Intel i5 2500k or Intel i7 2600k for Gaming?

[richdog16]

Is the intel i7 2600k worth the extra money and performance for Gaming or should I just stick with i5 2500k


Gaming needs: Running all Games at Ultra and making it future proof

Resolution: 1600 X 900

Will not be Overclocking



Budget: $1000 United States

Specs:

Motherboard: Gigabyte Intel GA-Z68A-D3H-B3

RAM: 8gb DDR3

HDD: Western Digital Caviar Green 2 TB

Graphics Card: SAPPHIRE AMD Radeon HD 6870 1gb

Power Supply: OCZ ModXStream Pro 700W

Case: Cooler Master Cooler Master Elite 430

 

[chin311]

I vote for the 2500k, price to performance ratio is best

 

[paperwastage]

2500k. use the extra money to buy an SSD or up your GPU (i'd say SSD... 1600x900 isnt anything too stressful)

 

[JonBlack]

2500k since it's a great bang for the buck and most folks on here say HT isn't all that for gaming (FWIW, since I'm not a gamer). Also, take a look at the Z77 series too for your motherboard.

Also, unless you need the larger drive size you might want to consider a SSD. If you need the monster drive space, then you should think about a SSD boot/HDD storage. If you are just going to get one drive you will probably be better served by not getting a green drive as your primary drive.

 

[cabotp]

The i7 is pointless for gaming. Since most games won't benefit from hyperthreading.



Sent from my GT-I9000 using Tapatalk 2

 

[Mars999]

DO not get the Green series they are not great for speed and shut down all the time to save on power which while gaming isn't what you want.... Stuttering may ensue...

Get a SSD for sure if you can afford it, and a 500GB HD or 1TB to dump games that don't really need an SSD to and drop all your music, movies onto the mechanical drive.

I would get the 2500k and up that GPU to say a 7950/7870/680

 

[Maximilian]

DO not get the Green series they are not great for speed and shut down all the time to save on power which while gaming isn't what you want.... Stuttering may ensue...

Get a SSD for sure if you can afford it, and a 500GB HD or 1TB to dump games that don't really need an SSD to and drop all your music, movies onto the mechanical drive.

I would get the 2500k and up that GPU to say a 7950/7870/680

Can be fixed in windows advanced power settings.

 

[aaksheytalwar]

No CPU is future proof. Haswell in 2013 will be a reasonable jump and will make all current CPUs outdated. Just save the extra $100 for your upgrade

 

[Dkcode]

Is the intel i7 2600k worth the extra money and performance for Gaming or should I just stick with i5 2500k


Gaming needs: Running all Games at Ultra and making it future proof

Resolution: 1600 X 900

Will not be Overclocking



Budget: $1000 United States

Specs:

Motherboard: Gigabyte Intel GA-Z68A-D3H-B3

RAM: 8gb DDR3

HDD: Western Digital Caviar Green 2 TB

Graphics Card: SAPPHIRE AMD Radeon HD 6870 1gb

Power Supply: OCZ ModXStream Pro 700W

Case: Cooler Master Cooler Master Elite 430

I would normally say get the absolute best you can afford, but looking at your build you have a very balanced system.

I concur with the others here about the hard drive, if your gaming get a WD Black at least.

You can always slap an SSD in later as a boot drive and use your HDD for games, which is something I do.

 

[SetiroN]

Is the intel i7 2600k worth the extra money and performance for Gaming or should I just stick with i5 2500k

Will not be Overclocking

Motherboard: Gigabyte Intel GA-Z68A-D3H-B3

I wonder why would you ever want to get a Z chipset and K cpu if not overclocking. Do you like wasting money?

With an i5 2380/2400 and basic H61 motherboard you'd end up with nearly identical performance, the same actually-taken-advantage-of features (you wouldn't need SATA 6Gb/s, RAID or Multi-GPU) and $150 more to invest in much more important stuff (=SSD, which would make the poorly performing WD green an acceptable choice-although I'd still go for a smaller 7200rpm drive).

 

[LagunaX]

If you will not be overclocking go Ivy Bridge and z77 or cheaper z75 if buying new (SATA 6Gb/s for maximizing SSD read/write speeds).

At the same stock speed (GHZ) the Ivy Bridge will be 4-10% faster.

A green drive is a horrible drive as a primary drive for gaming - the 5400-5900rpm speed is too slow for loading and retrieving data.

Minimum 7200rpm drive.

A $120 120gb Mushkin SSD (500+ read/write) as your main OS drive and the green drive for storage would be better.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820226236

 

[TekDemon]

Unless you can pick the 2600K up for $199 at microcenter I'd go with the 2500K. If you have a microcenter nearby though I would probably just get the 2600K.
I'm actually debating whether to upgrade my 2500K for a 2600K since microcenter is a 30 minute drive for me.

