Should I upgrade from i3 2120?

manxer259 · Jan 19, 2015

Hello. I ordered Gigabyte G1 GTX970, but my processor is Intel i3 2120. I'm thinking about buying i5 4960K, but is it necessary? I want to be able to play all games on Ultra. I have 8GB RAM.

lantrich · Jan 19, 2015

What games are you playing? The I5 is a much better processor and with overclocking it is as much as you will need for a very long time.

Ironsounds · Jan 19, 2015

Hello... Just try it and see how it performs with what programs you are using.

lantrich · Jan 19, 2015

If you are going to play games like Battlefield 4 you should upgrade to the I5. You I3 is very weak for these kinds of games.

geofelt · Jan 19, 2015

The i3-2120 is a surprisingly capable gaming cpu.
Few games will use more than the 2 cores + 2 hyperthreads.
Here is one comparison:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-processor-frame-rate-performance,3427-9.html
Best to try your games first and see how you do.

Your i3-2120 runs at 3.3.
i5 upgrades will also at a similar clock speed, so going to 4 full cores may not really help much
unless the game is multicore enabled. Few are.
If your motherboard is Z77 based Overclocking is supported. You could then profitably use a i5-2500K which can be overclocked to give much faster core speeds.

rockie_ · Jan 19, 2015

You need i5 at least for great gaming . most of i5 are nearly 2x faster than i3 2120
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i5-3570-vs-Intel-Core-i3-2120
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i5-4690K-vs-Intel-Core-i3-2120

Your current mobo should support 3570(K) and 3770(K). Check it.

upgrading to i5 3570(K)/4690(K) will give at least 40/50% more FPS on average.

Karsten75 · Jan 19, 2015

Bear in mind that upgrading to the i5-4xxx series processors will also require a motherboard upgrade.

manxer259 · Jan 19, 2015

Yeah it seems that I will have to upgrade my Asrock P67 Extreme6 too, will MSI Z97-Gaming 3 LGA 1150 be good? I'm mainly playing games like Skyrim, Dragon Age: Inquisition and Assassin's Creed and I want to be able to play Witcher 3 on maximum settings. My GTX970 should arrive tommorow or on Wednesday so I'll see how it works. I remember playing Assassins Creed Black Flag on very high settings with 8GB RAM, i3 2120 and Gigabyte Radeon HD6870 or Battlefield 3 on Ultra with 30+ fps.

rockie_ · Jan 19, 2015

But the current mobo is fine :
Advanced V16 + 2 Power Phase Design
SLI/Crossfire
http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/P67%20Extreme6/
might get 3570K or 3770K .
http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/P67%20Extreme6/

manxer259 · Jan 19, 2015

rockie_ :

Oh, that's great. So I'll get 3570K, there won't be much difference between this and 4960K in gaming?

rockie_ · Jan 19, 2015

At the stock clocks about 9% only. But when i5 3570K is overclocked the difference vanishes compared to i5 4690K stock clocks .

manxer259 · Jan 20, 2015

rockie_ :

Thank you, so I'm ordering 3570K

rockie_ · Jan 20, 2015

i5 3570K is an awesome CPU

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