2500k to ???

P

psyclist

Gawd
Joined
Jan 25, 2005
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Hey guys,

Im running along just fine at 4.6 on my 2500k sitting under my TRUE120. But just saw a deal on the 2600k with a Noctua NH-D14 cooler for $299 combo. I am planning on building a computer for my rents, so I could find a nice home for the 2500k, but had just planned on buying a i3 21xx for them originally.

What do you guys think? dont do any rendering, I do do some photoshop and illustrator work. Gaming of course, and love to overclock... Im just wondering if down the road, because of the HT the 2600k will have more legs? and should be able to clock a little higher than 4.6 correct? I guess I could sell the NH-D14 as well, as my TRUE seems to work well still! Good cooler she is :)

What do you guys think?
 
psyclist said:
Well of course its all YMMV...but generally the 2600k's are better clockers than the 2500k's correct?
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No, I'd say they are about equal. Then again, I have read some testimonies that people are able to overclock their i7's slightly higher by disabling HyperThreading...

If you have the disposable income burning a hole in your pocket, then go for the i7. Otherwise, stick with the i3 for your parents system and use the money towards another 670, a larger SSD, etc for yourself.
 
No, I'd say they are about equal. Then again, I have read some testimonies that people are able to overclock their i7's slightly higher by disabling HyperThreading...
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These were my thoughts.
 
Oh ok then, I was under the understanding that these were binned higher than the 2500's. So what do you think of the 2600k's 8 threads vs 4 threads on the 2500k into the future? Seems like we are making progression of multithreaded applications and games are increasingly becoming more threaded...I would just like to get the amount of time out of it that i got out of my old Q6600 rig. And seeing how dissapointing IVB was for overclocking it seems as though the only way to go is 2600k/2700k
 
It's all unknown at this point. I bought an i7 over an i5 because I tend to go 5-6 years between upgrades, and there is the chance that we'll see the introduction of and then more and more games will be able to utilize the virtual cores. Whether or not that actually happens in the next 5-6 years will remain to be seen. Short version is, I had the budget for it, so why the hell not, and keep my fingers crossed. I'd be just fine with an i5.

Do you use any software for music or video editing/converting, or graphics design and animation? If so, there are a handful of those applications that can benefit from HT today.
 
It doesnt seem as though hyper threading is going anywhere, so Id imagine we would see more support for it as the years go on in gaming. I realize the next gen consoles will be dictating how a lot of games are developed in the future, hyper threaded? im guessing so but dont know for sure. Ugh well i did just get a new Job with the city as a GIS tech, and I can sell the Noctua NH-D14 to recoup some of the cost.

Also thinking...later on down the road i plan on picking up a second 670 for SLI...are the 8x PCI2.0 lanes going to be enough? If i were to go IVB then its bumped to 3.0...great, more questions lol
 
psyclist said:
So what do you think of the 2600k's 8 threads vs 4 threads on the 2500k into the future? Seems like we are making progression of multithreaded applications and games are increasingly becoming more threaded...
Click to expand...

The most multithreaded game on earth only uses FOUR cores. Even when you take the GPU limitation out (1440x900 High), EXTRA CORES DO NOTHING.

The funny thing is, people say that Hyperthreading does nothing for games. That's simply not true - HT is wonderful for the i3 in BF3:

http://en.inpai.com.cn/doc/enshowcont.asp?id=7986&pageid=8156

But the i7 does not benefit from HT over the i5 because the 4 threads are already satisfied by 4 cores:

http://en.inpai.com.cn/doc/enshowcont.asp?id=7986&pageid=8157

Battlefield has been the principal platform for multithreaded gaming for YEARS, and there's no sign of it extending beyond 4 threads anytime soon. It doesn't help that most PCs sold this year have 4 cores or less - that trend will continue through Haswell. Nobody else is anywhere close to providing the threading you see in BF3, so if they're not pushing the limit nobody else will for at least a few years.

Photoshop is typically limited to 1-2 cores depending on what you are doing, with some filter effects scaling to many cores. You probably won't see any difference with HT added.

As for other multithreaded uses:

You don't do any rendering. You don't do any compilation. You probably don't do tons of video conversion. Please note that the i5 is NO slouch at any of the above multithreaded tasks, not by any means, and the i7 is typically faster, but then we're only talking a %10-30 improvement.

I would just like to get the amount of time out of it that i got out of my old Q6600 rig.
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AND YOU WILL!

Just never forget the true attraction people had for the Q6600: it was relatively cheap for the amount of power you got. Spending $300 on a "maybe this will help" fling of an upgrade goes completely against this line of thinking.

And don't worry about the future - if you suddenly find yourself with a heavily-multithreaded workload, it should be easy to find a used 2600K. There will ALWAYS be enthusiasts who can't say no who are selling their old rigs and looking for that small performance bump. And given how immensely popular Sandy Bridge was, you'll have your pick of upgrades down the road for cheap (if you REALLY need it, but you probably won't).

BIG PICTURE:

I bought my 2500k on launch, and it's so fast that I have yet to overclock it. I expect to get another year out of it stock, then another couple years with it overclocked.

Haswell will probably bump performance by %10-15. Skylake could be %10-15 over Haswell, and *might* introduce more than 4 cores on their mainstream socket. That's supposed to be released in 2015. See why I'm not worried about the longevity of my 2500k? Neither should you.
 
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As long as your MoBo is PCI-E 3.0 capable and compatible with IB, then yes, no worries on bus bandwidth.

And to add to what defaultuser stated: if the wait for virtual core aware games does take longer than the useful life of a 2500K or even a 3770K, then it's time to upgrade anyway. Likely Skylake/Skymont.
 
save the money and get your parents and i3. It's not worth $100 "sidegrade" from 2500k to 2600k.
 
Haha, alright Ill listen to the lot of ya and stick with the 2500k...just thought $299 with a free $70-80 cooler was a good deal to jump on
 
I don't think you'd really see that much of a benefit in anything other than maybe BF3 or another game that might actually make use of 6 cores.
 
Actually, I've seen 2600Ks clock worse than 2500Ks consistently. Maybe this has changed with the more recent steppings, but I doubt it.

Fairly sure the HD-D14 is a better heatsink than the TRUE though.
 
I originally got the 2600k, the temp on it was horrible. Was at over 90c stock at load. Exchanged to 2500k+ credit, had np oc to 4.3, and temp is at least 25c less then the 2600k.
 
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