2600k with a single gpu still relevant?

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4LC4PON3

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  • Ok here is my issue and I won't make it long. I got laid off 2 months ago and had to sell my 6600k setup to pay bills. So today I decided to trade a buddy of mine my Xbox one + games for his pc.

    The pc specs are

    I7 2600k
    16gb DDR 3
    X2 Intel 320 series 120gb in raid o. So 240gb ssd
    1tb western digital blue hd
    Corsair cx 750w
    MSI H67MA-ED55
    Gtx 660

    Here is my issue he has a non ocing board with the 2600k and a weak gpu. If I buy a new board to pc and a gpu like a 1060 or a 1070. Will there be alot if bottleneck on the 1070?

    Obviously I'll need a new board to pc and a gpu. Will it be worth it buying a new board or should I just keep it as is a buy a new graphics card and save for a better pc in down the road?

    What im asking is if the 2600k is still relevant or not. Obviously I don't have funds right now to do anything but I'm just getting advice on where to go from here


Correct me if I'm wrong but can you oc in h67 motherboards even a little? This is the board I have right now. I'm now sure of the power phase

H67MA-ED55 | MSI Global | Motherboard - The world leader in motherboard design
 
You might be able to OC a /little/ via a BCLOCK increase, but that can come with its own set of issues. I've never owned a H series board so I'm not 100% certain. Some quick googleing brought up contradictory information. Generally multiplier OCing is more effective and stable. To do that you'll need a P or Z series board; the cheapest option that'll still give you solid performance would be an Intel DZ77SL-50K for around $60, which is basically the single 16x slot version of the board I'm using. DZ77SL50K INTEL DESKTOP ATX MOTHERBOARD LGA1155 i3 i5 i7 E3 CPU HTSNK & I/O | eBay

If you're willing to go with a Z68 and MATX it can get even cheaper, like $35 or so after shipping. Intel Desktop Board DZ68AF new other - With Accessories | eBay

The 2600K is still a very capable chip, especially with a solid OC on it to around 4.5Ghz, which should be easily doable. Yes, you'll see lower minimum framerates in newer titles, and it's a bigger deal in some than others -- large scale RTS tend to be hard on CPUs, as does GTA V and some others. Most games will play fine though. People seem to think I'm crazy, but I'm doing fine with a 2500K and 980Ti SLI. I might not be getting 90 FPS minimum, but for me as long as it stays above 60 I really don't care.

Remember to budget for a HSF as well, unless you already have one (doubtful since it's a H series board).
 
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I really wanted to upgrade to Skylake this time around but it still does not seem right to me. Once your 2600K is OCed, the gaming numbers start to even out with a Skylake CPU. If you take both cpus stock to stock then yes the skylake will win, but the problem is the 2600K OCs very nicely and it will help a lot. My 2600K OCed and my 980GTX Oced both on water doesn't seem to give me any problems at all. I mainly game at 1080p or 1440p which doesn't give the CPU or the GPU I have any problems. If you get a 1070gtx and OC the cpu a little bit you will have no problems at all.
 
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I am very happy with my 2700k @ 4.5GHz. I have it paired with a GTX 1080 for 1440p gaming. Works great.
 
Thanks you guys I appreciate it. I'll be gaming at 1080p and I don't use any AA in games so that should help alot to keep fps stable. I will snag a cpu cooler when I can a better board and im not sure but because of my lay off yes im working now but it's not paying much i may just go with a rx480 or 1060 depending on cost
 
My 2500k is still working fine, but I think one thing that has begun to be noticeable is watching Netflix or Plex while gaming does noticeably effect my FPS. With a 2500k/GTX980 I can easily maintain 60fps in Dark Souls 3 for instance, but turn on Netflix and I'm at a constant 40~ fps. Still very playable, but situations like this is where the Sandy Bridge cpus are showing their age.

For pure gaming though, they are still fantastic, trying to watch 1080p+ content while gaming is about the only time I notice I'm starting to be CPU limited. And for me, that is like 80% of the time I'm on my PC, so I really want to upgrade soon.
 
