Are Intel E-Series CPUS worth it for Battlefield?

[battletoad]

I have had a 2500k for a few years now. I have it clocked at 4.4ghz.

I know that every iteration of the $220-$340 range i5/i7s released since then either offer no improvment or as little as 2% improvement over my CPU.

However, every review I have read of Sandy/Ivy Extreme CPUs in the $500-$1,000 range gets benched on only very non-cpu demanding games, which skews the results into making it look like there is little to no benefit in upgrading to them from my current CPU. Due to the unpredictable nature of online MP portions of games like BF3 or BF4, no sites I have seen really even try to show what benefits (if any) the Extreme series CPUs have over the cheaper Intel models.

Is there anyone here that has played BF3/BF4 extensively with both a $200-$300 Intel chip and then upgraded to an Intel Extreme that could give me some estimations of what such an upgrade might provide? These are pretty much the only games I play for the most part, and I am flush with enough money where I could drop a couple of grand in non-GPU upgrades alone if the benefits are substantial enough.

If it is for an extra 5fps or so I won't bother, but I figure there has to be some games that overspending for a $1,000 CPU is actually of some major benefit. I am hoping BF4 in particular might be one of those games.

 

[frozentundra123456]

I must be doing something wrong with pasting the link, but check out the latest BF4 benchmarks at game.gpu. Hex core is about 8 percent faster than 4770k and 4770k is about 20% faster than 2600k when all are at stock. So if you could overclock a 4930k to the same speed as your SB you could gain maybe 20 up to 30 percent, depending on your gpu as well. I dont have any personal experience to verify their results though. Up to you I guess to decide if the upgrade would be worth it. Their tests were also done with a GTX 780Ti, so if you are running a weaker card, you could be gpu limited.

 

[Bubbleawsome]

 

[EliteRetard]

My vote is to wait until haswell-e and DDR4 along with a much better updated platform.
The 2500k is decent enough now to justify the wait, another 6-8 months.

 

[Kitlope]

Yup, I would wait too as I've wrangled with this question myself for months.

I have a socket 1366 Gulftown 980 X6 3.33 Ghz (mildly overclocked to 3.72) and have been looking into perhaps a 4770k. There's no point as they're pretty equal chips in the end. 4770k has better clock speeds but the 980 has 2 more cores. Because BF4 uses as many cores as can be thrown at it, in my case there's no point.

2500k is still a great chip.

As was said, I would hold out for Haswell-E. If I upgrade, it ill probably be an enthusiast series chip as consumer level, even next year, probably won't be much improvement.

Just over two years ago I upgraded to this 980 from a 920, hoping that spending an extra 2 or 3 hundred would make the chip more future proof. Imagine my surprise these days as I realize it's still a top shelf chip and will probably last me another 2 years, easy. Granted, we all know Intel hasn't made much headway the last couple years with speeds and such, so that helps too.

 

[NTMBK]

Wait for Haswell E. The x79 platform is getting pretty long in the tooth, and the processors aren't really a great upgrade over your 2500K. Haswell E will have SATA-Express, DDR4, AVX2... all in all, a much better upgrade.

 

[Borealis7]

the reality is that for games, especially at 1080P and up, the CPU is much less important. a 200$ CPU performs roughly the same as a 1000$ CPU. invest in a good GPU instead.

 

[krumme]

If the problem is bf4 wait for mantle and see if it solves the problem. Look at the consoles. I am pretty sure the problem is in dx not the 2500k at 4.4ghz. Mantle could easily give you far more than even the fastest cpu when the going gets tough in bf4.

 

[sm625]

Intel is running such a scam. They could shrink an i7-990x down to just 60 sq mm @ 14nm. Which means they could throw 4 of them into a single die and it still wont be any bigger than the original i7-990x. And yet the most they will do is a lousy 6 core. I cant wait until they are swallowed by the ARMada...

 

[ShintaiDK]

Intel is running such a scam. They could shrink an i7-990x down to just 60 sq mm @ 14nm. Which means they could throw 4 of them into a single die and it still wont be any bigger than the original i7-990x. And yet the most they will do is a lousy 6 core. I cant wait until they are swallowed by the ARMada...

And run at what speed? 2Ghz? What about the increased interconencts?

 

[NTMBK]

And run at what speed? 2Ghz? What about the increased interconencts?

An 8 core IB Xeon can run at 3.4GHz, with a 4GHz turbo. Intel could certainly push for more cores on the i7-E range, without sacrificing clock speed; they just choose not to.

 

[ShintaiDK]

An 8 core IB Xeon can run at 3.4GHz, with a 4GHz turbo. Intel could certainly push for more cores on the i7-E range, without sacrificing clock speed; they just choose not to.

The 12 core version is already down to 2.7Ghz on a 541mm2 die. (15core die).

Also for his term of mm2. 990X is 239mm2. 4960X is 256.5mm2.