Total cost of ownership Sandy Bridge Core i5 vs. Core i7

[cbn]

According to today's ebay buy it now listings, here are the starting prices of two Sandy Bridge processors:

1. Core i7 2600, $130 shipped. According to Intel Ark this processor had an original price of $266. The depreciation works out to be $136.

2. Core i5 2400, $50 shipped. According to Intel Ark this processor had an original price of $177. The depreciation works out to be $127.

Pretty interesting how TCO for the i7 is very close to the low end Core i5. (This assuming energy consumption is the same for both processors.....which I actually doubt even though they both have 95W TDP)

P.S. I didn't include the i7 2600K, i5 2500K and i5 2500 because Intel Ark didn't have prices listed for these processors.....but they are currently going for $165 (OBO) shiped, $83 shipped, and $62 shipped respectively on ebay.

 

[Headfoot]

Today it just makes more sense to buy the hyperthreaded version, they are holding up much better against modern workloads. A 6700k/7700k today will last a very long time, longer than a 6600k will before you really start to feel the age. If I had a 2600k instead of a 2500k I may still be using it, but it felt long in the tooth by last year so I moved up. If I had the 2600k I could have held out until Zen and had a more competitive landscape to choose from.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Today it just makes more sense to buy the hyperthreaded version, they are holding up much better against modern workloads. A 6700k/7700k today will last a very long time, longer than a 6600k will before you really start to feel the age. If I had a 2600k instead of a 2500k I may still be using it, but it felt long in the tooth by last year so I moved up. If I had the 2600k I could have held out until Zen and had a more competitive landscape to choose from.

That is exactly why I just upgraded my 2500k last year with a 2600k instead of a full platform upgrade. I wanted to see what Zen will give us in terms of a value shift.

 

[LTC8K6]

2600K $317
2600 $294
2500K $216
2500 $205

Launch prices according to the reviews when they launched.

 

[IEC]

Saving $100 looks good until you realize most people keep their CPUs for five years or longer. Add in depreciation and reduced performance and in my view it always makes sense to buy as much processor as you can reasonably afford. I would not have felt a need to upgrade my i5-2500K if it was an OC'd i7-2600K.

Now I wait to see what Zen brings to the table. If it's reasonably close to the 6700K in single threaded tasks, I'm upgrading to 8C/16T.

 

[.vodka]

Saving $100 looks good until you realize most people keep their CPUs for five years or longer. Add in depreciation and reduced performance and in my view it always makes sense to buy as much processor as you can reasonably afford. I would not have felt a need to upgrade my i5-2500K if it was an OC'd i7-2600K.

Now I wait to see what Zen brings to the table. If it's reasonably close to the 6700K in single threaded tasks, I'm upgrading to 8C/16T.

Which is why I'm kicking myself for not getting the 2600k back then. It wasn't that much more, yet the extra 4 threads are making quite the difference lately. My 2500k can do another 500MHz easily on top of 4.5GHz... but I'm not convinced it's worth it. Its performance ceiling has been reached.

I agree with you, next rig won't be handicapped like this from the start.

 

[Genx87]

I am convinced to get the 7700K when it comes out. No more i5s for me.

 

[waltchan]

i3-2130s are going for low as $25 winning bid. CPU depreciation is the #1 enemy in computers.

 

[StrangerGuy]

Yup OP, it makes zero sense to buy an i5 instead of the top-end mainstream i7 when you can afford it. You are almost guaranteed to recoup the initial price differential in the resale and people are far more willing to pay a premium for the fastest used chip available for the respective socket, and as IEC also mentioned $100 over 3+ years is peanuts. Plus you get to enjoy HT and possibly a better binned chip for the duration of using the i7.

Ebayers had paid absurd prices for used chips even when much cheaper and faster brand-new parts exist, and I doubt Zen is gonna change this sort of irrationality.

 

[kwalkingcraze]

Ebayers had paid absurd prices for used chips even when much cheaper and faster brand-new parts exist, and I doubt Zen is gonna change this sort of irrationality.

Core 2 Duo E8500 3.16GHZ is the fastest $5 processor you can get listed on eBay. It was $15-$20 last year.

 

[jihe]

Which is why I'm kicking myself for not getting the 2600k back then. It wasn't that much more, yet the extra 4 threads are making quite the difference lately. My 2500k can do another 500MHz easily on top of 4.5GHz... but I'm not convinced it's worth it. Its performance ceiling has been reached.

I agree with you, next rig won't be handicapped like this from the start.

