I5 2500k @ $139.99 or i5 3470 @ $149.99

wolfkraut

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Oct 18, 2012
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I'm just wondering, which do you guys think would be better for a gaming rig? I was originally going to go with with an i3 3220, but some things have changed and Microcenter is now an option. So I wanted to go there and get an i5 3570k as I know that would be the best option, but it has gone up in price and, really, $169.99 plus $10 tax was really pushing my budget, so I decided to make do with a 3470. But now the 2500k has gone on sale and is cheaper than the 3470! So which would be best? I know that Ivy Bridge is a little better at stock clocks, smaller with the 22nm die shrink, has PCIe 3.0 support and 1600Mhz memory support, but do I really need any of that?
 
Of the two I would get the i5-2500k because it can be OC'ed.

Unless you are used to buying $400+ graphics cards you should not be worried about future graphic cards being limited by the PCI-e 2.0 slot for some time (2 or 3 years). The lower performance (lower price), the longer it will be when those cards will be limited by the PCI-e 2.0 slot.

RAM speed? Meaningless, unless you like running memory benchmarks. The smaller die means lower power consumption. I forget... maybe 15w less under high CPU load?
 

wolfkraut

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Oct 18, 2012
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Not right away, but yes, at some point I plan to overclock.



lol, no, my budget for a GPU is more around $200 (I'm planning on either getting a 7850, 7870 or maybe waiting until the 8000 series GPUs, since they seem to be near), besides, I'll probably upgrade this whole rig in 3 years, so I'm not too worried.

Ok, thanks, I do have 1600Mhz memory, though (Corsair Vengeance 2x8GB), will it still run at that speed or no? It doesn't really matter, but I'd like to know. That seems fine, but how much power do you think I'll be using with a small overclock (maybe 4.5Ghz or less) and one of the above GPUs? My PSU is 550W (SSR-550RM) and I don't want to get too close to that.