Intel i5 2500k with Nvidia GTX 570 SLI?

[Julian13S]

Would an Intel i5 2500k bottleneck a Nvidia GTX 570 SLI?

If so, would an overclock, an i7 2600k, or a GTX 560 Ti SLI balance it out?

And can SLI work between different card brands? For instance, a normal NVIDIA GeForce GTX570 with an EVGA GeForce GTX 570?

 

[brianmz]

The 2500k won't bottleneck you at all, you can also overclock it as you need to, 4-4.5ghz is a good OC, and yes, you can Sli different brand gpus as long as they are the same, and try to keep them in the same vram range, say you have 2gb one, sli it with another 2gb one.

 

[hellfire24]

no,no 2500k is more than enough.overclock it for better performance.

 

[ko888]

What is the make and model of the motherboard, power supply, and how many monitors and their resolution?

 

[Julian13S]

The motherboard is a ASUS P8P67 Deluxe, power supply is a 750 watt Silverstone, and I'm probably just going to use one 1080p television screen as a monitor.

Although, what would happen if I use an i7 2600k or a GTX 560 Ti SLI? And, what would happen if I just use one GTX 570? Would the GPU bottleneck the CPU, then?

 

[Crush3d]

GPU will bottleneck before CPU will.

 

[Max1s]

there aren't really any difference between the 2600k and the 2500k. i7 has 100mhz faster stock speed, a little more cache, and hyper-threading meaning one virtual core for every physical one. Stick with the 2500k.

Of course you will get better performance out of two 570s than two 560tis, but one 570 is enough for all games at this point. You might want to consider buying one powerful card now, and upgrading later. Either way its a ton of power.

 

[jjb8675309]

I have 2 oc'ed gtx 560tis in SLi with a 2500k and the performance is amazing, just saying, zero bottleneck as it would be with 570s

 

[ko888]

The motherboard is a ASUS P8P67 Deluxe, power supply is a 750 watt Silverstone, and I'm probably just going to use one 1080p television screen as a monitor.

Although, what would happen if I use an i7 2600k or a GTX 560 Ti SLI? And, what would happen if I just use one GTX 570? Would the GPU bottleneck the CPU, then?

Two GeForce GTX 560 Ti in 2-way SLI mode will give you on average a 28% or more performance advantage over a single GeForce GTX 570 when running at 1080p.

The GPUs will be the limiting factor in terms of frame rate because using a more powerful card like a GeForce GTX 590 will still result in an increase in FPS.

 

[jjb8675309]

what source are you citing?

personally I think with a little oc that the gtx 560ti SLi can come darn close to a 590

 

[bystander]

Depending on your resolution and the game, there will be bottlenecks. However, the CPU bottlenecks will not matter as you'll still be able to get more than 60 FPS in almost any game. It would just be a matter of the 570's in SLI could take you from great FPS to ridiculous FPS.

 

[ko888]

what source are you citing?

personally I think with a little oc that the gtx 560ti SLi can come darn close to a 590

From techPowerUp.com's NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti SLI review.

 

[esrever]

the 2500k > 2600k because hyperthreading sucks for games and often result in lower fps or studdering.

 

[spookyman]

You can sli with different brands but must use same model.

Honestly for the cost of 2 GTX 570's I would get a 7970 Radeon. Its a faster card and uses less wattage.

 

[bystander]

the 2500k > 2600k because hyperthreading sucks for games and often result in lower fps or studdering.

Mind siting actual results? From everything I've seen, 95% of the time it makes no difference between the two (because games rarely need more than 4 threads), and occasionally it's significantly faster, and occasionally it's slightly slower, and I've never heard of stuttering issues.

 

[esrever]

bf3 has had studdering due to multithreading on the i7 and has better performance with hyperthreading off.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1151970/my-own-bf3-benchmark-hyperthreading-on-vs-off
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1646383

there have been other benchmarks with the i7 showing hyperthreading off yields better results in different games.

 

[bystander]

I was kind of hoping for a study of some sort instead of an isolated incident. I can name 2 games that show 10% or more improvement with it on; Resident Evil 5 and Metro 2033.

BF3 has had lots of problems on many different systems. I'd love to see something else as an example.

 

[esrever]

well I don't think there are independent studies on the issue because its not really a big deal but hyperthreading has weaknesses and it affects some games. I would say the i5 is a better cpu for gaming until you turn off the hyperthreading in the i7.

 

[bystander]

well I don't think there are independent studies on the issue because its not really a big deal but hyperthreading has weaknesses and it affects some games. I would say the i5 is a better cpu for gaming until you turn off the hyperthreading in the i7.

I'd say the i5 is a better value for gaming, but while there isn't much of any difference the majority of the time, there are some instances where there is a real advantage for the i7 and at least in 1 case there is a real negative that may be fix at some point, as the Dev's purposefully tried to make hyperthreading useful, but failed in BF3.

 

[Julian13S]

Thank you for all the answers. I'm going to proceed with getting a Intel i5 2500k with a Nvidia GTX 570, and then I'll overclock the processor and get another GTX 570 when needed.

Max1s' post was chosen as the best answer for straight-out comparing the Intel i5 2500k with the i7 2600k, and for briefly stating that a GTX 570 "is enough for all games at this point," and for giving good advice on what to do.

 

[Julian13S]

Best answer selected by Julian13S.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey