I5 2500k vs i7 3770k

[mrwhosetheboss]

I currently have an i5 2500k
Its not a bad cpu, but I have some store credit for an electrics store and I could pick up an i7 3770k
Would I notice a decent speed boost for gaming and general use?

I have a gtx 680, so this upgrade would unlock pci 3, and I have some 1600mhs ram that the i5 2500k dosent use to its full speed

Any help is much appreciated

 

[abekl]

I say keep your store credit for something else. The CPU upgrade isn't worth it at this time. The performance increase in gaming and general use would be about 10%. And unlocking PCI3 doesn't gain you much, if anything as most cards cant even saturate a PCI2 bus. As to the RAM, the 2500k can fully utilize that, you just have to configure XMP profile in the motherboard's BIOS.

 

[13thmonkey]

No it would not unlock pci-e 3, unless you have a Z77 board.

would you upgrade from a 2500K to a 2600K, if not then don't bother, personally i'd say don't bother.

 

[Keanu Reeves]

I would just stick with what you've got. PCI-e 3.0 doesn't really make much difference at all at this point. Even in situations where it gets a bit of a boost, 3-way SLi or CF, it still only gains a tiny bit of performance here and there. If anything, since it's a gaming PC first, throw another 680 in there and be set on the GPU front for the next three years or so. By that point, PCI-e 3.0 might be relevant and warrant a CPU upgrade.

 

[DJDeCiBeL]

No it would not unlock pci-e 3, unless you have a Z77 board.

That's not true AT ALL. There are plenty of Gen 3 Z68's out there that can have PCIe 3.0 with an IB CPU (including my own, even though it's not officially classified as Gen 3).

Regardless, to the OP, I agree with the others, just stick with the 2500K.

 

[13thmonkey]

I thought there were lots that claimed that there would be 3 compliant, it is true then. Must admit I thought of that several hours after typing it

 

[ilysaml]

Would I notice a decent speed boost for gaming and general use?

I have a gtx 680, so this upgrade would unlock pci 3, and I have some 1600mhs ram that the i5 2500k dosent use to its full speed

Any help is much appreciated

For games, No. The i7 3770K is the sweetest choice if you're gonna do video encoding, rendering or generally gonna use a lot of multi-threaded application.

In real world performance there's no difference between PCIE 3.0 and PCIE 2.0, performance is the same.
Also, In real world performance there's no difference between 1333 MHz RAM and 1600 MHz RAM, maybe a additional bunch of numbers if you ran a bench program.

 

[BadTrip]

Agreed. Not worth the money. Stick with what you got, or a sweet SSD upgrade.

 

[mac_mac_attack]

All of the bandwidth can't even be utilized in the PCIE 3.0 bus yet so its not something to base a build off of right now.

 

[masterjaw]

I wouldn't bother with that as you will only experience diminishing returns going past 2500k unless you really can utilize the extra threads.

I'd say drop that extra credits for a nice SSD (if you don't have one) instead if you want to feel a noticeable boost in general usage.