i5 2500k @4.4 -> i7 8700K @stock worth it?

chatman

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Hi,

I recently switched from a GTX 970 to a GTX 1080 due to switch from FHD to WQHD monitor.
I saw the expected increase in frames but not in all games equally (BF1 for example didn't profit that much)

Do you think a switch from my 2500K @4.4 to a i7 8700K StOCK (as I've read this one is not as easy to overclock so I consider worst case) is worth the invest?
I was initially considering to wait for the Z390 boards to be able to upgrade to a 8+ core later the year but this 8 core might be clocked lower so maybe not worth waiting for this one.

Your thoughts?

Thank you!
 
Each Intel generation is roughly 10% faster (occasionally closer to 5%) than the last at the same clock speed MHz. Core for Core.

It’s probably a worthwhile upgrade at this point if you are an enthusiast, and not worthwhile if you can’t identify what is particularly slow on your current system.
 
I owned a 2600k at 5G, then a 7700k at 5G and now this 8700k at 5.2G.

Each step was noticeable, this 8700k is a beast.

They overclock fairly simple tbh. Tons of reviews around how to approach it. For 5G you need a very good aircooler like Noctua DH15 or a decent AIO-WC setup.
If you delid the CPU cooling is a lot simpler and it likely even oc's better due to better present temps/lower volts.

Yeah, go for it. It is a BIG jump forward in responsiveness and lowest-fps. If you own VR, then defo DO IT :)

**edit May 19th..I would not buy it again but get a 2700X instead !
 
Last edited:
Hi,

I recently switched from a GTX 970 to a GTX 1080 due to switch from FHD to WQHD monitor.
I saw the expected increase in frames but not in all games equally (BF1 for example didn't profit that much)

Do you think a switch from my 2500K @4.4 to a i7 8700K StOCK (as I've read this one is not as easy to overclock so I consider worst case) is worth the invest?
I was initially considering to wait for the Z390 boards to be able to upgrade to a 8+ core later the year but this 8 core might be clocked lower so maybe not worth waiting for this one.

Your thoughts?

Thank you!

in the case of BF1 and pretty much every BF game since BF3 you'll see a performance increase due to the move from 4 threads to 12 threads. most other games you won't see much of a difference but that's changing a little quicker now. either way i'd still say upgrading to either the 8600k (6c6t) or 8700k (6c12t) is worth doing now that you have a gtx 1080.
 
in the case of BF1 and pretty much every BF game since BF3 you'll see a performance increase due to the move from 4 threads to 12 threads. most other games you won't see much of a difference but that's changing a little quicker now. either way i'd still say upgrading to either the 8600k (6c6t) or 8700k (6c12t) is worth doing now that you have a gtx 1080.

You could probably even get the 8400 and MCE it to 4Ghz and be set.
 
Thanks for all your input!

I have an Arctic Freezer 13 pn my CPU. Will this still sufficient for a (overclocke) 8700K?
 
I have an Arctic Freezer 13 pn my CPU. Will this still sufficient for a (overclocke) 8700K?

This cooler performs somewhat worse than the Hyper 212 according to the one review I found, and it's rated at max 200W by its manufacturer. So, depends on how overclocked. Delidded at <5ghz? Yes probably, depending on your voltages. No delid? Probably <4.7ghz. A lot depends on whether you care about being temperature stable under synthetic AVX loads or not. Given that you're spending the money for an 8700K personally I would just get a new cooler, something closer to a NH-D15.
 

Compare the 2600k to the 1500x/2400g, then extrapolate down from a 2200g/1300x to estimate 2500k performance. In threaded applications, you are looking ay a 3x performance boost going to the 8700k, even stock.

CPUs with 4/4 cores are really starting to take a hit in the last couple of years. This does not always show up in fps charts, but it is really apparent when 1% lows are shown meaning lots of stuttering. The stock 8700k would be a HUGE performance boost.
 
For 5G you need a very good aircooler like Noctua DH15 or a decent AIO-WC setup.

Will second the DH15, if you have the space and air flow it will out perform most AIOs on the market. It cools my 7700k at 5GHz easily (mine is de lidded though).
 
Thanks for the recommendation! Was just a little shocked by the price of this monster... is there a cheaper alternative to the DH-15? If it's only 4,x instead of 5 GHz my world won't break apart ;)
 
Thanks for the recommendation! Was just a little shocked by the price of this monster... is there a cheaper alternative to the DH-15? If it's only 4,x instead of 5 GHz my world won't break apart ;)

4.8ghz is pretty easy without any expensive cooling... the extra 200mhz is just bragging rights lol
 
My 8700k is ridiculously hot.

I settled on 4.6 @ 1.200 volts with 240mm AIO.

If you aren't interested in overclocking, just get the 8700 non-k.
 
My 8700k is ridiculously hot.

I settled on 4.6 @ 1.200 volts with 240mm AIO.

If you aren't interested in overclocking, just get the 8700 non-k.

Christ, I think MCE is 4.7 ghz. Gamers nexus just dis a video on MCE.

