Is the 2600K the most future proof CPU ever?

[kirbyrj]

I have 2 rigs still running i7-920@4ghz for day-to-day gaming since 2008. Almost 1 decade and still feel like a new CPU honestly!

The pace of CPU developement has been atrociously slow. Just added USB 3 cards and they still do just about everything I need at home, including encoding & gaming.

If Threadripper can match this, I'll be quite happy.

Pretty much. Maybe NVMe support via PCIe card and X58 still is mostly fine. My old Sabertooth 990FX R.2.0 added NVMe support via PCIe addon card. It works well enough.

 

[frozentundra123456]

The oldest and most future proof CPU ever is actually AMD A10-5800K Trinity. Intel Core i7-2600K is nearly-close, but its GPU is getting slow and uncompetitive today (unless you put in your graphic card).

Seriously?? That cpu was outclassed in cpu performance the day it came out and the apu's have never been close to even mid level dgpus in gaming performance. It wasnt even "present proof".

 

[Zor Prime]

It says something about the longevity of CPUs when a Phenom II X4 or Kentsdale C2Q can't play modern games because of lacking SSE4 and not because of horsepower.

eh ... I haven't encountered those games yet with my old Phenom II, didn't even know that was an issue. I play Mass Effect Andromeda & DOOM which are recent.

 

[Sunburn74]

I have absolutely no desire to upgrade my OCed 2600K since I bought it roughly 6 months after it came out. Prior I was on a roughly but still fairly regular 2 year upgrade cycle. The 2600K is like the first non-crazy, has her act together girl to move in with you. You don't see it coming but 7 years later she's still there and you're perfectly happy even though she is getting slightly older and there are all these flashy young things running around.

 

[kwalkingcraze]

Seriously?? That cpu was outclassed in cpu performance the day it came out and the apu's have never been close to even mid level dgpus in gaming performance. It wasnt even "present proof".

Yeah, but new CPUs are more about better graphics than frequency speed these days.

 

[Shlong]

I had an i7 2600K at near 5ghz before Ryzen and it held up very well. Could play all the latest games with the GTX 1080 at ultra settings. The only limiting factor was the DDR3 slower speeds, lack of SATA 3.0 ports (I only had 2) and lack of USB 3.0 ports (only had 2).

 

[aigomorla]

i honest would say a gulftown on a x58 is more future proof then a 2600k, given the fact gulftowns are 6c/12t.

 

[whm1974]

i honest would say a gulftown on a x58 is more future proof then a 2600k, given the fact gulftowns are 6c/12t.

Yeah but how many people have Gulftowns vs how many have 2600ks?

 

[kirbyrj]

Yeah but how many people have Gulftowns vs how many have 2600ks?

Not only that, but the used market X58 platforms were a fortune compared to a Z68/Z77 boards, especially when the cheap 6c/12t Xeons came off lease.

 

[eton975]

eh ... I haven't encountered those games yet with my old Phenom II, didn't even know that was an issue. I play Mass Effect Andromeda & DOOM which are recent.

Planetside 2 for a while AFAIK.

 

[bigboxes]

i honest would say a gulftown on a x58 is more future proof then a 2600k, given the fact gulftowns are 6c/12t.

That may be where I go in the future. My i7 920 resides in my HTPC now. But like you said, I still have that platform. If I want to upgrade it with a cheap gulftown in the future I am ready.

 

[scannall]

That may be where I go in the future. My i7 920 resides in my HTPC now. But like you said, I still have that platform. If I want to upgrade it with a cheap gulftown in the future I am ready.

A Xeon 5650 or 5660 is under $20 now. 6 cores/12 threads of over clocking goodness.

 

[bigboxes]

A Xeon 5650 or 5660 is under $20 now. 6 cores/12 threads of over clocking goodness.

That will be for when I upgrade my file server. I'll just move the x58 guts out and put some insanely stupidly cheap xeon in and BAM!

 

[kwalkingcraze]

In terms of motherboard that is secure and safe-proof, the Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 is the world's best-selling AM3 board of all time with sales higher than any LGA1150 boards. When you have one that dies, you will always find another same 78LMT-USB3 any day or year since so many were sold. Other boards in different socket are tremendously difficult to find one used due to low sales (Asus B85 Vanguard LGA1150 board is a great example.)

