i7-2600k on Z77? (regarding PCI Express 3, USB3)

[hurrakan]

Hi,

I have a P67 system but also a Z77 system.

I have a MSI GTX 680 (PCI Express 3) - do I need to use an Ivy Bridge CPU on my Z77 board for the graphics card to work?

I currently have an i5-3550 processor in my Z77 but I was planning to put my i7-2600K in instead, however I've heard that an Ivy Bridge CPU is required to take advantage of the Z77 chipset - is that true?

Also, the USB3 ports never worked properly on my P67, but USB3 works perfectly on the Z77. But would USB3 still work properly on the Z77 if I used the i7 2600k?

Thanks,

 

[Steltek]

PCIe 3.0 cards will work in PCIe 2.0 slots. In this case, CPU doesn't matter. You'll get a little better performance by a few percentage points on benchmarks by running the video card in a Z77/Ivy Bridge system, but likely it won't be very noticeable in everyday use.

If you plan to overclock your 2600k, swapping the CPUs is advantageous as the Z77 chipset has significant overclocking support. Concerning USB 3.0, as long as the motherboard has a chipset which supports it, it should work regardless of the CPU installed.

 

[hurrakan]

Thanks,

But if I use the PCIe 3 graphics card with the i7-2600k on the Z77, the card will only work as PCIe 2 - because the PCIe 3 controller is only in Ivy Bridge CPUs, correct? Although people seem to say it doesn't matter unless using more than one video card.

Hmm I may just get a 3770k anyway.

 

[Arkaign]

If you're overclocking and not delidding, 2600K may have better clocks and lower temps. It remains to be seen if PCI 2.0 will meaningfully bottleneck future video cards, though I would guess that it would at some point. I saw benches on a GTX Titan in PCI 2.0 vs. 3.0, and the differences were between 0-3%. So maybe GTX7xx/HD8xxx series will be almost as fast at Titan, then GTX8xx/HD9xxx series will be a bit faster than Titan, so two gens out the bottlenecks could potentially get more pronounced. I wouldn't worry about it though, unless you think you'd still be running the 2600k in the third gen of cards in the future and would be bothered by ~10% bottleneck.

Actually, as your current i5 shouldn't bottleneck you very much right now, it may be worth waiting a bit and selling the combo in order to get the Haswell i7 + Z87 (just make sure the mobo revision has the USB suspend bug fixed by then, it probably will be).

That's what I'd do in your situation.

#1 choice : wait for haswell, get new mobo + new cpu
#2 choice : get 3770k, delid, oc on good air (4.6-5Ghz depending on luck)
#3 choice : get 2600k, oc on good air (4.6-5Ghz depending on luck)
#4 choice : get 3770k, oc on good air (4.2-4.5Ghz depending on luck)

I've had two 3770ks myself, haven't delidded. One was unstable at stock (confirmed in multiple mobos/configs), was exchanged no problem at MC, second one wouldn't do more than 4.4Ghz. Decided delidding was too much hassle in case it messed up (can't return delidded cpu), so went back to my 2700k, which runs solid at 5Ghz. Obviously 5Ghz is the high range for Sandy though. If you exclude that special intel decode thing (I never use it), average gains for Ivy over Sandy clock for clock are 0-7% (including decode increases that 'average' to about 7-10%). If you can make use of that feature, then 3770k is the best choice between the two. Also if you think you will do CF/SLI with high end cards, the 3770k will show significant gains with PCIe 3.0.

Sorry for the extremely long post haha.

Cliffs : WAIT for HASWELL

 

[hurrakan]

Oh, I didn't realise Haswell was coming so soon, I guess I should probably wait a few months for that then.

At stock the 2600k is .1MHz faster than the 3550 so I suppose I will use 2600k for now.

I don't even know if I will overclock yet as I haven't done it since Q6600.

Thanks for the advice!