Yes sb is still a beast i had a 3930k at 4.8 till a few months ago when the mb deid and i notice just a few fps higer in most games
 
ZacharyS said:
My 2500k is still working fine, but I think one thing that has begun to be noticeable is watching Netflix or Plex while gaming does noticeably effect my FPS. With a 2500k/GTX980 I can easily maintain 60fps in Dark Souls 3 for instance, but turn on Netflix and I'm at a constant 40~ fps. Still very playable, but situations like this is where the Sandy Bridge cpus are showing their age.

For pure gaming though, they are still fantastic, trying to watch 1080p+ content while gaming is about the only time I notice I'm starting to be CPU limited. And for me, that is like 80% of the time I'm on my PC, so I really want to upgrade soon.
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As someone with a 2500k I don't doubt the evidence - sometimes there is a noticeable performance loss when doing games while watching watching high-quality video. However, my gut tells me this is more about resource management than anything else. Watching 60fps 1080p or 4k video in your browser is no joke.

Working with WebGL on a low end GPU taught me instances competing for GPU resources have a great impact on performance. While there are ways to manage things, it can happen. Depending on the application, active tabs can impact overall performance even the browser is NOT on focus. Same with xbmc/plex, etc.
 
If you can get a cheap board and a used GPU depending on what you play, could be the best budget way to go.

My sb rig has played everything I've chucked at it at 1440p recently, pretty happy considering she's getting close to 5 years old.
 
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I'm still running an overclocked 2600K @ 4.5 GHz on an Asus p8p67 pro board and I recently upgraded the GPU to a 6 GB GTX 1060. It's still an awesome gaming machine and the reason I haven't upgraded the CPU is that I've never had my CPU max'ed out with 100% cpu utilisation on any game and I'm quite confident my PC has another 500 MHz worth of overclocking up its sleeve if I need it (based on the very low voltages I'm running to the get the overclock I am running). My previous GPU was a GTX 660 Ti and that was still quite capable with most recent games at 1080P, assuming you took the time to optimise settings and didn't expect to max out graphics details with the latest games. With the 1060, I'm now running everything with details cranked to max at 1080P, with very solid FPS (it's rare for my PC to drop below 60 FPS).
I'll probably start to seriously consider a CPU and motherboard upgrade in another year or so, maybe two, but right now the 2600K is still very capable. Get a decent motherboard (consider finding a decent second hand board to cut costs) that's known for good oc'ing of these chips, get the cooling really well sorted and you should have no problems getting very good performance :)
 
muz_j said:
I'm still running an overclocked 2600K @ 4.5 GHz on an Asus p8p67 pro board and I recently upgraded the GPU to a 6 GB GTX 1060. It's still an awesome gaming machine and the reason I haven't upgraded the CPU is that I've never had my CPU max'ed out with 100% cpu utilisation on any game and I'm quite confident my PC has another 500 MHz worth of overclocking up its sleeve if I need it (based on the very low voltages I'm running to the get the overclock I am running). My previous GPU was a GTX 660 Ti and that was still quite capable with most recent games at 1080P, assuming you took the time to optimise settings and didn't expect to max out graphics details with the latest games. With the 1060, I'm now running everything with details cranked to max at 1080P, with very solid FPS (it's rare for my PC to drop below 60 FPS).
I'll probably start to seriously consider a CPU and motherboard upgrade in another year or so, maybe two, but right now the 2600K is still very capable. Get a decent motherboard (consider finding a decent second hand board to cut costs) that's known for good oc'ing of these chips, get the cooling really well sorted and you should have no problems getting very good performance :)
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I did the exact same thing. I don't dip below 60FPS's except pre-rendered cutscenes.

If you have the cash get a 1060 6GB--if you don't find a used 970/980 on the forum for cheap.

Hell for $200 you can have a great debate between the 1060 3GB/6GB, 480, 970/980...all of which will greatly improve your setup.
 
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skeeder said:
I did the exact same thing. I don't dip below 60FPS's except pre-rendered cutscenes.

If you have the cash get a 1060 6GB--if you don't find a used 970/980 on the forum for cheap.

Hell for $200 you can have a great debate between the 1060 3GB/6GB, 480, 970/980...all of which will greatly improve your setup.
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Thanks currently I don't have the funds just because 2 months ago i got laid off. Working now but paying back bills.

