Upgrade from i3 2100

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A 2500K with a SLI GTX 660 overclock setup is...

McDuncun

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He just bought the 550ti from me so I`m thinking some lite gaming... Hes handling far cry 3 well at medium graphics but I think that a stronger cpu will be better in the lobg run... i5 at the least maybe...

Nice system btw!
 

namdlo

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Jun 20, 2012
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A lot will depend on the motherboard too- Elemein is probably right that a 2500k is probably the best unless they have a newer chipset like the Z77 then they he might want to look at a IB 3570k which is the usually the same price at the 2500k. However I wouldn't recommend it they have something like an H67 chipset which doesn't allow overclocking - then you'd go with a non-K version.

I know there are quite a few "arguments" about the 2500k vs the 3570k but I've personally owned both. The 2500k w/ a P68 chipset vs the 3570k w/ a Z77 chipset. The 3570k definitely runs warmer as was a little more difficult to OC but the 3570k @ 4.7 is definitely faster than the 2500k @ 4.8 was. The only reason I upgraded was because my motherboard went bad (damaging 2x 7970) and I was worried it had damaged the cpu as well - the motherboard/cpu wouldn't post any longer if it was OC'd. I gave the 2500k to a friend (even stock it was faster than his current machine) - he's currently running it at 4Ghz and it happy as could be.



 

McDuncun

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No I get what you mean... I personally like my 2500K and wont upgrade it anytime soon... He runs on a H67(My old bord) but I`m going to give my Z77 to him later so I think he will have to go with a IB... But the 3570K is a bit out of his price range... He does`nt really know alot about OCing so I`m thinking of telling him to just get a non-K IB instead later on...

Would a i5 3330 or 3470 also be good for the system hes running on right now... I mean he should be getting alot more than his 2100 at the moment... Hes not really into heavy hardcore gaming as such...

BTW... If your 3570K can run 2x 7970 then I bet my 2500K would be okay with 2x GTX 660`s with a bit of overclock right???
 

elemein

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Mar 4, 2013
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A 2500K with a SLI GTX 660 overclock setup is A-Okay.

If price is a big deal, consider going the i5-3350P route; they're significantly less expensive than similar Ivy Bridge processors due to the exclusion of the IGP, which you won't need anyways. They also don't overclock.

Getting a non-K processor with a Z77 is kind of an unfortunate waste, but a budget is a budget, and the 3350P is a good choice in this case. Very very similar in performance to the 3330 or 3470.

Any IB i5 processor will be more than enough for him.
 
Solution

namdlo

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Jun 20, 2012
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Just remember you aren't going to see a large jump between an SB i3-2100 and IB i5-3xxx. You're really only going from a dual core SB to a quad core IB and gaining L3 cache. The i3-2100 is 3.1 / 3MB L3 vs i5-3350 which is 3.1 / 6MB L3.

http://benchmark3d.com/far-cry-3-benchmark

Most games don't use more than 2 cores but this benchmark shows that Far Cry 3 will benefit from the additional cores when using DX11.

http://www.techspot.com/review/615-far-cry-3-performance/page6.html

This benchmark shows that it's really driven around the speed of the cores too.

If you're looking to improve performance specifically for Far Cry 3 then you will see a boost. I'm sure you'll see a boost in some other games as well but probably not as much as you'd expect. You'll get a 5-7% (some say more/less) going from SB to IB.

As said above you should have no issues with those in SLI on a 2500k.

Hope this helps.
 

McDuncun

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No I get it, the jump wont be that big, I just used FC3 as an example because it`s a pretty demanding game as far as I know... But I personally like the SB more due to the slightly better OCing potential

But that helps alot man thanx!!!