So what is the cheapest upgrade over my 2500K atm?

spaceman

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Completely bewildered atm as to what build would be worth doing in the coming months. I know my 2500K is at EOL but have no idea what to get for gaming. I have a 980 and a BenQ 144hz 1080P btw. Those min frames are killing me in BF1 and pubg.
 
Maybe even a 2600k would help you with those minimums on battlefield. Not sure about pubg though, I think that's just the way pubg is, not sure anything would make much of a difference if you are overclocking.
 
I5-8400 for like $189. Best "budget" gaming cpu IMHO...Not sure 8600k is worth the price premium of like $60-$70.
 
I play PUBG on 2500k + 1080GTX and have no problems with min framerates.
 
Completely bewildered atm as to what build would be worth doing in the coming months. I know my 2500K is at EOL but have no idea what to get for gaming. I have a 980 and a BenQ 144hz 1080P btw. Those min frames are killing me in BF1 and pubg.
Is it overclocked?
 
As a quick cheap bandaid you could hunt down a used i7 2600k or ivy bridge equivalent. It's not the horsepower that is keeping an overclocked 2500k down (not completely anyway), it's the lack of treads. 4 treads is just getting old.

If you are itching for a real upgrade, 8400 or 8600k (if you want overclocking) are fricking impressive. In games they are on par and even sometimes beat 7700K that was the king of gaming CPU's just two weeks ago. Problem is try to find one in stock. Coffee Lake release was pretty much a paper launch that Intel was forced to do early because Ryzen was making Kaby Lakes look kinda bad value.
 
As a quick cheap bandaid you could hunt down a used i7 2600k or ivy bridge equivalent. It's not the horsepower that is keeping an overclocked 2500k down (not completely anyway), it's the lack of treads. 4 treads is just getting old.

If you are itching for a real upgrade, 8400 or 8600k (if you want overclocking) are fricking impressive. In games they are on par and even sometimes beat 7700K that was the king of gaming CPU's just two weeks ago. Problem is try to find one in stock. Coffee Lake release was pretty much a paper launch that Intel was forced to do early because Ryzen was making Kaby Lakes look kinda bad value.


I have to disagree on the last point, in 90% of games out there the 7700k or even the 4790k(yes with its ddr3) is going to be faster for games. Reviewers like to test the very few games that will take advantage of the extra threads, and even then it doesn't make a big difference. Most games won't even use 4 threads effectively. A lot of youtube reviewers will record while making benchmarks which further skews the results. The nice thing about the i7's though on top of the extra threads is the extra cache, which is not pointed out often enough as the reason a lot of games will get a better frame rate vs an i5. By all means if he's rendering all day or has some other use for the 6 cores, go that route. I myself do do rendering for work and find it takes up less than 5% of my daily time. Games might eventually get to the point of using more than 4 threads, but we are far from the point where it makes sense to spend the money for that for that particular reason(games). Especially with motherboards as expensive as they are currently for that generation.
 
Want to borrow an i7-2600? Mail me a self addressed, stamped, padded envelope.

Seriously.

It'll be a non K, but you can clock it to around 4.1 or so (400mhz over base) and see what happens. The extra threads might help.

And how much RAM do you have? I could throw another eight gigs in that envelope too...
 
Very kind of you to offer. I have 16 GB. Let me look at it BC I am afraid to touch the mobo after all I did to get it to work with the 980 and how long the 2500 has been seated. Just scared it will all go poof!
 
I have to disagree on the last point, in 90% of games out there the 7700k or even the 4790k(yes with its ddr3) is going to be faster for games. Reviewers like to test the very few games that will take advantage of the extra threads, and even then it doesn't make a big difference. Most games won't even use 4 threads effectively. A lot of youtube reviewers will record while making benchmarks which further skews the results. The nice thing about the i7's though on top of the extra threads is the extra cache, which is not pointed out often enough as the reason a lot of games will get a better frame rate vs an i5. By all means if he's rendering all day or has some other use for the 6 cores, go that route. I myself do do rendering for work and find it takes up less than 5% of my daily time. Games might eventually get to the point of using more than 4 threads, but we are far from the point where it makes sense to spend the money for that for that particular reason(games). Especially with motherboards as expensive as they are currently for that generation.

And for those same 90% games an overclocked 2500K is usually more than enough. But TS had BF1 as an example and that game is very much thread aware, and things will only go more and more multithreaded especially now that Intel is also getting into the core/thread quantity race. And even if youtubers are recording while benchmarking I am not sure it makes that dramatic difference. Results have been pretty consistent, 8600K is very close to 7700K majority of the time and sometimes even manages to overtake it because in some situations 6 real cores and threads are better than 4 cores virtually doubled to 8. All for this for roughly 100$ cheaper.
 
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Bf1 destroyed my 3570k even at 4.6. Went to ryzen 7. All is well.
 
BF1 eats sandy bridge i5's alive, my 7820x even reaches 70% use at times at 4k ultra in multiplayer
 
yet their real review which is much more well done with far more data basically contradicts that video..

