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Upgrade from a core i5?

S

Shyatic

Platinum Member
I have a pre SB Core i5, and I was thinking of upgrading. My GPU is great (just upgraded and won't be spending any money on that), and I'd like to re-use as much of my existing parts as possible. I have a 256GB SSD, I have 8GB of DDR3 RAM, and a 7200 2TB drive for storage.

Anyhoo... for $200-$300 as a motherboard/CPU combo, what would you recommend? Or would you recommend not bothering to upgrade?

Thanks for any help!
 
Shyatic said:
I have a pre SB Core i5, and I was thinking of upgrading. My GPU is great (just upgraded and won't be spending any money on that), and I'd like to re-use as much of my existing parts as possible. I have a 256GB SSD, I have 8GB of DDR3 RAM, and a 7200 2TB drive for storage.

Anyhoo... for $200-$300 as a motherboard/CPU combo, what would you recommend? Or would you recommend not bothering to upgrade?

Thanks for any help!
Click to expand...

This question mainly depends on your intended usage. What applications will you be using?
 
Mostly gaming... CSGO, Starcraft, etc.

Only reason I want to upgrade is because I can upgrade my media center box which has quite a few issues, and it's quite slow as well. This way I take the components from my existing build, and put them into my media PC as an upgrade.
 
Shyatic said:
Mostly gaming... CSGO, Starcraft, etc.

Only reason I want to upgrade is because I can upgrade my media center box which has quite a few issues, and it's quite slow as well. This way I take the components from my existing build, and put them into my media PC as an upgrade.
Click to expand...

For gaming no, there won't be any discernible difference if you upgrade your processor.

So you want to upgrade to move your i5 to your media box? I would recommend a 64GB SSD and fresh OS install instead. That will make it blazing fast.
 
2timer said:
For gaming no, there won't be any discernible difference if you upgrade your processor.

So you want to upgrade to move your i5 to your media box? I would recommend a 64GB SSD and fresh OS install instead. That will make it blazing fast.
Click to expand...
Fair enough then... I can live with the way it is setup now, and if I don't have to spend the money then I won't 🙂

Thanks again!
 
Shyatic said:
Fair enough then... I can live with the way it is setup now, and if I don't have to spend the money then I won't 🙂

Thanks again!
Click to expand...

Well... *scratches chin*

I hope I didn't imply that you have to "live" with something you're unhappy with, that wasn't my intention. I was just trying to answer your question, and the fact is you won't see any real difference between an i5 and an i7 when gaming. Or moving to Haswell. But you're welcome to upgrade, I'm just sure you'll realize in hindsight it wasn't worth the money.

I'm telling you, if your HTPC is slow, I'd do a thorough disk and registry clean, it works wonders.
 
2timer said:
Well... *scratches chin*

I hope I didn't imply that you have to "live" with something you're unhappy with, that wasn't my intention. I was just trying to answer your question, and the fact is you won't see any real difference between an i5 and an i7 when gaming. Or moving to Haswell. But you're welcome to upgrade, I'm just sure you'll realize in hindsight it wasn't worth the money.

I'm telling you, if your HTPC is slow, I'd do a thorough disk and registry clean, it works wonders.
Click to expand...

No, usually I am looking for a "holy cow you are still using that POS?" type of response, and I didn't get it -- so I won't spend the money. I'm patient enough to wait and my current setup is fine, and so is my media center. Granted there are a few issues I'd like to address with an upgrade, but maybe later in the year if I get a good bonus 🙂

Thanks again!
 
The i5 750 is still awesome. My understanding is the Ivy Bridge (and I guess SB) processors have better memory controllers so you will have faster memory usage, but it really doesn't seem worth upgrading. I would wait another two gens probably first. I am on the 3570k now and love it, but it wasn't worth the added cost to upgrade from my 750.
 
Shyatic said:
I have a pre SB Core i5, and I was thinking of upgrading. My GPU is great (just upgraded and won't be spending any money on that), and I'd like to re-use as much of my existing parts as possible. I have a 256GB SSD, I have 8GB of DDR3 RAM, and a 7200 2TB drive for storage.

Anyhoo... for $200-$300 as a motherboard/CPU combo, what would you recommend? Or would you recommend not bothering to upgrade?

Thanks for any help!
Click to expand...

What i5 model exactly and what gpu did you get?
 
Shyatic said:
dual core
Click to expand...

33811292.jpg


I'm sorry bro, I totally missed the "pre Sandy Bridge i5" and just read "Sandy Bridge i5." I am dyslexic sometimes, I make stupid reading mistakes. I gave you some pretty horrible advice, please forgive me.
 
Last edited:
Lol, well now that we know I'm an idiot 😛

I actually would recommend an upgrade to a quad core 1155 processor or, if you can afford it, an 1150 Haswell. You can pick up some barely used i5-2500K/mobo combos in FS for under $250. This would be my recommendation, to go with the i5-2500K quad core and overclock it to at least 4.0 Ghz. You will see and feel a noticeable difference from a dual i5, I believe. Games will feel much smoother, decoding will go quicker, etc.

Another option is to go with a new Haswell i5, but I feel like there's a premium to adopt the latest and greatest, and it's not worth it considering the 10-15% difference between Haswell and Ivy/Sandy. Most games are not even fully optimized for four cores, to be honest, so it's not like you really *need* the most powerful Haswell processor. But it truly depends on your priorities are you looking for the most bang for your buck, or are you looking for cutting edge in terms of chipset and power savings?
 
As others have asked, what's the gpu?

A socket 1156 dual core will bottleneck most modern games unless given a big overclock. I wouldn't use anything higher than an HD7790 with one.
 
Termie said:
As others have asked, what's the gpu?

A socket 1156 dual core will bottleneck most modern games unless given a big overclock. I wouldn't use anything higher than an HD7790 with one.
Click to expand...

This. We really need to know what level of GPU performance the CPU is going to be paired with.
 
That's probably more like a 7950 unless you got really ripped off. A 7850 would have been ~$200. For the 7950, I'd recommend:

i5 3570K $210 AP
ASRock Z77M $85

Haswell would be nice, but the high mobo prices kind of kill it for you.
 
If I were able to put up my used parts for sale I would but I am only selling a i5 750 anyways so you would probably want something a bit newer.
 
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