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Is my i5 2500k finally becoming a bottleneck?

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RussianSensation said:
i7 4790K @ 4.7Ghz would only be 12-13% faster than an i7 2600K @ 4.8Ghz. I would sell the 2500K and try to find a 2600K that hits 4.7-5Ghz. SB overclocks well and can take a lot of voltage too. Alternatively hunt down a 3770K and overclock it.

^ If that is still not enough, only a 4.8+ Skylake would be a viable upgrade because i7 4770/4790K @ 4.8Ghz is only 15% faster against an i7 SB at the same clocks. The problem is i5 2500K at 4Ghz is clocked low and it doesn't even have HT. That matters a lot in TW3 and GTA V.

If buying an all new platform, at this point might as well go Skylake / 5820K if you don't mind selling all your key platform parts. However, I think selling the 2500K and finding a 2600K/3770K is probably the cheapest and most effective option to get a lot more performance in CPU demanding titles assuming you get one that clocks 4.7Ghz+.
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It's hard to find a good deal on used SB or newer i7's right now. It's going to be more trouble than it's worth IMO. With Skylake coming, but still 2-3 months away, no one is offloading their i7's right now. OP is sandbagging the CPU by 4-500MHz as it is. Unless the CPU has suddenly turned into a major detriment where his game is unenjoyable, which isn't likely the case, I say push that CPU a bit harder for the next couple months and start with a clean slate with Skylake.
 
Your CPU should not be a bottleneck at 1440p with a single GPU. Find your CPU's OC limit, and I think you'll be fine.
 
I don't think I'm having a problem with TitanFall on my 2600K @ 4.7. And I'm not having any trouble with the simulator "games" I run on my 2700K @ 4.7. Of course, I'm only feeding a 1080p monitor and 1080p HDTV from either system. But none of those games pushes my graphics cards much beyond 70% GPU usage on either card. And the CPU isn't terribly loaded up with them.

I could wonder how it all plays with 1440p. But I don't particularly want to buy a monitor right now.
 
escrow4 said:
A 5820K at 4.0GHz would eliminate any bottleneck for the next few years. Last I played V my 5930K @ 3.7GHz (too lazy to OC) CPU usage was hitting 6 cores ~45%. Witcher 3 CPU usage also picked up in Novigrad. SNB is old and tired. If you don't want to wait for Christmas and Skylake pick up Haswell-E. Problem solved. I also second 16GB RAM, V and Witcher III both swallowed 5GB roughly after taking away ~1.5GB for 8.1.
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Do you recall what kind of CPU usage you were seeing in Novigrad?

(My GPU does recommend 16gb ram but I was planning on doing this upgrade when I move to a new platform i.e possibly DDR4)
 
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2is said:
It's hard to find a good deal on used SB or newer i7's right now. It's going to be more trouble than it's worth IMO. With Skylake coming, but still 2-3 months away, no one is offloading their i7's right now. OP is sandbagging the CPU by 4-500MHz as it is. Unless the CPU has suddenly turned into a major detriment where his game is unenjoyable, which isn't likely the case, I say push that CPU a bit harder for the next couple months and start with a clean slate with Skylake.
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I agree with you. And when you do find them the prices are high.
 
If your goal is to keep it from hitting 100%, which it shouldn't be, then It may not help. If your goal is to make the CPU LESS of a bottleneck and get better performance. It absolutely will work.

Your analysis is like saying if you down clock to 1ghz it would perform the same since you'll still hit 100% usage.

A 2500k at 4.5ghz loaded to 100% is doing more processing for equal amount of time than that same processor at 4ghz. Simple math really.
 
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Majcric said:
To be honest at 1440p I'm surprised it's bottlenecking at my current 4.0. Oh well times are changing.
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It's extremely rare that on 1440p the i5 2500K gets bottleneck since that chip can hold very well that resolution. OC it up to 4.5 Ghz, it's 12.5% improvement, so maybe that could solve that bottleneck.
 
Hate to say it, but you need 16GB of RAM and an SSD or a bigger one if all your current games are not on it.

My chip runs 4.3 no sweat in games, and I have 16GB.

Can run 1080p or 1200p with varying details no hiccups.
 
I run witcher 3 on my 2500k just fine with a 780ti. Didn't even notice if there was a bottleneck in the processor as it just seems more gpu bottlenecked. My cpu is clocked to 4.5.
 
Majcric said:
I've been testing it out a lot in different games lately and seeing CPU usage getting hammered. I'll start with The Witcher 3 where I have 98-99 GPU usage until I enter a city like Novigrad and then my i5 is hitting 100% on 3 out of 4 cores. GPU usage drops and of course FPS follow. In GTA 5, I see very high CPU usage across all cores and when I get up to say 95-98 % CPU usage the GPU usage starts dropping. Note, I can go out in the country with a lot of grass and the CPU usage stays at about 60 to 70% while the GPU usage never drops below 97-98%. And finally Crysis 3 pretty much the same thing as soon as I hit in the 90-100% range on the CPU the GPU usage drops once again. Sounds like it is bottlenecking but I'd like to hear what others have to say.

I realize sometimes in certain games you will always be CPU limited but I have this feeling an i7 with higher ipc would help in the ones I mentioned above.

i5 2500k@4.0 (might try overclocking some more but I'm doubting it will make a difference)
980ti
8gb ram
rez 1440p
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Not a bottleneck.
 
