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i5 4440 (non-k) vs. i7 2600k

i5 4440 vs. i7 2600k

  • i5 4440 + H97 ($140)

  • i7 2600k + P67 ($220)

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cooper69

Member
Hey guys, I'm currently on the ledge between these two processors. I will be buying used and there are two local deals in my area:

1) i5 4440 3.3 ghz + h97 motherboard - $140
2) i7 2600k 3.8 ghz + p67 motherboard - $220

I'll primarily be using it for gaming - the i7 has 8 threads and the option to overclock - would this be a game changer? If so, is it worth the extra ~$80?
 
I tend to think the i5 is a better option because it's $80 cheaper and less old,
the i7 OC is faster, but I don't think it will be easy to notice most of the time...
also the h97 board is less outdated, and I would think you will have to worry less, because it's not 5 years old OC hardware.
 
The 4440 is not that great of a choice, imo, but neither is a used P67 platform. It's a tough decision. I'd probably get the 4440 system, sell the CPU, and buy an i5-4690 instead.

OR, you could look for a Xeon E3-1270v3 or similar, they are fairly cheap.
 
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Op, don't even debate this. Get that i7 2600k.

I recently upgraded my i5 2500k to a I7 6700k and the gains I'm seeing in gaming are nothing short of a nice GPU upgrade. And this is at 1440p. So great some people might question this.

A lot of games nowadays like that hyper threading or even extra cores.
 
Well, the problem is, I would have a difficult time paying 200.00 for a cpu/mb that old, at least unless I had personal knowledge that it had not been abused, like overclocking at unsafe voltages.
 
I would go with the cheaper i5 4440 3.3 ghz + h97 motherboard

Gaming performance at 1080p with details cranked up should be fairly close even with the 2600k overclocked and the newer platform will allow you the option of upgrading to a faster Haswell chip down the road if you choose.

Contrary to some of the comments above, hyper-threading makes very little to no difference in the vast majority of games, at least according to the AT CPU bench and virtually every reputable benchmark I've seen.

Since your main concern is gaming performance, I suggest taking the $80 price difference and putting it towards upgrading your GPU. (depending of course on what you have now)


Majcric said:
I recently upgraded my i5 2500k to a I7 6700k and the gains I'm seeing in gaming are nothing short of a nice GPU upgrade.
Click to expand...


This should come as no surprise to anyone and has a lot more to do with the cpu & motherboard being several generations newer then adding hyper-threading alone does.

The gains going from a 2500k to a 2600k (especially in gaming) would be far less impressive and in many cases close to non-existent.
 
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cooper69 said:
I'll primarily be using it for gaming - the i7 has 8 threads and the option to overclock - would this be a game changer? If so, is it worth the extra ~$80?
Click to expand...
Considering your choice is based on budget restraints, can you tell us more about the graphics card you will be using? Did you buy that yet?

  • If you have it already, and it's a strong card, the i7 is the option if you're going to overclock.
  • If the card is next on the shopping list, and the i5 savings would seriously impact the budget for the GPU, then the cheaper&modern platform starts to make a lot more sense.
 
cooper69 said:
Hey guys, I'm currently on the ledge between these two processors. I will be buying used and there are two local deals in my area:

1) i5 4440 3.3 ghz + h97 motherboard - $140
2) i7 2600k 3.8 ghz + p67 motherboard - $220

I'll primarily be using it for gaming - the i7 has 8 threads and the option to overclock - would this be a game changer? If so, is it worth the extra ~$80?
Click to expand...

For a little more you could buy Skylake and be in the now, throwing dead money at dead money.....
 
Captante said:
Contrary to some of the comments above, hyper-threading makes very little to no difference in the vast majority of games, at least according to the AT CPU bench and virtually every reputable benchmark I've seen.
Click to expand...

I'm not convinced this applies anymore when looking at modern games. Certainly back in the PS3/360 days games were limited by the CPUs in those consoles, and dual cores were still fairly common even in gaming PCs, then a quad core and/or HT would have seen few gains. Now with octocores in the consoles modern games are much better at scaling across multiple threads, given how long CPUs last I'd question why not to go with an i7 for a gaming as long as the budget allows it. One other argument is that if you're GPU limited there's plenty of settings to turn down to overcome that, while being CPU limited is going to be painful even with a monster GPU and there's little that can be done about it.

