Intel Sandy Bridge 2600K and 2500K Processors @ [H]

My 2600K is still more than enough, best CPU I have ever owned. In the past if someone would've said that I would one day run the same processor for 3+ years I would've laughed in their face.

4.8ghz on water...still awesome.
 
My 2600k still works on stock clocks and it's more than enough for multi tasking and games. Planning on getting a 970, probably gonna need to overclock it a bit to keep up with the GPU?
 
^Strike said:
My 2600k still works on stock clocks and it's more than enough for multi tasking and games. Planning on getting a 970, probably gonna need to overclock it a bit to keep up with the GPU?
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if you want to keep higher minimums FPS then yes, every mhz you can juice from the CPU will help A LOT. you will find a big difference from stock speed to lets say 4.4ghz.. a big one..
 
Araxie said:
if you want to keep higher minimums FPS then yes, every mhz you can juice from the CPU will help A LOT. you will find a big difference from stock speed to lets say 4.4ghz.. a big one..
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Yeah that's probably what I'll do. From your experience does the min. Fps boost happen in every single game or mainly the CPU intensive ones?
 
^Strike said:
Yeah that's probably what I'll do. From your experience does the min. Fps boost happen in every single game or mainly the CPU intensive ones?
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every game receive the benefit of the higher clock, and not only in minimums but also high, which also help to have a higher average FPS.. every single game in the market will benefit from that.. specially games that run in 2 or 3 cores or old games that run in 1-2 cores.. games that run in multiple threads like crysis 3 or BF4 multiplayer receive a huge performance boost

for example...
CPUocCrysis3.png
 
Araxie said:
every game receive the benefit of the higher clock, and not only in minimums but also high, which also help to have a higher average FPS.. every single game in the market will benefit from that.. specially games that run in 2 or 3 cores or old games that run in 1-2 cores.. games that run in multiple threads like crysis 3 or BF4 multiplayer receive a huge performance boost

for example...
http://www.techbuyersguru.com/attachments/Image/CPU_Bench/CPUocCrysis3.png[/IMG
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Yeah I was aware that Crysis 3 would benefit from a higher clocked CPU since this game requires a lot of processing power. But what about games that are not that CPU intensive, I would assume not all of them get massive fps gains like Crysis 3 does, right?
 
^Strike said:
Yeah I was aware that Crysis 3 would benefit from a higher clocked CPU since this game requires a lot of processing power. But what about games that are not that CPU intensive, I would assume not all of them get massive fps gains like Crysis 3 does, right?
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Most games aren't going to get a massive fps boost with a really high clocked cpu.
 
outers said:
Most games aren't going to get a massive fps boost with a really high clocked cpu.
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Yeah that's what I thought. I remember playing the first Crysis, and overclocking my CPU didn't seem to improve gameplay much (if at all). Maybe if I had benched it I would have got higher minimum fps or whatnot, but we all know that numbers don't tell the whole story. :)
 
^Strike said:
Yeah that's what I thought. I remember playing the first Crysis, and overclocking my CPU didn't seem to improve gameplay much (if at all). Maybe if I had benched it I would have got higher minimum fps or whatnot, but we all know that numbers don't tell the whole story. :)
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Yup, on the other hand in a game like bf4 it will use all my cpu. If you multitask while gaming having multithreaded/high oc performance really does help quite a bit.
 
I can see it being a good 2 years before we need to upgrade from our 2600K, at 4.5Ghz it's a beast still
 
CYB34 said:
I'm still looking for a game that can push the load above 75%...
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The load point is missinformed.
A game that push you sandy at 30% can run faster on an haswell-e at 10%.

Load usage means really few in gaming performance.
 
How does the 2500k compare to the 3570k? Been curious a bout that for games like cs go
 
jhicks said:
How does the 2500k compare to the 3570k? Been curious a bout that for games like cs go
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Thermal compound is better on 2500k, so you are likely to get a better OC out of it negating the slight IPC advantage of the 3570k. 3570k brings PCIe 3.0 though. For CS:GO, I doubt you'd see a difference.
 
This is a record for me, this is the longest I have ever kept a processor. I still don't seem to have a need for updating my 2500K. I usually update every year and it's been 3 years for me. I have gone through a few video cards though. I may evenutally upgrade to a socket 1155 i7 cpu before they disappear. Times have reallly changed in my opinion.
 
