Will I ever upgrade my 2500k

[ohforfs]

I have been on a 2500k now for years and would love to upgrade. But, tick after tock, I just can't see a good reason to. The 2500k runs pretty cool at 4.3GHz.

Can anyone make a case for me upgrading my current system?

2500k, Z68 mobo, Nvidia 780GTX Ti, 16GB 1600 rated RAM, several Samsung Evo 840's.

The only thing that tempts me is the newer board that can take one of those new samsung PCIE drives (which might beat my Raid 0 Vertex 3's).

But, I keep coming back to the CPU and I see no reasonable upgrade that will improve my gaming or programming. Do you think we will see a decent CPU appearing or are we stuck at 4.4Ghz with more heat than light?

 

[Morgoth780]

There will definitely eventually be a reason to upgrade. As more and more games support more than 4 threads, and Intel's 6+ core processors become cheaper, there will be a 6+ core CPU worth upgrading to.

I'm not sure if there will ever be a 4-core worth upgrading to, unless you really needed the HT on the 4-core i7s for some reason.

 

[BSim500]

But, I keep coming back to the CPU and I see no reasonable upgrade that will improve my gaming or programming. Do you think we will see a decent CPU appearing or are we stuck at 4.4Ghz with more heat than light?

A lot of people are accepting increasingly longer periods between upgrades given the general slowdown in performance boost per generation. What used to be annually & every generation for me has dropped to every other generation / 2 years, and for many dropped again to once every 3 generations / 3-4 years. I plan on sticking to my i5-3570 for at least 2 more years until something drastic changes as I literally own no games that maxes it out (and ironically, I'm finding myself replaying more 'golden oldies' & Indie's out of sheer boredom of recent AAA games). Not really interested in 120Hz, triple-monitor or 4k gaming, 1080p @ 60Hz is good enough for me. At this rate it'll be another 6-7 years before the "next-next-gen" consoles start pushing things.

Likewise there's slow as in "my PC is genuinely not fast enough to run a game like this one" and then there's "slow" as in "Sigh... Another sh*tty overly-consolized, badly optimised port which causes stutter even on top-end systems due to the way it streams in data across area / zone transitions as a console would" which quite honestly, no amount of hardware upgrades will fix...

There's really two schools of thought - you upgrade because you have an "itch" to upgrade (or like benchmark p*ssing contests), or you upgrade only when your current system feels slow. I used to be in the former "rat race / e-peen" group in my teens / 20's, now in my 30's I'm more pragmatic. I'd rather upgrade a 256GB SSD to 512GB-1TB or even get a new keyboard & mouse / comfy chair (most important component of all!) than a +5-10% CPU perf which doesn't even feel any different in most games. On the bright side, I must be saving a ton of money... :thumbsup:

 

[guskline]

ohforfs, with your specs, no reason to upgrade the cpu

 

[Borealis7]

Boat = Same.

only going to upgrade my Video Card in the foreseeable future.

 

[Leyawiin]

I just built my first Intel system (i5 4690k) last week to replace an FX-6300 one and I'm still trying to pick my jaw up off the floor. Gaming performance and power efficiency are like night and day. Guess I'll be done for awhile now from the sound of it (which is fine - who wants to spend money unnecessarily?).

 

[avx81]

It's because when it comes to gaming the processor has a much smaller influence and in a lot of cases as seen from benchmarks there's little to no performance difference except for a few games. If you have an overclocked i5/7 intel you are good for a while. I'm sure someone will correct me here but it looks like when DX12 comes out the processor will be doing even less work. It won't be worth it for a while for those that have a sandy bridge to upgrade. Maybe skylake will be worth it but that's a long way off

 

[ohforfs]

@avx81: Well that is what I wonder most: Will Skylake be worth it? Current trends indicate no I hope I am wrong.

 

[FatherMurphy]

I have an i5-2500k humming merrily along at 4.3 Ghz and I often wonder the same thing. I don't foresee a situation where it will ever make sense to upgrade from a 2500k to another quad-core.

However, I anticipate being sorely tempted by the upcoming 5820k, 6 cores and 12 threads. That's 3x the threads as the 2500k, and if it can clock at 4.3ghz as well.....

But, in truth, that probably an upgrade more for the sake of upgrading than out of necessity.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I'm kind of in the same boat. (i5-3570k)

I suspect what will happen is that in 3-4 more years, we will upgrade to take advantage of vastly superior I/O in future chipsets (multiple PCI-E SSDs, SSD DIMMs, DDR-4, etc.) and the CPUs will have to be replaced as a result. That seems to be the area that is innovating the most at the moment.

Since you have a 780, I'm assuming you play fairly recent games - if new games required some weird feature Sandy Bridge didn't have, you might need an upgrade there too.

 

[poohbear]

alot of us are in the same boat. the upgrade itch hit me well over a year ago but everytime i look at my options there's nothing really compelling...spent my money on a new ultrabook instead (never owned a laptop before) and while im very happy with it when im travelling, there's not much tinkering or modifying one can do with a laptop. Guess its a sign of the times, everything is moving to mobile and efficiency, in terms of raw performance there's no reason to upgrade.

