Is 2600k good for "future-proofing?"

What will you use your rig for mostly? The 2600k's 100dollar premium is only benefitted by users who want heavy media encoding type of work. You won't really see a difference in gaming or regular every day web browsing, blu-ray watching, music listening type of ordeal.

The major difference between the i5 2500k and the i7 2600k is the presence of hyper threading in the i7 which IMO doesn't makes any significant difference.. The 2500k is equally future proof..

Right. That is my question. I'm a gamer and movie watcher with occasional video editing. I'm not doing major video editing, so I know it won't make a difference now, but I wonder about a couple of years down the road. Will it make a difference then? I hadn't considered the 2600k until I had access to both the 2500k and 2600k at half price.

All depends. If you runs apps that use hyperthreading, then yes I would go with the 2600K for a bit more future proofing. If not, there really won't be a difference between the two

In my opinion it is a rather "meh" series of processors (the whole Sandybridge lineup). I would wait for Bulldozer and Intel's Ivy Bridge/Sandy Bridge Higher End Platforms before making any purchasing decisions.

I would have to go with ElMoIsEviL's assumption. I have a friend who is wanting to buy a new rig, I have advised him to wait until the Bulldozer/SandyBridge war begins to see where the new CPU's are going to land on this round. We really dont know until the benchmarks arrive. And personally I wouldn't want to kick myself in a few months because I spent now.

Thanks for your help guys. Much appreciated. Because I'm looking to upgrade in the next month, I will be using sandy bridge. Becaue the price difference for me is only $50, I think i'll go with the 2600k just in case.

Best answer selected by Big Hoss.

I've recently wondered about gaming while using 3rd party programs like Ventrilo and my game pad software at the same time. I wonder if Hyper-threading would help in these situations. I'd love to see some benchmarks that accounted for this.

The other day, when I was on Vent playing Rift, and using my G13 game pad, I noticed my FPS dropped by 5-10 when I was logged in Vent, and it shot back up after I logged out.

I also know that my G13 software is quite bulky and takes a lot of system RAM and it may also take a fair bit of processing power. At least with the lua scripting I use which is very large and does a lot.

Hyper threading is not a recent feature.. It has been around for quite some time now.. But I have not seen its advantage or for that matter any program specifying advantage using a HT enabled processor.. For reference, just compare any HT dual core CPU with a non HT (or HT turned OFF) quad core from the same range for a thread heavy program such as 3DS Max.. The gimmick called HT will soon come in real light..

HT has been around since at least the 2003 P4s or at least it was in my 3.0GHz P4 3.0c and still in benchmark after benchmark 7-8 yrs later I still see CPUs with HT enabled performing less than CPUs that have it disabled....I dont know how much of an advantage the 2600k has over the 2500k in video editing bc I havent been able to find any head to head tests ran on them but other than that I see no reason to buy the 2600k bc the 2500k actually outperforms the 2600k in lots of benchmarks....but like some1 else has said...I would wait until the release of bulldozer even though most dont believe it will be better than Sandy Bridge...if it is...or at least cheaper and somewhat comparable at least there should be some kind of price war...however...cpu prices are so low right now anyway i dont see you saving that much money...if AMD could possibly manage to beat out Sandy Bridge id be very happy bc then maybe intel would move up their Ivy Bridge processor release date bc if you really want to future proof yourself Ivy Bridge mobos will have pci express 3.0....if you can disable the HT on the 2600k and dont mind spending the extra 50 bucks then go ahead and get it if you want but I still dont see 50 in performance difference