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Buy a 2500K Now or Wait for Ivy Bridge?

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So this is my dilemma: I bought nearly everything for my new rig. The only thing I need now is the CPU and the motherboard. I want to make a system which I wont upgrade anything other than the graphics card and which will have ample power three years from now. My current graphics card is a single EVGA GTX 460, and its getting pretty long in the tooth. I will keep it until the new HD 7000 series from AMD is out. The new GPUs will support PCIe 3.0, and while I know they wont saturate 2.0 x8, I want to use the current standard and two years from now they may very well satirate it. Another thing that interests me in 3.0 and Ivy Bridge is 4x/4x/8x support. I like the fact that even though I have the same number of lanes I have twice the effective bandwidth, and again, I want the platform to last me three years at least. Another thing that keeps me interested in Ivy Bridge is the around 5% higher IPC plus that I will be able to squeeze 5% or so higher clock speeds through overclocking. There is also the lower power consumption; electricity here costs around twice as much as in continental US.

What do you guys think? Should I wait for Ivy Bridge and buy a cheap $100 CPU and motherboard to hold me over or splash $350-400 on a 2500K and motherboard?

More about : buy 2500k wait ivy bridge

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CPUs Master

I would say wait but since you have most of the parts already just get the Sandy Bridge CPU. No point in having the parts sit around for months until Ivy Bridges is released.
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rds1220 said:
I would say wait but since you have most of the parts already just get the Sandy Bridge CPU. No point in having the parts sit around for months until Ivy Bridges is released.


It's just that I personally don't see too much of a point to buy a 2600K when Sandy Bridge has been out for nearly a year; I won't have any money left and will be 'stuck' with an older CPU 5 months from now.

I was thinking of buying an Athlon II X4 631 and an ASRock A75 motherboard for $150. Would that be enough to hold me over until I upgrade to Ivy Bridge some months from now? I was thinking of pairing the 3770K with a Radeon HD 7950 or 7870.

CPUs Master

That's the computer world though. You'll only have the latest and greatest for a short time. Even if you get a Sandy Bridges now it will be the best processor for at least two years. The next big leap isn't going to be until 2013 anyway.
You do know the 2600k and Athlon are two different processor sockets? The 2600k is Intel the Athlon is AMD. If you get the Athlon now then decide to get an Ivy Bridges you'll have to get a new motherboard for an Intel socket and probably RAM. I would say get an I5 2500k now then wait for the Haswell to come out in two years.

rds1220 said:
That's the computer world though. You'll only have the latest and greatest for a short time. Even if you get a Sandy Bridges now it will be the best processor for at least two years. The next big leap isn't going to be until 2013 anyway.
You do know the 2600k and Athlon are two different processor sockets? The 2600k is Intel the Athlon is AMD. If you get the Athlon now then decide to get an Ivy Bridges you'll have to get a new motherboard for an Intel socket and probably RAM. I would say get an I5 2500k now then wait for the Haswell to come out in two years.


I understand, but given that Sandy Bridge will be replaced shortly and this is gonna be a long-term investment, I don't see much point in going with the 2600K. About the Athlon II X4: I know it uses an FM1 socket; I just looked at it as a current alternative to hold me over; also, the RAM would be the same. The 631 requires a dedicated GPU, so the RAM I'd run would be the same (I'll use some old 2x2GB sticks I have in my drawer). Another alternative I was looking at was getting an ASRock P67 EXTREME4 Gen3 and a Celeron G530 since then I'd have support for PCIe 3.0/Ivy Bridge and therefore wouldn't have to buy a new motherboard. I looked at the Athlon as an alternative because it's much faster than the Celeron.
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AppleBlowsDonkeyBalls said:
I understand, but given that Sandy Bridge will be replaced shortly and this is gonna be a long-term investment, I don't see much point in going with the 2600K. About the Athlon II X4: I know it uses an FM1 socket; I just looked at it as a current alternative to hold me over; also, the RAM would be the same. The 631 requires a dedicated GPU, so the RAM I'd run would be the same (I'll use some old 2x2GB sticks I have in my drawer). Another alternative I was looking at was getting an ASRock P67 EXTREME4 Gen3 and a Celeron G530 since then I'd have support for PCIe 3.0/Ivy Bridge and therefore wouldn't have to buy a new motherboard. I looked at the Athlon as an alternative because it's much faster than the Celeron.

If you want pcie 3.0 support i would either get the asrock z68 extreme 3 gen 3, or gigabyte z68x-ud3h.
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Why does nobody recommend the ASUS P8Z68 PRO?
Its won awards all over the place and its ASUS - ASUS are ASUS and people love ASUS cause they are ASUS.
Yo dawg I heard you liek ASUS so we put ASUS in your ASUS so you can ASUS while you ASUS.

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What a silly conversation. Yeah drop another $120 bucks on a cpu today, and then another $350 for IB down the road so you can continue to game at 1920x1080 at fps well over 60 either way.

You said yourself you're going to upgrade to the 7 series gpu. Guess what, Toms review of it was done on SB. No PCI-e 3.0 there. Did it suffer any bottleneck? No. So unless you plan on replacing that 7 series within the lifetime of IB you know for a fact that you don't need PCI-e 3.0. Of course we all knew that anyways.

It's your money, but 120+350 = 470 vs 220 for an i5-2500k today. I'd take that 250$ spread and put it towards something that'd actually make a difference like your new gpu.

a4mula said:
What a silly conversation. Yeah drop another $120 bucks on a cpu today, and then another $350 for IB down the road so you can continue to game at 1920x1080 at fps well over 60 either way.

You said yourself you're going to upgrade to the 7 series gpu. Guess what, Toms review of it was done on SB. No PCI-e 3.0 there. Did it suffer any bottleneck? No. So unless you plan on replacing that 7 series within the lifetime of IB you know for a fact that you don't need PCI-e 3.0. Of course we all knew that anyways.

It's your money, but 120+350 = 470 vs 220 for an i5-2500k today. I'd take that 250$ spread and put it towards something that'd actually make a difference like your new gpu.


That's kind of true, and if I go with the 2600K I'd blow my budget while not getting that huge of a performance increase. If I were to get a 2500K and an ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3 it'd cost me $345 without including shipping, which is still reasonable. What worries me about the Extreme3 is that there's no USB 3.0 headers, meaning no front panel USB 3.0. The case I bought is a Corsair Carbide 400R, and one of the reasons why I bought it was for that specific feature; I don't want to settle for FP USB 2.0. Are there any other motherboard options for a similar price that have front panel USB 3, a higher-than-4+2 power phase, and are also colored black?

Thanks a lot for the help to you all. :) 

Meh. Ended up buying an i7-2600K and an ASRock P67 Extreme4 Gen3. I hope I made the right decision.

Why P67 instead of Z68? Because P67 doesn't have the useless (to enthusiasts) video outputs in the back panel I/O and it costs less. I also have a Vertex 3 120GB, so I don't need IRST.

Thanks to everyone for the feedback, again. :) 
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