A expected, mother board manufactures enabled MCE by default because they did not want a bunch of idiot reviewers showing that there mother board was slower. I just wonder which vendor thought that MCE by default was a good idea. Seems like an MSI move. Got back up all those 'gaming' stickers.
 
Christ, I think MCE is 4.7 ghz. Gamers nexus just dis a video on MCE.

A expected, mother board manufactures enabled MCE by default because they did not want a bunch of idiot reviewers showing that there mother board was slower. I just wonder which vendor thought that MCE by default was a good idea. Seems like an MSI move. Got back up all those 'gaming' stickers.

Now to be honest, I'm an overclocking noob.

So there are probably all sorts of settings I could tweak to get things in line.

But basically running XMP at 3200mhz and 4.6 @ 1.200.

It was important to me to be stable and not get "too" hot, because I do a bunch of Handbrake encoding for long sessions. I guess if I was just gaming, I would feel more comfortable cranking it up a bit.

To the OP-
I waited for the 8700k to upgrade from my i7-3770.
Only the addition of 2 more cores seemed worth it.

Its a very nice upgrade.
 
My 8700k is ridiculously hot.

I settled on 4.6 @ 1.200 volts with 240mm AIO.

You probably need to delid. Any serious overclocking on CFL requires a delid imo. Delidded, a 240mm aio is plenty for an OCed 8700K. At 5ghz 1.38v (no avx offset) mine doesn't exceed 75C even running prime95 avx for hours. My case is pretty cramped too.
 
At stock speeds the 8700K is 53% faster.

But that's not the entire story. The 8700K has additional cores giving you great productivity in most cases.

There are also several new technologies under the hood with the 8700K.

Even if both the i5 2500K was overclocked along with the 8700K being overclocked, you're still going to see a 55% to 60% performance boost over the i5 2500K

Last but not least, the 8700K is going to possibly use less electricity and put out less heat.

http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-8700K-vs-Intel-Core-i5-2500K/3937vs619
 
I upgraded from overclocked 2500k to stock 8700k and I think it was worth it though I was not blown away. It is not day and night difference but 8700k is definitely faster.
 
Here is an excellent easy to follow guide on overclocking the 8700K.

I've personally used this and can tell you the results were spot on and completely stable.

Further more, the guide comes courtesy of Der8auer

 
Thanks for the recommendation! Was just a little shocked by the price of this monster... is there a cheaper alternative to the DH-15? If it's only 4,x instead of 5 GHz my world won't break apart ;)

You were shocked by the price of a Noctia cooler that has stayed relatively stable, but not the fact ddr4 has tripled in price?
 
You were shocked by the price of a Noctia cooler that has stayed relatively stable, but not the fact ddr4 has tripled in price?

Hehe, well this is a question of perception. Somehow I feel ram prices more justified than €85 for a piece of metal and a cooler. But basically you are right ;)
 
Hehe, well this is a question of perception. Somehow I feel ram prices more justified than €85 for a piece of metal and a cooler. But basically you are right ;)

I gagged on the retail asking $ for 128gb of 3200mhz for my 7820x.

I ended up doing a side gig for 3x64gb kits.

I just couldn't spend the $.
 

Nice comparison article.

From what I garnered from it:
If gaming at 1080p or less with a stout GPU= the move to an i7-8700K or R7-1800X from a SB or IB is pretty worthwhile.
If gaming at 1440p or more with a stout GPU = almost every game becomes so GPU bound that a CPU upgrade would be worthless at this time.

If that rings true, then I'd say save the money and keep the i5-2500K...for now.
 
A 2500 K can't even keep 60 FPS in some games so if you have a high-end GPU and actually want to get the most out of it then yes it is a noticeable bottleneck in some titles.
 
If gaming at 1440p or more with a stout GPU = almost every game becomes so GPU bound that a CPU upgrade would be worthless at this time.

If that rings true, then I'd say save the money and keep the i5-2500K...for now.

That's true of single player AAA games made within the last year or so, but it's mostly untrue of competitive titles, especially ones where you are trying to get the most FPS to drive high refresh rate monitors and don't care about maxed out graphics settings. For example Pubg, Fornite, Overwatch, Heroes of the Storm, CSGO, League of Legends... it's possible to get 150+ fps in all of these titles(depending on settings) at 1440p with a 1080 TI and 8700k, but a 2500K won't cut it.

Also, fps averages mean very little... and too many of these articles just data dump the averages and call it good. Where underpowered CPUs will really kill you is in the 1% and 0.1% minimums. If you are trying to maintain a MINIMUM of 100 fps and average of >144fps for competitive games at 1440p, then you need every ounce of CPU power you can get.
 
I went from an OCd 6600k to an 8700k and performance in two games (KCD and FFXV) actually decreased. Still trying to figure out why that would happen at the lowly resolution of 2560x1080.
 