Yeah I'm going to look into a couple things. The stock cooler is loud so def needs to be replaced and the gpu needs replacing as well.

I found out that he had mismatched ram in the system. X2 sticks 8gb corsair vengeance 2133. And x2 sticks of ram = 8gb of 10600.

I took out the 10600 and set up the vengeance in dual channel but now I'm at 8gb instead of 16
 
No real downside to it being mismatched unless you were getting instability. Running quad channel would more than make up for any speed difference.
 
silent-circuit said:
No real downside to it being mismatched unless you were getting instability. Running quad channel would more than make up for any speed difference.
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I had no instability issues I was just thinking that the games would benefit from the 2133 speed. If I reinstall the other 2 sticks all my ram will be at 10600 which is slower. Unless it won't really matter
 
The impact from a bit slow ram would be minimal but the impact of running out of RAM would be destructive to performance.
Disabling CoreParking will have more impact than your mismatched memory


muz_j said:
the reason I haven't upgraded the CPU is that I've never had my CPU max'ed out with 100% cpu utilisation on any game
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You do realize you can be CPU bottle neck at 100%/number cores. So in your case anything 25% or above can mean CPU is the bottleneck.
The proper way to see this is to use process explorer and see under thread utilization of the process you are curios about. If any of its threads hit 25% you are CPU bottlenecked.
 
On a side I was looking in my bios and was wondering my my motherboard isn't reading my ram at 2133. Apparently my motherboard oy supports 10600 or 1333 so it's knocking my ram to 1333 and no real option to run it at 2133
 
4LC4PON3 said:
I had no instability issues I was just thinking that the games would benefit from the 2133 speed. If I reinstall the other 2 sticks all my ram will be at 10600 which is slower. Unless it won't really matter
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4LC4PON3 said:
On a side I was looking in my bios and was wondering my my motherboard isn't reading my ram at 2133. Apparently my motherboard oy supports 10600 or 1333 so it's knocking my ram to 1333 and no real option to run it at 2133
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Since you're going from dual to quad channel, you're halving speed but doubling bandwidth... leaving you with nothing lost or gained, but more memory available. Actually, since the board isn't running the faster RAM at full speed you're actually cutting speed by about a quarter but doubling bandwidth, leaving you with more throughput. A lot more. So put the other sticks back in, no reason not to use them.
 
ok thank you. i was not sure if it would hurt me or not. Of course i would like 4 matching sticks of the same ram but im stuck with what i got.
 
4LC4PON3 said:
ok thank you. i was not sure if it would hurt me or not. Of course i would like 4 matching sticks of the same ram but im stuck with what i got.
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Sorry -- got your thread and another mixed up where a guy is talking about an X58 based system.

Your board is dual channel only, not quad channel, so you are losing some performance -- dropping from 1333 to 1066 or whatever the case may be on the RAM speed -- but chances are you're better off with more RAM all the same. There's also a good chance that with a little voltage bump you can get all 4 sticks running at 1333 anyway, if the BIOS even allows adjustment of RAM voltage.
 
SvenBent said:
The impact from a bit slow ram would be minimal but the impact of running out of RAM would be destructive to performance.
Disabling CoreParking will have more impact than your mismatched memory

You do realize you can be CPU bottle neck at 100%/number cores. So in your case anything 25% or above can mean CPU is the bottleneck.
The proper way to see this is to use process explorer and see under thread utilization of the process you are curios about. If any of its threads hit 25% you are CPU bottlenecked.
Click to expand...

I'll just mention that in my professional life I've been contracted to do very deep level performance analysis work on large scale windows server farms in relation to distributed applications. In short - yes - I'm quite aware of how to manage, diagnose and resolve OS, hardware and software performance issues... but thanks for asking :)

...and for the record I wouldn't suggest relying on your method re: CPU utilisation - that's a little bit simplistic in my view.
 
muz_j said:
I'll just mention that in my professional life I've been contracted to do very deep level performance analysis work on large scale windows server farms in relation to distributed applications. In short - yes - I'm quite aware of how to manage, diagnose and resolve OS, hardware and software performance issues... but thanks for asking :)

...and for the record I wouldn't suggest relying on your method re: CPU utilisation - that's a little bit simplistic in my view.
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I've just seen a lot of people proclaiming they are not CPU bottlenecked because they are below 50% (or whatever they say) overall CPU usage and then when you look into it, they have one thread that is eating up one core fully and would love for some more CPU speed. But because the program is not threaded enough to use all cores, the overall CPU utilization is low, but still bottlenecked by corespeed.

