When to upgrade from an i5-2500 (non-K)

[Tolin]

When is a good time to upgrade from a i5-2500? It seems currently that even a $300.00 processor is only about a 10% upgrade. Will the new Broadwell processors at the end of this year be a worthwhile upgrade? I definitely want a K this time so I can overclock. The reason I'm asking is because I want to run crossfire 7950's and my current motherboard only has a 4x slot so I am looking at new motherboards as well. Thanks.

 

[logainofhades]

You do not need to overclock to run dual 7950's. Personally, I would go with this. You get i7 4770 performance and an upgrade path to Broadwell, should you decide you want it.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1230 V3 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor ($249.98 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: ASRock Z97 Extreme3 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($129.91 @ Newegg)
Total: $379.89
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-06-11 09:54 EDT-0400)

 

[BerganTead1]

I would wait and upgrade when Devil's Canyon comes out. Your 2500 isn't a bad CPU right now.

 

[WhiteSnake91]

There honestly hasn't been much improvement since Sandy Bridge. CPUs have kinda stagnated. I know how you feel, I want to upgrade from my i5 too to an i7 to overclock and have the 8 threads but it's really not needed.

For a side build I may try an fx6300 and decent motherboard and see if it can keep up in games.

There's people even with the first gen i7 920s and i5s that are still gaming fine and those were clocked pretty low, only 2.66ghz