What would you consider to be the current equivalent to the Intel Core i5-2500K?

[dud]

I am currently mapping out my first build in 12 years and was wondering what the current "equivalent" in value (price/performance) is to the bang/buck of the i5-2500K is? the 2500K was such a fantastic value in it's day. I still see people trying to sell used 2500Ks for not much less than Haswell 4690Ks!


Was wondering what (in your opinion) today's current equivalent to the 2500K would be for a gaming PC. The bottom line is that I am looking for value ... and the 2500K was a tremendous value.

Edit: I found this comparison of the 2500K and the I5-4670K. The 2500K holds it's own against the 4670K:

http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/571/Intel_Core_i5_i5-2500K_vs_Intel_Core_i5_i5-4670K.html



I thank you ...

 

[richierich1212]

4690K? Almost same MSRP as 2500K.

 

[Puppies04]

Latest unlocked I5.

 

[Phynaz]

Price / performance world be the Pentium Anniversary Edition. $100, mobo included.

 

[cbn]

I am currently mapping out my first build in 12 years and was wondering what the current "equivalent" in value (price/performance) is to the bang/buck of the i5-2500K is? the 2500K was such a fantastic value in it's day. I still see people trying to sell used 2500Ks for not much less than Haswell 4690Ks!


Was wondering what (in your opinion) today's current equivalent to the 2500K would be. The bottom line is that I am looking for value ... and the 2500K was a tremendous value.


I thank you ...

Would you be overclocking?

Is this for gaming or something else?

P.S. one thing that made 2500K so strong was its ability to hit 5GHz on air.

One step backward for Ivy Bridge, Haswell and Haswell Refresh has been the inability to hit the high clocks Sandy Bridge was capable of (although the difference is only two hundred MHz or so for one or two of the processor generations I mentioned.)

 

[dud]

Price / performance world be the Pentium Anniversary Edition. $100, mobo included.

I would tend to agree but looking at the worst-case-scenario (gaming). With MB this is a great value with limitations.

 

[NTMBK]

A 2500k...

 

[dud]

Would you be overclocking?

Is this for gaming or something else?

P.S. one thing that made 2500K so strong was its ability to hit 5GHz on air.

One step backward for Ivy Bridge, Haswell and Haswell Refresh has been the inability to hit the high clocks Sandy Bridge was capable of (although the difference is only two hundred MHz or so for one or two of the processor generations I mentioned.)

I tend to plan for worst-case scenarios ... and that is gaming. If I build a system that can support the latest games ... it can support just about anything else. Problem solved.

 

[dud]

A 2500k...

Good try but AFAIK not available new retail.

 

[Phynaz]

I would tend to agree but looking at the worst-case-scenario (gaming). With MB this is a great value with limitations.

Nothing in your op said anything about gaming. You just said price / performance. Now that you included a performance floor, a cheap I5.

 

[ashetos]

Whatever you do, make sure it natively supports PCI-Express version 3. I have a feeling that a couple of years down the road, the new graphics cards will be majorly bottlenecked by a PCI-E 2.0 core i5 2500K.

 

[CakeMonster]

Not sure I follow you here... Its obvious. With the current Intel lineup, the equivalent to the i5 2500K is the i5 4690K. Same price range, quad, unlocked, it is in fact the intended replacement model. Maybe you can get a i5 4670K a bit cheaper, but except for that there is nothing further to discuss given that you asked for the equivalent to a specific model which there is only one spot for in Intel's product range for the last 3 generations.

For the last months and up to a year there's been lots of threads here praising the i5 2500K like it was magic. By now the incremental updates have made sure that the i5 4690K delivers reliably better on the whole, whether both are OC'ed or not. There's no reason to be nostalgic anymore. Move on.

 

[Lepton87]

Not sure I follow you here... Its obvious. With the current Intel lineup, the equivalent to the i5 2500K is the i5 4690K. Same price range, quad, unlocked, it is in fact the intended replacement model. Maybe you can get a i5 4670K a bit cheaper, but except for that there is nothing further to discuss given that you asked for the equivalent to a specific model which there is only one spot for in Intel's product range for the last 3 generations.

For the last months and up to a year there's been lots of threads here praising the i5 2500K like it was magic. By now the incremental updates have made sure that the i5 4690K delivers reliably better on the whole, whether both are OC'ed or not. There's no reason to be nostalgic anymore. Move on.

