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!

[Aliquis Freedom & Ethnopluralism]

i7 and i5 isn't the same speed-wise.

On a slower graphics card or graphical demanding title like Division or with old less threaded titles they may act similar.

[cronic0_0]

OP watch this video it's very informative
https://youtu.be/4chk3fWb6xI

[fraggtastic]

Nice video. Looks like this is the last 80 bucks I'll be spending on this build, and I am going to be towing the line a little in a couple years, but think it should be about perfect.