Worth an upgrade?

[iviv]

My current rig is in my sig, and while its being ok, I was hoping to sometime upgrade to Bulldozer when that became cheap enough. But, well, that might actually be a downgrade at the moment. I mainly game, but do some video encoding as well (1920x1200 res), but primarily I'd be after something meatier. 6 cores at 3.5Ghz is nice, but you can get past 4Ghz on the sandybridge CPUs, can't you? And I imagine past that on ivybridge.

I was among about half the forum in winning one of the £25 rebates on the MSI Z77A-GD65. And that's what got me thinking about this (Which was no doubt the point of the competition).

I've not paid too much attention to Intel's recent releases, but from a brief look, I know that ivybridge is due out soon(tm), and is going to be around 10% faster than the current sandy bridge CPUs while being released at around the same price?

That said, is the GD65 any good? I found some reviews but they didn't really reveal anything much compared with the other z77 mobos available.
And if ivybridge turns out to not be as great as planned/it drives the sandybridge prices down further, what's the actual difference between the 2500k and the 2550k? I know that one is 100Mhz faster, but since they are both unlocked, can't you just overclock the 2500k up to the 2550k speeds anyway?

Thanks!

 

[cmndr_andi]

For gaming, your current CPU is pretty good, though with a HD 6870X2 it is conceivable that in many situations the CPU is a bottleneck and a sandy bridge or ivy bridge CPU would give you access to better performance. However, I should emphasise that for gaming this difference may not even be noticable (as framerates will be good anyway).

As for video encoding a sandy bridge i5 does tend to be faster than a Phenom II X6 - though the gap does vary between the different tasks and in the 2nd pass test the X6 is quicker than the i5. Therefore, I would be tempted to say that if you want a noticeable performance difference in video encoding then go for an i7 - as the hypertrheading really does make it faster.

In terms of overclocking, the sandy bridge chips do rather well - most will happily get to ~4.5GHz without too much trouble using a £25 air cooler. Some will go further (~4.8GHz) but in that range you have to get a lucky chip and make sure you keep the voltage in the safe zone. As for overclocking Ivy bridge, from the early info I hear it will overclock around the same as sandy, but I guess we will have to wait a couple of weeks to find out for sure.

The Z77A-GD65 board looks like a decent one (as have all GD65 boards for the past couple of generations), if you can get one for £125 then you are getting a nice deal.

As for i5 2500K vs i5 2550K - the 2550K is basically just an i5 2500K with a slight default clockspeed bump and the onboard graphics core disabled. Most believe this model was made so Intel could make use of their stockpile of sandy bridge quad core CPUs which had defective graphics cores (but working CPU cores) they have built up - which otherwise couldn't have been used.

Personally I would steer clear of the i5 2550K as the 100Mhz clocks speed bump means nothing on an unlocked multiplier chip and the graphics core of the 2500K is very useful since it makes use of a technology called "Intel Quick sync" which is a clever system of accelerating video transcoding using the graphics core in conjunction with the CPU cores and many video transcoding and some video editing suites are using this technology now. Here is some more information on Quick sync. Also, the onboard graphics core of the i5 2500K provides a useful backup if you ever have any issues with your main GPU, something which the 2550K can't provide.

If you will be making use of quick sync then you may want to wait for Ivy Bridge - as the CPU performance may not increase too much, but the onboard graphics are much faster than sandy bridge - which promises even better quick sync performance.

 

[iviv]

Thanks for the reply. Looking at the MSI site, I need to have received the mobo by the 30th to claim the cashback, which is before ivybridge actually comes out, so annoyingly I can't look at those benchmarks before doing this.
One possibility would be to just buy the mobo anyway, and wait until IB is released, read some benchmarks and either grab one of those, or a discounted SB as stock is sold off.

Cooling wise, hopefully my old Thermalright IFX-14 can deal with it. I've had it for about 5 years now, but it still does the job well. Though I had a look on a couple of recent CPU cooler reviews and I couldn't even see it being listed on the benchmark comparisons now, so I have no idea how good it actually is.
Another reason I'm considering the upgrade is that one game I run is pretty badly limited by my CPU as it doesn't support SSE4.1 or even SSSE3, and doesn't have enough raw power on a single core to make up for this, so switching to a new intel offering should give it the grunt to play smoothly.

Thanks for the pointers on the 2550k, as you say since its unlocked there is no reason to pay more for less features. The Lucid MVP stuff also looks pretty interesting which needs a powerful integrated GPU, right? So waiting for an IB would also help out in that respect.

 

[cmndr_andi]

Yea, it is a tough one having to buy kit without having reviews to go on. Considering the cashback deal I would still go with it and if it turns out it has some issues (which based on their track record and the similarity of Z77 and Z68 board technology I think is relatively unlikely) then you can always return the board under DSR for a full refund.

As for cooling, the IFX-14 is an excellent cooler and will happily allow you to overclock a sandy bridge or ivy bridge quad core as far as the CPU can go. I think the reason this cooler isn't shown on many benchmarks is because it hasn't been available to buy for some time, so it's successor - the Thermalright Silver Arrow - is usually featured instead.

Lucid MVP does indeed sound rather impressive and it does need a working graphics core to function.