Yes, it's the direct replacement, however when SB came about 4 threads were enough for most things and no games used more then 4 threads but things begin to change, with more programs using more and more threads. Even games start to benefit from HT just look at Pentium and I3 to see how the situation might look in the future while I'm sure that the performance difference won't get so big between 8 and 4 threads than 2 and 4 in the forseable future, I think it's a glimpse into the future. I think it's high time to buy a CPU with 8 threads unless you want to keep it no more than a year. I upgraded my 2500k about 3 months ago, because I think that there are more and more programs and games using more than 4 threads, when SB came out HT was much less useful then it is now. If you want to keep the CPU for 3 generations buy the 8-threaded version, if it's a stop-gap solutionthen 4 threads will be fine for a while but even now software starts to benefits from more than 4 threads. When 2500K came out it was an obvious value leader but now it might be worth it to invest into i7 to get those extra threads.

 

[escrow4]

i7 4790[K optional]. Both my boxes have non K 4770s as I don't overclock anymore. I won't be upgrading for a while yet. As above you want 8 threads, even if 4 are "fake". An i7 is the ideal allrounder period. Anything you chuck at it (barring stuff you want 6 cores+ for like running x264 and rendering 3D at the same time) it will handle easily. And Z97 even for a locked chip gives you quality mobo's that will last and last stuffed with ports and slots.

 

[dud]

Nothing in your op said anything about gaming. You just said price / performance. Now that you included a performance floor, a cheap I5.

My OP has been corrected ...

 

[Denithor]

i5 4690K would get my vote if you plan for this rig to last about 3-4 years.

If you're planning for it to last the next 12 years, on the other hand, I'd say wait for Haswell-E and get an i7 5820K. The extra physical cores will help extend the usable lifespan considerably as games become more and more heavily threaded.

 

[dud]

i5 4690K would get my vote if you plan for this rig to last about 3-4 years.

If you're planning for it to last the next 12 years, on the other hand, I'd say wait for Haswell-E and get an i7 5820K. The extra physical cores will help extend the usable lifespan considerably as games become more and more heavily threaded.

What do you estimate that these CPUs will cost at release?

 

[Burpo]

http://www.zdnet.com/pre-order-pricing-for-intel-haswell-e-desktop-processors-revealed-7000031651/

"The cheapest of the trio is the Core i7-5820K, a six-core chip running at 3.3GHz with 15MB of L3 cache, which ShopBLT.com is selling for $425.92."

 

[RussianSensation]

Keeping a CPU for 12 years? Not worth it. It is better to buy an i5 on H97 and in 6 more years, repeat than to spend $650-700 on the i7 5820K + X99 mobo and keep it for 12.

 

[poohbear]

Yes, it's the direct replacement, however when SB came about 4 threads were enough for most things and no games used more then 4 threads but things begin to change, with more programs using more and more threads. Even games start to benefit from HT just look at Pentium and I3 to see how the situation might look in the future while I'm sure that the performance difference won't get so big between 8 and 4 threads than 2 and 4 in the forseable future, I think it's a glimpse into the future. I think it's high time to buy a CPU with 8 threads unless you want to keep it no more than a year. I upgraded my 2500k about 3 months ago, because I think that there are more and more programs and games using more than 4 threads, when SB came out HT was much less useful then it is now. If you want to keep the CPU for 3 generations buy the 8-threaded version, if it's a stop-gap solutionthen 4 threads will be fine for a while but even now software starts to benefits from more than 4 threads. When 2500K came out it was an obvious value leader but now it might be worth it to invest into i7 to get those extra threads.

Is there any evidence that the newest games benefit from 8 threads? I heard BF4 benefits, but were there any benchmarks to prove this, or is it just anecdotal hearsay?

 

[dud]

Keeping a CPU for 12 years? Not worth it. It is better to buy an i5 on H97 and in 6 more years, repeat than to spend $650-700 on the i7 5820K + X99 mobo and keep it for 12.

This is the decision we all have to make when system building. How much do you invest up-front to gain longevity of a system before it goes end-of-life? The reason I picked the SB 2500K is that it is still a very competent CPU YEars on from it's release, especially compared to some current Haswell I5 processors.

 

[jpiniero]

Actually the 2500K is end of life.

 

[StrangerGuy]

The closest to 2500K value wise IMO is a $240 4690K paired with a ~$50 H81 mobo, mildly overclocked to like 4100-4300MHz depending on luck.

BTW I always find it completely baffling why anyone would want spend $200+ on Haswell mobos with added features they will never use and ~$100+ on cooling to overclock a $240 CPU for an extra ~400-500MHz OC that virtually translates into next to zero real-world performance boost over my preferred setup.

 

[Roland00Address]

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8312/state-of-the-part-cpus

http://www.anandtech.com/Bench/CPU/2

Notice the i3 4330 is about 80% of the speed of the i5 2500k at stock speeds even though it has half the cores (50%). This is because of the higher clock speed and the improvements in ipc from sandy to haswell.