Do i5's ever go down in price?

[Maximilian]

No. Never. 1500 years into the future the 4690k will still cost ~£180!!

Seriously though no they don't go down much at all, not that ive seen anyways. The price stays mostly the same and the stock simply runs out. On the plus side though of all the things that can break in a PC the CPU is probably the last on the list. So buying a used CPU is usually a good idea, theres always the chance its been abused to hell but I think theres less chance of that when buying from a forum. Non K versions are a good bet :thumbsup:

 

[escrow4]

This is a lie. there's was absolutely no competition with AMD at my pricepoint. Not to mention I got to keep my $45 cooler and didn't have to buy a new one or even a mounting bracket.

If you want dirt cheap you get dirt cheap performance. You could keep the same cooler from LGA 1156 to 1155 to 1150.

 

[crashtech]

I recently scored a 3570K along with an old HD 4770 GPU for $165 here on the For Sale/Trade forum, so it can be done, you just have to be in the right place at the right time.

 

[StrangerGuy]

Nope, if anything i5s has gotten more expensive since SB. Which IMO is a cunning pricing strategy to entice people to pay more for the 4790K and 5820K instead.

And it works: 4790K has been outselling the 4690K by 2x as far a # of reviews are concerned on Amazon.

 

[myocardia]

Haswell i3's are generally on-par with Sandy Bridge (locked) i5's, and can be found for $100-120.

Now, if you would just design an adapter, to allow the OP to use an LGA 1150 CPU with an LGA 1155 socket, that would be an awesome idea. Oh, you'd have to write the microcode to allow the OP's chipset to use a Haswell, too, now that I think about it!

Go on the bay and search for SR00T. $120 is a fair price.

I'd probably do this myself, unless the highest framerates in WoW are what you want. In that case, I would buy the fastest Ivy Bridge i3, which newegg has on sale atm for less than $120: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-912-_-Product

BTW, you do not have to have a four core CPU, to be able to run a game that requires 4 threads. You only need to have a CPU that can handle 4 threads, like an i3. The i3 that I linked is 800 Mhz faster than your current G630, along with having higher IPC, because it's an Ivy Bridge, making it the equivalent of a ~900 Mhz advantage, along with having the ability to run twice as many threads as that G630.

 

[Ranulf]

different performance characteristics...

(ignore pov ray, the result is wrong for it)
http://anandtech.com/bench/product/363?vs=1192

I think the old i5 is better balanced for newer games; but for WoW and SWTOR the Haswell i3 might win, still on swtor I compared an i5 and i3 at the same clock (both SB), and even with the game only showing 50% CPU usage the i5 had an advantage, so they might performance the same anyway.

Meh, swtor is just a badly programed game, graphics or cpu. Maybe for amusement I should test it on my i3 4330 and my 2500k again. Even with a ssd the loading times are still bad on my 8350.

Since the graphics engine change with WoW my 8350 and 7870 are hovering around 60fps far too much at 1080p.