i5 2550k Upgrade to i7 3770k experience

KingDazza

New member
Hi,

Just thought I'd post some strange findings on my recent Sandybridge to Ivybridge upgrade.

Due to a bad/faulty x79 motherboard, which caused me allot of hassle. I swapped over to a z77 mobo pretty much on the mobo/chipsets day of release i.e prior to Ivybridge itself coming out. I picked up an i5 2550k to go with it, thinking that I'd then swap it out for an Ivybridge when they hit later on.

In the end I ran with the i5 2550k for several weeks. The mobo is a ASRock Fatala1ty Pro, paired with 16Gb G Skill 1600mhz RAM and a GTX580.

Now booting, stability etc has all been brilliant. However what I found was that in a few games I was getting the occasional stutter - almost like a pause you'd expect in an open world game like Oblivion say. Except in MW3 single player this would happen every 15mins or so and Alan Wake it would happen every 5mins or so. I managed to minimise it to a degree in MW3 by disabling speedstep and switching off C state functionality. However when i went to play Alan Wake, the occasional hitching/judder/stutter persisted. Some games like Crysis 2 were fine and never had any probs at all. But on the games where it did happen, it was annoying - even if it is only every few mins and lasts a second or two.

So I then overclocked the 2550k to a prime 95 stable 4.0Ghz and also did a complete fresh install of Windows 7. Still no joy.

As a last attempt, before accepting to just live with it, I upgraded to an i7 3770k. No other changes at all. Same drivers etc. And ALL stutter issues in the effected games has totally gone.

So apart from being happy, am I the only one very surprised that there is this difference between an i5 2550k, even at 4.0Ghz and a stock i7 3770k. I tried the i7 3770k with and without HT and same positive results and also with and without speedstep.

I thought the difference was meant to be negligible between Sandy and Ivy - clearly not for me. In short I'm chuffed to bits and so glad I moved from my Sandybridge to the Ivy.
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Could have been a mobo bios issue .

Did you flash your bios ?

Maybe Asrock have a specific bios specially developped to support SB on their Z77 boards .

But since you're in the Ivy League, it doesnt matter anymore !
 
Congratulations mate
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Happy for you
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Could have been a mobo bios issue .

Did you flash your bios ?

Maybe Asrock have a specific bios specially developped to support SB on their Z77 boards .

But since you're in the Ivy Leagu, it doesnt matter anymore !

I think this might've been it
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2550k is still better than my piece of crap
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Well with the issues, I kept an eye out for latest BIOS, and flashed and updated 3 times during ownership of the 2550k - however no change in results whatsoever. The last BIOS I had been using on the 2550k, is also the same BIOS being used by the Ivy today. So I dont think the BIOS has any impact at all on my findings. (EDIT: unless of course all of them were solely optimised for Ivy!?)

I wondered if the i7 extra cache and Ivy specific optimisations are essentially raising any minimum frames experienced and therefore smoothing out some of the games I played. Like I say, the occasional stutter aside, there were no other issues whatsoever with the 2550.
 
I wondered if the i7 extra cache and Ivy specific optimisations are essentially raising any minimum frames experienced and therefore smoothing out some of the games I played.

It's a weird result and I'm glad that it is resolved but I it won't be any difference in performance between the i5 and i7. The basic quadcore is more than enough for gaming. In fact very few games actually see more than 4 threads anyway let alone have the capacity to push an i5 to its limits especially on a single GPU setup like yourself.

I don't know what the issue was though!
 
The mobo is a ASRock Fatala1ty Pro, paired with 16Gb G Skill 1600mhz RAM and a GTX580.

had you tried to remove two sticks of RAM from the board? sounds ludicrous, but with my sandy four stick setups

tend to have unexplainable results. i believe the memory controller in sandy is ragged edged and when over clocked

make hiccups in noticable areas. when i had four sticks on 2550k and rendering the "RAM buffer was quick to

hold, but to flow-outward i'd noticed skips and jumps (studder) went to 2 4GB stcks and had less skips and errors

but performance slowed. moved to 2 8GB sticks and all it better.

airdeano
 
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