Upgrade from my i5 3330 to i_ 3______?

[fraggtastic]

Hello everyone. I am currently running on my trusty rusty i5 3330, which has been running strong for over four years now. It was part of my budget build way back then, and it is starting to show its age in some CPU intensive games. I was going to upgrade it when I bought my Oculus...but I spent all of my money on the oculus haha (it actually does alright with 90% of oculus stuff).

I am wondering, what should I upgrade to? Here are my specs:

i5 3330
MSI z77 mobo
Evga GTX 970 SC
16gb ram
128gb Kingston ssd
960gb Sandisk ssd

The i5 3570K or i7 3770K would be ideal. Used, the i5s run around 100-150 and the i7s run 200-250, depending. This is based on my ebay observations over the past week. Speed wise they are essentially the same, so I guess the decision there is based on the usefulness of hyper threading. It would be great to ride out another few years and upgrade the gpu one more time (1070 or equivalent next gen) before doing a completely new build.

Also, I have noticed the locked versions of both are way way way cheaper, and if I am not mistaken, you can still overclock the older locked intel cpus correct? Is that really a viable option or just something people do for the sake of doing it while dealing with headache after headache?

Thanks!

[Rumpelcrutchskin]

Since you have Z77 overclocking motherboard then i7-3770K is best thing to go for without major overhaul. GTX 1070 would be fine too with i7-3770K but i5-3330 would bottleneck it somewhat.

[SundownKid]

If youre gonna upgrade, get an i7-3770k and overclock it as high as you can immediately. You need all the power you can get with a CPU that old.

[upcoast]

http://www.techspot.com/review/1089-fallout-4-benchmarks/page5.html

i7 3770k even a stock does fine ^.

http://www.techspot.com/review/1263-gears-of-war-4-benchmarks/page4.html

Look at those threads go ^.

[fraggtastic]

Originally posted by SundownKid:

If youre gonna upgrade, get an i7-3770k and overclock it as high as you can immediately. You need all the power you can get with a CPU that old.

I know cpu's have become more efficient with each generation, but that seems like it'd be more than a tad overkill. If I overclocked it just to say 4.3ghz, that's about a 30% increase to what I'm currently running...and I'm barely, more importantly rarely, having issues.

I used to freak out when they started saying you needed (fill in the blank current gen Intel top tier processor) recommended and something like mine as the minimum....until I got the game and played it on ultra and came to the conclusion CPU recs are either companies covering their butts or marketing hoopla. The first time this happened was a couple years ago; I think the witcher 3 started it.

Anyway, it is showing it's age in some physics heavy oculus games, barely, but enough that it's worth a couple hundred bucks to do something about it.

Reading this back to myself I'm leaning to the 3570 and a small overclock? Am I thinking about this correctly? As in a 4ghz processor will out perform a 3ghz processor by ~30%?

Thanks for the replies guys!

[Bad 💀 Motha]

You'd need something like 3770K just to come close to keeping up with more recent i5 class/series.

I would suggest either get the best CPU you can afford for the Z77 board (and a decent CPU Cooler for it) or ditch the current CPU and Board and step up to something that is current. Baby steps from say i3 to i5 then to an i7; or from one i5 to another from the same Gen, is not worth doing like that. All you are doing is wasting money going that route.

Once you move up to something such as 3770K, then your GTX 970 can finally shine and run at its full performance. Something it can't possibly do now with your current CPU.

[fraggtastic]

I found a good looking used 2500k here locally. Thinking about grabbing it then OC'ing it and using it for a little while

[CursedPanther]

Originally posted by fraggtastic:

I found a good looking used 2500k here locally. Thinking about grabbing it then OC'ing it and using it for a little while

I guess it's a nice lil stepping stone until you can save up again for your next major upgrade. But since it's a second-hand piece of hardware and you can't possibly know what the previous owner(s) have done with it, I won't hold on to it for too long if I were you.

[sburns015]

Don't cheap out on the CPU, if youre sticking with your z77 platform then go for the I7 3770k and overclock to around 4+ Ghz, games are becomiong alot more multithreaded these day so your'e going to want hyperthreading especially on an older setup.

With an overclocked I7 3770k and GTX 1070 I can see your rig lasting antoher 2 or 3 years easy

[Nabster]

If you are going current gen CPU, sure, you don't need i7. Current gen i5 would do the job. But you are going 3 generation back, you should get an i7.

