Trying to predict how much of a performance increase I will see in int

[Dan3345]

When I switch my 1100T out for an intel 2500k i5, how many frames do you think I will see over the 1100T in skyrim? Currently I get anywhere from 38-60 but it is very inconsistent. Sometimes it is fine at 60 (in towns) others under different circumstances (more people, more shadows, day time etc) it drops way down to 38 or lower. I have seen many graphs that show the 2500k being head and shoulders above the 1100T in core per core performance. So basically the 1100T may have more CPU's but the 2500k can use its four to their fullest potential.

 

I know that this is a tricky thing to predict so I am asking that if you have the i5 in question you post your specs, what settings you play on and your average frame rate in skyrim.

 

I have said it before but I will say it again so i am thorough and we are all on the same page.

 

The motherboard I am currently using is a gigabyte 990FX UD3 AM3+ socket. The motherboard I am going to use is this one! CLICK ME I chose it because it has the headers for a case mounted USB 3.0, and it has PCIe 3.0 so I will be set for future cards. Of course I am aware that I will need Ivy Bridge. I also considered the fact that I currently am using two 6950's in crossfire and so I wanted that to work. The only complaint I have with this board (and it seems most intel boards) is that when they are dual GPU compatible, the pcie 2.0 x16 slots only work in x8 when in dual mode. I am not sure how much of a difference that will make when gaming ( some people have said it is a 3% loss in performance? )but I don't know. It may not even be noticeable.

 

So some extra info I don't think is very relevant is: I have 2 sticks of 4gb's corsair vengeance RAM. operating at stock 1600mhz. 950 watt silencer mkII PSU. And yeah thats all.. I had liquid cooling for the AMD CPU but obviously that will not work, so until I can afford to buy the H80 cooler, I will use the stock fan. No big deal as I won't be overclocking right away.

 

I almost forgot, I will be wiping the drive completely using drive scrubber prior to installing the new components. This way I can ensure no problems, on a fresh instal of windows 7 64 bit.

 

So yeah, this should be my final topic on this. I am upgrading likely in the next week and want to get it all right.

 

Oh one last question. If I am going to completely wipe the drive of everything, erasing all partitions. Should I even bother to remove video drivers before, or will they just be wiped out with everything else?

 

Ok looks like I covered all my questions... Thanks for the replies and any info I can get.

[FMod]

Recorded 14-61 fps total with central 80% range of 40-56 fps with 2500K@45/47/49/50 turbo ratios, GTX580. Most 2500K don't run that high, I use (34)/40/42/44/45 for temperature and degradation concerns.

 

You are unlikely to visually notice the change from 1100T->2500K, unless your current 1100T isn't overclocked and 2500K is going to be. Since it seems to be the opposite (overclocked 1100T vs stock 2500K), not likely to see an improvement at all.

Skyrim is CPU-demanding, but it's not that CPU-dependent. The new HD texture pack further shifts the burden towards the GPU.

 

Don't bother with H80, it's not a proper LCS, if you're going to install a better cooling solution, use Thermalright Macho HR-02.

 

Generally, considering that you'll be losing some performance in multithreading, it doesn't sound like a wise upgrade at the moment. Your CPU is fine, not the best one for Skyrim, but you'd be getting very small gains from replacing it. Would make more sense to wait until at least Ivy Bridge is out. Probably till Haswell.

Edited February 18, 2012 by FMod

[hoofhearted4]

When I switch my 1100T out for an intel 2500k i5, how many frames do you think I will see over the 1100T in skyrim?

 

not much. just a few frames give or take.

 

The motherboard I am currently using is a gigabyte 990FX UD3 AM3+ socket. The motherboard I am going to use is this one! CLICK ME

I chose it because it has the headers for a case mounted USB 3.0, and it has PCIe 3.0 so I will be set for future cards. Of course I am aware that I will need Ivy Bridge. I also considered the fact that I currently am using two 6950's in crossfire and so I wanted that to work.

 

i recommend the Z68 version. its a slightly newer chipset. and has a great function with SSDs. P67s have a lot of issues or so ive read, across all manufacturers, or so ive read. the Z68 is slightly more expensive. and if you never plan on getting an SSD, then there is no need to pay that extra money. but if you do plan on it. i think its worth it. my opinion though

 

The only complaint I have with this board (and it seems most intel boards) is that when they are dual GPU compatible, the pcie 2.0 x16 slots only work in x8 when in dual mode. I am not sure how much of a difference that will make when gaming ( some people have said it is a 3% loss in performance? )but I don't know. It may not even be noticeable.

