Upgrading from i5 2500K - for gaming

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ritch1

Weaksauce
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Sep 1, 2005
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I am running a GTX 780 with an i5 2500 and am wondering if a CPU upgrade would help performance, especially in 3D vision. The general view seems to be that a 2500 doesn't bottleneck a GTX 780 but am wondering about this in certain scenarios, such as 3D vision use and games that seem to require more CPU performance such as Skyrim?

I currently own an asus P8P67 Pro so ideally would like to keep this, so would upgrading to something like a i7-3770K see any gains in these scenarios or would I need to look at a more advanced upgrade?

thanks for any advice
 
Do you have the Core i5 2500K or the Core i5 2500? The CPU mentioned in your thread title and OP don't match up.

IF you do have the Core i5 2500K, just overclock it. Far better use of your time and money than to upgrade to a slightly better CPU for gaming.
 
Check CPU use and see if its bottlenecking on any core.
90%+ ish occupied on a ""core"" can hold back the PC.
 
If your CPU is the 2500K then it will not hold any GPU configuration back as long as you get it up to ~4500 MHz. For any single card 4000 MHz is enough.

If its the non K version then look for a used i7 2600K/2700K, with some luck you will find one for $100 - $150.
There is no need to waste $400+ on a new board and a new Haswell i7.
 
the one I have is the 2500K, I have it over clocked to 4Ghz at the moment.

when i check the CPU and GPU usage the CPU is definitely using more power than the 780, sometimes its only a little more but in general it lags behind. i don't really want to upgrade if there is no point but I'd also like a CPU that fully utilises the 780 in recourse hog situations.

thanks for the input
 
There are some special cases where more CPU speed is always useful.
Open world games with mods and huge draw distances are probably one of them.

Try to get the clocks up on your 2500K to see it it helps, if it do then you know that the CPU is the limiting factor.

Only looking at GPU and CPU load dosnt tell the whole story.
 
If you want to boost 3D Vision performance, spend your money on 2nd 780 and OC your CPU to likes of 4,5 GHz
 
yep it seems to improve performance if i push the over clocking, buts its not very stable. but as said it seems pointless to spend a load of money on an upgrade at this point. thanks for the advice
 
reimann3 said:
what other games are you playing?
Click to expand...

I'm playing skyrim, fallout 3, far cry 3 and witcher 2 (not played much yet). the Bethesda games perform the worse, especially in 3D vision. Far cry 3 isn't actually too bad, just stutters in some areas. I just finished tomb raider, which played very well but did have slight stutter in 3d vision.

think I'm just looking for a bit of a general performance boost to eliminate the stutter, I am coming to the realisation that Bethesda games are a non option in 3D vision, they are hard enough to get decent performance in normal circumstances. I thought about going SLI but always found that idea a bit of a brain ache. might wait it out and play games that perform well enough for now.
 
Upgrading from a 2500K at 4GHz for a single GPU video card is not compelling.
 
Skyrim is an extremely bad coded game and no CPU in the world would help you. Maube more graphics memory could delay the inevitable crash/slowdown/stutter.

Before you commit to an upgrade, try to play the game with the CPU running slower, like 3.5GHz and then overclock the hell out of it and see if things improve (they should not, because even at a low 3.5GHz a 780 shoudl not be CPU limited by a 2500k)
 
Folks, just to reiterate that he said he's looking to do 3D vision, which would require 120 fps constant for the best experience, I believe.
 
ritch1 said:
yep it seems to improve performance if i push the over clocking, buts its not very stable. but as said it seems pointless to spend a load of money on an upgrade at this point. thanks for the advice
Click to expand...

What do you mean that when u push overclocks that its not very stable? It will either be stable or not. To get it stable you either need to put more voltage into the cpu or you need better cooling, what is your current cooling solution? Most 2500k cpus can easily operate at 4.8ghz or higher with little work, you just need a semi decent cooler which would be a cheap upgrade.
 
ssnyder28 said:
What do you mean that when u push overclocks that its not very stable? It will either be stable or not. To get it stable you either need to put more voltage into the cpu or you need better cooling, what is your current cooling solution? Most 2500k cpus can easily operate at 4.8ghz or higher with little work, you just need a semi decent cooler which would be a cheap upgrade.
Click to expand...

+1. I was about to ask the same about what is the current cooling solution.
 
^
I use a fan for cooling, its a Zalman CNPS14X. when I say not very stable I mean it runs but some games crash out after a few minutes, this is when i over clocked to 4.5. at the moment I am trying some higher voltages but am not very experienced with overclocking so am being very cautious about this, a am going up to 1.7 at the moment.
 
ritch1 said:
^
I use a fan for cooling, its a Zalman CNPS14X. when I say not very stable I mean it runs but some games crash out after a few minutes, this is when i over clocked to 4.5. at the moment I am trying some higher voltages but am not very experienced with overclocking so am being very cautious about this, a am going up to 1.7 at the moment.
Click to expand...

Wait, you give 1.7v to 2500k and your cpu is still alive? Don't sandy CPUs melt with voltage higher than 1.55v?

And get rid of that zalman... Get something like dark knight, dark power 3 and such.
 
I damaged my 2500K by accidentally applying "max" LLC when it first appeared as a setting in my BIOS after a BIOS update. (before that there was only an LLC on/off option)
I was Prime testing my CPU to be sure the new BIOS was stable, forgetting I had changed this setting.
1/2hr later I looked at the voltage being applied and saw it was 1.49V.
I am on a decent home made water cooler, so temps werent through the roof.

Since then, I have permanently lost 100MHz overclocking headroom.
Previously I could get 4.7GHz at 1.44V, now it is 4.6GHz at the same voltage.
My permanent overclock is now 4.5GHz at 1.4V, it used to be 4.6GHz before this.
fyi

Yeah, its a crap clocker anyway :p

ps I tried the old BIOS again and found it was permanent.
 
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yeah it wasn't v1.7, it went to that setting after I updated the bios, and refused to boot up thank god lol. am at work now so cant confirm what I set it at, think it was 1.3. at 4.5ghz.

I ran far cry 3 in 3d vision and noticed a performance boost with that overclock. skyrim was still a bit laggy but defiantly smoother than stock speed, I just think i have to accept bethedsa games are a no go for me in 3d vision unless I go SLI, which i cant justify at this point.
 
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