact upgrade last summer. Went from a 4.5ghz 2500k to a 4.7ghz 2600k. I also dropped in 16gb 2133mhz ram to replace my 8gb ram.

I spent about £140 approx.

I have a 1070 and a RoG Swift. BF1 on ultra consisently between 90-110 FPS at 1440p 64 player map.

For £50 its a no brainer. Upgrading to a new platform while nice amd give slight improvement is not worth the hundreds you'll spend for the privelege.

I did research and clock for clock over 4 generations of i7 from sandy there is hardly any gain. Especially if you game at 1440p where you're more gpu bound. 1080p might be worth it on some titles if you want 144hz+.

Zefan · 8 Jan 2017 at 00:42

Check out this article, and the two videos from it that I have embedded below.

www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-is-it-finally-time-to-upgrade-your-core-i5-2500k

Specifically in that article, look at the following:

A good example of the FPS boost that a RAM speed increase will have with your current OC'd 2500k:

The Witcher 3, Ultra, HairWorks Off, Custom AA
i5 2500K/ 1600MHz DDR3 60.8
i5 2500K/ 2133MHz DDR3 70.1
i5 2500K 4.6GHz/ 1600MHz DDR3 72.8
i5 2500K 4.6GHz/ 2133MHz DDR3 86.4
i5 6500/ 2666MHz DDR4 87.3
i5 6500/ 3200MHz DDR4 99.8

Battlefield 4, Ultra, 4x MSAA
i5 2500K/ 1600MHz DDR3 88.9
i5 2500K/ 2133MHz DDR3 98.1
i5 2500K 4.6GHz/ 1600MHz DDR3 104.8
i5 2500K 4.6GHz/ 2133MHz DDR3 110.2
i5 6500/ 2666MHz DDR4 121.0
i5 6500/ 3200MHz DDR4 123.1

Crysis 3, Very High, SMAA
i5 2500K/ 1600MHz DDR3 95.2
i5 2500K/ 2133MHz DDR3 97.7
i5 2500K 4.6GHz/ 1600MHz DDR3 105.9
i5 2500K 4.6GHz/ 2133MHz DDR3 108.3
i5 6500/ 2666MHz DDR4 110.9
i5 6500/ 3200MHz DDR4 111.9

Grand Theft Auto 5, Ultra, no MSAA
i5 2500K/ 1600MHz DDR3 49.7
i5 2500K/ 2133MHz DDR3 55.5
i5 2500K 4.6GHz/ 1600MHz DDR3 58.1
i5 2500K 4.6GHz/ 2133MHz DDR3 67.7
i5 6500/ 2666MHz DDR4 68.5
i5 6500/ 3200MHz DDR4 72.6

Far Cry 4, Ultra, SMAA
i5 2500K/ 1600MHz DDR3 66.4
i5 2500K/ 2133MHz DDR3 76.1
i5 2500K 4.6GHz/ 1600MHz DDR3 84.6
i5 2500K 4.6GHz/ 2133MHz DDR3 99.9
i5 6500/ 2666MHz DDR4 92.4
i5 6500/ 3200MHz DDR4 98.4

Example of the boost in FPS going from OC'd 2500k with 2133Mhz RAM to 3770k setups.

The Witcher 3, Ultra, HairWorks Off, Custom AA
i5 2500K OC/ 2133MHz DDR3 86.4
i7 3770K/ 1600MHz DDR3 91.9
i7 3770K 4.4GHz/ 1600MHz DDR3 94.6
i7 3770K 4.4GHz/ 2133MHz DDR3 99.1
i7 3770K 4.4GHz/ 2400MHz DDR3 101.0

Battlefield 4, Ultra, 4x MSAA
i5 2500K OC/ 2133MHz DDR3 110.2
i7 3770K/ 1600MHz DDR3 120.0
i7 3770K 4.4GHz/ 1600MHz DDR3 126.7
i7 3770K 4.4GHz/ 2133MHz DDR3 123.7
i7 3770K 4.4GHz/ 2400MHz DDR3 125.0

Crysis 3, Very High, SMAA
i5 2500K OC/ 2133MHz DDR3 108.3
i7 3770K/ 1600MHz DDR3 112.0
i7 3770K 4.4GHz/ 1600MHz DDR3 116.7
i7 3770K 4.4GHz/ 2133MHz DDR3 117.2
i7 3770K 4.4GHz/ 2400MHz DDR3 117.5

Grand Theft Auto 5, Ultra, no MSAA
i5 2500K OC/ 2133MHz DDR3 67.7
i7 3770K/ 1600MHz DDR3 60.9
i7 3770K 4.4GHz/ 1600MHz DDR3 66.7
i7 3770K 4.4GHz/ 2133MHz DDR3 71.2
i7 3770K 4.4GHz/ 2400MHz DDR3 74.2

Far Cry 4, Ultra, SMAA
i5 2500K OC/ 2133MHz DDR3 99.9
i7 3770K/ 1600MHz DDR3 82.6
i7 3770K 4.4GHz/ 1600MHz DDR3 91.9
i7 3770K 4.4GHz/ 2133MHz DDR3 100.2
i7 3770K 4.4GHz/ 2400MHz DDR3 104.6

With this in mind, I'd look at getting a 3770k and the fastest RAM supported. It should bring your minimum FPS up by quite some margin.

opethdisciple · 8 Jan 2017 at 00:43

Sit tight for a bit longer, Ryzen should be out sometime before March.

wrenaudrey · 8 Jan 2017 at 12:12

I would personally hang tight and see what Ryzen brings and what Intel's answer will be.
You could buy an AIO and push that 2500k even further, if you're willing to drop some cash but then again the AIO can be used in the future upgrade/build