getting a used build for strategy games, i5 2500k vs i5 3570 vs i7 2600

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death_relic0

Chieftain
Joined
Mar 12, 2011
Messages
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Hey guys, was hoping you could help me out.

I'm getting a (used) gaming PC soon InshAllah and I'm deciding between a 3570/3470/2600 + h-series mobo vs 2500k + z-series mobo + cooler.

I've had 'speed' problems before while running Civilization and other similar kinds of strategy games (HOI 2/3, Total War series, etc) where the turns would take quite a while to complete and it became rather annoying to the point that I stoped playing. Though to be honest I was playing CIV 5 on my laptops i5 2450m, but still, I believe the next civilization game is not so far and I want to be prepaired.

Since I may be running my system on a UPS some times, low power consumption is benficial (though I can obviously 'slow down' the system when running on the UPS to save power).

Will be pairing with a r9 270x most likely, but this is not a debate on the GPU, so lets just stick to the CPU

Here are my basic pros and cons:
3570/3470 + h motherboard => $200, (low power consumption / tdp, low price)
i7 2600 + h-series motherboard => $200, (high power consumption / tdp, comparatively slightly lower per-core performance)
i5 2500k + z-series mobo + cooler => $245, (medium power consumption / tdp when not OC'd, overclocking potential to 4.5ghz, and I do want to try out overclocking)

Thanks in advance
 
For those games a i7 is pointless (and pretty much for any others, too)

You will not be able to notice the difference between a 3570 and a 2500k in games, unless overclocked to an unhealthy degree.
The 2500k will draw maybe 10W more in those games, unless overclocked.

In any case, CPU power draw differences are pretty much irrelevant (say between 50 and 60W), if you will use a video card that draws more like 140W in games.


If you really are concerned with power consumption, you should opt for a GTX 750Ti, which needs less than half of what the 270x uses, while only being about 25% slower.

And for good measure try to undervolt the CPU at stock speed, rather than overclock.
 
Yeah, the difference in speed between 3470/3570/2600/2500 will be essentially none in strategy games at stock clocks. You won't be able to notice it. The good news is that they're all about 33% faster than your current mobile i5, so they should be a fair improvement over it (they're also quad-core instead of dual-core, but that's not relevant for the games you mentioned, which are all single-threaded as far as AI turn times go*).

If you do want to do some overclocking, then unless you left out a "K" for the 3570 or 2600, I'd go with the i5 2500K. Especially with an aftermarket cooler, 4 GHz is not a stretch, which may be noticeable (unlike the minor differences between those CPUs at stock clocks). Sandy Bridge (the 2xxx series) also has a reputation of being more overclockable than Ivy Bridge (the 3xxx series) in general, so even if you were looking at a 3570K, it might not necessarily be better when overclocked (although $200 with a 3570K, even without a third-party cooler, is a bit better of a deal than $245 for a 2500K).

Edit: Actually, double-checking, it looks like the H-series doesn't allow overclocking to any appreciable degree on either Ivy Bridge or Sandy Bridge chipsets. So if you want to overclock, the latter is definitely the best deal (and a K-series CPU wouldn't be of benefit on the H-series motherboards).

* - Rome Total War 2 might be an exception; I haven't looked into it very much.
 
don't see how any gamer would need an i7 desktop pc as of now. no games are optimised for it, and modern gaming performance is still more dependent on the GPU.

i imagine you would only "need" an i7 if you run a very accurate game console emulator or OS virtualmachine while multi-tasking several programs at once.
OR
you program a custom console emulator or OS virtualmachine that actually uses multiple cores to run it. and erm... nobody's ever done that AFAIK?
 
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