 

[bigboxes]

In terms of motherboard, safe-socket and security-proof, the Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 is the world's best-selling AM3 board of all time with sales higher than any LGA1150 boards. When you have one that dies, you will always find another same 78LMT-USB3 any day or year since so many were sold. Other boards in different socket are tremendously
difficult to find one used due to low sales (Asus B85 Vanguard LGA1150 board is a great example.)

Sad.

 

[Ratman6161]

50/50 that and lack of competition allowed Intel to sit back and do the bare minimum from year to year. See this rushed Coffee Lake launch and upgrade of the lineup from top to bottom? There was no technological barrier preventing them from doing this 3 or 4 years ago.

I think lack of competition is only a small part of it. The real reason is that the amount of computing power most people need leveled off. It actually leveled off for a lot of people in the days of the core 2 duo. NOTE: As I often mention I don't give a crap about games. So don't hand me arguments about gaming. At work, we have been replacing systems simply because we are on a 4 year life cycle, not because what we had at the time wasn't fast enough. The work we were doing with our PC's stagnated and we just did not need faster CPU's.

As others have mentioned, the real story of the last few years has been SSD's. While my 2600K system remained static over the years in terms of motherboard and CPU, it did switch from spinning disks to SSD's and that was a far bigger update as far as responsiveness and the way the system feels to use than any CPU upgrade I ever made. Also, when DDR3 got cheap, it went from 8 to 16 GB RAM.

For my own systems at home, the last time I did a rebuild because what I had was not fast enough was when I went from an Athlon 64 X2 to a Core 2 Quad 6600. In April of 2011 I built a system based on an i7-2600K, gave it a mild overclock to 4.2 Ghz and ran it until April of 2017. But I did not replace the core 2 quad because it wasn't fast enough - I did it because I had upgrade fever and just wanted to. The Core 2 Quad continued on as part of a VMware lab environment for several more years. Likewise when I built my Ryzen based system in April 2017 the i7-2600K was still plenty fast for my needs - just upgrade fever once again. There was a minor technical justification in that I'm doing a lot more virtualization on my desktop than I used to and the 12 threads on the R51600 are useful for that...but if I'm being honest with myself, I didn't really need an upgrade.

I've still got the 2600K along with its Z68 motherboard and 16 GB of RAM sitting here in a box and sooner or later will probably build a system out of it (I think the only thing my parts bin is lacking for the project is a power supply). It will still be a great system too and more than adequate for most people...though not sure what I will do with it

 

[whm1974]

I'm wondering how "future proof" my Haswell i5-4670 system is? I had it for four years now and I'm expecting it last last me at least another two to three years before I have to replace the CPU.

 

[.vodka]

Only having 4 threads is what's killing those systems lately, for more demanding tasks or games.

If you can get a cheap 4770k or 4790k, you'll get many more years out of that system. Consider the R5 1600 as your reference for what "cheap" means here.

Of course you can then delid+CLU and overclock.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Yeah, but new CPUs are more about better graphics than frequency speed these days.

Again, I say "Seriouisly", the new Ryzen everybody seems to be raving about doesnt even

I'm wondering how "future proof" my Haswell i5-4670 system is? I had it for four years now and I'm expecting it last last me at least another two to three years before I have to replace the CPU.

Depends on what you do and how demanding you are. My i5 2300 is more than enough for what I do, including gaming on mostly older titles. So I see no reason to upgrade. A gpu upgrade would definitely be a bigger step up. (No interest really in any of the "newer" cpu demanding games or in multiplayer. I say "newer" in quotes, because pretty much everything coming out these days is just an update to older games with new maps, modestly better graphics, and outrageous system requirements.) New Elder Scrolls single player, where are you??

 

[Paratus]

Still on an OC'd i7 920 X58 @ 3.6GHZ.

It's only been recently that the computer has been feeling a bit slow. So I'll upgrade this Christmas.

The thing I miss was it was easy to pick out an i7 920 X58 combo as the best bang for long term buck.

Now the decision sucks.
Kabylake, SkylakeX, Coffelake, Ryzen, Threadripper. What the hell do I buy?

The X58 machine had 4C8T, triple channel RAM, and 40 PCIe 2.0 lanes. I'd hate to go back to a 4C8T, dual channel, 16PCIe machine. That kind of throws mainstream kabylake out and possibly Ryzen, (although I'd at least get 8C16T)

Skylake X is so damn expensive to get above 28PCIe lanes, (thanks Intel).

Right now it looks like maybe Threadripper. X399 looks like the best platform. I'm just concerned about the single threaded performance.