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...ntel-coffee-lake-i7-8700k-i5-8400-review.html


In what way? For one they aren't using a 2600k in the web review, and the rest of the gaming benchmarks appear to show the same pattern(with a difference you would expect going from a 1070 to a titan). Also communism when did hardwarecanucks become a "trash tier" website/youtube channel, what information from them to you have a problem with? You both seem pretty toxic to be honest.

Gamers nexus did a review like this awhile back and had the same results(although this was before coffee lake).
 
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Also, these guys (HC) basically cripple Ryzen with 2666 RAM.

Btw, I am also on overclocked 2500k (4.4). It looks like I am waiting for Feb/Mar next year to see whether that will make more of a difference. It will be either Ryzen refresh or 8700k. As it stands 8700k is good, but not great and I am not desperate to upgrade at the moment.
 
The best CPU on the market right now is the Ryzen 3 1200 for $105 to $110 dollars. It OC's to 4ghz with the stock cooler and is equal in performance to the 7600K i5.

You can go and research this yourself. Tons of videos on the net along with excellent reviews.

I'm currently selling 5 to 6 of these systems a month with a 1060 3gb video card. $550 in parts I sell for $899 to $799

Absolutely the best bang for the buck.
 
The best CPU on the market right now is the Ryzen 3 1200 for $105 to $110 dollars. It OC's to 4ghz with the stock cooler and is equal in performance to the 7600K i5.

You can go and research this yourself. Tons of videos on the net along with excellent reviews.

I'm currently selling 5 to 6 of these systems a month with a 1060 3gb video card. $550 in parts I sell for $899 to $799

Absolutely the best bang for the buck.

Did you seriously just recommend a CPU that is worse performance than his 2500k?

Someone needs to reboot their AMD shill bot swarm manager, it's going haywire.
 
Did you seriously just recommend a CPU that is worse performance than his 2500k?

Someone needs to reboot their AMD shill bot swarm manager, it's going haywire.

Yeah, as much as I support Ryzens that was quite a brainfart. Ryzen 5 1600 on the other would be somewhat sensible choice, a sidestep/mild upgrade in single thread and big upgrade in multithread, and I would support that decision if Coffee Lake proves to be too hard to find for TS. Ryzen 3 however would be just silly for 2500K owner.
 
I think I will wait too. Probably keep an eye out for a 2600K on the fs. Even a 5 fps difference would help. Funny thing is that the nvidia experience for bf1 is a maxxed out profile. TAA all ultra lol. I do NOT think that will help.
 
I think I will wait too. Probably keep an eye out for a 2600K on the fs. Even a 5 fps difference would help. Funny thing is that the nvidia experience for bf1 is a maxxed out profile. TAA all ultra lol. I do NOT think that will help.

Probably for the best (also that is what I am doing). Coffee Lakes availability will get better and prices stabilize and Ryzen refreshes are also around the corner which may (or may not) fix their achilles heel, low clock speeds. We are living interesting times in the CPU department.

I was also considering hunting down a 2600K but I found out that I had overtightened my cooler some years back and lately managed to strip one of the screws when I tried to remove it to reapply the thermal paste. I do not dare to touch it anymore so that cooler stays on until the end of its life. No simple CPU swap for me. :yuck:
 
Wow. I did not know my mobo would support a 3770K but it does. That should be a decent boost. For around $120 and I can still get around $60-70 for the 2500k?
 
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Did you seriously just recommend a CPU that is worse performance than his 2500k?

Someone needs to reboot their AMD shill bot swarm manager, it's going haywire.


you TOTALLY ignored what said, it OC's to 4ghz on the stock air cooler for $105 dollars. 4 Core / 4 Threads.

At stock speed the 2600k is only 1% faster.

Again, and you guys can find the reviews on youtube, there's plenty of them

the Ryzen 3 1200 ( AGAIN ... at 4GHZ ) is as fast as a stock 7600k i5.

The truth is, people throw a lot of money away on a few fps difference. I'm guilty of this as well.

I can put any of you down in front of Ryzen 3 1200 @ 4ghz @ 1080p as well as in front of my 7820K I have @ 4.7ghz and you would not be able to tell the difference. I can do this with a lot of other CPU's as well.

If you have money then just get you the 7820K for $550
 
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7820x you mean :)

yeah sure your point is valid at least till you throw the wrong game or workload on the machine then everything falls right apart. try doing battlefield 1 multiplayer on a 4 ghz quad core and let me know how it goes for you or just being willy nilly with background programs and gaming in general even.

this day in age with ryzen 5/7 and now 6 core intel mainstream i don't see myself ever recommending anyone under any circumstances going with a quad core unless they are looking for a 500-600 dollar budget entry level system.
 
you TOTALLY ignored what said, it OC's to 4ghz on the stock air cooler for $105 dollars. 4 Core / 4 Threads.

At stock speed the 2600k is only 1% faster.

Again, and you guys can find the reviews on youtube, there's plenty of them

the Ryzen 3 1200 ( AGAIN ... at 4GHZ ) is as fast as a stock 7600k i5.

If you have money then just get you the 7820K for $550

Says the person who totally ignored the entire thread when they pressed "AMD shill bot swarm spam post."

