i5 2500k or i7 2600k

[fatalaeon]

i am having a tough time deciding wich cpu to get, i play wow and swtor along with skyrim and a few games here n there, i want to do so at max settings, which one do i need to accomplish this?

if you need a list of my other parts i have decided to go with i can provide that.

thanks in advance

[Blackspur]

The i5 and i7 are pretty much the same, with the exception of the i7 having hyper threading (your system sees 8 cores rather than 4, but virtually no games utilize even 4 cores yet) which is only really useful for video editing and rendering and such.

The i5 2500k will perform identically to the i7 in gaming.

Edit: The i7 has an extra 2mb cache over the i5, but thats also useless for gaming.

[Schmilblick]

2500 will be enough for gaming.

[noteworthynerd]

The general consensus is: if you're just gonna be gaming, get the i5 2500k. Since most (if not all) games can not make use of hyperthreading, the extra money you'd spend on the 2600k would be wasted. If you were doing editing of some sort, I'd say get the 2600k in a heartbeat, but you're not, so the 2500k is more than enough (and will be for years to come).

Here's a comparison of the two: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/288?vs=287 (game benchmarks at the bottom).

[Fuger]

If you don't run anything that uses HT then just get the 2500K i5 and i7 means shit for LGA 1155.

[fatalaeon]

awesome, with that i can afford to get an ssd as well, i want at least 120(ish) gb, sata 3, and not horrid reviews(heard bad thing about ocz), what do u guys recommend

[Deleted]

Well i use an ocz , and for 1 year it worked perfectly, dont know what u heard about the ocz but i remommend them :P

[Neothin]

crucial m4.

and yes, the i5 is where you're going to want to go towards if all you do is game. And the best part, because it's 100 bucks cheaper, you won't feel so bad 6 months from now ditching it for a new ivy bridge processor

[0ptimo]

awesome, with that i can afford to get an ssd as well, i want at least 120(ish) gb, sata 3, and not horrid reviews(heard bad thing about ocz), what do u guys recommend

Crucial has very fast, reliable SSD's. I would definitely check them out if I were you.

[Deleted]

The best SSD on the market right now is the Crucial M4 series.

And your best bet for processor is the i5 2500k, the sheer price of the i7 with no performance gain (even a 1% loss reported in some cases) makes it a much less sought after processor for gaming PC's

[Deleted]

i am having a tough time deciding wich cpu to get, i play wow and swtor along with skyrim and a few games here n there, i want to do so at max settings, which one do i need to accomplish this?

if you need a list of my other parts i have decided to go with i can provide that.

thanks in advance

For those things you won't see any extra performance from i7-2600K over i5-2500K.

---------- Post added 2012-01-05 at 05:42 PM ----------

The best SSD on the market right now is the Crucial M4 series.

And your best bet for processor is the i5 2500k, the sheer price of the i7 with no performance gain (even a 1% loss reported in some cases) makes it a much less sought after processor for gaming PC's

Best bang for buck possibly, not test performance wise.

[Deleted]

---------- Post added 2012-01-05 at 05:42 PM ----------

[/COLOR]

Best bang for buck possibly, not test performance wise.

It has fairly mid-high performance but the almost non existent chance of failing makes it one helluva SSD. The OCZ has a nice bit of speed but the fail rate is comparatively high.

[Sicktired]

awesome, with that i can afford to get an ssd as well, i want at least 120(ish) gb, sata 3, and not horrid reviews(heard bad thing about ocz), what do u guys recommend

Ocz makes the number one fastest ssd, the vertex 3 max iops. Ocz and a lot of other ssds got a lot of bad reviews due to controller software problems, but those are all fixed now, so ignore the reviews about drives not being recognized, crashes and bsod, this has all been fixed, I would instead look at the speed and storage and go with the one you like, tom's hardware has a nice tiered list you can probably find, there's also a pretty good list if you google "fastest ssd"

[heatrage]

Get the 2500k and the money you saved buy a better GPU or SSD.

[Esg]

Crucial m4 is best bang/buck atm, intel series is probably the best but they charge a lot more and at the end of a day an SSD is a huge improvement over a HD regardless which one you get.

[Bikiniwax]

The problem with Sandforce drives has been fixed now with the latest firmware update. Just make sure that if you purchase a sandforce drive that you update the firmware immediately as many are still coming with older firmware.

That said, I would still stay away from OCZ based upon their poor customer service and their behaviour or rather denial when the Sandforce problems were first reported. Also, the OCZ fiasco when they went from 128GB SSD's down to 120GB SSD's using the same skew #. A lot of people got smaller drives than what they were expecting and OCZ had to eventually offer replacements when enough customers complained.

Crucial M4, Patriot Wildfire, Kingston HyperX, Corsair GT are all good drives. Just make sure to update the firmware if it isn't up-to-date.

Also, don't buy anything smaller than 120GB otherwise you will regret it.