 

[LagunaX]

$199 deal at MicroCenter expired after the 15th I believe.

 

[blckgrffn]

$199 deal at MicroCenter expired after the 15th I believe.

Yep, its all done.

For a *gaming* build I think you would want to focus on your GPU first, CPU second, an SSD won't help you much.

It's a tough leap from the 6870 right now, because to get much better performance you might need to spend 2x as much... At least a 560Ti (probably more like a 448, 7850 or 570 to really step it up...)

You could get a ~1TB faster drive (Black?) and a ~64 GB Crucial M4 or similar and use SRT for a good taste of SSD performance without spending a fortune. Just know that the setup is a little more complicated and you should follow the directions that come with the motherboard or an online guide.

 

[Rvenger]

Can be fixed in windows advanced power settings.

Actually its fixed using the WDIDLE3 tool on Western Digital's site. Not possible through Windows. It needs an adjustment to the firmware in the harddrive. From 8 seconds to 300 seconds.

 

[pauldun170]

$199 deal at MicroCenter expired after the 15th I believe.

Phew......
I'm actually glad. Too much pressure to do an unnecessary upgrade.

 

[tweakboy]

Great responses. The 2600k is totally not neccesary since it has HT and games dont use HT.

grab the 2500k and I promise you wont know diff between a 2500 or 2600 .......... Games are GPU dependent. The 2500k will give you all the frames per second on a good graphics card. No bottleneck at all. Matter of facts games take on avg on quad cpus ,,, about 50 to 60 percent CPU usage. You want a real upgrade, one you will actually notice get a SSD ,,,,, then you will have a super comp,, everything popping and loading in 0 seconds,, hehe

 

[IntelEnthusiast]

I always advise that you go with the Intel® Core™ i5-2500K in a gaming system. There are a few gaming that can take advantage of more than 4 threads but they are rare and don't give much of a boost when they do. So you really get the best performance/value from the Intel Core i5-2500K and spend the difference on something like a better video card or an SSD and you will get overall better system performance.

 

[felang]

I don´t understand why people are recommending a 2500K instead of regular 2500 if he´s not overclocking...

 

[Maximilian]

I don´t understand why people are recommending a 2500K instead of regular 2500 if he´s not overclocking...

True but the option is there. A few years down the line his 2500k may be where the Q6600 is currently, he may want extra speed and can whack it up to 4.6ghz for that extra boost just like the Q6600 owners can whack theirs up to ~3.5ghz now.

 

[tweakboy]

I always advise that you go with the Intel® Core™ i5-2500K in a gaming system. There are a few gaming that can take advantage of more than 4 threads but they are rare and don't give much of a boost when they do. So you really get the best performance/value from the Intel Core i5-2500K and spend the difference on something like a better video card or an SSD and you will get overall better system performance.

If you use ... Photoshop, Premiere, Vegas, Sonar X1d then get the 2600k as these apps are HT 64bit apps.. there is not a game that needs more then 4GB

These HT apps need more then 4GB like 8GB , the HT apps min should be 16GB then 32GB.

 

[thelastjuju]

Since nothing is going to radically change until the next generation of consoles run out, you can't possibly future-proof with all that much confidence with anything out right now.. I actually think the i5 and i7 are both overkill for gaming, but the i5 is definitely a better bang for your buck.

I also hate the WD Green drives.. which would be a miserable bottleneck and are really meant for storage purposes.. but even for storage, their failure rates are pretty frightening.. Samsungs 2TB offering is far more dependable.

Maybe make room for a cheap SSD by not blowing money on a 700w power supply. This is literally between 300 and 400 watts more than your system will EVER need.. Most people with killawat report their systems browse the web at less than 50 watts, and unless you have multiple video cards, intensive games don't even exceed 350-400w.

 

[SetiroN]

Seriously people, why do you keep recommending a 2500K?
How can you advice for more expensive CPU and MoBo when he mostly cares about gaming and won't overclock?

i5-2380P+H61/67 -> i5-2500K+Z68 = +$80-100 and +0-3%...sometimes 5% gaming performance

HD6870 -> HD7850 = +$80-100 and +15% gaming performance

I understand you're not used to them, but there's nothing wrong with the lesser CPUs and chipsets.

 

[jacktesterson]

I honestly think if your not overclocking, go with the i5-23xx series.

Save $40 or more and get almost same stock performance.

 

[davel]

I can be wrong but some games don't like HT and can cause issues?