Upgrading i5 2500K - Worth it or not?

[Deleted]

Oi guys.
So I have an i5 2500K in a Sabertooth Z77 motherboard, and I've been considering upgrading.
However, with a total cost of 450 - 500$ to upgrade in my country, I'm worrying the upgrade won't be worth it as of now.

Is Haswell worth the cost for such upgrade, or should I just spend my money elsewhere?
I am only using my PC for gaming and some video editing now and again.

[Deleted]

just sit tight for either the haswell revision or the generation after it.
for gaming you got plenty of power and just some video editing every once in a while wouldn't be worth the minor speed gain imo.

[KoshiB]

While what you use your computer for will ultimately decide whether the upgrade is worth it or not, for most people, I'd say that answer would be no. The 2500k is only 2 iterations old, and I believe each iteration added something like 5% performance over the previous gen. Given how good the 2500k i5's were/are, chances that you'd even notice the upgrade are small, albeit again, it depends on what you use your computer for. If you mostly game with it, your money (That's a lot of cash to shell out for a small upgrade) would probably be better spent upgrading your graphics card, as that will impact you the most.

You also should ask yourself why you want to upgrade. Are you upgrading just to upgrade to the newest, or are you trying to address a weak spot that you are noticing in your computer? Many people fall into the trap of upgrading for upgrades sake and wasting a lot of money. Decide if there's something you want to do that your computers hardware can't handle now. If there isn't, I would recommend holding off on upgrading all together.

The above is just my opinion though, others might disagree *shrug*.

[neuk]

No, it's not worth it.

[Majesticii]

You be the judge: http://anandtech.com/bench/product/288?vs=837

[Fluorescent0]

You be the judge: http://anandtech.com/bench/product/288?vs=837

It's not that easy. Sandy goes higher when overclocking.

[Deleted]

I wouldn't say it's worth it at all but in theory you wouldn't need to pay that much since you already have Z77 motherboard you could get an i5-3570k, only reason I could see wanting to "upgrade" was if someone bought your current CPU.

[Holyshnikies]

I would wait for the Haswell refresh for next year or you could wait for skylake in 2015/2016. I run a i5 2400 and it runs everything and then some. So my advise is to wait. Because they could change the socket type for Skylake as well... Skylake will also support PCI 4.0 which may be available on motherboards when this comes out and then you know new video cards will be made for 4.0. And ddr4 support to. So I would say that would be well worth the money upgrade for an entirely new build.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylake...rchitecture%29

[Deleted]

Its definitly NOT, worth it.

[Fluffygong]

I'm in the same position, running i5 2500k setup with 6950....getting the upgrade itch and just telling myslelf there is really no reason to! I'm just upgrading other long term use parts and tinkering. Considering swapping the 6950 but again, good enough and I only really play MMO's atm so it'd barely be worth it! So I'm going with the stick the 2500k, just make sure you got it overclock!

[BicycleMafioso]

Thread moved to appropriate sub-forum.

It's not that easy. Sandy goes higher when overclocking.

Most likely, yes. But not ~20% higher which would be needed to rival Haswell's superior IPC

[aevitas]

I was considering the same, then I made up my mind and bought a Zalman CNPS 10x Performa cooler for my i5-2500k and I'm now running it at 4.5 ghz (was running stock before).

That alone feels like a huge upgrade!

[Erous]

I'm in the same position, running i5 2500k setup with 6950....getting the upgrade itch and just telling myslelf there is really no reason to! I'm just upgrading other long term use parts and tinkering. Considering swapping the 6950 but again, good enough and I only really play MMO's atm so it'd barely be worth it! So I'm going with the stick the 2500k, just make sure you got it overclock!

I have the same setup as you (at least I did) and swapped the 2500k for a 4770k, I wanted the hyperthreading for future items but that's neither here nor there. The 6950 seems somewhat bottlenecked with the 4770k and isn't worth the change. Not to mention my 4770k MSI motherboard auto clocks it to 3.9 and I'm having trouble boosting the speed without blue screens. The 2500k I had, had an easy 4.2 overclock with only changing the multiplier.

So you're really not going to see a major benefit in swapping out to a Haswell in gaming at least unless you're able to get a more steady OC and potentially new video card.

