Worth upgrading from a 2600K?

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KickAssCop

[H]F Junkie
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Pretty sure this question has been asked many times and answered as well but given my current computer and games out today, do you believe I will benefit from a faster processor in games such as BF4?

I haven't upgraded for quite a while now (I think 2011) and am itching to upgrade yet do not believe that the 4930K or 4770K offer significant advantage over what I have. I am also not clear as to what is the nVidia roadmap for processors in 2014 so any insight on that will be helpful as well.

I really don't know what else to upgrade in my computer that would make most sense for gaming (I know GTX 780 Ti SLi is an option but I believe gains are not worth the price of admission considering I will end up paying upwards of ~600 bucks on them; assuming 400 per GTX 780 sold).
 
Nvidia will have Maxwell launched somewhere in 2014. Though rumors as always are contradicting. Same say Q2, others even Q4 - it will propably all depend again on AMD and how much 780 Ti they will sell :) Now, for battlefield, as it likes CPU much, I think that 4930 will be better. But, you will get much worse chipset than Z87. I'm in same boat as you, as my 2500K goes on 4,5 gHz, and in all the tests apart BF4 (that I don't play much), there is just less than 5% difference. You won't feel though that upgrade much - it's same as upgrading 780 SLI to 780 ti SLI.

No competition between Intel and AMD is bad for enthusiast sector. Or we would already see Broadwell on horizon and read first rumors of Skylake :)

Did you consider getting enough RAM for RAM disk, or maybe Raid 0 with some fast SSDs? Or I don't know... triple 1440p Surround :p, or some kickass DAC/AMP monitors/headphones combo? And if you really, really have money to burn - get one of these -

http://www.mwelab.com/index.php/en/products
 
I wanted to upgrade my monitor but decided against it since I do like 3D on the occassional game out. This year alone, I enjoyed 3D in Batman, Metro, Tomb Raider, Remember Me, Starcraft 2, Diablo 3 and so on. I would gladly take a 120 Hz 1440P 3D panel which I haven't seen thus far so stuck with 1080P. Plus with my current setup I can run most games around 120-144 fps which is fantastic ability that I don't want to give away :).

So you two think CPU upgrade is not worth it. I guess, I am coming to the same conclusion after reading benches.
 
Yeah... better put the money in the bank, and make a major upgrade for Star Citizen with Broadwell, Maxwell SLI and some nifty G-Sync 144hz 3D Surround system :)
 
Probably not worth it, that said I took the leap when the 4770k's were $199 @ Microcenter a few weeks ago. I only did it because I had a willing buyer for my old board and CPU.

OP - If I had been running a 2600k rather than a 2500k I would not have upgraded, even though it only cost me $125 in the end.

If you really have to upgrade I would take the Z87 Chipset & 4770k over the 4930k.
 
I wouldn't waste your money on a 4770k. The heat they produce is just sad. Put your money in the bank and wait for the next wave. See what it does and how great the reviews are and then maybe get something. I went from a 2700k to a 4770k and I hate it, basically a waste of money. The heat is so bad I just stuck with 4.5GHz. And that is coming from a 2700k @ 5.0GHz. A fast ssd, big monitor and a high end video card is all you need now. Anything else is just a waste.
 
KickAssCop said:
I wanted to upgrade my monitor but decided against it since I do like 3D on the occassional game out. This year alone, I enjoyed 3D in Batman, Metro, Tomb Raider, Remember Me, Starcraft 2, Diablo 3 and so on. I would gladly take a 120 Hz 1440P 3D panel which I haven't seen thus far so stuck with 1080P. Plus with my current setup I can run most games around 120-144 fps which is fantastic ability that I don't want to give away :).

So you two think CPU upgrade is not worth it. I guess, I am coming to the same conclusion after reading benches.
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If you are willing to run at least a high end AIO WC (H100I or better) and get a decent clocking 4930K, I think you could see some fairly nice gains going forward..That being said, I wouldn't say it was "necessary" to get it..I am going to one just because I got it dirt cheap through Intel Retail Edge...

Have you considered getting rid of those old ass HDD's are you running and go to a single large faster drive (3TB or 4TB)? It would let you use less power and it's also less heat and one less thing to worry about dying on you...There is a decent resale market for the 1TB WD Blacks (figure ~$65) so you could get a nice 3TB for another ~$80ish..


WinSomeLoseNone said:
Probably not worth it, that said I took the leap when the 4770k's were $199 @ Microcenter a few weeks ago. I only did it because I had a willing buyer for my old board and CPU.

OP - If I had been running a 2600k rather than a 2500k I would not have upgraded, even though it only cost me $125 in the end.

If you really have to upgrade I would take the Z87 Chipset & 4770k over the 4930k.
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That would be a foolish idea. Unless he gets a 4770K that can reach at least 4.6Ghz, then he would be LOSING CPU POWER. That is not a good thing when you are driving 3 high end GPUs...In fact, his situation is one of the few where going to a highly O/C'd hexcore makes sense.
 
Well, on the HDDs. I do not need the space. I also got the 500 gb for win 8.1 install. The rest of HDDs are legacy. They sit idle at 25 c so no real heat being produced by them. I mainly use the ssd and 1tb hdd and it is enough for my purposes.