It's the longest I've kept one as well, with a 2600K ripping along at 4.4ghz stock voltage, and I haven't even really pushed it. Hell, I was about to upgrade to a 5830 before coming here and taking the suggestion of upgrading my video card and just OC'ing my processor...
 
Yeah, 4.1 years my 2500K has been kicking ass.
Yet I'm annoyed with Intel not bringing out something worth upgrading to.

My main point is slower cpu development holds back elements of software evolution.
ie games :p
Although Mantle developments and DX12 will help alleviate that.
And my secondary one is that I want some retail therapy!! Then someone else that needs an upgrade gets one.
 
A little over 4 years for me too @ 4.7ghz. No point in upgrading for a while still. Best chip I've ever had. Three cases, several coolers, several video cards later.
 
Still running my price error 2600K on 2 rigs. I don't think I'll be upgrading anytime soon either aside from my GPUs.
 
Yup, after 4 years still running my 2500k @ 4.0 GHz in P67 my rig. It's within 15% of a Haswell Core i5, so why bother?

Plan is, when I eventually see a CPU worth upgrading to, I will put the i5 2500k in my HTPC/light gaming PC. Even at stock speeds it will be a nice upgrade for the Core i3 I have in there. This CPU will be kept in service as long as it keeps chugging (8+ years, perhaps) :D

Best $210 I ever spent!
 
After years of running these CPUs has anyone run into any issues as a result of using 1.65V memory?

I have some factory-overclocked DDR3-2133 that requires 1.65V to hit the XMP target, but defaults to DDR3-1333 at 1.5V. I recently scavenged an i5-2500K that was primarily used in an office PC and I was thinking of pairing it up with the 1.65V memory, but I seem to remember everyone saying that Intel's memory controller from this generation didn't play nicely with 1.65V memory.

I've been using the same memory on my A10-7850K setup without issue since it came out. If I recall correctly, the general consensus at the time was that it was not ideal, but probably wouldn't hurt anything. I never ran into issues with the old Phenom IIs and 1.65V memory either.

The goal will be a modest overclock to around 4 - 4.2 GHz for the 2500K, maybe more depending on the characteristics of the chip itself.
 
MrCaffeineX said:
After years of running these CPUs has anyone run into any issues as a result of using 1.65V memory?

I have some factory-overclocked DDR3-2133 that requires 1.65V to hit the XMP target, but defaults to DDR3-1333 at 1.5V. I recently scavenged an i5-2500K that was primarily used in an office PC and I was thinking of pairing it up with the 1.65V memory, but I seem to remember everyone saying that Intel's memory controller from this generation didn't play nicely with 1.65V memory.

I've been using the same memory on my A10-7850K setup without issue since it came out. If I recall correctly, the general consensus at the time was that it was not ideal, but probably wouldn't hurt anything. I never ran into issues with the old Phenom IIs and 1.65V memory either.

The goal will be a modest overclock to around 4 - 4.2 GHz for the 2500K, maybe more depending on the characteristics of the chip itself.
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I've always used 1.5v. The entire 1.65v overclocked ram from major suppliers community dried-up within a year of the introduction of Sandy Bridge. That is how seriously Intel took and pushed the new 1.5v spec. I would take it just as seriously, since your processor is now outside of warranty :D

You don't need to overclock the memory to overclock the processor, since it's just a multiplier/voltage tweak. Also, the difference between 1333 and anything higher is fairly small if you're not using the onboard graphics.

See this review, where they test memory timings on a stock and 4.7 GHz 2500k:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/memory/display/sandy-bridge-ddr3_7.html#sect0

Virtually no difference at stock clocks, and you have to jump above 1600 to show a real improvement over 1333 (and even that's 10-15 percent or less). If you're only going to lightly, overclock, I can't see 2133 being all that beneficial.
 
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I have some 2yr old Kingston DDR3 2400 rated at 1.65V, they are still sold.
I run it at a lot less volts though, under 1.55V.
 
Nenu said:
I have some 2yr old Kingston DDR3 2400 rated at 1.65V, they are still sold.
I run it at a lot less volts though, under 1.55V.
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No, you're right, you can still buy plenty of 1.65v modules :D

but the modules sold by major dealers used to ALL BE 1.6v or higher, even at lower speeds like 1333/1600! This was a way for them to increase useful yields by selling overclocked (i.e. out-of-spec) DDR3 ram.

Now, just about everything new up to 1866 is all universally 1.5v or lower, and that all happened in the year following Sandy .
 