[purefury]

if you get a program that works a little slow, and you want it badly to work great, then yes.
if you stream games in HD and fps drops just a little too much, then yes.
if you want to encode faster regularly, then sure.

in other cases you still have the best processor in last 10years. its still amazing for next 2years minimum (overclocked to 4k+).
i assume u have SSD already, otherwise thats the bets investment possible

[BicycleMafioso]

I have the same setup as you (at least I did) and swapped the 2500k for a 4770k, I wanted the hyperthreading for future items but that's neither here nor there. The 6950 seems somewhat bottlenecked with the 4770k and isn't worth the change. Not to mention my 4770k MSI motherboard auto clocks it to 3.9 and I'm having trouble boosting the speed without blue screens. The 2500k I had, had an easy 4.2 overclock with only changing the multiplier.

So you're really not going to see a major benefit in swapping out to a Haswell in gaming at least unless you're able to get a more steady OC and potentially new video card.

There are some things that I think you've gotten the wrong conclusions from:
In what way is the HD6950 held back by the 4770K? Not even the opposite is the case.
The "auto-clock" you are thinking about here is the standard Intel turbo-function.
Silicon lottery matters; Not all CPU's are the same, so someone elses i5 2500K might not have done it but their i7 4770K could.


That said, I think that upgrading to Haswell is a good idea if you're after the features of the much superior chipset that Z87 offers over P67 or even Z68. If not, it's likely largely wasted in that aspect.
For the OP specifically, no, I would not advice such an upgrade.
CPU-wise, either is fine

[Erous]

There are some things that I think you've gotten the wrong conclusions from:
In what way is the HD6950 held back by the 4770K? Not even the opposite is the case.
The "auto-clock" you are thinking about here is the standard Intel turbo-function.
Silicon lottery matters; Not all CPU's are the same, so someone elses i5 2500K might not have done it but their i7 4770K could.

I say that because I had to flash the bios back on my 6950 2GB from the 6970 unlock. The difference in game performance is immense between the 2 and the performance isn't even seen with the 4770k vs the 2500k (I'm speaking WoW in general)

I understand the silicon lottery matters, however my MSI board autoclocks the CPU to 3.9. No, it's not the turbo. It's a steady-state 3.9 all the time. I agree that someone's 4770k could get much higher clocks much easier than I, unfortunately for me it was the other way around.

[BicycleMafioso]

I understand the silicon lottery matters, however my MSI board autoclocks the CPU to 3.9. No, it's not the turbo. It's a steady-state 3.9 all the time. I agree that someone's 4770k could get much higher clocks much easier than I, unfortunately for me it was the other way around.

Ah, that's windows. If you have the power setting to high performance, it doesn't clock down unless you tell it too.

As for the 6950, well, you did say 6950 not a flashed 6950 not working. :P I am thinking that is completely irrelevant to how you presented it. I have both a 6950 and a 6970 lying around here, and apart from them having a different memory size, there is not much of a performance difference.

[Deleted]

Thanks for the replies, guys.
That made my mind, no need to upgrade yet.

Just a GPU upgrade and a new tower then!

[Fluorescent0]

I understand the silicon lottery matters, however my MSI board autoclocks the CPU to 3.9. No, it's not the turbo. It's a steady-state 3.9 all the time. I agree that someone's 4770k could get much higher clocks much easier than I, unfortunately for me it was the other way around.

That's because any auto-overclock utility can't get anywhere near the real overclocking potential of your chip.

[Fascinate]

Sandy bridge CPU's are THE best ever made. Sure there are very small gains in per core performance with ivy and haswell, but nearly every 2500k ive ever seen overclocks to 4.6 or higher and more importantly stay cool doing so (they have proper solder between the cpu die and heatsink).

My daily OC is 4.2 at 1.25v, with a CM 212+ ive never seen over 57c even under stress tests. My benchmarking OC is 4.8 at 1.4v and even then my CPU stays around 70c under stress tests. Sure maybe you could reach a 4.8 with a ivy or haswell and get a 10-15% gain in performance, but you sure wont see the low temps. Ya you could delid an ivy or haswell and get the best of both worlds, but are you really willing to void that warranty?

TLDR, keep your 2500k lol.