i5 2500k or i7 2600 (non K) - Debate! [resolved: the 2500k wins!]

[Jetster]

I just broke the tie

 

[Ferrum Master]

*Going by the linked benchmark above, HT performance really can vary between programs.

Just do some lazy FINAL FANTASY XIV: HEAVENSWARD it reacts to multiple cores... we have a TPU thread for it. Many GTX970ties with different CPU's.

 

[newtekie1]

Going by the linked benchmark above, HT performance really can vary between programs.

Yes, for almost all games, HT won't help at all.

Even in times when HT does best, it only gives about 25% boost in performance. HT is just a really super efficient way of switching cores between two different pieces of work. So it uses clock cycles to do work that would otherwise be wasted.

 

[Sasqui]

i also put the clock speeds in the survey question too
A friends work dumped a bunch of 'dead' office machines out, and had to be strippped. Being their last 1155 boards he salvaged the CPU's - he scored about 10 CPU's, mostly i5 2500's and i7 2600's with just the one random K chip he donated to me.


At this stage i'm leaning towards OCing the 2500K as high as i can, leaving the 2600 at 4GHz in the secondary PC. if i need virtualisation or anything, i can simply run it on there i guess.

Nice, lucky you! 8 threads vs. 4 ...and more cache, vs. Getting 4.5 Ghz out of the i5 vs. 3.8 on the i7. I choose clock speed! Some applications will prefer the i7, with 8 cores but I'm guessing not much.

 

[trog100]

its a win some lose some situation whichever way you look at it.. i dont think the average gpu limited game will care which option is chosen.. other things might though..

trog

 

[GhostRyder]

I would say i5 2500K. I say this because HyperThreading does not add much in games and unless you do a ton of video editing or similar you won't see the benefit (Or run a lot of VM's). The i5 2500K with decent cooling can reach 4.8-5.0ghz (Like the 2600K/2700K) so you should get more benefit off pushing that to its limit.

 

[peche]

Primary rig for working, videos, internet stuff and whatever you will have to do,
intel i7 2600, 8Gb ram and also if possible a 64/120GB SSD for OS and a HDD for info...

Secondary / Gaming Rig:
intel i5 2500K 16GB ram and also SSD for OS and HDD for games, also you could get a 256GB SSD and stay with just one drive, for gaming only, you can make this a the little preferred toy! all the details, upgrades and cute stuff comes to this one 1st!

Regards,

 

[Mussels]

If i was doing video editing, the i7 would be in the secondary system anyway and i'd just throw the task over to that - the top system in my sig.

So far everyone agrees with my original suspicions which is basically go the i5 for gaming and OC the tits off it, and run any heavy crunching tasks on the i7 in the secondary machine if needed.

 

[newtekie1]

Yep, since you aren't completely getting rid of the 2600, I agree with that.

 

[Bill_Bright]

This is a no-brainer for me. I'd go with the i7. Then, if not happy, I'd put back in the i5.

 

[Kursah]

This is a no-brainer for me. I'd go with the i7. Then, if not happy, I'd put back in the i5.

The power user in me agrees, the overclocker disagrees.

As I said before, I'd run them both in the main machine, do some tasks and play some games that are normally used/played, compare performance metrics/results...go with the one that provides the best results. /thread

 

[jsfitz54]

This is a no-brainer for me. I'd go with the i7. Then, if not happy, I'd put back in the i5.

If I read this post correctly, you have it backwards.

 

[theJesus]

I don't overclock so naturally I'd say the 2600. If memory serves, 2600 has some features that the 2500K lacks like hardware virtualization.
http://ark.intel.com/compare/52213,52210

They both support VT-x, which is what actually enables hardware virtualization. The three items you pointed out are enterprise features that I doubt Mussels would use anyways.

The only missing feature that might actually mean something for Mussels is hyper-threading.

 

[Frick]

vt-d 4 lyfe. Not necessary unless you want access the hardware directly, but there's rarely reason for that for home users afaik. Maybe disk controllers would be interesting.

Me I'd stick with the i7, but if gaming's your thang I'd go i5. Basically what everyone else is saying.

 

[theJesus]

vt-d 4 lyfe. Not necessary unless you want access the hardware directly, but there's rarely reason for that for home users afaik. Maybe disk controllers would be interesting.

Me I'd stick with the i7, but if gaming's your thang I'd go i5. Basically what everyone else is saying.

Like I said, an enterprise feature.

 

[Bill_Bright]

If I read this post correctly, you have it backwards.