Thanks guys! I decided now to wait with an upgrade for another year as I think at 1440p I will mostly run into GPU limit. I did however buy 16GB DDR3 2133 to replace my 8GB 1333 as I've read that faster memory can help a lot in CPU-limit situations and 16 GB is also often recomended
 
I was playing games on a VMware lab box until a couple months ago.
Supermicro board, E3 1270 Xeon, 32gb 1333 ECC ram, Sony 43" 4k tv.
Just used a 780to for a while, then got a hybrid 1080ti.

7700k & 7820x feel "smoother" than the old e3-1270, but it's not anything I'd spend $ for.


Machine learning basically pushed me to building a pair of new boxes bc I got btchd at many times for the $ of data generators, pushing large volumes of images around, etc. I needed a gpu & ram host. Play around with dog food Kubernetes runs, GPU accelerated runs to VM with SSD based block storage, just play with infrastructure sizing to see how a given stock model will run before we start burning up more of the company $.
 
So I run a 144hz gsync monitor with a 1070 at 1440p. When running my 2500k overclocked to 4.8 I was getting good frames even on newer games like ffxv. But I was noticing some hitching and stuttering Also I monitored my cpu and gpu usage during the game with Riva tuner.
So I saw my cpu pegged out quite a bit. At 1440p I didn't think was much of a problem but gpu would drop to 80% at times.

So I picked up the 8700k this weekend and switched over and now my games run smooth as butter even down as low as 38fps. I would say the upgrade for me feels like I upgraded my gpu even though I get around the same fps.

Two things though.... Going from a ssd to an nvme I can't tell ant difference when loading windows, apps, or games. Worthless upgrade in my opinion unless you need that speed for a specific task. Two, I cannot overclock past 4.4ghz linking all cores at 1.14 volts without temps spiking beyond 75c. I'm using a h100v2 watercolor and reseatted it several times with different paste. I use prime 95 to test stability and make sure all 12 cores stay working the whole time. This chip needs a delid bad. Although at 4.4 it's still a beast compared to my old 2500k.
 
You are purely CPU limited with that very old Sandy B.

Get a coffee lake or wait on coffee lake S and your GPU will come to life Instantly. I promise you or your money back.
 
Does g-sync help older CPUs if they have dips in frame rates?

Does the 7700k perform like the 8600k? I'm seeing some Kaby Lake depreciation already on the used market.
 
I went from a 2700k @ 4.6ish to a 6700k @ 4.6ish and most games especially big MP games like BF1 etc ARE running MUCH better so I imagine even more so with a 8700k! As far as possible lower frames this may shed some light on the issue. When I 1st got the 6700k I actually had insanely high cpu usage a lower FPS until I turned off all the power saving junk in the bios and BAM! My FPS and smoothness in gameplay went through the roof!
 
I went from a 2700k @ 4.6ish to a 6700k @ 4.6ish and most games especially big MP games like BF1 etc ARE running MUCH better so I imagine even more so with a 8700k! As far as possible lower frames this may shed some light on the issue. When I 1st got the 6700k I actually had insanely high cpu usage a lower FPS until I turned off all the power saving junk in the bios and BAM! My FPS and smoothness in gameplay went through the roof!

Was that with your 1070 between both CPUs?
 
Huuuge upgrade, and the 2500k has been quite a workhorse over the last 7 years.
 
Hi,

I recently switched from a GTX 970 to a GTX 1080 due to switch from FHD to WQHD monitor.
I saw the expected increase in frames but not in all games equally (BF1 for example didn't profit that much)

Do you think a switch from my 2500K @4.4 to a i7 8700K StOCK (as I've read this one is not as easy to overclock so I consider worst case) is worth the invest?
I was initially considering to wait for the Z390 boards to be able to upgrade to a 8+ core later the year but this 8 core might be clocked lower so maybe not worth waiting for this one.

Your thoughts?

Thank you!

If you are not overclocking, then why a K version? BTW Ryzen 2 should be about as fast and a lot cheaper.
 
If you are not overclocking, then why a K version? BTW Ryzen 2 should be about as fast and a lot cheaper.
I bought a 4790K because of the stock boost clocks and ability to undervolt, overclocking can wait till after the warranty and when it is actually warranted. Why have it at 5GHz and 1.4v cranking mad heat just for games?
I recently switched from a GTX 970 to a GTX 1080.
So you got a GTX 970 for sale now? I'd love to get another for SLI ::)
Like someone else said you will feel it in the minimums with the old CPU. Waiting for Z390 isn't a bad idea, if it has nothing interesting then at least you will find a cheaper 8600/8700k.
 
I bought a 4790K because of the stock boost clocks and ability to undervolt, overclocking can wait till after the warranty and when it is actually warranted. Why have it at 5GHz and 1.4v cranking mad heat just for games?

So you got a GTX 970 for sale now? I'd love to get another for SLI ::)
Like someone else said you will feel it in the minimums with the old CPU. Waiting for Z390 isn't a bad idea, if it has nothing interesting then at least you will find a cheaper 8600/8700k.
Getting another 970 to run in SLI would be a very stupid thing to do.
 
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