better cpu then i7 2600k - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: sony mavica
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2018, 01:08:25 am
content: going to be building a new pc using the giftcards and paypal money i get from doing surveys and other offers onlinei am hoping to build something better then my pc i have no that is ai7 2600k8gb ramgts 4502x 1tb hddpeople keep telling me just to upgrade the gpu in this computer as the cpu is still really good but i really want to build a new pcwas looking at getting a Intel Core i5-8400 but not sure if its going to be much better

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2018, 01:21:34 am
content: Didn't we have a thread like this before?In what ways isn't your current computer satisfactory, what should your new computer be able to do and what is the budget?

author: sony mavica
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2018, 01:32:08 am
content: Quote from: Mr. Scram on May 04, 2018, 01:21:34 amreally just want to build a new computer that is faster then my old i7 2600k computer the old i7 computer does everything i need ok granted its is a little slow but the giftcards i have will expire soon and i will be giving my nephew another old computer that i use from time to time to play games or watch videos ect on its a q6600 6gb ram gt 710 1gb 1tb hdd so would be nice to be able to replace it with a new pc i built and not have the giftcards go to waist

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2018, 01:35:14 am
content: Quote from: sony mavica on May 04, 2018, 01:32:08 amSo what's the budget and what should this computer be able to do?

author: sony mavica
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2018, 01:46:39 am
content: Quote from: Mr. Scram on May 04, 2018, 01:35:14 amright now i can build this with the money i have have right now but will get more parts latter like gpu more ram larger hdd or ssd ectmotherboardcasecpu Intel Core i5-84001tb hdd4gb ram650w psu$588nzdthere not much i really want the computer to be able to do just as long as it faster then my i7 2600k for video editing gaming and around daily use ectthat why i wanted to know what cpu to go for when i do build my pc

author: tautech
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2018, 01:50:50 am
content: Where's the SSD in that list ?CPU's, how deep's your pocket ?https://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2018, 01:52:30 am
content: What's faster than a 2600k?A 2700k.There's a certain price to performance point you have to hit versus what you already have in order to make an upgrade worthwhile. Let me explain.I have an i7-4790k, which is a decent chip. If I were to spend 329 + board on a Ryzen 7 2700X, the performance increase I would get wouldn't be worth the money I put in. I could of course sell my old gear, but it still may not be worth it. I also wouldn't get any improvement in my use cases as my i7 is perfect for what I am doing right now.If serious cheap CPU performance is needed (and your tasks are multithreaded friendly) I suggest going on eBay and finding the biggest and cheapest server you can find.As for what people are telling you, if you're unhappy with what we are saying, stop asking. This is the second post you've made on this topic, and it's the second time I will tell you, the only potential improvement you can make is graphical for the money. SSD would also go well too.If you want it to seem like you have a new computer, get a newer, nicer case, throw a new copy of Windows on it, get an SSD. Your CPU is seriously the strongest part of your machine, and changing it for something else would be foolish.If your board supports more RAM, get it.If, after all this, you can't manage to keep your i7-2600k, I suggest something Ryzen. Halcyon might try to beat Intel into you, but Ryzen is truly a workstation performance darling, with great gaming performance to boot (which isn't CPU dependent anyways). The Zen+ series of chips are doing really well right now, and depending on your budget, one of them would be a great idea.There are also more maverick things, like the server idea I stated, or just buying a load of Sandy Bridge Xeons and throwing them in a box, but for new gear, Ryzen is the current contender. They have tons of PCIe, cheap boards, great performance, less bullshit locked down stuff like what Intel does.Quote from: tautech on May 04, 2018, 01:50:50 amThat's another thing. You give us no idea what sort of money you have. We don't know if you have 2000 dollars or 200 dollars, so all we can do is give you generic advice you don't like anyways. If you're going to be vague about it, go bother the people at LTT's forums.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2018, 01:53:44 am
content: Where's the GPU?

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2018, 01:55:31 am
content: Quote from: Mr. Scram on May 04, 2018, 01:53:44 amQuote from: sony mavica on May 04, 2018, 01:08:25 amTerribly old bottom of the bottom of the range Fermi (Furnie). This is the main weak spot of this system if he is doing ANYTHING GPU related.

author: tautech
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2018, 02:03:24 am
content: Quote from: TwoOfFive on May 04, 2018, 01:55:31 amYep the support HW can make the biggest speed improvement....Good fast GPUSSD, and big enough for your OSand allyour load time hungry SW.And a big bunch of RAM.Careful study of the CPU specs is important to select one with with good cache capacities.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2018, 02:04:01 am
content: Quote from: TwoOfFive on May 04, 2018, 01:55:31 amI've seen the one in the old system, but where's the one in the new system? The one major item that needs a swap isn't even addressed.

