Please help me choose an upgrade path...

[corehound406]

Heres my situation. I work with an electronic retailer and have been able to buy some parts recently at a really good price.

Currently I have a desktop at home that has a Q6600 and a GTX 560 Ti. I play everything, shooters, lots of MMOs, strategy you name it, Steam loves me.

Anyways today I have the opportunity to buy some new items and I need to decide what to do. I can get a Core i7 950 for 99-150 bucks, and a mobo for it for about 100 (the mobo regular price is 254, its a really good quality mobo). Or I can buy a Core i5 2500k, for 199 and a basic mobo from Asus with the Z68 chipset for 109.

So..

i7 950 + Hi end mobo = 200~250
i5 2500k + low end mobo = 310

Now I got a second 560 Ti last week for 90 bucks, brand new. That will be the biggest upgrade for my PC in terms of performance, so with THAT in mind, would going to a 2500k (I know its faster than the i7 950) really mean that much more performance for gaming? Specially since the x58 mobo for the i7 has 16x/16x for SLI instead of 8x/8x?

I would really, really, really, love to hear from someone that knows fore sure and can advice.!!

Thanks a million!

 

[sosofm]

i5 2500K is the best choice and with that Z68 mobo is great even for future upgrade with Ivy Bridge ( the mobo will suport new Ivy ). X58 is a dead socket.

 

[nagol567]

the 16x/16x 8x/8x is a difference of less than 3%
the X58 is dead.
upgrade possibility is worth more then the $50 price difference to me.
go ahead and get the best gaming processor for the price i say. 2500k ftw.

 

[corehound406]

i5 2500K is the best choice and with that Z68 mobo is great even for future upgrade with Ivy Bridge ( the mobo will suport new Ivy ). X58 is a dead socket.

Yeah I understand that, but keep in minda I have a Q6600 now and my PC's gaming performance is pretty much where I want it, Im upgrading because Its just time to. My questions still is how much better will the i5 be for gaming compared to the i7 950 ?

 

[davcon]

Gaming performance increase from 1st to 2nd gen is negligible.
Gpu is far more important.

 

[mrmotion]

^+1

 

[DXRick]

They are both dead end sockets now. For gaming, and with overclocking, the i5-2500K is it for the 1155 socket. Even the new i7-2700K is only 0.2GH faster (around 7%).

Having built an i7-950 system last November, and seeing the Sandy Bridge i5-2500K get release a few month later and beat it by 15%, I only felt a small tinge of buyer's remorse. In reality, that 15% doesn't mean much in gaming (30 vs 32 FPS). So the gaming difference is not a concern.

What about your other components? Do you have DDR3 RAM, a PSU that can handle two 560 ti's, and a case that can fit it all?

Is the difference in price $60 or $110? That's a big difference.

Does the "cheap" Z68 motherboard have 16x/8x PCI slots, or 16x/4x? If 16x/4x you will get around a 10% performance hit. Do you really need SLI?

 

[corehound406]

They are both dead end sockets now. For gaming, and with overclocking, the i5-2500K is it for the 1155 socket. Even the new i7-2700K is only 0.2GH faster (around 7%).

Having built an i7-950 system last November, and seeing the Sandy Bridge i5-2500K get release a few month later and beat it by 15%, I only felt a small tinge of buyer's remorse. In reality, that 15% doesn't mean much in gaming (30 vs 32 FPS). So the gaming difference is not a concern.

What about your other components? Do you have DDR3 RAM, a PSU that can handle two 560 ti's, and a case that can fit it all?

Is the difference in price $60 or $110? That's a big difference.

Does the "cheap" Z68 motherboard have 16x/8x PCI slots, or 16x/4x? If 16x/4x you will get around a 10% performance hit. Do you really need SLI?

Ok Rick thank you for your reply, very helpful. Allow me to give you some more info maybe I can make the best decision.

My mobo now is a Asus PN5-E SLI, I want SLI because I bought a 560 ti really cheap, and it would be a nice upgrade for my gaming performance. My computer has a 500W PSU, so I need to buy a new one.

I am gonna buy a 750W corsair PSU. But then I remenber there was something about my mobo and SLI that didnt work well, not sure what something with the PCIe slots. So I thought what the hell might as well buy a new mobo/cpu and memory (DDR3 from DDR2).

What you think the difference in performance would be if I add a new PSU and go SLI with my current mobo, or buy new mobo/cpu/memory/psu then go SLI?

Let me know what you think.