Upgrading an i5 2400

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
X

x.gamerzhax

Mar 22, 2018
8
0
10
Hi,

I'm looking to upgrade my CPU from i5 2400 to i5 8400 which is around my budget.
But, I'm worried whether it will boost the performance or not.

I'm in it for gaming(FFXV/ AC Origins) and web programming.

I'm looking to pair it with gtx 1060 6gb.

Or should I wait for ice lake or are there any better options?

Thanks in advance

EDIT : Sorry for not putting my current specs :

I5 2400
8GB DDR3
1 TB Seagate Barracuda + 2 TB WD Blue
GTX 1060 6GB

 
Solution
n0ns3ns3
The only MB that are currently in stores and support 8th gen are the ones based on Z370 chipset. They are all priced above 100$.
From a practical point of view, there is no point in getting Z chipset for non K CPU.
You might be able to save a bit with the upcoming H motherboards without sacrificing anything meaningful.
May be it will make possible the jump to i7-8700 which is 100$ more expensive than i5-8400.
Sort by date Sort by votes
If you upgrade the CPU to something like i7-2600K (especially if your MB supports overclocking) and you have (or add to) a total of 16GB of RAM, it will get you about the same result for both gaming and development at much lower cost.

waiting is tricky, If you need the performance upgrade (read you can't do your tasks) and you can afford the upgrade, you shouldn't wait unless it's within weeks from the release of new generation.
 
Upvote 1 Downvote


Thanks alot sir, and yes, I'm aware of it which is why I go for i5 8400. at first, I plan to go to an i7 7700 (non-k), but since I need new mobo and ram, its going out of my budget which is why I switch to an i5 8400.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote


Thanks alot for the reply sir. Unfortunately, currently, i'm only using a cheap motherboard that doesn't support overclocking with 8GB of RAM. So, Ice lake is really far away from releasing right. What I'm afraid is that, once I upgraded, a few days later a new processor comes out that cost around the same one that I bought.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
A used i7-2600 or the Xeon version would be by far the best upgrade for the money. You don't need the unlocked "K" if your board lacks overclocking support and also finding a unlocked i7-2600K will be harder and likely more expensive. The i5-2400 is actually ok if you stick with a GTX1060.

Once you upgrade the cpu, a faster card will or course help. You could put the savings into getting a GTX1070 instead. (Sometimes the 1070ti or 1080 is priced close so then get those ones instead.) A GTX1060 6Gb is ok but the cheaper 3gb version is pretty good. IN many games the 3gb and 6gb are close so it really depends on the game and resolution if having the extra 3gig's is worth it.

-The memory you have should be ok. By far if your system lacks a SSD boot drive that would speed things up. If your current drive is too big, like if it's something like a 1Tb HDD, the new HDD's are way faster so get a speedy new HDD, there are even a few Hybrid drives. Some are up to 180mb\s and higher so look up the specs first if your only option is mirroring to a new HDD.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote


Sorry for not putting my current specs, I've updated my first post, and as for i7 2600k, it is as you said, I just checked it, the price is the same as i7 7700 T_T. I'll try look into the rest of the things you mention, thanks alot.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote


Most probably, you will not be able to buy ice lake until early Autumn and probably towards the end of the year or even early next year.
Coffee lake does good against ryzens and even the ryzen refresh, so there is no point for intel to hurry with release of new CPUs for desktops. They even haven't released the coffee lake budget motherboards yet.

