2500K or 2600K - ...big difference between stock speed vs OC

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

What are your impressions of your performance increase or gains whether it be FPS in gaming, distributed computing, (or if you have a 2600K) media encoding/transcoding/etc. from the default speed to your over-clock speed?

Thanks

 

[Nintendesert]

Hmm, well I have a 2500k running at 4.2ghz for a few months. It's rock solid. I'm not sure what I can say about the performance, I run a ridiculous amount of ram and use a 256gig SSD for my primary drive. That being said, since a 2500k overclocked so easily and with very little pains compared to how it used to be, I see no reason not to do it.

 

[Diogenes2]

I have no idea... I never ran it at stock .. :biggrin:

 

[grkM3]

most 2600ks will do 4.7-5.0 ghz with a decent heatsink on air...I dont think any of my chips ever enven ran under 4.5 lol

 

[greenhawk]

at stock speeds, I suspect too small to tell. Both are close in speed, cache, and turbo numbers.

When overclocking, it is genearlly hit or miss as to which will go better. Only thing that can be assumed is that the 2600K might clock a little higher thanks to a better binning. How much, depends on demand for both and the quality of intel's production process.

 

[tweakboy]

It unnoticeable unless your doing a render of dvd. you can time it. ok the faster chip does it in 2 minutes but the latter will do it in 6 minutes. If that matters to you then yes get 26K

 

[mrSHEiK124]

I have no idea... I never ran it at stock .. :biggrin:

This. Although I would imagine it would scale pretty well.

The 2600k will make a difference for media encoding (Adobe Premiere, etc.) by virtue of having more threads.

 

[bryanW1995]

It unnoticeable unless your doing a render of dvd. you can time it. ok the faster chip does it in 2 minutes but the latter will do it in 6 minutes. If that matters to you then yes get 26K

Huh? What about F@H, seti, etc etc? Civ 5? + Several other games that are on the way that take advantage of >4 cores?

 

[MangoX]

I have found that a stock clocked i7 2600 is slightly faster than two stock Q6600's for video encoding.

 

[m3t4lh34d]

I have found that a stock clocked i7 2600 is slightly faster than two stock Q6600's for video encoding.

I can definitely see how that would be true as the stock Q6600 is @ 2.4 ghz vs the 3.7ghz of the i7 which is a ~55% increase in core clock alone, coupled with the hyper threading and the additional 50% of performance that brings on top of the 4 discrete cores so yes about 105% increase in apps that take full advantage of it is about right 🙂

I still find that my 2 Q6600 Rigs still pack a good punch for gaming rigs when OC'd to 3.6 Ghz. Definitely still worth their TDP in performance. We'll see how long that lasts. My 2500K @ 4.7ghz is a beast however and I can 100% notice differences in FPS with Tri-Crossfire'd 6970s compared to stock turbo speeds. However with 1 High end GPU I HIGHLY doubt it would make a discernible difference. If you're a cooling freak or a voltage freak as far as keeping things minimal and quiet or are running on stock cooling, I would definitely say keeping it stock is absolutely fine, unless you are running 2-4 GPUs. Which in that case, you should already be investing in a higher end motherboard, K-Series CPU, and decent cooling, which in all would only cost around ~150 more than the original budget if we're talking a modest HSF...

Anyways I do tend to go off on tangents in regards to the OP but I think there are a few tidbits in there that could help.

Enjoy the switch to Sandy, you'll never look back 🙂

 

[blackened23]

I have a 2500k that I ran at stock on the first day while waiting for additional parts to arrive via UPS. I would say there's a very sizable performance increase from stock to 4.6....for gaming. The framerate increase was very, very noticeable.

 

[guskline]

I have run my 2500k at 4400 almost since I bought it @July 4. It is very fast. Not bad having 2 5850s in crossfire either.

 

[Jacky60]

I think OP meant for example Crysis 1920/1200 16AF/4AA Stock fps 50
Same settings overclocked at 4.5ghz fps 70 or something like that but all the banal anecdotes are welcome.

 

[Crap Daddy]

I have a 2500k that I ran at stock on the first day while waiting for additional parts to arrive via UPS. I would say there's a very sizable performance increase from stock to 4.6....for gaming. The framerate increase was very, very noticeable.

What games and how much above 60FPS?

 

[blackened23]

What games and how much above 60FPS?

I don't typically benchmark while playing games, but I play all games at 1920 / close to full detail. Most of my games went from visibily stuttering at times to being smooth as butter. At the time I got my system, I was playing Dragon Age 2, Crysis 2, Rift, and TW2.

 

[toyota]

I don't typically benchmark while playing games, but I play all games at 1920 / close to full detail. Most of my games went from visibily stuttering at times to being smooth as butter. At the time I got my system, I was playing Dragon Age 2, Crysis 2, Rift, and TW2.

are you actually claiming that most of your games visibly stuttered with a stock 2500k and only became smooth once you oced it to 4.6? sorry but I do not think anybody is going to buy that.

 

[blackened23]

are you actually claiming that most of your games visibly stuttered with a stock 2500k and only became smooth once you oced it to 4.6? sorry but I do not think anybody is going to buy that.

I could care less really, but yeah, some of my games were less than 30 fps at times - 1920 resolution with full detail. Maybe stutter was the wrong word for it. I know in Rift I remember running around sanctum on a high populated server would result in slower than 30 fps, and also dragon age origins running through denirim (the city) during the final event where you kill the archdemon was a bit slower than 30 fps at times. I only play my games at the highest detail settings. Overclocking to 4.6 resulted in a signifigant performance increase across the board.

Anyway, just throwing my observation out there and I could honestly care less if anyone believes it. But I did notice a difference in games I play, with the settings I play them at.

cy@