Here's DigitalFoundry on the 6700k vs 6600k:

There was a time when games only utilised one or two cores - and for those titles, an overclocked Pentium G3258 remains the best price vs performance processor on the market. Then gradually, we saw a migration across to titles using four threads - good for the Core i3 line (two cores/four threads), great for the i5 (four full cores). Throughout this time, an i7 offered virtually nothing extra for gamers, but times have changed. The new wave of consoles has moved us into the many-core era; out of all the games we tested here, all of them - bar Shadow of Mordor - appear to utilise all eight threads available to an i7.
Click to expand...
However, the average frame-rate results suggest that the advantages of the i7's hyper-threading are minimal, its stock performance often overcome with an i5 overclock - but it's a different situation on when we look at the lowest recorded frame-rates, where the i5 is disadvantaged in several titles, and there are occasions where even 4.5GHz performance can't match the i7's stock stability. We should remember that our tests here are designed to propel CPU limitations to the forefront, and our contention is that in most titles where GPU is the bottleneck, the difference will be harder to detect. But the bottom line is this - in many-core games that hit CPU hard, the i7 6700K offers a level of stability in excess of what the equivalent i5 is capable of.
Click to expand...
The above quote really gets to the heart of the matter - an i5 is adequate for modern games, and in many situations the performance is going to be more or less the same as an i7, but when a game starts to hammer the CPU (and more and more games are) then the i7 can hold the framerates up while the i5 struggles under the load. Since stutter and low frames are so noticeable that secures the i7 as the best choice for modern games.

The gains going from a 2500k to a 2600k (especially in gaming) would be far less impressive and in many cases close to non-existent.
Click to expand...
The OP mentions Witcher 3 so I went searching for CPU benchmarks for the game. I've found some which show very little difference across widely varied CPUs, and others which show the opposite. I would think this is due to where those benchmarks took place, Novigrad in particular is a known CPU killer, DigitalFoundry often test CPUs by riding through the town for that reason. Here's an interesting one:

http--www.gamegpu.ru-images-stories-Test_GPU-RPG-The_Witcher_3_Wild_Hunt_v.1.04-test-witcher3_proz.jpg


This is exactly what I'd expect to see from a modern game, it's happy to scale to as many threads as you can throw at it. Obviously there's diminishing returns; octocores don't exactly justify themselves for gaming yet. But the HT on the 2600k propels it noticeably above the 2500k. Even the FX-8 series puts in a pretty great showing considering how old it is.
 
I just can't recommend buying an old system with the idea of overclocking it.

Get the newer system, it should be plenty for you, and if, later on, you need more CPU grunt, you can drop an i7-4790 in there.
 
Is it possible to wait a little longer, save some money and get something like a 4790k used maybe? When it comes to CPU's these days, I really think its worth it to wait a little bit and get a better one. They last so long its better to get the real deal than settle for an i5.
 
The 2600k is only worth it if you are willing and able to overclock it. Technically speaking, yes it can be a game changer because there are at least a few games that benefit from either more than 4 threads or high clocks.
 
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OP, as good as a chip as the i7 2600K was and is, I still like the H97 + i5 4440 simply because the platform is much newer. Not only do you get a full complement of SATA 3 6Gbps port but you get potentially SATA Express and M.2 slots plus upgrade compatibility to either the Devil's Canyon Haswell or even maybe the .14nm Broadwell chips.

Get the newer platform, put the extra cash towards a better GPU or save for a future i7.
 
nenforcer said:
OP, as good as a chip as the i7 2600K was and is, I still like the H97 + i5 4440 simply because the platform is much newer. Not only do you get a full complement of SATA 3 6Gbps port but you get potentially SATA Express and M.2 slots plus upgrade compatibility to either the Devil's Canyon Haswell or even maybe the .14nm Broadwell chips.

Get the newer platform, put the extra cash towards a better GPU or save for a future i7.
Click to expand...

I agree. The i7-2600K was first released in Q1 2011. Paying that much money for a 5 year old CPU on an outdated platform is hard to justify.

If it's just for gaming, you'd be better off with an i5 + faster GPU, and you can upgrade to an i7 later on when they're dirt cheap. 😎
 
RaistlinZ said:
I agree. The i7-2600K was first released in Q1 2011. Paying that much money for a 5 year old CPU on an outdated platform is hard to justify.

If it's just for gaming, you'd be better off with an i5 + faster GPU, and you can upgrade to an i7 later on when they're dirt cheap. 😎
Click to expand...

IME it takes a long time for older CPUs to become dirt cheap. On the contrary, they tend to stay at relatively high prices for a long time.


Older GPUs however, drop in price fast. And GPUs improve by quite a bit each generation.
Going back to 2012, there were GTX 680 and Ivy Bridge. It's hard to motivate the cost upgrading from Ivy Bridge i5/i7 to Skylake i5/i7, but much easier to motivate upgrading from GTX 680 to GTX 970.
 
crashtech said:
The 4440 is not that great of a choice, imo, but neither is a used P67 platform. It's a tough decision. I'd probably get the 4440 system, sell the CPU, and buy an i5-4690 instead.

OR, you could look for a Xeon E3-1270v3 or similar, they are fairly cheap.
Click to expand...
This.

Buying anything older than Haswell today, is a crime, imo. Way too many things to give up.
 
I'd stick with the i5, it's a good buy for that price, however I wouldn't expect much upgrade-ability at this point, before OP will even think of getting the i7, his mobo will die and 1150 platform will be as good as dead. Haswells with their DDR3 RAM are being currently phased out and won't take long before mobo shortage will cause this platform upgrades to be not economically viable.
 
There are currently over 30 LGA1155 motherboards on sale just at Newegg alone, so even someone running, say, an old 2550K can still get a replacement if needed. Haswell boards will similarly continue to be available for quite a while.
 
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