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Upgrading from a 2500K


Serapho

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So I figured it is finally time to upgrade from my 2500k. It's a second gen and I've got it sitting in an Ivy board so all good on the Mobo front. However, I am not entirely sure what the new "bang wang" cpu is. The 2500k was a pretty clear cut winner at the time.

I work for a gaming website, so I need to be able to stream and play games at the highest settings while also being able to edit large amounts of video. Any suggestions?

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Are you overclocking the 2500K at the moment? If not, I'd try that before jumping to a brand new CPU. The 2500K is still widely considered the best bang for your buck. If it was simply for gaming, I'd say there's no reason to upgrade from a 2500K. However, since you also do streaming and video editing, you might want to look into the i7-4770K. Especially if you're looking to stream at 1080p @ 60fps then go for it. But the 2500K should still be able to rock 1080p @ 30fps streaming, so it depends.

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The 2500K has a ton of headroom, doesn't seem to me that you're going to notice a really huge improvement on Haswell. Would recommend clocking up your 2500K.

If, not 4770K I guess. I looked into moving from my 2600K and its definitely not worth it on the current generation.

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Yeah 2500k is fine. The only upgrade I would consider in your situation is is a 3770K. Unfortunately though you will have to redo the IHS for the temps to be as good as or better than the 2500k. The 2500k does not have IHS/die contact issues.

The 3570k will be around 5% faster at the same clock speed as the 2500k and should overclock the same and use around 10% less power. The 3770k will be 10% faster at the same clock speed, and again overclocks to the same levels and uses around 10% less power. Since the 3770k offers double the gains over the 3570K, I think only the 3770k should be considered despite it being more expensive.

Haswell parts are just not worth it for you. They vary wildly in overclockability. You may get lucky and get something better than an ivy bridge, or you can get something no better than your 2500k. Haswell still has the same IHS issues as ivy bridge, AND you will need a new motherboard. Not worth it at all.

I suggest just keeping what you have unless you can get a very good deal on a 3770K and are willing to redo the IHS with liquid metal.

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I recently thought about doing this myself. I also have a i5-2500K.

I recommend overclocking your 2500k to 4.4Ghz and if that works out trying for 4.7Ghz. If you're using the stock cooler get something better. I have a Corsair H80 closed-loop cooler but it's total overkill. Stop where ever your chip does. I did a bunch of research on this exact issue lately and found that upgrading to Ivy Bridge would net me anything from a small increase to a small decrease and Haswell chips overclock unevenly and unreliably. Normally after 2 years Intel would have produced something worth upgrading to but apparently they've been spending the entire time working on power efficiency.

I would wait and see what Intel comes out with after Broadwell (which is likely to not improve the CPU performance situation either).

But if gaming is what you're looking to do, buy a better GPU. Radeon 7970s are being fire-saled right now and the "next gen" isn't a quantum leap forward so they're a pretty good buy. When it comes to game performance you're not going to see much difference between a 2500k and 4770k.

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Yeah 2500k is fine. The only upgrade I would consider in your situation is is a 3770K. Unfortunately though you will have to redo the IHS for the temps to be as good as or better than the 2500k. The 2500k does not have IHS/die contact issues.

The 3570k will be around 5% faster at the same clock speed as the 2500k and should overclock the same and use around 10% less power. The 3770k will be 10% faster at the same clock speed, and again overclocks to the same levels and uses around 10% less power. Since the 3770k offers double the gains over the 3570K, I think only the 3770k should be considered despite it being more expensive.

Haswell parts are just not worth it for you. They vary wildly in overclockability. You may get lucky and get something better than an ivy bridge, or you can get something no better than your 2500k. Haswell still has the same IHS issues as ivy bridge, AND you will need a new motherboard. Not worth it at all.

I suggest just keeping what you have unless you can get a very good deal on a 3770K and are willing to redo the IHS with liquid metal.

I am currently running a I5 3570k and can confirm that the IHs really is a issue.

When I was overclocking my CPU with a zalman cooler it reached fairly high temperatures dispite the fact that my cooler and airflow are both good.

I decided to use the hammer and vice method to delid my processor and apply proper termal paste.

The CPU temperature dropped like 15C after that.

So unless you are willing to delid a brand new processor in order to gain more performance than the I5 2500K you should stick with the 2500K and overclock it.

I think you can get atleast the same performance on a overclocked I5 2500K as on one of the new haswell processors.

I think it would be better to spend the money on a good cooling solution and get a stable overlock.

~ Archcry

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I would stay with your 2500k. One of my desktops is currently housing a 2500k and SLI GTX780's. I stream to twitch while maxing out games without any issues.

Sandy Bridge is a great processor architecture, and it will likely hold its own for a while.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Personally I wouldn't upgrade an i5-2500K to an IB or a HW rig, SB is still very powerful for 99% of all regular activities. If not for some real production based workflow matters: Keep it 1-2 generations further or OC if necessary.

Actual CPUs are powerful enough to handle nearly all situations present and yet to come.

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I am still rocking my 2500K. It has been a beast overclocker on air for me....... 4.7 with ASUS Auto Overclocking tools. (and I am running on a low end ASUS LX board)

I might have to jump on the next wave with DDR4, but that supposed to be expensive early on.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...

2500k is still very, very good CPU imho. And overclocks great (haswell and ivy fails here).

4.5GHz on 2500k is enough for at least next year or two.

I wouldn't change anything. Only switching to LGA 2011 can make you happy but it's expensive, and 2011 still overclocks great.

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  • 1 month later...

Yes, keep the 2500K, I overclocked my 2600K to 4.8 GHz on air cooling.

The i7-4th generations are about 15% faster than Sandy Bridge while being less easy to overclock. The reason is that Sandy Bridge use metal alloy for the heat spreader, transferring heat better.

I only switched to 4960X since I calculated a speed increase for Ultra HD video encoding, i.e. 6 hours instead of 9 hours. With an OC of 4.55 GHz I get 60% more speed than the i7-2600K @ 4.8 GHz. Same speedup with panorama rendering.

But that's it, the rest is not so much faster than you may hope.

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  • 4 months later...

I can't see any real advantage from upgrading from a 2500K to a newer i5 really. If I were you I'd check out the i7 Haswell if you wan't any real bigger jump in performance.<!-- google_ad_section_end -->

If you want to upgrade than I would go for the i7 4770K.

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If you liked to tuning anyway, think the 4670K or 4690K. In gear the same, as the 2500K, but this knows more. Currently the best is value performed-proportioned. The following stage is the i7 yet. Run on 4GHz are going without tension lifting.

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I agree with most here saying stick with the 2500k but it really depends on what you are doing with it. I have a 2600k (clocked at 4.7Ghz) and recently thought upgrading to a 6600k would be give me a bit of a boost and it did in some games, but failed in others. For example CS:GO seems to favor more threads over higher clock speed/newer architecture because it ran way better on my 2600k. If you are going to upgrade I think you should be looking at upping core count and not just jumping to a newer gen i5.

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  • 8 months later...
  • 2 months later...
14 hours ago, techie said:

Skylake is better.

Did you realize you just replied to a 2 year old post? heheh

Ryzen seems to be a good option BTW

Edited by 3RYL
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