How much longer will i5-2500k be considered pretty good?

[lang15]

I have an i5-2500k @ 4.6ghz, and a 7970 card... how much longer will this CPU be considered pretty good? I understand for gaming its still in the top tier of choices, but for how much longer?

 

[jay_nar2012]

Can't say for certain but probably 4-5 years it will still be good for gaming.

 

[Metwingie]

CPU's like the Q6600 and the PII 955 are still going strong now with a bit of overclocking so no need to worry anytime soon

 

[zdbc13]

The next generation of CPUs from Intel will be a "tock" like Sandy Bridge was a couple of years ago. That means it will probably be a big performance increase. We don't know until they are released.

Your Sandy is a good processor and will likely work fine for games a long while. It was a big jump from the old Core 2 and quads that preceded it.

 

[Deleted member 217926]

With Intel's tick/tock strategy I would say Sandy Bridge will still be good for 3 or 4 years at least. Ivy Bridge was a tick ( or die shrink ) and is only roughly 7% faster clock for clock than Sandy Bridge. Next year Haswell will be released and should be a major architecture change ( or tock ). How much faster it wil be remains to be seen but I would expect somewhere around ~15% faster than Ivy so around 20% faster than Sandy. Then in 2014 Broadwell wil be the tick ( die shrink ) for Haswell. So by Broadwell you should see ~25% faster clock for clock speeds than a Sandy Bridge chip.

I will probably look to upgrade around then as 8 core CPUs should be the standard by then as well. That will make this 2600K the longest I have ever kept a CPU since I bought mine the week they were released in January 2011. As said above though plenty of people stil use Core2 and Phenom II chips and are happy with them so a 2500K, especially overclocked should last past Broadwell. It just will not be the latest and the greatest anymore.

 

[DJDeCiBeL]

I'm keeping my 2500K until Skylake (or possibly even Skymont), so take that however you will.

I fully expect the 2500K to have enough oomph for at least that long (especially overclocked).

The 2500K is legendary (like the Q6600). One of those things that only comes around so often.

 

[jaguarskx]

I have an i5-2500k @ 4.6ghz, and a 7970 card... how much longer will this CPU be considered pretty good? I understand for gaming its still in the top tier of choices, but for how much longer?

Until you decide it is no longer powerful enough for you.

 

[jaguarskx]

With Intel's tick/tock strategy I would say Sandy Bridge will still be good for 3 or 4 years at least. Ivy Bridge was a tick ( or die shrink ) and is only roughly 7% faster clock for clock than Sandy Bridge. Next year Haswell will be released and should be a major architecture change ( or tock ). How much faster it wil be remains to be seen but I would expect somewhere around ~15% faster than Ivy so around 20% faster than Sandy. Then in 2014 Broadwell wil be the tick ( die shrink ) for Haswell. So by Broadwell you should see ~25% faster clock for clock speeds than a Sandy Bridge chip.

I believe Intel is going to change things up with Haswell. I think they will be more focused on reducing power consumption than increasing performance. They are looking beyond PCs and laptops for Haswell since those market segments are not growing as much as they used to. That means trying to bring out low power CPUs for the tablet market which is the new growth segment. There will be a performance increase over Ivy Bridge, but it will be at most 10%. The new "Intel HD 5000" graphic core might see 15% - 20% improvement over the HD 4000.

Broadwell will be the CPU that offers over 10% performance for the CPU and likely a 30%+ improvement for the IGP. The die shrink down to 14nm will allow Intel to produce CPUs that are more powerful than Haswell, but consume basically the same amount of power. Since tablets do not need the same performance level as desktops or laptops, Broadwell could offer a little better performance while consuming less power than the Haswell variant.