i5 2500k or i7 2600?

[Zerogknight]

I'm building a new rig for some gaming and mostly video editing/rendering such as adobe premiere pro, after effect and 3ds max.

I was going to buy the i7 2600 at first with a H67 chipset MoBO, but it turns all the H67 are micro ATX. Now that would have been fine, except for the fact that my video card is MSI GeForce GTX 560 Ti Twin Frozr OC 880MHZ 1GB GDDR5 which is pretty big and needs an ATX case. So I decided to go with a P67 MoBo and now begins my dilemma. Since im getting the P67 that can overclock the "K-series" cpus, i thought maybe i5 2500k would be the better choice, however HT on the i7 would help a lot for the rendering.

I do have a budget so i cannot get the i7 2600k, which is why im considering the i5 2500k as one of the choices.

Where i live, the i5 2500k is $230 and i7 2600 is $310.

[vesseblah]

This should answer your question pretty well -> http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/t...2100-tested/17

[nwo]

Why not just get a cheaper p67 mobo and an i7 2600k?

I think you would be better off with an overclocked i5 2500k to be honest. If you overclock it to 4.5GHz or more, it will more than likely outperform the i7 in all the hyper threaded apps you mentioned. At stock speeds, the i7 is about 10-30% faster than the i5 in multi-threaded apps, so overclocking should put it on top.

[Plasmon]

Sounds like a trade off that comes down to personal preference. Personally I'd rather have an overclockable CPU than one with hyperthreading that can only run at stock settings considering that 2500K and 2600K's can overclock very high. You can likely get ~27% OC without even increasing voltage (I did anyways on my 2500K with a small negative voltage offset). With voltage you can go typically get 35-40% OC without trouble and by pushing it you might be able to get 45% OC.

That's a big deal, and might be worth more than hyperthreading, even to someone doing a lot of video stuff, but again it's not an obvious choice, depending on the value of HT in what you are doing.


One thing you might not realize is that you can screw in a micro-ATX motherboard in a regular ATX case without a problem, there are usually screw holes for them, so you don't have to worry about your 560 not fitting. Just make sure the case supports that size.

Also, not all H67's are micro. Here's a regular ATX H67 for example:
http://ncix.com/products/?sku=59165&...cture=Gigabyte


My opinion is that you'd be better off with a "K" version, and overclocking it to somewhere around 4.4-4.7 GHz. The 2600K would be ideal if you could just cut cost a little bit more somewhere else, it's only maybe $20 more than the non-K version. I'd take an nicely overclocked 2500K over a stock speed 2600 even for video stuff.

[Nume]

Why not just get a cheaper p67 mobo and an i7 2600k?

I think you would be better off with an overclocked i5 2500k to be honest. If you overclock it to 4.5GHz or more, it will more than likely outperform the i7 in all the hyper threaded apps you mentioned. At stock speeds, the i7 is about 10-30% faster than the i5 in multi-threaded apps, so overclocking should put it on top.

This. If you can save in other areas and get a 2600k though, that'd probably be ideal due to the fact that you want to use the hyperthreading.

[Wries]

micro ATX boards fits in ATX cases. But unless you have an application using quicksync, going for H67 would've been pointless anyway.

I'd say go for an overclocked 2500K. You can probably get it up pretty high, out past the performance gain you'd get from a non OC i7 2600 with HT in most if not all cases.

The performance benefit of HT you get in After Effects is like 10%, for example, and even less if you like running with multiprocessing enabled in settings (effectively starting 8 aftefx-processes for rendering 8 frames at a time. I just find this inefficient and makes RAM previews to take time to start).

[Zerogknight]

I have a 600W PSU, does overclocking to at least 4.4Ghz require more power than what i have?

[vesseblah]

I have a 600W PSU, does overclocking to at least 4.4Ghz require more power than what i have?

Nop, that CPU + videocard takes around 450-500W when overclocked. More important question is what quality your old PSU is, and how old.

[nwo]

Overclocking uses more power than at stock speeds, but a fully overclocked i7 (sub 5GHz range) will draw ~180W at full load, so the CPU alone uses about 50% more power, but a quality 600W PSU should be more than enough, as long as you have a single GPU card.

[General_Typhus]

2500k for sure. The average user is NOT going to use hyperthreading often enough to warrant having 50% lower clock speed from not being a "K".

[nwo]

2500k for sure. The average user is NOT going to use hyperthreading often enough to warrant having 50% lower clock speed from not being a "K".