The point is still the same. I would try both, see which I like best and use that.

 

[Flow]

People should do what they like.
But I played my games with my cpu default and oc'ed, and quite frankly, fps was more or less the same.
Gaming difference between i7 4Ghz and 4,5Ghz isn't very big. The extra threads however can become handy for games that do utilize them.
And nowadays more and more games do benefit from multiple threads.

 

[BiggieShady]

Overclock the i5 to the limits, sandy bridge should go fairly high because of the soldered IHS

 

[revin]

I'd have to pick the i7 primarily that it has 16-way associative access to the larger L3 cache, and a larger L2 cache.
What I found from in Pentium days was the P@1Ghz vs. the Celery @928 was huge jump in performance due to having double the access to it's cache [which was both the same size,4 vs 8 way]

Edit: I rarely see much over 4.19 when it's just 1 core gaming

 

[hat]

Well, that sort of thing is probably a lot less important today than it was back in those days.

 

[qubit]

I went i5 as a near 5GHz overclock really makes a difference in games.

Besides this the i7 has a larger cache and HT which might just make a difference in some edge cases so it's not totally cut and dry.

 

[EntropyZ]

I voted for the i5 to use for gaming, any general purpose/computing and what not should be with the i7. This isn't a simple choice by any means, I have never owned an i7 grade CPU, so I have no personal experience on what they are capable of, worst case scenario comparison would be the FX-8350 which I do know how it runs, and the i5 leaves the FX-8350 in the dust any day for single thread gaming tasks, on the other hand newer DX11 titles do like extra cores so the FX-8350 comes a lot closer, but still just doesn't cut it. The i7 could run better than the i5 in some games though.

IMHO gaming wise i5>i7 and for whatever else you want to use extra threads i7>i5 since we're still stuck with DX9/DX11 games. This will change in the near future so, yeah. There ain't no safe bet at this point. Gotta stop repeating myself.

My analysis here has gone like this: Personal experience>People's experience>Review sites>Random forum

Reading 5 years worth of tech material when unregistered does pay off sometimes, but I am unable to throw ideas back and forth, anyway.

If memory serves, you shouldn't have any problems gaming on both processors right now. If you want to try and "future proof" and with CPU's that's easily doable. Using the i7 does seem like the better option. I am conflicted between the two because of the DX12 hype. Curses.

Personally I am sticking with playing DX9 titles, which usually have abysmal multi-thread/HT support.

At the end of the day, it all depends on what you're going to do. Planning ahead might help.

Your last post seems to indicate that you have already chosen what the systems configurations will be. And I believe that might be the best course of action.

Edit: I'm going to follow this, hopefully you'll throw in some real world gaming comparisons because that is what I am interested in. Benchmarks are way too controlled and don't reflect typical scenarios right.

I'm trying to keep my friend off buying an i7 3770 when he really doesn't need one. I would just sell him my MB/CPU combo, if I had enough money to upgrade to something better.

 

[Mussels]

Well i've got the K in my hands at last, so i'll swap for the i7 2600 now and do some comparisons.

 

[Artas1984]

So as an interesting dilemma, i'm being given for free, an i5 2500k when i already own the 2600.
I've got two systems, so the 'loser' will end up in my secondary PC.


Which would you choose for your primary *gaming* PC, and why?

Well, as i have shown in my previous test hyper-threading not only does not help, but literally hurts gaming performance:

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/t...ing-test-20-games-tested.216466/#post-3351915

This is surely an Ivy Bridge test, but i suppose it should fit to Sandy Bridge as well.

Also that K overclocking factor.. It has been proven that overclocking Core i5 2500K from 3.7 GHz to 4.5 GHz adds additional 2 % gaming performance on high settings and 12 % on low settings:

http://www.ocaholic.ch/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=1158

Wooppy dudu! That's a lot?! I am sure for 3k resolutions with SLI GTX980 overclocking Core i5 to 4.5 GHz would be a must, but for 1920x1080 2 % is nothing.

 

[Mussels]

Well i've finished a very basic synthetic test, comparing at 4Ghz with the same voltage (stock)

i7 (auto/stock volts):
Desktop Idle: 61w

CPU-Z Single threaded: 89W (1510)
CPU-Z Multi Threaded: 147W (6348)



i5 2500k 4Ghz (auto/stock volts):
Desktop Idle: 59w

CPU-Z Single threaded: 90W (1243)
CPU-Z Multi Threaded: 144W (3619W)

Gaming tests could show very different results, but it shows how close they are at the same clocks with the i7 leading as expected.