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i5 -> i7

Caporegime
Joined
20 May 2007
Posts
41,217
Location
Surrey
Hi Chaps

Getting the urge to upgrade to an i7 from my i5 2500k (running currently at 4.3ghz) as quite a few new games are really starting to make use of either 8 cores or 8 threads.

However I have already spent too much on my computer over the past few months so I need to keep it as cheap as possible! I have an MSI p67a gd53 and with the latest bios, it will support ivybridge. My question is, do I go for a 2700k or 3770k? Both seem to be around similar prices at the moment but I know ivy's aren't renowned for being as good clockers as sandy's and they run hotter as well. But then ivy's are slightly faster clock for clock...

Thoughts?

and before anyone says, no I don't want to go Haswell as that will involve a new mobo and cpu cooler and I don't want to spend anymore! I will do a system overhaul when intel release something that isn't just a slight improvement. :p
 
It's still more depending on what graphic card you using.

If you are only using a single GPU card, the graphic side of things would still be a bigger bottleneck (unless you are playing on medium graphic settings or below on a GTX670/7950 or above). Most people talking about CPU bottlenecking are usually people with multi-GPU setup, for example SLI GTX670 or CF7950/7970 etc.

670 sli and I have already seen the bottleneck in Crysis 3 in the bits where there is a lot of grass animation. CPU is maxed on all 4 cores but gpu usage drops to 70-80%. This is 1080p and maxed out with 4xMSAA as well!
 
3770k if you can source one cheap enough. Even a mild oc of 4.2ghz ono will be a bit better than your current 4.3ghz 2500k. Gpu use in games such as bf3/4 will increase, cpu use will drop a good amount. Your results are almost identical to what i had with a 3570k at 4.5ghz, switching to a 3770k helped a lot with sli.

Yeh, I think I will keep an eye out for a 3770k then.

Only worry is that I have read there is little point putting a 3770k in a p67a motherboard over a 2700k but I would have thought the increased performance of the ivybridge will still be there ( its just that integrated gpu and pci express 3.0 wont work which I don't care about anyway)
 
What can be easily obtained overclock wise on a 3770k with a good air cooler? Is 4.4GHZ pretty standard?
 
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