author: Ampera
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2018, 03:54:26 am
content: Quote from: Mr. Scram on May 04, 2018, 02:04:01 amHe's asking us for suggestions on PC hardware.

author: tautech
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2018, 08:39:39 am
content: Quote from: sony mavica on May 04, 2018, 01:46:39 amIf you check the CPU rating link I provided the i5-8400 whips the i7:https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i5-8400+%40+2.80GHz&id=3097https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-2600K+%40+3.40GHz&id=868However the best $ improvement to PC performance is an SSD even just a little one that houses the OS.First one I installed in a dual core about 4 builds ago was just 60Gb and it cut boot times by 75%. (IIRC ~30s for Win7)Latest (this one) is nothing flash, just i3 3.6G, 8 G ram, OB graphics, 120Gb SSD and 1Tb HD and boots W10 in less than 10 s.8 G of RAM seems a piss ant amount for anything serious and while it's enough for my use I'd want 16G min in a 4 slot mobo to take advantage of dual channel RAM configurations for something like real performance.

author: hayatepilot
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2018, 08:43:22 am
content: Quote from: sony mavica on May 04, 2018, 01:46:39 amI would choose a AMD Ryzen 5 2600 with a B350 Mainboard. It is faster than the 8400 and overclockable on top of that for about the same price.You need to get a SSD instead of the HDD this makes the biggest difference in speed.4GB RAM is not much today, Chrome will eat that for breakfast.Better go with 8GB.Greetings

author: tautech
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2018, 08:47:31 am
content: Quote from: hayatepilot on May 04, 2018, 08:43:22 amExactly.I was at 12G before and the 8 I have now is just enough for ~40 tabs open.Next build I'll go back to 12G or if I upgrade this build 2x 8G sticks.

author: sony mavica
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2018, 09:33:54 am
content: Quote from: hayatepilot on May 04, 2018, 08:43:22 amcool the Ryzen 5 2600 is only $24 more then the i5 might look at getting that cpu then

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2018, 09:37:59 am
content: An SSD will be the best investment to make your current system faster. So start with the SSD, install 16GB of memory, disable virtual memory (you don't need it but it makes Windows very slow and it will trash the SSD) and go from there.

author: bob225
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2018, 09:46:47 am
content: A new boot ssd and upgrade the ram to 16gb or even 32gb you will notice a marked performance increaseDepending on the video software your graphics card is a major bottleneckWhy would you go from 8gb to just 4gb ?, 8gb is the bare minimum i will spec on any new build let alone video rendering pcbe careful with motherboard selection and make sure its compatible with the cpuimho you have your priorities wrong

author: sony mavica
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2018, 09:55:04 am
content: Quote from: bob225 on May 04, 2018, 09:46:47 ami do want 16gb but for now my budget i can only get 4gb but i will probably just wait till i can get 2 8gb sticks or get a motherboard that supports 4 ram sticks then upgrade to 32gb when i get more money i will also get an ssd when i do build my new pc

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 04, 2018, 09:59:05 am
content: Quote from: nctnico on May 04, 2018, 09:37:59 amAbsolutely agree. By just installing an SSD as your boot drive, you will make the most profound improvement. I still use a 12 year old HP laptop to this day, the only thing that has changed is I swapped the 240GB HDD for an SSD and it works brilliantly, even with it's very limited 4GB RAM.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2018, 10:00:26 am
content: Quote from: TwoOfFive on May 04, 2018, 03:54:26 amI feel we're somehow miscommunicating. As far as I know and I'm concerned, video cards are part of PC hardware. He's asking for advice on a new system and one of the weakest parts of his current system isn't improved upon in the new system. I'm not even sure he's intending to swap out the current card to the new system, in which case he would have to do without a discrete GPU entirely.If you want to improve useful performance, I'd suggest spending most of the budget on a proper and modern video card. That should breathe new life into the system. Buy a nice SSD from the remaining money and you have a nice system that will last you while you save to replace the rest. Doing it in reverse means limping wih an unbalanced system for a while until the rest can be replaced.