OP has a 4.5 ghz 2500k, Ryzen IPC is ~ Sandy Bridge IPC. Ryzen 3 1200 is 4c/4t.

The Youtube links that AMD shills love to link are hot trash.

ATF, /r/AMD are calling you home.

The nerve of people to advise people to waste 150-300+ USD on DDR4 3200+, 80-150 USD on mobo, ~50-70 USD on HSF, just to "save" 100-200 USD on a CPU so that you can have worse performance than the system you already have.

Buying anything less than a 8700k if you have the option to is an absolutely retarded decision.

When upgrading, you have to always look at total system cost, and factor in the benefit over your current setup.

You also have to make sure to factor in that any CPU bottleneck at any time in any game automatically makes your GPU a bad purchase, as you are now both introducing cpu bottleneck stutter (The MAIN determinator of "playability" of a game, as GPU bottlenecked settings are mostly cosmetic and easy to tweak, but CPU bottlenecked setting are almost always harder (if not impossible) to tweak and is literally gameplay itself), as well as lowering effective performance of your GPU.

This is my last response to you, you don't deserve my time.
 
Says the person who totally ignored the entire thread when they pressed "AMD shill bot swarm spam post."

OP has a 4.5 ghz 2500k, Ryzen IPC is ~ Sandy Bridge IPC. Ryzen 3 1200 is 4c/4t.

The Youtube links that AMD shills love to link are hot trash.

ATF, /r/AMD are calling you home.

The nerve of people to advise people to waste 150-300+ USD on DDR4 3200+, 80-150 USD on mobo, ~50-70 USD on HSF, just to "save" 100-200 USD on a CPU so that you can have worse performance than the system you already have.

Buying anything less than a 8700k if you have the option to is an absolutely retarded decision.

When upgrading, you have to always look at total system cost, and factor in the benefit over your current setup.

You also have to make sure to factor in that any CPU bottleneck at any time in any game automatically makes your GPU a bad purchase, as you are now both introducing cpu bottleneck stutter (The MAIN determinator of "playability" of a game, as GPU bottlenecked settings are mostly cosmetic and easy to tweak, but CPU bottlenecked setting are almost always harder (if not impossible) to tweak and is literally gameplay itself), as well as lowering effective performance of your GPU.

This is my last response to you, you don't deserve my time.


Well I'm not him but I'm the one who linked the video, and I don't see how that video is pro AMD at all. The point of the video was to show that ipc still has not changed a ton since Sandy Bridge. Also going to a 6 core when hardly any games at all support that many threads would be a bad financial decision if your only caring about gaming performance. I think you need to see a psychiatrist if you're getting this upset about the hardware people choose to use. I can play battlefield fine on a 4790k with a gtx 1060 6gb with most of the eye candy turned up while leaving my browser open with 10+ tabs open.
 
As for BF1, are you running Win 7? This specific game ran terribly for me (stutters, low minimum frames) until I switched to Win 10 (with a 980 ti, 4790k, 1440p). It was only happening on large multiplayer games... aka CPU intensive situations.

I have seen a lot of people reporting the same.
 
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windows 10, i made this comparison last year after i upgraded to a 6700k due to the game, even at 4.7 ghz without hyperthreading (basically a 6600k) performance suffered due to cpu with just a single 980 at 2560x1080. the situation only got worse once SLI was fixed and after i got a 1080 Ti if i disabled hyper-threading. the game literally eats non-HT quad cores alive.
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I'd say wait it out until 8600k is actually available and priced decently. I saw a small jump in frames for PUBG going from a 2500k @4.5 to a 6700k @4.6.
 
Got a 3770K and even at stock clocks my min fps so far is 94 with the average around 120 or so. No more killing dips in fps. My BF1 experience is far smoother than before. This is at 1080P 144hz.
 
Oh my temps are already super low. I rigged a pretty nice push pull air cooler and it is in the basement which is underground and cool. Plus my ram does limit the oc a bit bc 4 sticks. I am not going to worry about an oc until I have to. ATM all is golden.
 
Is 20 days a necro? Bumping for i5 upgrade path and PUBG, so related. /Charlton Heston voice 'Damn you DDR4 prices! Damn you all to hell!'

I've got 3 rigs in the mix, Papa Bear Ivy (sig), plus 2 Baby Bear boxen (4GHz FM2+/8gb ddr3 1866, GTX1050) to upgrade. Options were r3 1200's for the kids (MC bundles ~$235 each with 8gb of ddr 3000), keeping my rig as is, or getting a 1600x for myself, giving my i5 to one and either an r3 or ebay Sandy or Ivy combo for the other. Last option ebay i7 Ivy for me, extra z77 for my i5 and find another SB/IB/z77 for the third. Either way I'm paying the Windows tax twice, unless the used boards show up with OEM keys in tow.
 
PubG is pretty hopeless in a lot of ways. Not sure upgrading will actually improve anything. I will say that just moving to the 3770K has made every game I play at 1080P run rock solid. So for now, the I7 is still a fine choice for 1080P. I have a friend with a 4770K bnib I can probably get you a good price on. He is a bit crazy but honest lol. He bought it new a long while back only to find his mobo was dead before installing the 4770. Never returned the cpu.
 
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