 

its not. unless you wanna overclock and bench mark and get those extra points in your benchmarking results and all that jazz. getting a mobo that runs at x16/x16 is going to be around double what your paying for now.

 

So some extra info I don't think is very relevant is: I have 2 sticks of 4gb's corsair vengeance RAM. operating at stock 1600mhz. 950 watt silencer mkII PSU. And yeah thats all.. I had liquid cooling for the AMD CPU but obviously that will not work, so until I can afford to buy the H80 cooler, I will use the stock fan. No big deal as I won't be overclocking right away.

 

what did you use for liquid cooling? another Corsair closed loop?? cause if so, it should just be a matter of changing the back plate.

 

Oh one last question. If I am going to completely wipe the drive of everything, erasing all partitions. Should I even bother to remove video drivers before, or will they just be wiped out with everything else?

 

if your formatting, everything will be gone. drivers and all.

[Dan3345]

Thanks for info, and FMod I realize the difference between the two is not that great, but where the 1100T shines is indeed multitasking, however I am not doing anything that really is multithreaded. All I really do on the PC which will be upgraded is play games, it is after-all my gaming PC. And I have been doing research and gaining personal experience with many games and I have found that generally the only cores a game will take advantage of are 1 and 2, leaving the rest to sit and do nothing. In this scenario the 2500K out performs every single AMD CPU in almost every instance.

 

However my biggest reasoning for the change is that AMD is no longer going to be creating desktop enthusiast level CPU's, save for their line of APU's which do not do what I need, and will be of no use. Not to mention for those I would have to get an FM1 board and at that point I might as well just go the extra mile and switch everything out for intel. This change will also have the benefit of future proofing my computer. Seeing as how I can no longer rely on AMD at all, I will move to Intel because this way eventually I can get an Ivy Bridge CPU and have a board that will be ready for the new graphics cards on pcie 3.0.

 

Which brings me to my thing. AMD driver support (for me at least) seems to be a complete failure. They spend a lot of time trying to fix games that aren't very popular, and almost no time (or none taken to seriously) trying to fix a major release like skyrim, which I should add I had to make a profile for skyrim that does not use my second 6950 at all because the negative scaling even on AMD's latest beta driver and cap, was terrible. So I am now getting excited for nVidia's 600 series and will most likely sell both of my 6950's when those are produced.

 

It's all very ironic because I used to be the biggest AMD fan, I would encourage new PC builders who couldn't afford Intel to go with AMD, and now I don't feel right telling them too. Especially if they are really serious about it. Better now to just save as much as possible and go with Intel and nVidia.

[FMod]

And I have been doing research and gaining personal experience with many games and I have found that generally the only cores a game will take advantage of are 1 and 2, leaving the rest to sit and do nothing.

That used to be the case for a long time, and still is the case with legacy engines. Skyrim runs the same engine as Oblivion, only visually tweaked, and that's another tweak of the engine from Morrowind; it's over 10 years old by now.

Newer engines utilize more cores, for instance GTA4 is almost unplayable with fewer than 3 cores. Currently support for 6-8 cores is being introduced. 2500K still remains the top dog when it comes to games, by a much smaller margin.

 

 

Seeing as how I can no longer rely on AMD at all, I will move to Intel because this way eventually I can get an Ivy Bridge CPU and have a board that will be ready for the new graphics cards on pcie 3.0.

That's the thing. Are you ready to drop another $250-$500 on PC upgrade every time there is a new CPU that provides 5% better framerates?

 

If so, you should have moved to 2500K back in January 2011, got a B2 board, RMA'd it for B3 later. Now you'll be buying a new mobo+CPU combo that you'll be dumping on ebay and replacing with a new set in a couple months. (Z68 will run IB, but there will be Z77 that is better).

It's your money, of course. But for my money, I would wait at least until Ivy Bridge is out and upgrade to that.

 

From your post, you're probably expecting a new CPU will get you clean smooth performance everywhere. That's not the case. The game still only does 40-60 fps, it still drops sharply in heavy scenes, it just doesn't drop quite as low, but these drops are still uncomfortable moments to wait out.

