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Will a i5 2500 bottleneck me?

Xcandyman

Xcandyman

Xcandyman

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Joined
10 Jun 2011
Posts
154
I have a i5 2500 (not overclocked) and wondering if it would bottleneck me during gaming if I were to upgrade other components? If so what processor would you recommend?
 
Not sure how we are meant to say one way or the other when you don't provide the rest of your specification.
 
I do a lot of gaming and some video rendering and I'm not seeing any bottlenecking yet. If you have a 'k' version then you might want to think about overclocking it.
 
Thanks for the replies. My current spec is:

Motherboard Giga Byte GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3
Intel i5 - 2500K 3.30GHz
Noctua NH-C12P SE 14 CPU Cooler
Western Digital WD20EARX 2TB Caviar Green Quiet SATA 6Gb/s IntelliPower 64Mb Cache 8ms HDD
Corsair XMS3 - 4 X 4GB 1600Mhz 9-9-9-24 (CMX16GX3M4A1600C9)
MSI Graphics Card Twin Frozrlll - R6950 Power Edition - 2048MB GDDR5.
Corsair HX520W Modular Power Supply.

As you can see it's a 2500k but I'd rather no overclock it. My ideas are to upgrade the graphics card to maybe a 7970 ghz edition, gtx 780 or maybe a 9970 depending on if I decide to wait it out. I'm aware my 520 PSU is lacking for these cards (especially 780 and 9970) and that's on my upgrade path also.

Thanks again
 
7970 should be fine but if you want to go with the 780 or higher i would think about overclocking your cpu a bit should easy get 4.0 np
and get a better psu
 
His pus is fine, but +1 to over locking the CPU, just change the multiplier to 40, will do that on stock volts no problem. If you want/need more get an after market cooler.
 
Overclock that bitch, most 2500k's will hit 4.6GHz with absolute ease. I had a 2500k with GTX 780 and no bottleneck. Had mine at 4.8GHz, vcore set to 1.385V, LLC set to max, volts maxed at 1.4V under stress.
Just remember not to exceed 1.425V on the vcore and keep temps below 80c with stress test and you'll be absolutely fine. Also check your ram volts and set to 1.5V
 
Last edited:
spankingtexan said:
Overclock that bitch, most 2500k's will hit 4.6GHz with absolute ease. I had a 2500k with GTX 780 and no bottleneck. Had mine at 4.8GHz, vcore set to 1.385V, LLC set to max, volts maxed at 1.4V under stress.
Just remember not to exceed 1.425V on the vcore and keep temps below 80c with stress test and you'll be absolutely fine. Also check your ram volts and set to 1.5V
Click to expand...

What spanking said ^

Overclocking the 2500k is almost too easy :p
 
I doubt you'll notice any bottlenecks with a 2500k running stock. I have a 3570k running stock with a Radeon 7950 boost and don't have any bottleneck issues (and i've felt no need to overclock yet either). I wouldn't worry ;)
 
Yes, but during game play (unless you're seriously running a game directly from CD) one of the CPU, GPU or memory (plus communication channels) or very rarely outside of load times the HDD will be the bottleneck. This is unavoidable.

Where that bottleneck will be will vary by game in a balanced system, mostly being the GPU. In an unbalanced system it'll always be the same part. In the OPs case it'll be his GPU that is the limiting factor most of the time so he doesn't need to worry about his CPU too much :)
 
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