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Upgrading 2500k to 2700k in 2018 a waste of money?

Soldato
Joined
18 Aug 2005
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13,170
Location
Shropshire
Hi all, currently running a 2500k @ 4.5 alongside a GTX980 @ 1506mhz with 1440p, I've been thinking about getting the 2700k or 2600k for the Hyperthreading in more recent games..

Has anyone done this upgrade and found it worthwhile? Looking at £70-£80 for a new chip.
 

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Soldato
Joined
21 Nov 2004
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Wishaw
run a clocked 2600k still,

happily sits at 4.8ghz year after year and apart from a failed H100 cooler this week never had a problem.

maybe the wrong person to ask about being worh it but quad core with Hyperthreading its a decent step up and i for one cant fault mine
 
Soldato
OP
Joined
18 Aug 2005
Posts
13,170
Location
Shropshire
run a clocked 2600k still,

happily sits at 4.8ghz year after year and apart from a failed H100 cooler this week never had a problem.

maybe the wrong person to ask about being worh it but quad core with Hyperthreading its a decent step up and i for one cant fault mine

Thanks the reply, my other option is to wait for Ryzen 2, but that's still going to be silly money! with RAM prices continuing to stay high.
 
Soldato
Joined
22 May 2007
Posts
3,137
I had an i5-2500k running at 4.3 on a Z77-D3H motherboard. I considered dropping in a i7-3770 for the hyperthreading which would have cost about £ 75 or the i7-3770K to overclock to 4.3 for about £ 110.

i7-3770 would have got me about 3800 CPU score in 3D Mark Timespy and the i7-3770k @ 4.3 about 4200. In the end I built a new system with a Ryzen 5 2600 which gets me 5841 CPU score. It cost £ 119 ex VAT for the CPU and I upgraded to 32GB DDR 4 as well.
 
Soldato
Joined
27 Feb 2015
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12,596
if your reason for upgrading is to improve game performance then yes waste of money as HTT does nothing for gaming.

I would consider it if its a net very low cost like say £20. But thats about it.
 
Associate
Joined
26 Nov 2017
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116
I too have a 2500k since 2011 running at 4.5ghz.

Only now have i noticed it starting to show its age and bottleneck my gpu in some games such as bf 1 and bfv which like more threads.

I had considered a 3770k to avoid a full upgrade but dont feel it's worth it so will likely go the 2700x route next month
 
Soldato
Joined
27 Feb 2015
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12,596
It was worthwhile for me a few years back. I'd say it still is now. Digital foundry went into it a while ago looking at the 3770k which is about the same thing.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...it-finally-time-to-upgrade-your-core-i5-2500k

Thanks for the link but I couldnt find anything there that shows HTT helps.

It shows an ivy bridge beating a sandy bridge (diff gen cpus). But also shows an i5 non HTT chip beating the HTT ivy bridge, the i5 was skylake tho so also diff gen. To me it just looks like gen on gen improvements.

Such a test needs HTT vs non HTT in same gen of chips and same clock speed.

yes I did see this

These results won't be achieved with pure architectural improvements alone, it's almost certain that it is the Core i7's eight hardware threads that are making a genuine difference here. Once we scale up processor speed and memory bandwidth, the i7 truly begins to flex its power.

However thats just bad analysis, the comment completely ignored the same kind of performance jump happened to the i5 skylake chip and that 100% cannot be down to logical threads since it doesnt have any. So it was speculation on digitalfoundry's part that it was HTT bumping the performance, all they had to do to prove it was test on an i5 ivy bridge or retest on the same i7 with HTT disabled which they sadly didnt do.

These articles are often rushed so speculation gets used to compensate for lack of complete testing.
 
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Soldato
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6 Aug 2009
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7,070
I wouldn't bother now. Would have been with it 5 years ago, time to upgrade to something more modern. I've gone through all these ideas and concluded it was just postponing the inevitable.
 
Associate
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19 Feb 2018
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152
Thanks for the link but I couldnt find anything there that shows HTT helps.

It shows an ivy bridge beating a sandy bridge (diff gen cpus). But also shows an i5 non HTT chip beating the HTT ivy bridge, the i5 was skylake tho so also diff gen. To me it just looks like gen on gen improvements.

