Few questions about my Cpu upgrade (Hyperthreading and gaming)

[ZaO]

Alright guys. Before you get mad and tell me to search about this or whatever - I already have! I've already spent hours researching this tonight. And the problem with nearly all of the data I've found, is that it compares the performance in games that are 2+ years old. So I thought I'd come here for some more recent opinions.

My current setup can be seen on the left. I am thinking of upgrading my Cpu, whilst staying with my current motherboard to save money.

So my options are basically a 3570K or 3770K.

* Would it be worth forking out the extra to get the hyperthreading on the 3770K (3570K is £166.98 and the 3770K is £239.00 on Scan)? If I got one of these, then I'd likely keep it for at least another year or two. You think games will benefit a good amount from the hyperthreading in that time? What about games that are already out?

* The other concern I have, is how well my motherboard will support one of these new Cpu's. My board has a Z68 chipset (this one, to be more specific: http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P8Z...pecifications/), which was originally made for the Sandy Bridge Cpu's (the gen before). But with a Bios update, I can use Ivy Bridge Cpu's. I just don't know if one would run at full potential on my board. I've had that problem before when I upgraded to an AM2+ chip on an AM2 board (or maybe it was putting an AM3 chip on an AM2+ board. I forget..). It didn't run as fast as it could, until I moved it to a newer board (due to the older board only supporting Hyper Transport 2.0, while the newer board supported Hyper Transport 3.0. The Cpu also supported Hyper Transport 3.0 of course).

So yeh - those are my main concerns here I think!

Appreciate any help you can give. Thanks

[scaryjim]

tbh, I don't see any benefit to upgrading from a 2500k at 4.4GHz if it's just for gaming. Yes, some games do run a bit better with more threads available, but I don't think there are any games out there yet that tank on a quad core, and you've got one of the fastest quad cores around with that overclock. If you're looking purely at gaming, any performance gains you get from upgrading would be minimal, and certainly not worth the outlay.

Put the money back in your bank account and start saving towards a full upgrade in a couple of years time

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The only game which seems to see a big improvement with HT was Crysis3 in some parts,but that was with a top end card and a stock CPU. TBH,I would not be bothered upgrading - your graphics card is probably going to be the major limitation in many games at some point IMHO.

BTW,check out the Russian site GameGPU:

http://gamegpu.ru/

They have a tendency to do the most CPU and graphics tests of newer games,and their current benchmark suite includes SB CPUs too.

[ZaO]

Thanks for the feedback guys. My 2500K is actually getting maxed out quite often in the games I play. And I think this upgrade might benefit me in games like Arma 3, which I play quite often. I would really appreciate a boost there! My Cpu is really getting beaten up in that game..

The whole Hyper Threading thing doesn't seem convincing enough for games right now, as far as I can tell from an educated guess. But it might be worth throwing down the extra for the HT capable chip with games looking to support it more in future. I guess it's mainly just guesswork on that one though.. But I was hoping there might be a few good examples around right now. I did see one thread over on Ocn which showed a bit of an improvement in Crysis 3 and Bf4. But it wasn't all that convincing..

It's kinda tough figuring this one out. I think I will go and try to find as many 2500K-3570K comparisons as I can. Something like a 10fps increase in the games I like playing would be good enough for me. Seeing as part of the reason for selling my 2500K is to help someone else upgrade their rig on a budget.

I tried looking at that russian site btw. I used the google translate thing on it. But I can't find their cpu benchmarks :/ I'll keep looking through it anyway. But if anyone has a link to where they are - that'd be cool, thanks

[MrRockliffe]

The CPU shouldn't be struggling with games like arma 3 - I can run it fine on my 3470 and see no performance difference compared to benchmarks that use the same graphics card, and mines not an overclockable chip! I would run some tests to make sure the chip is running properly first, and then decide.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

ARMA 3 is just very poorly optimised.





It literally hogs one thread,and look at the CPU scaling. A socket 2011 IB six core overclocked shows little performance improvements over SB. Haswell might improve IPC a bit,but if you are struggling with an overclocked Core i5 2500K I doubt any newer CPU is going to massively help IMHO.

[dfour]

You might even be better seeing if you can up your overclcock a bit.

Dropping £200+ for an extra couple of frames isnt worth the investment.

[ZaO]

ARMA 3 is just very poorly optimised.





It literally hogs one thread,and look at the CPU scaling. A socket 2011 IB six core overclocked shows little performance improvements over SB. Haswell might improve IPC a bit,but if you are struggling with an overclocked Core i5 2500K I doubt any newer CPU is going to massively help IMHO.

Thanks for linking the charts Arma 3 might not be optimised all that well. Though it does stream in things at very high detail with probably the furthest draw distance of any game out there. Well, depending on how you set it up. But it's things like this that destroy the cpu..

There are other games as well. My cpu is definitely getting its ass kicked in some games (in relation to the settings and frame rates I want). It's still a great chip over all. It still holds up very well in modern games. But there are those where I just want a bit more power. I like to play my games at a solid 60fps as well. I know some people are happy with 30-40fps and consider that as a game running ok. But that's terrible for me. Can't handle those frame rates.

But as I say guys - part of the reason for me selling my 2500K is to help someone else upgrade on a budget. I would get some money off them for my current chip. So it's like a part exchange for a newer one. And the more I think about it, the more I would like the Hyper Threading for video editing. But I would still like to have an idea of the potential of that when it comes to games. So my main concern here is just figuring that part out. Cheers all

[GeorgeStorm]

I would have thought your cpu would have enough oomph, didn't think there were many games that were cpu-limited (I didn't really notice a difference going from a 2600k to 760k).