Did you read the OP? He is not an average user, he is a casual gamer that uses a lot of apps that can put HT to good use. Also, I don't know about 50%, since most chips take a lot of luck, work and investment in order to get up to 5GHz or higher.

[General_Typhus]

Did you read the OP? He is not an average user, he is a casual gamer that uses a lot of apps that can put HT to good use. Also, I don't know about 50%, since most chips take a lot of luck, work and investment in order to get up to 5GHz or higher.

hm, my mistake. Just so used to these types of threads I automatically assume its a "how much FPS is hyperthreading for WoW???". Tough call still though. With a beefy CPU cooler 4.5-5ghz is not uncommon with these chips, but I think for heavily threaded applications the HT might still win out.

[nwo]

hm, my mistake. Just so used to these types of threads I automatically assume its a "how much FPS is hyperthreading for WoW???". Tough call still though. With a beefy CPU cooler 4.5-5ghz is not uncommon with these chips, but I think for heavily threaded applications the HT might still win out.

4.5GHz is certainly very feasible, even with an affordable cooler like the CM hyper 212+. At 4.5GHz, I think that the i5 would clearly win, even in multi-threaded apps that fully utilize HT. Because as the benchmarks show, the difference is minimal at stock clock speeds, and it is usually around 10-20%.

[gmike]

Go with the i5. And get a cheaper mobo and overclock it.

[Asera]

I'm building a new rig for some gaming and mostly video editing/rendering such as adobe premiere pro, after effect and 3ds max.

I was going to buy the i7 2600 at first with a H67 chipset MoBO, but it turns all the H67 are micro ATX. Now that would have been fine, except for the fact that my video card is MSI GeForce GTX 560 Ti Twin Frozr OC 880MHZ 1GB GDDR5 which is pretty big and needs an ATX case. So I decided to go with a P67 MoBo and now begins my dilemma. Since im getting the P67 that can overclock the "K-series" cpus, i thought maybe i5 2500k would be the better choice, however HT on the i7 would help a lot for the rendering.

I do have a budget so i cannot get the i7 2600k, which is why im considering the i5 2500k as one of the choices.

Where i live, the i5 2500k is $230 and i7 2600 is $310.

Question, what kind of HDD setup are you planning on running with this? Hopefully not one...

Speaking from experience with AE and Premiere, Having an extra drive, a faster drive, an SSD, or a RAID0 or RAID1 or RAID10 array or a combination of 2 or more of those will yeild better travels while video editing than having HT over no HT. HT only helps with rendering, not scratching and memory thrashing, which production does A LOT of. I'd rather have more drives than HT and wait the extra bit of time to render (keeping in mind HT does not yeild +4 cores worth of performance at all).

[Sephiracle]

I'm building a new rig for some gaming and mostly video editing/rendering such as adobe premiere pro, after effect and 3ds max.

I was going to buy the i7 2600 at first with a H67 chipset MoBO, but it turns all the H67 are micro ATX. Now that would have been fine, except for the fact that my video card is MSI GeForce GTX 560 Ti Twin Frozr OC 880MHZ 1GB GDDR5 which is pretty big and needs an ATX case. So I decided to go with a P67 MoBo and now begins my dilemma. Since im getting the P67 that can overclock the "K-series" cpus, i thought maybe i5 2500k would be the better choice, however HT on the i7 would help a lot for the rendering.

I do have a budget so i cannot get the i7 2600k, which is why im considering the i5 2500k as one of the choices.

Where i live, the i5 2500k is $230 and i7 2600 is $310.

Not to be a douche or anything but...

Newegg is selling the 2600k for 314.99.

If the five dollars is going to break your budget, you shouldn't be buying a computer.

[nwo]

Not to be a douche or anything but...

Newegg is selling the 2600k for 314.99.

If the five dollars is going to break your budget, you shouldn't be buying a computer.

It's actually only $299 if you use EMCKFKC23 promo code for e-mail subscribers

[Sephiracle]

It's actually only $299 if you use EMCKFKC23 promo code for e-mail subscribers

and then a 20 dollar combo discount on the banner ad :P

[georgevonfranken]

It's actually only $299 if you use EMCKFKC23 promo code for e-mail subscribers

speaking of that anyone else have it where a couple days after you buy something you get a email saying its $20 off haha

[Sephiracle]

I think in a mass sweep of my junk mail box I think I may have blocked their email newsletter...what address did that one come from so I can unblock it? >_>