author: ludzinc
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 04, 2018, 11:18:16 am
content: Quote from: sony mavica on May 04, 2018, 01:08:25 am*betterthan

author: hayatepilot
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2018, 11:29:18 am
content: Quote from: sony mavica on May 04, 2018, 09:33:54 amKeep in mind, that the Ryzen doesn't have integrated graphics. So you will need a GPU to boot.Any PCI-E GPU will do in the beginning until you have saved up for a decent graphics card.The same goes for RAM, I would get one 8GB stick and buy another one a couple months later. Performance wise 1x8GB is only marginally slower than 2x4GB.Look also for a mainboard with 4 RAM slots for future expandability.RAM and GPU prices have peaked recently and will probably (and hopefully) come down again.I would also consider looking for used RAM (and GPU). As they do not age you can save money if the budget is really tight.Greetings

author: sony mavica
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2018, 11:34:33 am
content: Quote from: hayatepilot on May 04, 2018, 11:29:18 amcool i have an old 512mb video card i will use till i have enough for a new video card

author: paulca
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2018, 12:17:12 pm
content: I'll pitch in with the other who have already said.If you want to make that system faster spend your money on a better GPU and an SSD. The slowest thing in a computer is accessing storage. Lots of RAM will help limit reocurring disk access due to caching, but only SSD, PCIe, M.2 drives significantly reduce initial access times.8Gb is fine for 90% of casual gaming and desktop tasks.The i7 you have is fine.The GPU is ancient as I expect your gaming experience is poor or your quality and detail sliders are well to the left.For CPU, RAM, etc. I would usually wait until you can double your performance before upgrading. That said I broke my own rules and upgraded from a Piledriver FX 9590 to a Ryzen 7 2700X this week.

author: sony mavica
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2018, 12:59:53 pm
content: Quote from: paulca on May 04, 2018, 12:17:12 pmplaying gta v on my pc at 1360x768p things set to normal/high and i get over 60fps

author: ChrisLX200
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 04, 2018, 01:14:13 pm
content: I generally don't 'upgrade' my PC's - other than to add extra diskspace if needed. I run it into the ground then build a new one (around 5yr intervals for a complete refresh). The bits I like to keep are the case, the PSU (if compatible - I go for high-end stuff so it often is), and the storage drives. Maybe the sound card too. The GFX card is kind of separate and may be upgraded along the way, the 1060 I currently have installed would likely go into a new machine in around 18months time, but then I'm not a PC games enthusuiast. The thing is, a PC needs to have components with balanced performance and upgrading one part or another just reveals the shortcomings of the others. All my old parts go into boxes/drawers for when I need to build a special purpose PC which doesn't need to be the fastest thing ever - my workshop PC and observatory PCs (and the kid's PCs) were born from such collections of bits. It's always useful to have spares too in case something fails, substitution is the easiest way to fault-find

author: paulca
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2018, 03:15:52 pm
content: Quote from: sony mavica on May 04, 2018, 12:59:53 pmBut that resolution is fairly low. Depends on your monitor but I am running games at 3440x1440p with the sliders maxed to the right at around 50fps with a GTX970 and just upgraded to a 1070Ti to make sure I hit the 60FPS. The GTX970 was fine for 1080p gaming, but struggles a little with 1440p ultra-wide.You are basically playing at a PS3, XBox standard. Things have moved on.That said if you are happy at that res and those details settings then spend your money on SSD.I think you already realise if you up the CPU, you'll need to upgrade the motherboard and the memory too. Usually they all go at once and have limited upgradability these days.

author: bob225
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2018, 03:56:31 pm
content: My main machine is a 3-4 year old x99 i7 5820k that has plenty of power being a hex core, I run a triple monitor setup a pair of 1080p and a 27" 1440p as a main display from a pair of rx480's what suit my needs for cad/cam, eagle, photoshop and games I can get 70fps at 1440p at high settings in gtavupgrade the memory, fit a ssd as a main boot drive, if it hasn't been done fit a new cpu cooler, the Cooler Master Hyper 212 evo (dual fan) will give you good bang for you buck, put a mild overclock on the cpu will also help as you have a 2600K (K being the overclockable cpu)upgrade the GPU the benefits of more vram and better chipset will make a night and day difference to video related tasks

author: tautech
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2018, 07:35:39 pm
content: Quote from: sony mavica on May 04, 2018, 09:55:04 amWhere do you source your HW ? PBTECH ?If you can find an account holder there, there's good savings to be made on their stuff at trade prices.Really to do this build properly you want the SSD and 8G in there right from the start.Upgrading the GPU and RAM can be postponed till later as they're 'drop in' HW and the system then will jump another step in performance. RAM needs be matched to the existing stick to take advantage of dual channel performance.The initial configuration with SSD for the OS and your USER files on a HDD can only be done at the build, otherwise you need scrap the first install and start again. The cost of that time needing to do the install twice is better spent on the HW you need from the start.

author: sony mavica
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 05, 2018, 02:29:07 am
content: Quote from: tautech on May 04, 2018, 07:35:39 pmi have $525 in gift cards to mightyape and like 323nzd on my paypaland i get mightyape giftcards all the time so i was going to get most parts from there as there is nothing else i can see on the site i would want

author: bob225
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 05, 2018, 04:28:49 pm
content: a new motherboard, cpu and ram will kill your budget at nz prices, memory is very high at the moment and has been for the last 12 months, DDR 4 is in demand atm worldwide most latest gen boards are either dual or quad channel 4-8 slotsI would not go the Ryzen route yet as Ryzen 2 has been released and prices have yet to drop on the older chips4gb of ram will not be up to much tbh

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 05, 2018, 04:44:58 pm
content: Maybe some helpful info:https://arstechnica.com/features/2018/05/ars-technica-system-guide-spring-2018-the-show-your-work-edition/

author: senso
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 05, 2018, 07:31:39 pm
content: An SSD and a new GPU, your pc seems slow, because you only have HDD's..No need to buy a whole new system, given what you say you do in it..