In my main rig I'm still running a 2500K at 4.2Ghz on an MSI P67A-G43, cooled by a Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme. Its been that way for right around 4 years.

In that time I've had a GTX 470 (with GTS 250 for Physx), GTX 560 Ti and a GTX 660... and I'm interested in upgrading the GPU again soon.

I knew this thing was a good investment at the time, but I'd never have expected to have no reason to upgrade it for 4+ years.
 
Same as previous posters. 2500K at 5Ghz runs great. The only regret I have is not going for 2600K. I did not expect it to last that long, to be honest.
 
I didn't expect my 2600K to last me this long, either. Sad, because I really like upgrading. Just nothing that is cost effective for me to upgrade right now.... :/
 
yep i bought my 2500K the night they released back in January of 2011. great investment. in that time i've gone through these gpu's: GTX 460 > GTX 460 SLI > 7970 > 290X > GTX 970

i want to upgrade my system soon but it's looking like my 2500K will stay. i'll probably just add more ram, an SSD, and fresh install of Windows (Win 10?).
 
All of the above is why I didn't hesitate to snag a deal on a 2600 non-K for my 3 year old Z77 board (was running a i5 3570 non-K until I had to sell it and downgrade to an i3 2120). Even at stock it's plenty powerful for even the most demanding games/software.

Moore's law just ain't what it used to be.
 
these cpu's are epic win, and a prime example of how competition is good for consumers.
When amd was pushing awesome price performance cpu's intel came up with 2500k-2600k and we had a winner back in the time. Since than amd failed to deliver, intel with no competition giving us sandy bridge v1.1 v1.2 like processors. Would it be like this if amd didn't fail? would we still run our precious sandy's? i think no.
 
6 systems (2 laptops).

1st what I notice is if one just simply disagrees "TROLL" has been used.. that says allot right there.

I never been one to run with any reviews. If you know computers then no matter how similar they are .. their not.

For me testing my I7-2600k and OC'd using my 970 or using 770 or 680 or ATI 7970.. yeah in SOME not all and most tests it does not win. I know some like to believe what ever it is as long as it has the same numbers as in "4.0-5.0".. duh its the same! A truth yet not..

They are a great cpu yes. If you just play games and your not looking to push 4k and SLI then no need to upgrade. But as Steve Martin once said in a movie "can we come back from la la land now". Or go back to your bubble and remember its not you is always THEM!

Its text.. what matters is if YOUR happy then relax if others disagree.. who cares? I am not like most.. for my son.. I always give him the best yet.. he loves the I7-2600k and the NV 770. Says he has nothing that needs a 970 or 4690. The other boy.. pffft cant give him enough lol
 
^^^ WTF are you talking about? It sounds like a drunk rambling at 1220 A.M.
 
Zeblade said:
6 systems (2 laptops).

1st what I notice is if one just simply disagrees "TROLL" has been used.. that says allot right there.

I never been one to run with any reviews. If you know computers then no matter how similar they are .. their not.

For me testing my I7-2600k and OC'd using my 970 or using 770 or 680 or ATI 7970.. yeah in SOME not all and most tests it does not win. I know some like to believe what ever it is as long as it has the same numbers as in "4.0-5.0".. duh its the same! A truth yet not..

They are a great cpu yes. If you just play games and your not looking to push 4k and SLI then no need to upgrade. But as Steve Martin once said in a movie "can we come back from la la land now". Or go back to your bubble and remember its not you is always THEM!

Its text.. what matters is if YOUR happy then relax if others disagree.. who cares? I am not like most.. for my son.. I always give him the best yet.. he loves the I7-2600k and the NV 770. Says he has nothing that needs a 970 or 4690. The other boy.. pffft cant give him enough lol
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I play games exclusively, run SLI 980s, and run @ 4k resolution, sometimes 1080p @ 144Hz. And, if anything, DX12 is just going to make my 2500k shine even brighter.
 
Is there much of a reason to upgrade? I'm running a 2600K right now with a Titan. I've had the itch to upgrade my rig, but honestly haven't felt the need. I can still drive most games very well @ 1440p.
 
NeoMatriX724 said:
Is there much of a reason to upgrade? I'm running a 2600K right now with a Titan. I've had the itch to upgrade my rig, but honestly haven't felt the need. I can still drive most games very well @ 1440p.
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if you haven't overclocked yet, that's your path then.. overclock that 2600K to at least 4.4ghz which should be easy and you will be fine. you will notice a lot of difference..
 
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