 

[scannall]

Still on an OC'd i7 920 X58 @ 3.6GHZ.

It's only been recently that the computer has been feeling a bit slow. So I'll upgrade this Christmas.

The thing I miss was it was easy to pick out an i7 920 X58 combo as the best bang for long term buck.

Now the decision sucks.
Kabylake, SkylakeX, Coffelake, Ryzen, Threadripper. What the hell do I buy?

The X58 machine had 4C8T, triple channel RAM, and 40 PCIe 2.0 lanes. I'd hate to go back to a 4C8T, dual channel, 16PCIe machine. That kind of throws mainstream kabylake out and possibly Ryzen, (although I'd at least get 8C16T)

Skylake X is so damn expensive to get above 28PCIe lanes, (thanks Intel).

Right now it looks like maybe Threadripper. X399 looks like the best platform. I'm just concerned about the single threaded performance.

You can always go the cheap route for now. Xeon 56xx 6 core/12 thread Westmere's are $20 or so. And easy to hit 4.2 Ghz on. Often higher depending on the luck of the draw.

 

[pyro226]

I have it on good authority that I stand to gain a 128gb ssd in the near future.

I'm sure you know what you're doing, but:

I'd strongly recommend a 500GB one if you can afford it. I tried going the 128 GB option and it didn't work out so well. I play skyrim, Starcraft 2, maybe a few small steam games and installed MS office. That's about all the drive had room for. There's overprovisioning which doesn't help either.

Drives can last many, many years if you're lucky.

I had originally bought a Samsung 840 Pro on sale as the 850 series was coming out. 128 GB wasn't enough, so holiday season, I bought a 480GB (Sandisk?) and reinstalled.

My 840 Pro went into my laptop for a while. It really helped when the laptop hit 3GB ram usage. The HDD used to freeze the laptop for 30+ seconds as it tried to write to the swap / pagefile. Also, SLC of the 840 Pro should have fair endurance even at 128GB capacity, so I'm not worried about using it as swap / pagefile.

Eventually, it became my root linux drive on my desktop and put /home onto a HDD (similar to having your documents folders on a HDD in windows) and will happily reside next to my other 4 drives I bought a 1TB HDD for data, later wanted a 2TB so I could back up the 1TB easily in case of drive failure. Then there's the DVD drive... I shouldn't buy any more drives XD I'm running out of both bays and ports.

Overall, I suggest buying more than what you think you need. My 95% full 16GB cell phone agrees

I started with a 32GB 4th gen iPod. Was way too much. Read everyone online saying go for at least 32 GB in a phone, but felt I'd be okay with a 16GB Andriod since 32 was too big on an iPod. I mean, it's manageable, but I don't have room for as much as I'd like and the Nexus 5X doesn't support SD cards

 

[Asphodelus]

Now that I think about it, I wonder what happened to Intel's Israel CPU design team? Everything they gave us from Banias (Pentium M) through to Sandy Bridge was great. It was only when the... uhh, "less talented", to be generous, Oregon team (who were also responsible for the Pentium 4 fiasco) took over again starting with Haswell that the era of stagnation started...

 

[jmelgaard]

Pretty much. Maybe NVMe support via PCIe card and X58 still is mostly fine. My old Sabertooth 990FX R.2.0 added NVMe support via PCIe addon card. It works well enough.

There is the Memory barrier though, I only just recently upgraded my i7-970 because 24GB had become a bottleneck a good while back, CPU wise I have never feelt the need for more and I am almost convinced that it could break 10 years had it not been for the platform (started on a i7-920 around it's launch, so the platform was actually getting really close to 10 years), storage wise there where several paths that one could take to boost that, NVM'e via PCIe as you mention, in my case I have been running 5x 256 GB SSD's on a LSI raid controller, which for a 7 year old setup isn't bad compared to my new 1TB Samsung 960 Pro M.2 ssd.

Granted this is because I have some workflows that requires allot of memory, I think that for more than 90% of all end users is fine with 24GB.
E.g. for gaming my old setup was still really solid, at least for my mediocre gaming needs, it's just for my other more memory intensive workflows I had been bottle-necked for quite some time.

 

[Asphodelus]

How does one get an NVMe SSD to work on X58? I was under the impression that since NVMe is a brand new protocol, BIOS support is required to read from and write to the drive at all, much less use as a boot drive, and that PCIe AHCI is as good as it gets for anything older than Z87.