 

 

trying to fix a major release like skyrim, which I should add I had to make a profile for skyrim that does not use my second 6950 at all because the negative scaling even on AMD's latest beta driver and cap, was terrible.

NetImmerse, the engine that runs Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3/NV and Skyrim, does very poorly with multi-GPU support. Previous games had problems starting up with SLI or Crossfire at all. Some drivers auto-disable SLI/Crossfire there. It's a little worse with Crossfire than it is with SLI, but it's bad in both cases.

Some current card-driver-game combos do run SLI, but it remains buggy. HDR is lost, antialiasing can break, the game crashes more, stuttering can appear. Most people with SLI setups that I know and that have Bethesda games just disable SLI there.

[hoofhearted4]

Skyrim runs the same engine as Oblivion, only visually tweaked

 

NetImmerse, the engine that runs Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3/NV and Skyrim

 

you know that Skyrim runs on the Creation Engine right?

[FMod]

you know that Skyrim runs on the Creation Engine right?

Yes, I know. They finally decided it was time to rename NetImmerse again, since they had the code now.

 

A third name by now. Was NetImmerse, GameBryo, now Creation Engine. New graphics front end, still Morrowind's engine under its hood. That's why we see the same old bugs, same old crashes, same old struggling with high NPC count, same old problems with multiple GPU and multithreading. New body on an old chassis.

[Dan3345]

Fmod I am not expecting sudden perfection. As I said, this is more about getting away from AMD as a whole and making myself ready for intel than anything else. The 2500K will be a jumping point, so that once I have that I can make the move in the next 8 months to ivy bridge if it is worth it.

 

And I don't mean to be rude, but every benchmarking graph I have looked at show the i5 far above the 1090t/1100t. It is a very good CPU for gaming, and I do not think in the next 5 years we will see applications utilizing 6 cores. But who knows, I do not think they are common enough but they could become common.

[hoofhearted4]

Fmod I am not expecting sudden perfection. As I said, this is more about getting away from AMD as a whole and making myself ready for intel than anything else. The 2500K will be a jumping point, so that once I have that I can make the move in the next 8 months to ivy bridge if it is worth it.

 

And I don't mean to be rude, but every benchmarking graph I have looked at show the i5 far above the 1090t/1100t. It is a very good CPU for gaming, and I do not think in the next 5 years we will see applications utilizing 6 cores. But who knows, I do not think they are common enough but they could become common.

 

you still wont see much of a performance increase. just a handful of FPS really. which you wont even notice....i say, save your money and wait for Ivy Bridge. there is no point in getting the 2500k and then the IB right after. esp coming from an 1100T. if you were coming from like an Athlon or something then maybe, but your coming from AMDs flagship. you wont be hurting if you wait until IB.

[FMod]

2500K is significantly above 1100T, just not enough to make a massive difference under realistic circumstances. When you go from say GTX280 to GTX580, or from one GPU to dual-GPU, you about double your framerate. When you go from a somewhat weaker to a somewhat faster CPU, you gain 5% to 40% framerate increase, usually on the low side, if you're running 1920x1080. I'm not theorizing, I've been upgrading every year and kept good track of what produced visible improvements and what didn't.

 

Why would you wait 8 months to move to Ivy Bridge? They are launching it in April, and it's not whiskey, so it's not getting any better from aging.

 

Price-wise, it's even worse - Intel tends to keep a fixed price from launch till retirement. The first people to buy 2500K, which came out over a year ago, only paid only $10 more than it cost at it lowest, and about $20 less than you'll be paying now, as it went up in price.

People buying 2600K today got screwed even worse: not only does it cost more than at launch, but newer 2600K are rejects from the best chips that are now sold as 2700K, at a whole $60 over what a chip like that would in early 2011.

 

The question before you is not whether to upgrade, it's when to upgrade, and the best time to get a new CPU is while they're hot.

Depending on when you bought your 1100T, it was either a good choice (in 2010) or a mistake (in 2011).

 

But you can't undo past mistakes, only avoid making new ones. IB is due in just a couple months and promises 7%-16% per-clock improvement over SB, and with higher clock rates 10%-20% total. It isn't enough to upgrade from SB to IB, but for you it will produce the result you intend to get over two upgrades, for the price of one.

Edited February 19, 2012 by FMod