Actually i have a I7 2600 on my pc. I get the chance of taking the I7-37790k for a very good price. All i'm asking is: is it worth it? I dunno how the 3770k could perform better in PS2 than 2600. Can someone share some hints about it?
Well, the i7-3770K is the Ivy Bridge i7 released around the same time as my i5, and I can only say it has no trouble at all. With regards to how it compares to your Sandy Bridge 2600, the 3770K will overclock comfortably to 4.5Ghz on an upgraded air CPU cooler, with no need to worry about liquid cooling unless you're going past that. Obviously you will need to look into your PSU and motherboard situation, as the full potential of that 3770 needs unleashing for it to be worth your time. You're only going to see a gain of 100Mhz over your 2600 in base clock speed (3.5 Ghz boosting to 3.9Ghz compared to 3.4 Ghz boosting to 3.8Ghz) but the unlocked multiplier of the K series chip will soon make that gap wider. The big news I guess is that the 3770K allows you to use much faster RAM, with you gaining access to DDR3-1600 (and it's Overclocked variants) rather than being pegged back at DDR3-1333 as you are at present. On balance, the difference isn't going to knock your socks off unless you overclock. So if that's not your thing, you may want to pass up the 3770K.
The short answer: no it's not worth it. The performance improvement is marginal, and i7-2600K overclocks better while consuming more power. If your CPU is actually the locked i7-2600, then the 3770K with overclocking could make a little bit of sense, but for that you'd need to make sure your motherboard can overclock, and your CPU cooler is up to the task. But I would still not bother upgrading to the same product tier just one generation apart. See here for performance difference at stock: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/287?vs=551
Thnx guys for answers. I'll try to overclock it a bit (my Noctua D-14 should do the work fine enough), even if now i know i will not see any substantial improvements in PS2...
The performance difference between a stock 2600 (which cant be overclocked) and a 3770k overclocked to lets say 4,5 ghz, is about 30%... aka quite noticable.
No, you can slightly overclock a non-k cpu, but your cpu needs turbo boost technology. Intel called it limited unlocked cpu in one of their slides. My i5 3450 runs at 3.8 ghz ( 3.1 ghz stock and 3.3 ghz turbo all cores). But it looks like this feature got removed from standard Haswell CPUs.
That's nice Padapong, but Haswell is irrelevant to OP as they have Sandy Bridge and are considering Ivy Bridge as a replacement.
And your point is? I was just telling him that he doesn't need to buy an ivy bridge or something like that even if he has a non-k cpu. An i5/i7 ivy bridge above 4.5 isn't worth it anyway in my opinion, because heat+bad tim. ( maybe with water cooling + cpu delidding to fix bad tim).
My point? I made my point in my first post (which came to the same conclusion as most, I believe). My reply to yourself was in an effort to keep the thread on track and not muddy the water.
I told dragam that the op doesn't need to buy a new cpu even if he has non-k cpu. So what are you talking about? Are you trolling or something?
Certainly not. It was your digression into what Haswell does or doesn't have, which I meant by "muddy the waters". I'm not looking for some strange conflict here, just things which are pertinent to either the Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge the OP has (or may prospectively have). In case I caused confusion in my previous reply, by "first post" I mean post #2 in this thread. On reflection, maybe you included the link about Haswell as evidence of the small OC window on non-K chips in case someone tried to discredit your assertion.
I did and i also tried to help the op so he isn't wasting his money on ivy bridge, because you have to heavily overclock your cpu to see a big difference in performance and not every cpu makes it past 4.4 ghz air cooled ( i have a bad 3570k for example ).
I'd agree it certainly isn't wise to go past 4.5Ghz on air cooling with Ivy Bridge. For example, if I were to push mine any harder, I'd make the transition to water. You also make a good point about not all chips being created equal (even if the moniker is the same). There is no guarantee he'd have been able to get 4.5Ghz out of the i7.
Sadly my I7-2600 is not a "K" variant. My mobo is nothing like RoG or something, but is a good one (still in office so i cannot post my specs). Air cooling should not be a problem, i read the Noctua d-14 is still an excellent piece and you guys confirm that. I'm planning to start with overclock at 4.0 ghz, and see how stable it will be.
Did this exact swap back at xmas, got the 3770k really cheap on sale. I saw about a noticable improvement at higher graphics settings. 15fps more in huge fights. Not noticable small/med. Had the 2600k overclocked too, but the 3770k is way cooler under heavy load and haven't had a crash yet. I gave my 2600k to my son, so wasn't a loss. Not sure i would have done it otherwise.
i5-4670k is the best choice for video games ATM. Only difference between i5 and i7 is hyperthreading, which is a function not supported by most games that, in the best case won't result in any difference and in the worse could lower the performance. BTW most games aren't even able to effectively take benefits from CPUs with more than 2 cores... What is the point in having 12 ?
You cannot really overclock the i7-2600 because the multiplier is locked, that's the whole point of the K SKU. You can mess around with the base clock, but it's not really recommended because it affects the PCIe frequency too, and you don't want to overclock your PCIe frequency. I'm baffled why you even have a D14 for a CPU that isn't unlocked. The i7-2600 is adequately cooled even by the stock Intel cooler. If noise levels were a concern, a $30 cooler would've sufficed. What exactly is your motherboard? It depends on that whether upgrading to 3770K would make any sense