[fraggtastic]

before I started this conversation, I was eyeing a 3770k and planning to drop 150 or so, ideally under perfect circmstances. However, it looks like 170 is more typical. From a little research, it looks like the 2500k/2550k is the best bang for my buck I'm gonna find. A poster over on Tom's opened me up to the idea and upcoasts chart seems t support it. I found a few examples already in the 80 dollar price range with factory coolers. Figure I get a solid aftermarket one for 30 and I'm 110 all in for a processor that can be safely overclocked a full ghz past my current setup, so single thread apps will be getting a big boost. I figure that extra 100 or more that would go towards a 3770 (solution still requires the personal cost/anxiety of OCing, can't overlook that, it's real!) would be better saved pr something like oculus touch controllers :)

Ideally yes the 3770k would rock, but, ~200 vs ~100 for a bandaid upgrade using old parts....and what seems to currently be a pretty marginal difference in performance between the two with both being a large step forward from what I currently run, seems like 2500k is in the sweet spot.

That, or I'm just cheap :) Hey it's worked so far! I'll never forget the first time I threw in my 970 and booted up witcher 3 worried it would be a slideshow. 100 hours (gameplay) later was upgrading my ram and reading about the next gen of gpus haha.

I can't get any more out of this lil guy though, bless his heart

[Fluffy]

used 3770ks are very expensive for very little performance increase over i7 2600k while 2600k (used) are considerably cheaper on ebay at least... i would suggest a i7 2600k/2600 over a 2500k but its your call its just not much of a difference going from 3xxx i5 to 2500k i5.. i7 2600ks still do quite well.. or at least go i5 3570k

also yeah the z77 or z67 can get a bit more mhz out of the turbo options.. for example z67 can get i7 2600 (non k) to 4.2ghz turbo (instead of 3.8ghz) a BIT of voltage may be required for stability though.. and thats without touching bclk btw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iU66oAl_z0
^4.1ghz on this mobo without touching bclk usig boost multipliers

[fraggtastic]

Well...damage is done; looks like I am picking up a 2550k for about 70 bucks. Felt like at that price, I should just rip the band aid off of this upgrade dilemma, OC the crap out of it, and rebuild in a couple years.

Originally posted by Fluffy:

used 3770ks are very expensive for very little performance increase over i7 2600k while 2600k (used) are considerably cheaper on ebay at least... i would suggest a i7 2600k/2600 over a 2500k but its your call its just not much of a difference going from 3xxx i5 to 2500k i5.. i7 2600ks still do quite well.. or at least go i5 3570k

also yeah the z77 or z67 can get a bit more mhz out of the turbo options.. for example z67 can get i7 2600 (non k) to 4.2ghz turbo (instead of 3.8ghz) a BIT of voltage may be required for stability though.. and thats without touching bclk btw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iU66oAl_z0
^4.1ghz on this mobo without touching bclk usig boost multipliers

So you don't think I am going to see much of a difference between my 3/3.3ghz 3330 and a 2550k OC'd to say 4.2 ghz? Everything I am looking at indicates that even at stock speeds, the 2500 hangs with the current gen big dogs out there.

[fraggtastic]

t is official, just scooped a 2550k for 70 bucks! Will update thread once I receive it. All in, assuming this works, looking at spending 100 bucks on what appears to be a heck of a step forward. Wish it was a 2600, but hey, this is just temporary. Thanks guys!

[Fluffy]

Originally posted by fraggtastic:

Well...damage is done; looks like I am picking up a 2550k for about 70 bucks. Felt like at that price, I should just rip the band aid off of this upgrade dilemma, OC the crap out of it, and rebuild in a couple years.

Originally posted by Fluffy:

used 3770ks are very expensive for very little performance increase over i7 2600k while 2600k (used) are considerably cheaper on ebay at least... i would suggest a i7 2600k/2600 over a 2500k but its your call its just not much of a difference going from 3xxx i5 to 2500k i5.. i7 2600ks still do quite well.. or at least go i5 3570k

also yeah the z77 or z67 can get a bit more mhz out of the turbo options.. for example z67 can get i7 2600 (non k) to 4.2ghz turbo (instead of 3.8ghz) a BIT of voltage may be required for stability though.. and thats without touching bclk btw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iU66oAl_z0
^4.1ghz on this mobo without touching bclk usig boost multipliers

So you don't think I am going to see much of a difference between my 3/3.3ghz 3330 and a 2550k OC'd to say 4.2 ghz? Everything I am looking at indicates that even at stock speeds, the 2500 hangs with the current gen big dogs out there.

no youll notice a difference just not too much because the 3330 is mildly faster than equivalent sandy bridge series (i5 to i5 of same speed) so its about as fast as 2500k/2550k at 3.5-3.6ghz boost and 3.2-3.3ghz 4 core speed... anyways you have 2550k now so best just to oc it and enjoy... either way 2550k will utilize a gtx 970 fully so your good there especially when oced

[fraggtastic]

Awesome, basically my thinking is, I want to be able to run a majority of games on high/ultra settings at 2560x1080 on my primary, and oculus games at low/whatever works settings, until legitimate and somewhat affordable 4k gaming hardware hits the shelves; then it is rebuilt time.