2500k @4.4Ghz worth upgrading?

[MemQ]

What range of frames/sec are you getting at the moment and what speed(s) does your current monitor support?

Right now in Mafia it's 44-60. I notice drops mainly while driving in the city, that's why I thought it's CPU that's not fast enough. In other games I mostly get 55-60fps. My monitor is 60hz.

 

[Komshija]

Your CPU and GPU are still very capable for gaming. I wouldn't change them, but I would definitely change the monitor. Right now it's a good time to buy 1080p 23-24" IPS monitor, since they are not expensive and can offer exceptionally good image quality.

 

[BiggieShady]

Memory bandwidth isn't a bottleneck.

It isn't "usually" ... but in some of the heavier games you can see noticeable FPS increases on the same sandy i5 with faster memory (both latency and frequency should have an effect provided there is enough gpu headroom):

In these games, stock sandy with 2133MHz ddr3 is almost as capable as OC 4.6 with 1600MHz ddr3

 

[EarthDog]

True.. it is only in a rare few titles. For DDR4, you are looking at 3 titles with anything significant increase.

 

[Vayra86]

Hi,

While playing Mafia 3 tonight I started to wonder why my fps drop while cruising through the city. I know the game is poorly optimized but still.. So I did a log of CPU usage and GPU usage and here's how it looks like. The questino is: is my cpu bottlenecking my GPU ? And if not can I switch 970 to 1070?

My current rig:

CPU: i5-2500K @4,4Ghz
Mobo: Asrock P67 Pro3 B3
GPU: MSI GTX970 Gaming 4Gb @1279mhz/1925mhz
Ram: Kingston HyperX 8Gb (2x4096) @1866mhz
SSD: 120Gb SVP200S3
HDD: Seagate 500Gb ST3500418AS
PSU: 650W rp-650-pcap wentylator Roxio Ultra Silent
Obudowa: SilentiumPC Regnum L50


CPU

GPU

My i5 3570k @ 4.2 Ghz (which is going to be strikingly similar to your 2500k @ 4.4 in terms of performance) does present an every-so-slight bottleneck in a few games, most notably in The Division where it can take up to 15% bites out of max GPU utilization.

So a slight clock bump may already remove that issue for you on a GTX 1070. I wouldn't hesitate and upgrade GPU, and try to get out 200 mhz more of that 2500k at least. It's going to be worthwhile if you can keep that 2500k for another 6-8 months, because by then the CPU landscape will be more interesting with Zen on the shelves.

Important note: in the example table above you can see that this is mostly a bottleneck at high FPS - if you run a 60hz monitor, I wouldn't even worry about it for now.