Your argument seemed to be using that way of measurements in the way you presented it.


I would be intersted in what way you DO in fact measure CPU bottleneck if measuring by thread utilization/limits is not your preferred way.
 
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SvenBent said:
Your argument seemed to be using that way of measurements in the way you presented it.

I would be intersted in what way you DO in fact measure CPU bottleneck if measuring by thread utilization/limits is not your preferred way.
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I wasn't making any sort of argument - I was simply offering very high level advice.

My point re: your comment about process explorer etc (and they're great tools btw) is that's a high level view and if it were me and I felt I had problem, I would generally use Process Explorer and other random tools like Process Monitor for a quick overview, then use Windows Performance Monitor to drill into things at a detailed level on a per core basis.
Perfmon setup is also critical - especially around the collection intervals being used - that needs to be granular enough to highlight the problem you're trying to understand, but you also don't want to collect so much data that it becomes hard to analyse.

So you're comment about 25% utilisation is a high level comment and its meaning depends on how that 25% is distributed across all of the (logical) CPU cores...

Mark Russinovich's videos detailing how to perform troubleshooting and performance analysis are a good place to start in terms of methodology.
 
muz_j said:
a lot of stuff
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I wasn't making any sort of argument - I was simply offering very high level advice.
Then i did take you post in a slighty wrong way. probably because of pet peves from having had this debate all around :)

So you're comment about 25% utilisation is a high level comment and its meaning depends on how that 25% is distributed across all of the (logical) CPU cores...
i agree on this but i think you misunderstood me. im not looking for a 25% CPU utilization. it just that anything above this MIGHT have a CPU bottleneck (but it not a proof of it)
Why im looking at thread info is because i can see one thread ( software) and see how bussy it is. If a thread (again software) is using its core 100% it means it not getting enough juice ( or just exactly enough but highly unlikely)
This threads has taken all your CPU can deliver. the facts that its just a single thread mean it cant take more than 25% on a Quad core CPU so in this case you need faster core and not more cores.

The only reason i could see you are being bottleneck but have no software threads eating up all of a Core speed is when you have more threads than cores ( Physical or logical) because now you are hitting the cap of the total CPU usage before a thread hits the cap from a core

This subject easily gets confused because people call logical cores for threads even though threads are part of software not hardware. So just to clarify when i say threads i mean the correct term of software threads.


my point was that bassicall there is two way to be bottlenecked

Tottally CPU ressource - number of cores ( and to some extend the MHz)
Single Core speed - MHz solely

and looking at total CPU usage just show you the first one and not the core speed bottleneck


time to google Mark Russinovich's
 
2500K OCed is getting there (but still pretty alright).
2600K OCed is plenty fine.

A 4.5GHz 2500/2600K =~ stock 6600/6700K
 
The newer instruction sets are about 20-30% faster than sandybridge. In short, unless you had a k series with a nice OC, plan on upgrading soon.
 
skeeder said:
The newer instruction sets are about 20-30% faster than sandybridge. In short, unless you had a k series with a nice OC, plan on upgrading soon.
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True, but comparing a 2500K -> 6600K, 2600K -> 6700K, all at the same OC, you'd basically get say ~25% faster CPU performance.
Not the most thrilling performance jump, considering the 4+ year gap. Sandy has basically become the new Nehalem :(

Now if you wanted the newer platform features (more SATA3, USB3, nvme, PCI-E 3, etc.), then sure.
 
Still rocking a 2500K @ 4.2GHZ. Plenty for me. Can run most games at 1440P with a 290 and decent details. Will probably get a next gen card sometime next year.
 
My downstairs PC is a 2600k at stock clocks with a gtx 680 and im able to run BF1 maxed at 1080p with no problems. If anything just get a used 970 or 780 and you'll be golden.
 
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