980Ti wasted on existing ASUS mobo with 2500k CPU?

Usersname

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Question is, would pulling my existing GPU and replacing it with a 980Ti be pointless on a http:// ASUS P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 mobo fitted with 2nd Generation Intel Core i5 2500K 3.30GHz Socket LGA1155 SandyBridge) which I can OC stably during gaming at 4.5GHz. Specs of the mobo suggest the 980Ti will not take too much of a hit...is this the case? I had a quick glance at the specs for Intel CPU's since early 2012 and, frankly, not much seems to have improved markedly unless a game happens to rely on the CPU; the GPU is still doing most of the work.

 
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The instruction sets improve most single/multiple thread applications ~10 - 15% from what i've read.

This for me would not be enough return on investment to upgrade the CPU.

Skylake (soon to be released) is only adding ~7% over haswell if you believe leaked sources, so if you were to upgrade i'd wait for the refresh version of skylake or beyond.

In my humble opinion your 2500k @ 4.5 will not bottle neck the 980 Ti GPU.
I still consider the I5-2500 to be a good CPU. We are only 3 generations beyond that at this point, and that means that its only about 15% slower than a similar I5 today. Which should still be fine for driving the 980ti in nearly all games. Obviously, if a game is CPU bound, there might be a small reduction in performance vs having the latest and the greatest CPU, but its going to be relatively small.
 

mate seriously there is no performance drop. the improvements made to the cpu arnt used in gaming for the most part.
all intel have done is add a few instruction sets, but very little of it affects gaming in any meaningful way.
i still run an i7 920 paired with a gtx 970 and i get every bit of fps that my mates running 4970k's do.
you get 95.6 fps in there games i get 93.5 fps in mine. its nothing to do with the cpu its the fact im running on pci-e 2 while they run on pci-e 3

it really is a case of intel cpu's are strong enough to wring out all the performance of current gen cards regardless of whether the game is cpu bound or gpu bound.


 

Not quite true - they've added additional integer units (going fromm 6 to 8), use faster cache, improved branching prediction, improved TLB, which adds up to around a 20% clock-for-clock performance increase going from Sandbridge to Haswell (I have a Sandbridge i7 at work, and Haswell i7 at home, and the difference is noticable when really pushing them, e.g heavy Visual Studio usage).

Most games are GPU bound, and most modern processors are pretty strong, so you as you correctly say, you won't notice it, though.

 

whassup

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Nothing really happened with Intel CPU after Sandy Bridge. Clock for Clock performance improvement with newer Intel CPU is almost negligible. Since you overclocked your 2500k to a solid 4.5G you are still as good as Haswell/broadwell at 4.5G. Think about CPU upgrade only when something significant happens otherwise keep upgrading the GPU as and when needed.
 
Your CPU at 4.5 GHz will not bottleneck the GPU at all. There will be a slight performance loss on PCI-E Gen 2, but not much to really make a big fuss over. Further generations gain little in raw performance; they focus more on improving Intel HD graphics. Your CPU will run parallel with even a stock i7-4790k in most games, so no worries there. No need to upgrade your CPU now, but DirectX 12 will make better use of threads on the i7-2600k if you want to consider that whenever DirectX 12 CPU benchmarks are released.
 

Jonathan Cave

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The instruction sets improve most single/multiple thread applications ~10 - 15% from what i've read.

This for me would not be enough return on investment to upgrade the CPU.

Skylake (soon to be released) is only adding ~7% over haswell if you believe leaked sources, so if you were to upgrade i'd wait for the refresh version of skylake or beyond.

In my humble opinion your 2500k @ 4.5 will not bottle neck the 980 Ti GPU.
 
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Usersname

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Thanks, My mobo has Gen3 PCI-e support.

 

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