Explain why my old best buy stock CPU destroys newer ones.

[Zazey]

So about 5 years ago my father purchased an HP pc from best buy for about $700. Most of the PC was trash, but the processor is a 2nd-generation intel i5 2400. This chips been out for almost half a decade and I've run it up against almost every other card since then and the only cards that start to beat it are top model 4th gen and 5th gen chips. And by beat it, I mean BARELY outside of the i5 4690k and i7 4790k cards. I cannot understand this at all. Can someone explain this to me? Maybe I'm looking at the data wrong but I can't really justify buying a new CPU for literally minor upgrades.

[Evildeffy]

So about 5 years ago my father purchased an HP pc from best buy for about $700. Most of the PC was trash, but the processor is a 2nd-generation intel i5 2400. This chips been out for almost half a decade and I've run it up against almost every other card since then and the only cards that start to beat it are top model 4th gen and 5th gen chips. And by beat it, I mean BARELY outside of the i5 4690k and i7 4790k cards. I cannot understand this at all. Can someone explain this to me? Maybe I'm looking at the data wrong but I can't really justify buying a new CPU for literally minor upgrades.

First off the CPU has been released 2011 so it's 4 years old tops.

Second.. every I5/I7 CPU from the same generation with the same frequency is faster. (DUH!)

Other than that every generation after is about 7,5% (in reality 5 - 10% but this includes all types of benchmarks, not just games) faster.

Meaning we're about 15% faster currently from the generation you are at.
Now the reason you THINK it's BARELY faster is likely due to what you use it for, which are games.

Fair enough ... however that's because most games are still limited in threads and how the games handle them.
If you were to video edit or play a couple of other newer games which have better multithreading support than you will notice a difference.

So no the CPU is soundly "beaten" by newer generations... just that you only compare a few games and thus it SEEMS like it's not.

[Artorius]

You're not looking at it wrong. 2XXX 3XXX 4XXX all perform really close. The difference is mostly at power consumption. Performance wise only, there's no reason to upgrade unless you need a LGA2011 chip with 6/8 cores.

[Zazey]

The reason I was going to upgrade was for witcher 3 / battlefield. I mainly stay with MMO's for the most part but I like to be able to do raids with max settings. I'm just debating if it's worth it to essentially build a new PC for that. I used to be able to raid in WoW on ultra fine, haven't done it in a while though. I have a 650ti right now, with the i5 2400. If I wanted to get a newer GPU I would need a new motherboard for multiple reasons. 1- the boards setup horribly and I can barely fit this in as is. 2- the motherboard will not support any newer chips. So I am just trying to see if any of it's worth it. Side note, I've never overclocked, not sure if I should or how much more of an increase I would see.

[Evildeffy]

The reason I was going to upgrade was for witcher 3 / battlefield. I mainly stay with MMO's for the most part but I like to be able to do raids with max settings. I'm just debating if it's worth it to essentially build a new PC for that. I used to be able to raid in WoW on ultra fine, haven't done it in a while though. I have a 650ti right now, with the i5 2400. If I wanted to get a newer GPU I would need a new motherboard for multiple reasons. 1- the boards setup horribly and I can barely fit this in as is. 2- the motherboard will not support any newer chips. So I am just trying to see if any of it's worth it. Side note, I've never overclocked, not sure if I should or how much more of an increase I would see.

The "worth" of building a new PC is totally up to yourself, that CPU will still do most jobs fine.
However if you WANT faster then you already have your reason don't you?

Also:
The motherboard will fit any GPU, even current gen so that's not really an upgrade reason.
Even the latest cards barely reach the PCIex 2.0 x16 lane slot's bandwidth let alone PCIex 3.0.. and yes PCIex 3.0 is backwards compatible with 2.0

Your case and PSU dictate whether or not you can fit the card as the mobo is just a receptacle, it doesn't care.
Your case does along with your power supply's power connection availability and wattage/amps.

Your motherboard will not support new CPUs however and with that CPU you can forget about overclocking, it's not supported on them.

[chazus]

What are you using to compare?

Your i5-2400 probably runs at 3.3ghz

an i5-4690K will probably run about 3.8ghz.

However you probably won't notice this difference outside of raids, so unless you're using raiding as a benchmark... You won't see much of a difference.

If you DO, then you'll see your minimum framerate go up by a good 20%. Overclock that, and you're looking at like... 40-50%

[apepi]

I got a 2500k here. Honestly, every time I look at the new cpu benchmarks, I think why? Intel has not focused on on performance for a while, they are not really afraid of AMD right now to perform better. So they are focusing on efficiency. Trying to make it smaller, trying to make it run less power. Trying to make it work on a mobile. They already feel like they have our money, why should we turn to AMD when they have all the performance? The only thing Intel has really improved greatly is their integrated graphics. If they actually lowered the price of those cpus, there would be zero reason to buy AMD. Intel is basically using AMD so they will not be claimed as an monopoly.