StrangerGuy said:
Despite conclusive evidence that HT helps gaming significantly now, people are still recommending others to save $100 for a 4690K with no HT and lower stock clocks for some unfathomable reason, for a long lived part that can survive 2 or even 3 GPU cycles.
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People are still stuck in 2013 and before where almost all games left virtual cores 5-8 of an i7 idle. It's gamer religion that i5-4690k is the best gaming CPU ever made.
 
SteveGrabowski said:
People are still stuck in 2013 and before where almost all games left virtual cores 5-8 of an i7 idle. It's gamer religion that i5-4690k is the best gaming CPU ever made.
Click to expand...

But this info has always stuck in my head. Not sure if it is true anymore after all the BF4 patches, but it is good food for thought.

http://techbuyersguru.com/ochtgaming4.php

Edit: at 1080p / 1200p; the i5's have always been a great balance of price and performance. The popular wisdom being roll that i7 money into a better GPU.
 
LOL @ the people who think that if a 2500k is bottlenecking performance @ 4.0ghz that somehow overclocking it wont reduce the bottleneck. WUT

Overclock it more.

4.0 is weak for a 2500k. Mine does 4.6ghz with only somewhat more voltage over stock. Mine is an average chip. My buddy's better 2500k he bought in 2011 I overclocked to 4.5 ghz on a 50mV bump over stock w/ Hyper 212 Evo and that overclock has held steady literally since 2011. I have no doubts it could hit 4.7 on more voltage if I spent the time to get it.

If you could hit 4.7-4.8, +700-800 Mhz will certainly be noticeable if you're actually CPU bottlenecking. No doubt
 
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Headfoot said:
LOL @ the people who think that if a 2500k is bottlenecking performance @ 4.0ghz that somehow overclocking it wont reduce the bottleneck. WUT

Overclock it more.

4.0 is weak for a 2500k. Mine does 4.6ghz with only somewhat more voltage over stock. Mine is an average chip. My buddy's better 2500k he bought in 2011 I overclocked to 4.5 ghz on a 500mV bump over stock w/ Hyper 212 Evo and that overclock has held steady literally since 2011. I have no doubts it could hit 4.7 on more voltage if I spent the time to get it.

If you could hit 4.7-4.8, +700-800 Mhz will certainly be noticeable if you're actually CPU bottlenecking. No doubt
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You DO mean "50 mV," don't you?!?😕
 
B-Riz said:
But this info has always stuck in my head. Not sure if it is true anymore after all the BF4 patches, but it is good food for thought.

http://techbuyersguru.com/ochtgaming4.php

Edit: at 1080p / 1200p; the i5's have always been a great balance of price and performance. The popular wisdom being roll that i7 money into a better GPU.
Click to expand...

What's an extra $100 over a period of three years?

If you cash strapped you shouldn't *even* be OCing CPUs to begin with using the same maximum GPU for the budget logic.
 
Hdgamer said:
I run witcher 3 on my 2500k just fine with a 780ti. Didn't even notice if there was a bottleneck in the processor as it just seems more gpu bottlenecked. My cpu is clocked to 4.5.
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well a 980 ti is TWICE as fast as the 780 ti in this game so of course your gpu is the main limitation by far.
 
stockwiz said:
Build a skylake build when it comes out. The chips run at 4.2 boost speed out of the box.. should be a decent IPC gain over Sandy. You coughed up over $650 just for a video card... you should be able to afford a new build. 🙂

I may do skylake.. may do haswell-e... or wait for skylake-e.. have not decided yet. I don't want to upgrade from 4 cores to 4 cores really... I have no reason to upgrade other than my mother wanting to upgrade from her Q6600 system that used to be mine... I pass down my stuff at a substantial discount when she's ready. I have a 2600K powering my current rig, built soon enough after sandy's launch that I had to send in my motherboard to get the revised versions with different SATA ports.
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I recently upgraded from an i7 920 to an i7 4790K. From what I've read it's a 100% increase in performance. Maybe you think that hex-core will be dominant in the near future. I'm willing to bet against that in the next 3-4 year window.

Unless you do heavy encoding and such you can do without a hex+ core cpu until some time in the future.
 
Let me clarify a bit to the few of you who think the i5 is causing me problems playing games, etc. It's not. In fact, it does a pretty fine job.

Going from stock speeds up to 4.0 I did notice a decent boost in GTA 5. I went ahead and took the processor up to 4.5 but hardly any changes in the games I mentioned in my OP.

Here is what I think raw processor power alone is not cutting it for some of the newer games that are out. More cores/threads are needed. Remember the days when a lot of folks were suggesting a highly clocked dual core over a quad. We all know how that eventually turned out. Now this is a personal opinion of mine but I believe that time is here again .(has been for a little while) Sure you can slide by with an i5 now, but if you want the ultimate gaming experience and the most out of your GPU I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the i7 over the i5. And as another member mentioned what's a hundred bucks for the better experience.
 
I agree on getting the i7 over i5 at this point going forward. that said I can turn off HT and will make zero difference in all but a couple games when using a single 980 Ti. in fact there are some games such as Thief that will actually go up a couple fps without HT. except for parts of Crysis 3 the only improvements I saw in cpu limited situations when going from a 2500k at 4.4 to 4770k at 4.4 were from the IPC improvement not HT.
 
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