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 05, 2018, 09:39:30 pm
content: I remember the first time I got a SSD and installed it in my laptop (a Core 2 Duo I got for college) that was 6 years old at the time. It booted faster than my friend's (then) brand new mobile workstation that didn't have a SSD.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 06, 2018, 08:11:47 am
content: The 2600K is a pretty decent CPU. Geekbench4 3841 single core, 12399 multi core.The i5-8400 is 4878 single core, 18619 multi-core.So 27% faster single core, and 50% faster multi core.To be honest, unless you're doing compute-bound things that run non-stop for many minutes you'll never notice the difference. Building software. Transcoding videos. That kind of thing.Depending on your use, you should be either bumping the RAM to 8 or 16 or 32 GB. or else replace the hard disk with an SSD, or else if you're playing 3D games then get a better graphics card (*any* currently sold card, even the cheapest).Or preferably all three.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 06, 2018, 04:45:42 pm
content: His PC already has 8GB installed, which should be plenty if he isn't running VMs, heavily multitasking, or running apps that use lots of RAM. Extra RAM can be used as tmpfs but RAM is considerably more expensive than SSD nowadays, so tmpfs makes the most sense for frequent writes that do not go well with SSDs.It looks like DDR3 prices have rebound a little since the time when the mainstream was transitioning to DDR4 and there was a sale on DDR3 to clear out some stock, around when I upgraded my PC to 48GB in order to run more VMs. (Upgrading to 32GB would have been plenty but the Sandy Bridge E platform is quad channel so getting an additional 32GB did not cost very much more than an additional 16GB.)

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 07, 2018, 11:05:00 am
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on May 06, 2018, 04:45:42 pmWell, yes, it's hard to give sensible advice unless we know what he's doing with this PC.My MacBook Air I use for web browsing and email and document editing while I'm travelling is perfectly fine with 4 GB.But my work involves frequent rebuilds of the LLVM compiler. If I make some small change to a critical .h file then a debug build needs on minimum of about 6 GB of RAM for each HT thread, plus 10 GB for disk cache if I don't want the build to fail with OOM or swap itself to death. If the machine doesn't have that then I have to tell cmake/ninja to limit the number of simultaneous "ld" e.g. 1 program link at a time with 16 GB RAM, 3 at a time with 32 GB RAM, 10 at a time with 72 GB. Having 8 GB per HT thread plus 20 GB for disk cache is 50% faster. With less than 16 GB it's simply impossible to work at all.That's why I maxed out my little i7-8650U NUC (which lets me work while travelling) with 32 GB of RAM, but even then it's worth cranking up an m5.12xlarge (48 thread, 192 GB RAM) on AWS when I'm doing repeated modify/build/test/debug cycles, especially of header files. They take almost identical time (about 60 seconds) if I modify just one or two .cpp files and link a single binary (e.g. "opt"), but modifying one .cpp and then linking all the LLVM binaries is 2m45s vs 8m46s.Keeping constant 8 HT threads like my NUC (or most desktop i7s), but varying RAM on the same build task:16 GB 28m14s c5.2xlarge32 GB 09m46s m4.2xlarge61 GB 06m51s r4.2xlargeSo you can see that for *this* task, 32 GB is massively better than 16 GB, and 61 GB (strange number, but that's correct) is 42% faster again, even with a slower 4th generation EC2 CPU (Xeon E5-2686v4 2.3 GHz, 3.0 GHz max turbo) in the r4.2xlarge instead of 5th generation EC2 CPU (Xeon Platinum 8124M, 3.0 GHz, max turbo 3.5 GHz).Given the same RAM size, the i7-8650U (1.9 GHz base speed, max turbo 4.2 GHz) in the NUC is more than 10% faster than the AWS Xeon with the same number of threads and RAM.QuoteSSD is of course much cheaper, but the difference between "enough RAM" (for disk cache, not just for apps) and "not quite enough RAM" is still vast -- the difference between DDR4 2400 RAM and a Samsung 960 PRO SSD is something like 10x in transfer speed and 150x in random access time.