I thought about doing tri sli but would need a new board and then also a processor and the whole expense was around1200 bucks for a decent board proc and ram plus a video card for little gains since tri does not work in 3d.
 
dandragonrage said:
Do not upgrade your 2600K right now. Complete waste of money.
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I built a computer for my brother in law. I have a 2600K, he has the 4770K. Both are overclocked. There is a slight different. Definitely not worthy of the cost to upgrade. You would gain some speed, but unless you're just throwing money away, it's not worth it. Anything older? Sure. But, the 2600K is still a kick ass CPU, especially overclocked.

I'd say hold off. The gains you'd get aren't worth the entry fee. I'd wait Q4 of next year while saving money then do a large upgrade of CPU/GPU/MB/RAM and get a huge improvement.
 
Thanks guys. I guess I can hold off a bit more. It is not like anything is running slow on my PC these days lol. Even the most intense games are pushing frames like a champ.
 
I'll add to that... I have both a 2600k + Z68 and a 3770k + z77. Stick with the 2600K for now. I only went with the 3770K because it was a new build. Even the 2500k is still an awesome CPU. ;-)
 
3 video cards...do not go 4770k IMO.

Only reason to go 4770k from my research is if you need a new chipset (Z87). Z87 made financial sense for me because I was coming from a x48 chipset with Q9450. I didn't want to jump into the x79 chipset this late in the game and I don't need 64gb of ram or 3GPUs right now.

Z87 + 4770k @ 4700mhz + a single 290x GPU will have me covered for now.
 
Well I got my new SSD installed. I need to run some benches on Win 8.1 to make me feel better about my computer lol.
 
Thanks for this thread... I have 2500K @ 4.4 on stock HS for a long time now, never saw a reason to get a custom cooler for 200-400Mhz.... I have the upgrade bug bad ATM but will hold off.

Seriously, if you are a bang-for-your-buck enthusiast it's been bleak lately. Outside going from a 6950 to a 7950 I haven't changed anything since May 2011.
 
toddw said:
Seriously, if you are a bang-for-your-buck enthusiast it's been bleak lately. Outside going from a 6950 to a 7950 I haven't changed anything since May 2011.
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That's a good thing because recent computers have remained fast enough rather than new products falling behind the curve with new software.

Wanting to upgrade for the upgrade itself is wasteful (of both time and money) and irresponsible (irresponsible for the environment and also an irresponsible use of money). Upgrade when new software causes your system to start slowing down, wasting your time and/or ruining your enjoyment of using it.
 
I made the upgrade and the differences are noticeable in some regards and minimal in others. My 2600k ran at 4.6GHz and I currently have my 4770k at 4.4GHz (haven't tested higher). During gaming you wouldn't notice much of a difference, 2-3 FPS better on average. However, it definitely boosted my video encoding performance by quite a bit. The 4770k does run quite a bit hotter though. My H50 (120mm radiator) cooled my 2600k and it topped out at 74°C while my H100i (240mm radiator) cools my 4770k and it tops out at 83°C.

I jumped on the 4770k at $199 from Microcenter and purchased a motherboard for $30 off for the bundle, couldn't resist at that price. If you use Anandtech's benchmark tool, you can compare the two directly.
 
I just upgraded from my 2600k (4.8Ghz) to a 4770k (4.6Ghz). I use the term upgraded loosely as the gains are small for the most part. However my primary reason was I was bored and wanted to do a new build. I used to swap hardware every 6 months back in the old days and I had been running my 7950 and 2600k for close to 2 years which felt like an eternity. I get lots of joy from building and overclocking. So for me, yes it was absolutely worth it.

With some of the Z87 and 4770k deals lately and the fact that 2600k's have held their value well, the step up to the new hardware was not that steep. Difference after selling my old gear is not much more than what my family spent for dinner at Olive Garden last weekend.
 
I got my 2600k from Microcenter on a sale for $229 and $50 off the motherboard. I'd love to pick up another one, but the sad thing is, I've seen them used for $250 or more.
 
The urge to upgrade to the latest is powerful and I have thought about jumping to Z87 a lot these past few months. I came to the conclusion that even if I were to sell my 2600K and use the funds to pay for a new Haswell setup, the 5-10% performance increase was not worth it. Why go through all that for a 5 fps increase?
 
meh, you should be fine.. unless you really want certain features a newer chip offers or their corresponding mobo..
 
///M3 said:
The urge to upgrade to the latest is powerful and I have thought about jumping to Z87 a lot these past few months. I came to the conclusion that even if I were to sell my 2600K and use the funds to pay for a new Haswell setup, the 5-10% performance increase was not worth it. Why go through all that for a 5 fps increase?
Click to expand...

E-Peen.
 
///M3 said:
The urge to upgrade to the latest is powerful and I have thought about jumping to Z87 a lot these past few months. I came to the conclusion that even if I were to sell my 2600K and use the funds to pay for a new Haswell setup, the 5-10% performance increase was not worth it. Why go through all that for a 5 fps increase?
Click to expand...

The $100 to $200 you pay for the upgrade may pay for itself in better resale value when you sell it 5+ years down the road.
 
There isn't a big difference between the cpus, the only situation where I'd suggest and upgrade is if you live by a Microcenter and hop on one of tose deals they have had lately. A $199 4770k and discounted motherboard would essentially end up being a free upgrade when you can sell your cpu for around $200 as well (although the motherboard might cost you a bit.)
 
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