I'd look to pick something up 2nd hand, and try to get the one with HT, stuff like video editing should take advantage of the extra 'cores'.

[Kovoet]

Went from a 2700k to a 4770k this week and didn't really notice anything in game. Only reason I upgraded basically was because I went from a Maximus formula v 1155 to a formula VI 1150

[dfour]

ignore

[ZaO]

As I say guys - it is still a great cpu! Don't get me wrong! But all the cores are getting pushed to 100% in some games. And that's leaving me with choppy frame rates when it happens. Usually I just lower some less important settings to remedy the situation. But I also wouldn't mind a little boost if I can get it. I don't want to clock this thing any higher either. As going from 4.4 to 4.5Ghz requires about 1.4v. And I'm not happy to run it at that voltage. Even though the temps are within acceptable range there. But that extra 100Mhz just isn't worth it to me. And I don't think I could push it any further than 4.5Ghz on air. Plus I'm tired of playing with overclocking settings lately!

But I think you guys might be right about this when it comes to gaming performance. The upgrade probably isn't worth it. The differences generally look extremely minimal, if any. And the Ivy bridge chips apparently don't clock as high, as easily.

So that leaves me with my original concerns here: The Hyper Threading issue, and my motherboard. So that's the bit I would like to focus on Thank you all for the replies so far. Much appreciated!

[MrRockliffe]

It might be worth going with an 8350/20 if you're concerned about core usage. You should be able to overclock it to 4.5 without any issues. Again, I recommend you do some diagnostics as I don't have any issues on my i5 3470, and yours should be quicker with a 4.4 overclock.

[scaryjim]

... that leaves me with my original concerns here: The Hyper Threading issue, and my motherboard. So that's the bit I would like to focus on Thank you all for the replies so far. Much appreciated!

Well, CAT's already given you a link that shows one game you're interested in, ARMA 3, doesn't even use the extra threads that Hyperthreading offers (look at all those 0% usages for the hyperthreaded 2600k). So there's one use case where you thought that HT would help, that can be demonstrably proved to not be the case.

Other people have said that they're not getting their CPUs maxed out with similar or slower CPUs than you're using. That suggests to me that either you've got some esoteric settings that are mangling your CPU for no good reason, or there's something else chewing the CPU time while you're playing games - particularly if you're seeing 100% usage on all 4 cores on ARMA 3, as CAT's charts show that's an atypical distribution for that game. It's rarely the best choice to throw money at a hardware upgrade unless you can categorically show that the hardware is the root cause of the problem, and so far I think the evidence isn't strong enough. Your CPU is behaving atypically in at least one game - I'd look at working out why that's happening first.

[ZaO]

It might be worth going with an 8350/20 if you're concerned about core usage. You should be able to overclock it to 4.5 without any issues. Again, I recommend you do some diagnostics as I don't have any issues on my i5 3470, and yours should be quicker with a 4.4 overclock.

I would actually prefer to go with amd. And did consider that route. But it means buying a new board. So I was thinking I would try and do a short term upgrade with what I already have Plus the top of line FX chip from amd performs basically the same as something like the 3570k or 4570k (or some i7's above). So it would be better to just stay with my board for now. And wait for amd to come out with something good later!

Well, CAT's already given you a link that shows one game you're interested in, ARMA 3, doesn't even use the extra threads that Hyperthreading offers (look at all those 0% usages for the hyperthreaded 2600k). So there's one use case where you thought that HT would help, that can be demonstrably proved to not be the case.

Other people have said that they're not getting their CPUs maxed out with similar or slower CPUs than you're using. That suggests to me that either you've got some esoteric settings that are mangling your CPU for no good reason, or there's something else chewing the CPU time while you're playing games - particularly if you're seeing 100% usage on all 4 cores on ARMA 3, as CAT's charts show that's an atypical distribution for that game. It's rarely the best choice to throw money at a hardware upgrade unless you can categorically show that the hardware is the root cause of the problem, and so far I think the evidence isn't strong enough. Your CPU is behaving atypically in at least one game - I'd look at working out why that's happening first.

Well I don't know when that test was done. Things can change. It's only one test as well. Though the data there is definitely useful and I won't ignore it. It's not so much that I'm trying to argue for or against anything. I'm just trying to see if anyone knows of some gaming scenarios where hyperthreading benefits

When other people say their cpu is doing fine or whatever. That can mean so many things to me. We all have different standards. I'm not disputing whether anyone else is happy with their setup or not. But I have settings I want to run, and frame rates I want to maintain. Do they want to run the same settings with the same frame rates as me? What I want in these situations will differ from others..

My setup is running great. I've been building computers for years now... I'm not saying I know it all or anything. There's always tonnes to learn. And surprises in why things are happening when you thought you had it all figured out. I know this. But my setup runs great in my opinion. Benchmarks against similar systems will prove this as well. It's not a setup that struggles often. But I want better. Know what I'm saying?

Now I really want to steer this thread back into my original direction. The direction I've been politely trying to take it back into. It's clear what people think about whether an upgrade is worth it or not. And that's fine. I'm not even disputing that! But the two original concerns I had, still remain. So that's what I would like to focus on if anyone can help with that.

Again - thanks for all the replies so far. Much appreciated

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The whole ARMA series have been hardware hogs and throwing more hardware beyond a point is not worth it.

GameGPU actually seems to have tested one of the more demanding parts of the game.

This is the Techspot test:

http://static.techspot.com/articles-...nch/CPU_03.png



Test on a forum:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthrea...ng-Benchmarked





Another review:

http://hardwarepal.wpengine.netdna-c...-Benchmark.jpg