The new consoles were supposed to raise the bar in terms of graphics and hardware capabilities, but they haven't really changed the landscape much. Games still only use 4 threads maximum. maybe this will change as the figure out how to optimize games for 8 threads, then there'll be a push for octa cores, but i doubt we'll be seeing that before 2016.

 

[SAAA]

Hmmm unless Skylake turns out to be a total misstep it should give a decent boost even at the same thread/core count over Sandy Bridge, using numbers from various sources:
Ivy is ~5% better, Haswell 10%, Broadwell is again 5% (from Intel own admission) and let's suppose Skylake is yet another 10%.
That's about 30-35% better at the same clockspeed, I don't see problems in 14nm reaching 4.3Ghz like you have now so 2015 should be the right year to upgrade if any -k chip is released.
Temperatures: maybe they'll run hotter but as long as that's "normal" or within specks who cares?

 

[Lyfer]

It's the same with gpu's as well. If you purchased a 7950 or equivalent years ago there's little reason to upgrade unless your budget is over $400.

With the mobile sector exploding there hasn't been anything ground breaking in terms of leap in $-performance.

 

[poohbear]

It's the same with gpu's as well. If you purchased a 7950 or equivalent years ago there's little reason to upgrade unless your budget is over $400.

With the mobile sector exploding there hasn't been anything ground breaking in terms of leap in $-performance.

uhm, not to derail the topic, but GPUs have improved alot more than CPUs in the past 2 years. There's no way a 7950 is gonna be playing any of the games in the past 2 years with maximum settings especially @ 1440+ resolutions. BF4 would cripple a 7950.

 

[GrumpyMan]

I have almost the same setup with the exception of a 2600K running at 4.4 and have been doing so for 3 or so years. The only upgrade could be a GPU, maybe. I like saving money now, it's a good thing.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

I just got done upgrading a bunch of i3 systems to i5 2500Ks / 3570Ks that I picked up for cheap ($80 - $100). The 3570Ks hit 4.4GHz, the 2500Ks 4.5-4.6GHz. I'm set for a good while.

 

[isekii]

i'm still on the 2500k too~ it's been chugging along just fine without any issues and i don't even overclock.

 

[RussianSensation]

I am asking the same question. If 5820k hits 4.6Ghz on air, it sounds tempting on paper but there are still no games which truly take advantage of 6 cores. I think at this pace I can hold out until BW-E or Skylake-K. From an e-peen upgrade point of view I don't think anything is going to be more cool than X99 chipset until at least BW-E or SK-E.

4790K on Z97 doesn't impress me as much since it feels like a mild upgrade over 4770K OC. If you waited this long to upgrade, might as well go 6-core or wait for another year for something even better if your CPU doesn't feel slow. I don't see a lot of value in upgrading for the sake of upgrading. I mean even dual 880s would be a better upgrade for games.

 

[SlowSpyder]

I was AM2+ for five years. I miss the old days when CPU's would launch and we'd periodically get faster versions. Now they introduce some CPU's to the market and they'll have new products again in a year or so.

Also, I bought my 7970 nearly three years ago. Most I ever spent on a video card. But here I am three years later with a 3GB card and no real reason for more power at 19x12... for now.

 

[djnsmith7]

I'm in the same boat (for now). Depending on upcoming GPU performance (& native 4k support...HDMI 2.0), I'll probably go back to an SLI config.

Even then, there's a good chance the 2500k will be up to the task, so I may not upgrade for quite some time.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Wow! I don't feel alone in this thread!

We should start a club of Sandy/Ivy-Bridge Ambivalents.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Went from a i5 2500 non k to a i7 3770 for BF4,pull a high average fps but nothing mind blowing.Game feels a bit smoother but nothing where i can say everyone can make the swap.

The i5 was plenty for my other games.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Went from a i5 2500 non k to a i7 3770 for BF4,pull a high average fps but nothing mind blowing.Game feels a bit smoother but nothing where i can say everyone can make the swap.

The i5 was plenty for my other games.

That's a comparison worth noting. Many of the posters here are sporting "K" chips, and the OC'ability of the SB-Ks was almost a presupposition. Comparing the non-K chips would seem easy to overlook.

 

[venkman]

I have been on a 2500k now for years and would love to upgrade. But, tick after tock, I just can't see a good reason to. The 2500k runs pretty cool at 4.3GHz.

Can anyone make a case for me upgrading my current system?

2500k, Z68 mobo, Nvidia 780GTX Ti, 16GB 1600 rated RAM, several Samsung Evo 840's.

The only thing that tempts me is the newer board that can take one of those new samsung PCIE drives (which might beat my Raid 0 Vertex 3's).

But, I keep coming back to the CPU and I see no reasonable upgrade that will improve my gaming or programming. Do you think we will see a decent CPU appearing or are we stuck at 4.4Ghz with more heat than light?

Yes, when something breaks. It's the only reason I upgraded from my i7 920. X59 motherboards were $200 on ebay, so I just went with the latest when my motherboard fried. Don't really see any benefit of upgrading though. I bought my 920 in 2009 and since then have also done SSD and two video card upgrades (first to a 4890 and then to a 670). Upgrading my HDD to SDD and my video cards each provided monumental performance increases. CPU, not really.

 

[Sable]

Boat = Same.

only going to upgrade my Video Card in the foreseeable future.

Exactly this.