As for your system, the upgrade within current platform is still viable.
i7-2600 is trending well under 100$, if you have available slots for RAM,50-70$ for a 2x4GB.
so instead of paying ~450-500$ for the i5-8400, you can get away under 200$ even if you buy new 2x8GB DDR3 kit (120-130$).
under 150$ for total upgrade if you have available RAM slots and only need 2x4GB.
performance wise, the difference won't be noticeable. you will have stable FPS without stuttering/freezes and in both cases (i7-2600 or i5-8400) will be way above of what you currently have.
with the spared money you can get a large SSD which is convenient to run IDE, DB, web server and even VM at the same time if you need it for work.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote


Thanks again for the reply sir. As for my current build, I don't have any available ram slot left. Between i7 2600 and i7 3770 which one is better?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote


the 3770 would be a bit faster due to improved IPC and a bit higher boost clocks. but it is also more expensive
Make sure your MB supports 3d gen CPUs before buying.
Also, make sure the CPU is not marked as T or S (those are lower power versions with less performance).
Also no point of overpaying for K version as the MB does not support overclocking.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
If you want to stay on your current platform (LGA155), you shouldn't look at anything other than 3770. Anything else would be a small upgrade and not really worth it, especially to i7 2600. For gaming those processors perform the same as each other My recommendations are:

1. Get a 3770, update your BIOS, and install the new chip. Your motherboard should support 3rd gen with a BIOS update. If you give your motherboard name we can confirm this.

2. Completely rebuild on Coffee Lake. i5 8400 would be considerably better than 3770 and would actually feel like a newer PC. Requires a new motherboard, RAM, Windows license (if yours is OEM).
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Not really. Most current games don't care about if you have hyperthreading or 12+ cores. I see this in benchmarks and my own testing. If that was the case Ryzen 7 processors would be the best processors for gaming you could buy if core counts/thread counts mattered as much as GPU power. If you were doing workstation tasks like content creation or encoding going from i5 to i7 in the same generation would give you noticeable (although not amazing) performance increases. Upgrading a gaming PC from 2400 to 2600 you would be quite disappointing. Hyper threading processors are arguably unnecessary for gaming PCs unless of course it's an older PC needing an upgrade. I never recommend them unless a client wants to stream games also also do content creation.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
lel... there are many games were thread count AND additional cache matter. Especially when it comes to lag free and stutter/freezes free gameplay. I care less about avg FPS, but even that is proven to be much higher in games with decent game engine.
So even going from i5-7500 to i7-2600 would be an upgrade.
Any open world game with large amount of NPC would benefit from additional threads. Most of the AAA games released since 2016 can utilize more than 4 threads. actually up to 4 times more. And OP mentioning open world games.
But even shooters enjoy from more cores/threads.
If you were serious about gaming you'd know that avg FPS while important, does not tell the whole story. moreover, even 0.1% low not necessarily describes the user experience.
Contrary to the popular believe, in some games the experience is better with FX-8xxx than with quad cores i5 despite much higher FPS on later.
try to play WD2 on i5 and i7. real i5, not converted i7.
Bottom line - poor clients of yours.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
My goodness, that was just about the rudest and venomous reply I've ever seen someone post here. Have you been offended? If you could be a bit more civil that would be nice n0ns3ns3.

- Where are you getting your benchmark data from? Gaming benchmarks done by people show HT doesn't make a big impact in gaming. Average and max and min FPS isn't really effected by HT. Modern games can take advantage of more threads than before but it's not really a reason to upgrade from i5 to i7 in the same generation. If I had a 8600k it wouldn't be worth it to go up to an 8700k for just gaming.

- Going from i5 to i5 different generation of course will give better performance. That doesn't require a lot of thought. 2400 to 2600 however is not an upgrade you'd really notice.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I'm terribly sorry if i offended you.

Worth is very subjective metric. Some people would sell their kidney for an extra FPS.

Back to the benchmarks, my source is my own experience or sources that do understand in tech more than making pretty videos.
GN is one of the best "mainstream" sources. Otherwise you have to go to dedicated forums of people testing things like timings and memory controller speed and really understand how computer works in general and games specifically. Don't forget, that we are talking about modern games, 5 years ago you'd be somewhat right. But even then Games like Crysis 3 showed clear advantage of an i7 over i5 with powerful enough GPU.
Witcher 3, Ghost Recon Wildlands, any of AC series games, Watch Dogs 2 and even ROTR benefit from moving to i7. and again, not only in average FPS, but in fluidity of experience (much less if at all of input lags, freezes, stuttering). And let's be honest, most reviewers only run built-in benchmarks and use avg FPS as a main metric only recently starting to include 1% and 0.1% lows which only somewhat reveal freezes and stuttering.

