Looking to upgrade my computer's processor but options seem limited.

[the1seth]

So I'm looking to do a series of upgrades to my computer one of them being a processor upgrade my current is an intel core i5 2500k sandy bridge quad core that runs at 3.30GHz, the problem is that my Motherboard is a socket LGA 1155 and the only processor that I can find that looks like an upgrade is the Intel Core i7-4770K Quad-Core Desktop Processor which runs at 3.50GHz at a whopping $320.00. Is this really an upgrade that's worth it? I can't imagine that it is for only 2MHz difference between the 2. I guessed I missed the memo when LGA 1155 became obsolete. My current Graphics card is an Nvidia GeForce GTX 550 Ti. I'll probably be upping that to a 900 series and my ram is 8GB of 1600MHz corsair vengeance DDR3. Any help would be great.

[potis]

4770K is a different socket than i5 2500K.

Z77 is different than Z87 for motherboards are you sure you arent confusing with 3770K?

4770K = 1150 not 1155.

Apart from that

Grab a cooler (a decent 70$+ one) overclock to 4.5Ghz, gain 30% in WoW, there is your upgrade.

Air coolers: Be Silent/Noctua/Cryorig

Pre-made water cooling: Corsair/NZXT/Coolermaster, i dont remember the water cooler names so..Generally H80i as example.

[Fascinate]

No reason to spend that much on a cooler for a 2500k. Im pushing 1.3v to mine and it never goes above 60c on a 30 dollar CM hyper 212.

But yes that is absolutely what you should do, overclock that 2500k and grab a faster GPU. Gtx 750ti is also a good option if you are on a smaller budget (its maxwell, just like the 900 series). Your ram is fine.

[glo]

So I'm looking to do a series of upgrades to my computer one of them being a processor upgrade my current is an intel core i5 2500k sandy bridge quad core that runs at 3.30GHz, the problem is that my Motherboard is a socket LGA 1155 and the only processor that I can find that looks like an upgrade is the Intel Core i7-4770K Quad-Core Desktop Processor which runs at 3.50GHz at a whopping $320.00. Is this really an upgrade that's worth it? I can't imagine that it is for only 2MHz difference between the 2. I guessed I missed the memo when LGA 1155 became obsolete. My current Graphics card is an Nvidia GeForce GTX 550 Ti. I'll probably be upping that to a 900 series and my ram is 8GB of 1600MHz corsair vengeance DDR3. Any help would be great.

Clock speed isn't the determining factor in performance, otherwise 14 year old Pentium 4 chips would still be viable.

Imagine someone running down the street while simultaneously making pies:

- The time that it takes the pie making lunatic to reach his destination = clock speed, or X
- The amount of pies he can make on his way to the end of the street = IPC, or Y

Y * X = pie making efficiency, or how much crap a processing core can do in a given amount of time. In the case of your chip (Sandy Bridge) vs something like the 4690k (Haswell), there's about a 20% increase in efficiency, among other things.

[Fascinate]

Right....but not sure what you are saying glo.

You can OC a 2500k to beat a stock 4790k.

Cinebench r15.0 single core results:
http://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu_ben..._single_core-7

My 2500k@4.9ghz:
[IMG][/IMG]

159 single core performance for a stock clocked 4790k. 162 single core performance for my 4.9ghz 2500k

Obviously you can OC the 4790k too, but a 4 year old CPU isnt THAT far behind todays top end CPU.

[glo]

Right....but not sure what you are saying glo.

You can OC a 2500k to beat a stock 4790k.

Cinebench r15.0 single core results:
http://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu_ben..._single_core-7

My 2500k@4.9ghz:

159 single core performance for a stock clocked 4790k. 162 single core performance for my 4.9ghz 2500k

Obviously you can OC the 4790k too, but a 4 year old CPU isnt THAT far behind todays top end CPU.

What does this have to do with anything? I didn't tell OP to upgrade, was explaining that clock speed isn't something you should gauge performance by.

[Fascinate]

Has a lot to do with things, shows him his CPU is still boss mode even by today's standards. Put an OC on that chip and go to town : )