Sandy Bridge upgrade i5 2400 to i7 2600k

[gregulator]

Sorry to rain on the new processor parade in here (can't afford a full system build at the moment), but am looking for upgrades for encoding speeds and video editing in 4k. Will I notice much difference going from an i5 2400 to i7 2600k? Enough to really justify $120, and maybe another $30 for a Hyper 212 to get a bit of an overclock? Watching system resource usage, it seems like when I am playing back 4k h.264 encoding, it definitely pegs out the CPU. Transcoding h.264 to something more manageable in premiere seems like it doesn't peg any system resources, but CPU is up around 80-90% so I am guessing CPU is the bottleneck again.

So I am wondering, will a 2600k @ 4GHz feel like a huge increase, or just incremental? Thanks for any insight!

 

[AMDisTheBEST]

I am willing to buy your old sandy i5 for $60

 

[richierich1212]

What motherboard do you have?

 

[gregulator]

A biostar TZ68+ I believe.

I will certainly sell the i5 if I upgrade. Thanks.

 

[Ken g6]

So I am wondering, will a 2600k @ 4GHz feel like a huge increase, or just incremental?

Here you go: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/54

i5-2400 score: 26.8
i7-2600K@stock: 38.8
i7-3770K@stock: 42.72 :hmm:

One more thing: an i7 2600 non-K, with 4 bins overclocking, and I think 2 bins stock turbo, would also get you to 4GHz. A 3770 non-K would be one bin faster.

 

[MajinCry]

Overclock the bejeesus out of the 2600k. 4.5Ghz is easy afaik.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

A 2600K is a nice choice if you can get it cheap enough.
Sandy is dead easy to overclock (I've always found Ivy way more finnicky) - you should be able to get ~4.5GHz easily, with a decent chance of 4.7GHz+

At high OCs, you'd only be ~20-25% behind a Sky/Kabylake that's also OCed balls out.

 

[gregulator]

Thanks all. Ken, due to your hint I actually looked at overclocking my current chip, and got the multiplier to go to 38 so 3.8GHz. I re-ran my transcode and it didn't make a difference at all other than making the CPU temps hotter during the run. It was just a single 28 second h.264 file to a DNxHR file UHD. Both times it took about 1:40 seconds. It seems weird that it didn't seem to help at all. Openhardware did report the faster clock speed too so it seems as though it was actually at 3.8GHz.

 

[sm625]

Thanks all. Ken, due to your hint I actually looked at overclocking my current chip, and got the multiplier to go to 38 so 3.8GHz. I re-ran my transcode and it didn't make a difference at all other than making the CPU temps hotter during the run. It was just a single 28 second h.264 file to a DNxHR file UHD. Both times it took about 1:40 seconds. It seems weird that it didn't seem to help at all. Openhardware did report the faster clock speed too so it seems as though it was actually at 3.8GHz.

If it didnt help at all then you arent actually overclocking it. There is nothing magical about h.264 that makes it not benefit from what should be a nice 20% increase in clock speed. If you were to get a 2600K and clock it to 4.4GHz or so I think that would be a massive upgrade.