but of course games like overwatch are not in that category because they designed for low CPU usage. so in those games, like 10 years ago, faster fewer cores are better. but those becoming more rare.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Those people that want maximum FPS and are at the point where hyperthreading would be of any benefit to them likely aren't the ones to be doing an upgrade from a 7 year old i5 to a 6-7 year old i7. I think what this person wants is better performance on an older platform if possible without completely rebuilding and that's fine. If you have a link to any benchmarks showing a 2600 having noticeably more (like at least 10%) more FPS (average, min, or max) I'd really like to see it. Or just any sock i7 decisively besting a stock i5 (in the same gen) in a gaming benchmark where both processors have the same number of cores as the 2400 and 2600 do. I think if you took away the slight different in clock speed the performance would be the about same in gaming. Shuddering and lag is factored into the average/min FPS number so that is accounted for. If I swapped a 2400 for a 2600 I think the difference would be almost unnoticeable in games. It would be almost as unnoticeable as an upgrade from a 3550 to a 3770. At least with 3770 you feel like you're getting some performance for your money but a hyperthreaded 2600 is in no way future proofing and neither is 3770 because they are getting on in years. It's more like a band aid to hold you off another couple years until it's time to rebuild.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
https://www.gamersnexus.net/game-bench/2808-watch-dogs-2-cpu-benchmark-thread-intensive-game/page-2
you can see here about 25% difference between 2500K and 2600K at only 100MHz stock clocks difference.
Even at 4.5GHz the 2500K was almost 10% slower than stock 2600K.
Moreover, look at the 7700K with or without HT - 22% difference ! and just to make it clear, it as you can see from the chart, it could be even larger gap as there is obviously something limiting the game at 112-113 FPS.
Pay attention that the 2600K is the only i7 beaten by much higher clocked 6th and 7th gen i5s. 3770 would be closer to 4790K results.
Here is another one https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/2773-intel-i5-2500k-revisit-benchmark-for-2017/page-3
look at the results of Metro Last Night (a game from 2013 !!!) that stutters on any i5 while, but does not on i7-2600 despite lower avg FPS (check the 0.1%).
Unfortunately they have not done witcher 3 or AC games benchmarks and I'm too lazy to search for you, you seem to be more than enough intelligent to take it from here on your own.

There is no discussion that 3770 would be better than 2600. It is just that it's kinda more expensive. Almost twice more expensive. It does bring better performance due to significantly improved IPC from gen 2 to gen 3. But unless there is a monitor with over 100Hz refresh rate, it would go unnoticeable in gaming and for web development, there is not much compilation, so more threads on i7, as well as more L3 cache, would help very much with VMs, DBs, web server and IDE running simultaneously.

As for the timeline - it will keep the system viable/actual for another 2-4 years. But anyway, OP is planning to upgrade. I'm just suggesting a cheaper option with about the same performance as it seems that the budget is playing role here.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Guys, thanks alot for all the responses. It is really helpful for me, I've decided to go with the i5 8400, and I'm sorry, I don't know how I could have forgotten about it when I first start this post, I promised my little brother that I would give my old build to him with my old graphic card, ati radeon 6950 2GB. With that, I'll be needing new motherboards and ram too, so I think it might be better for me to just go ahead and grab a newer version.

Once again, I thank all of you with the useful information.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote


Now that you mention it, I just checked, the motherboard that i'm looking to buy doesn't support 8th gen processor.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
The only MB that are currently in stores and support 8th gen are the ones based on Z370 chipset. They are all priced above 100$.
From a practical point of view, there is no point in getting Z chipset for non K CPU.
You might be able to save a bit with the upcoming H motherboards without sacrificing anything meaningful.
May be it will make possible the jump to i7-8700 which is 100$ more expensive than i5-8400.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution


Thanks, I think I'll wait for the cheaper mobo.

PS : Sorry for my bad english. English isn't my native language.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom