Is i3 - i5 worth the upgrade?

[4737Joker]

Hi,

I was browsing ocuk and found myself adding stuff to the cart and almost bought an i5 2500k (and some other things )

But i thought about it a bit and wondered if i would really see much difference between an Intel Core i3 540 3.06GHz (Clarkdale) (Socket LGA1156) and an Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155.

I have my i3 clocked about 3.7, had 4 out of it before but lost my settings.

So lets say it was at 4ghz what could i expect out of an i5 2500k and would it be much different in lets say bf3/cs:go or swtor/wow. i doubt it will have much effect on normal pc tasks and interent browsing, or am i wrong?

I wanted a bit of an upgrade but i don want to spend money on a new motherboard as well if im not going to benefit much.

Thanks for reading

 

[the1gooner]

I have a 6870 and just recently went from a Core i3 540 which was running at 3.8Ghz and now have a Core i5 760.

The difference in the games I play is minimal as the gpu will be a bottleneck before the processor.

I do video editing and conversion sometimes so the i5 760 is better at that but as far as gaming goes not a huge difference.

Your 6850 will be a bottleneck in most games before your processor.

Minimum fps in some games will improve though which may help.

 

[4737Joker]

Thanks for the reply. I only really use my pc for gaming/internet browsing so it's probably not a good upgrade for me atm. (yay didnt waste my money )

I've only recently bought the 6850, upgraded from an nvidia 260gtx so im seeing a massive difference in gameplay at the moment. I'll probably wait until next year and see what the new intel chips are like and perhaps upgrade the gfx card then as well.

 

[JonSmith]

clarkdale is only 10% slower clock for clock against sandy, so for gaming it's not worth the upgrade unless you play BF3 or lots of mmos

 

[Stanith]

The only upgrade I'd recommend is finding a cheap second-hand socket 1156 i5 or i7 for your motherboard (if you feel that a quad-core might improve your performance, in some things it will). I recently made a jump from an i3 550 @ over 4ghz to an i5 750 and saw some performance gain in Team Fortress 2 and BF3.

 

[Marine-RX179]

Almost all i3 5xx would do aroun 4.2GHz on overclock...some would even hit 4.5-4.6GHz. If I was in your position, I would give overclocking the i3 540 further a go, before deciding to upgrade to Sandy/Ivy i5 or not.

 

[Marine-RX179]

Ignore.

 

[bells]

A good upgrade would be a an i7 860/870/875/880 if you can pick one up second hand as they are still very good

 

[4737Joker]

yeah i play bf3 a lot, might try the overclock first.

Might wait to see the prices on the new intel chips before i upgrade, hopefully they will be reasonable If i can wait that long

 

[P0tenc]

The i5 2500k at 4GHz is pretty quick and easily achievable. Most people get 4.3-4.5GHz with modest voltage increases. You will run into gfx bottleneck problems long before stressing the CPU though. The i5 2500K should be over double the i3's speed.

Having those extra 2 cores can be handy as many new games make use of 4 cores, which can boost performance a bit, but you will need a good gfx card to really make use of the chip.