Such a test needs HTT vs non HTT in same gen of chips and same clock speed.

yes I did see this



However thats just bad analysis, the comment completely ignored the same kind of performance jump happened to the i5 skylake chip and that 100% cannot be down to logical threads since it doesnt have any. So it was speculation on digitalfoundry's part that it was HTT bumping the performance, all they had to do to prove it was test on an i5 ivy bridge or retest on the same i7 with HTT disabled which they sadly didnt do.

These articles are often rushed so speculation gets used to compensate for lack of complete testing.

This YouTube vid shows a marked improvement in FPS based on a quad core with HT off/vs on in Assassins Creed Origins:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-S4izMnQDo

It convinced me to move from my i5-750 to a xeon 3470, to eek out a little more performance before I do a full upgrade next year. Although that was a bit of an easier decision as it was £30 ish on ebay as opposed to £70-£80 OP is stating.
 
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Soldato
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27 Feb 2015
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12,596
thanks for that link.

I cant argue with the test result there thats a reasonable test.

However the game is unusual, I have never ever seen a game before that pegs all cores to 100%, thats the type of workload HTT provides positive results on but games typically do not do that on modern processors.

So the flaw with that video you could say it is that is simply showed only one game, but if you play that game, and you looking for extra performance then fair enough, although I wouldnt be playing that game at 150fps, I would be vsync locked at 60 personally.
 
Associate
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thanks for that link.

I cant argue with the test result there thats a reasonable test.

However the game is unusual, I have never ever seen a game before that pegs all cores to 100%, thats the type of workload HTT provides positive results on but games typically do not do that on modern processors.

So the flaw with that video you could say it is that is simply showed only one game, but if you play that game, and you looking for extra performance then fair enough, although I wouldnt be playing that game at 150fps, I would be vsync locked at 60 personally.

Yeah true enough, most games haven't tended to peg a quad core over the years, but I personally noticed 100% usage on Forza Horizon 3 and Witcher 3. Since the consoles both run on 8 core Jaguars I'd like to think there will be a trend for 6 threaded games minimum in the future, especially once the "PS5" and new xbox comes out.
 
Soldato
Joined
27 Feb 2015
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12,596
FF15 and GTA5 come to mind.

FF15 never pegged my cpu cores at 100% on my quad core processor, but stutters were caused by saturation, people with 4770k's reported the same issues, htt would potentially help on FF15 but nowhere near the impact of that AC game.
GTA5 when you crank up the advanced graphics settings, its hard on the CPU in city areas, again tho like FF15 it doesnt stay at 100% pegged, but it is capable of maxing out all cpu cores, so that would be another candidate for HTT to help. I remember someone doing a HTT test on GTA5 once and if I remember right there was an improvement, not large but it was measurable.

So I will back of a bit on this HTT performance issue, in "some" games it can have a benefit, and one confirmed game it has a moderate benefit providing you playing at really high framerates.

I await now to see what the OP says after he fits his new cpu, if he feels he has an improvement.
 
Associate
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4 Nov 2007
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Scotland
I went from a 2500k at 4.5ghz to a 2600k at 4.5ghz and noticed a slight improvement with my R9 290. It wasn't mind blowing but some games like Just Cause 3 definitely felt a bit smoother.
 
Soldato
Joined
17 Dec 2004
Posts
8,696
I went from a 2500k at 4.5ghz to a 2600k at 4.5ghz and noticed a slight improvement with my R9 290. It wasn't mind blowing but some games like Just Cause 3 definitely felt a bit smoother.

The R9 290 is about maxed out with the i5, so you wouldn't notice much different no.. I upgraded from a i7 2600k to a i7 8086k with a R9 290 and I havent noticed any diff gamewise. But I dont see the point in upgrading my R9 290 because all the games I play run smooth enough.
 
Soldato
OP
Joined
18 Aug 2005
Posts
13,170
Location
Shropshire
Sorry should have updated this sooner, have only tried PUBG yet and the Forza 4 demo but all feels good at the moment, seems quicker encoding in Handbrake too as expected!

Currently sat at 4.8 Ghz under my Cryorig R1 Ultimate with 1.376 vcore, I can get it to boot in at 5.0 Ghz but it isn't happy unless I'm over 1.4v which is fine temp wise but a bit excessive on the volts for my liking?
 
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