Yeah but those 4 extra threads pretty much did nothing for you until last year or so, whereas you probably had a better graphics card at the time because of the saving. And now you can still pay the same price difference (in fact a lot less) to upgrade your i5 to i7, so economically you are way ahead. Buying the top CPU for future performance is always a losing proposition.

 

[CakeMonster]

... and now you also have the option of getting a faster overall CPU on a new platform right when those extra threads have started to matter. I think your initial decision was the best at the time, but now you have to make a new one given the options. I would not get an i7 for your old platform, I would put that money toward a graphics card fund or 7700K fund, but that's just me.

 

[.vodka]

Those 4 extra threads could've helped me on encodes and some other stuff. I had a 4850 for a few years, then a 6850 from about November 2010 to November 2014, then upgraded to a R9 290 (Tri-X, well cooled, might as well be called a 390 with an overclock and 4GB less memory). My upgrade cycles are long, that's why I made the remark.

Yeah, at the time there wasn't much of an issue with not having the extra threads, now the i7 differentiates much more from the i5 thanks to that. No, I'm not getting a 2600k or a 3770k for this old platform. It's a waste of money. If there were such CPUs for $5-10 as we now see old 1366 xeons or 775 C2Ds then yeah, but no thanks, prices haven't dropped as much as they should have for 6-5 year old tech.

My next upgrade is a current generation i7 if I stay Intel, or most probably what AMD gets to the table, 8C16T Ryzen is looking perfect for my usage lately based on what's known so far and will make for a great platform for some long years.

 

[lefenzy]

Have there been recent changes so that hyperthreading has a greater benefit? I haven't been following closely.

 

[Headfoot]

Have there been recent changes so that hyperthreading has a greater benefit? I haven't been following closely.

Increasingly, software is better threaded and more threaded than when HT first reappeared in 09. Especially in games since 2015 designed for Xbox One and PS4 and on, since to get good performance out of those consoles you need to be able to use the 6 to 7 effective cores you get out of the dual jaguar cluster.

Also the cores themselves have gotten wider with more execution units, so there is more opportunity to run 2 threads at once.

 

[lefenzy]

Increasingly, software is better threaded and more threaded than when HT first reappeared in 09. Especially in games since 2015 designed for Xbox One and PS4 and on, since to get good performance out of those consoles you need to be able to use the 6 to 7 effective cores you get out of the dual jaguar cluster.

Also the cores themselves have gotten wider with more execution units, so there is more opportunity to run 2 threads at once.

Well my understanding is that in the past, benchmarks with more threads than cores yielded little performance gain. e.g. a four-thread process on a 2 core HT CPU does not perform much better than a two-thread process (< ~5%) even though the four-thread process would scale well on a quad core CPU. Sometimes the performance was actually worse.

It's interesting that you're saying a wider core with more execution units would lead to better performance. I remember HT being touted for the Pentium 4 because of its long pipeline. I guess both cases apply.

But people in this thread are also saying that HT on the 2600k is useful, so we're not necessarily talking about newer architecture.

 

[Headfoot]

IIRC when Haswell came out and the core got wider they did some HT tests and found it was more effective on Haswell i3's vs Sandy/Ivy Bridge i3's. I cant find the article now though

 

[Insomniator]

I didn't think I'd keep my i5 2500k for 6+ years, had I known then I probably would have picked up a 2600k instead. Then again, even the 2500 @4.2 was a massive increase in performance over whatever the hell I had before... maybe a 9550... so long ago...

But yeah, being 7 years older 100 dollars isn't a meaningful amount of money anymore + I know people buy cars more often than CPU's now, so i7 all the way.

 

[krumme]

I didn't think I'd keep my i5 2500k for 6+ years, had I known then I probably would have picked up a 2600k instead. Then again, even the 2500 @4.2 was a massive increase in performance over whatever the hell I had before... maybe a 9550... so long ago...

But yeah, being 7 years older 100 dollars isn't a meaningful amount of money anymore + I know people buy cars more often than CPU's now, so i7 all the way.

I have it the excact same way. Rocking a 3570k at 4.2 and would have gotten a 3770 if i knew it would last so long and cpu progress practically stopped. I can buy whatver cpu i want no probs but it just makes little sense using 1000 on a cpu. Next cpu is surely going to be 8c 16t. Or there isnt any difference. I cant see why it shouldnt cost the same as a quad 8t 5 years ago. I would though prefer it to stay under 100w even oc near max. And oc it must be out of principle

I wlll probably have to skimp a bit on the 100w because i want something new and cant wait for next process generation. 70w oc for a 7nm 8c would be nice...