OC3D Review i7 2600k, i5 2500k & 2300 1155 Sandy Bridge CPU's

[tinytomlogan]

Finally we have the latest range of Intel CPUs available to us. Do they keep up the performance levels of previous generations?

 

[clutchuser]

great reviews man, glad to finally see them.

 

[delusion77]

considering these are mainstream cpus - they are really good. I dont like how they overclock tho... just seems silly to me.....

 

[clutchuser]

Id like to see them swinging in a good video crunch session.

 

[Filekutter]

Wow. Just.. wow. I agree with the Turbo-only mode being a tad obnoxious though. But, otherwise quite nice looking chips and awesome vids. Thanks mucho!

 

[MeltedDuron]

absolutely brilliant review Tom! wasn't expecting this when i woke up this morning. That 2500K definitely looks like the next must-have chip

Think I'll have to get one when I finally get sick of my xeon

 

[sadbuttrue]

Excellent review Tom. The benefits of 32nm are outstanding, and one wonders why they didn't re-fab the i7 and i5-7xx chips last year when i3 came out. Capacity I suppose. You gotta love those numbers for power consumption and temperatures.

Bulldozer is going to have to be really good for AMD to stay in the market.

 

[Tortuga]

^^^Really good, or reeeeally cheaper. They don't have much threshold to work with, seeing these intel prices now. It's going to get good. Thanks guys for the reviews, I know it was a ton of work. Looking forward to more.

 

[killablade]

Great review Tom! You seem to be one of the few that took the time to test these stock and overclocked

 

[Boca10205]

Man imagine what the cpus that are releasing later this year will be able to do!

 

[Stryker64]

The i5 2500K is definitely gonna be in my next gaming rig, due to it's epic performance and value. Plus most games that I play will fare better with 4 Cores without HT =D.

Great review btw, but any chance you can chuck in the charts of a i7 970 or 980x so we can see how they do against the king of the hill?

 

[Technex]

i7-2500K 4 N 3.3GHz 3.7GHz 95W £168

Typo in 1st page? Should be i5?

Still reading the review

.

Edit:

Great review, do you think a Gigabyte would fair even better?

Glad I've been waiting for the i5-2500k

. Although I'm getting very impatient now

.

 

[kyle9600]

wow these look really nice and at 5GHZ

 

[mulda]

really want to see in tests i7 @4+ and SB @4+

 

[JezEngland]

Good, good reviews Tom & Co.

mm lovely tech. replacing 1156 gives budget builders/core 2 users(the majority) a better opportunity. gauranteed this makes Intels market bigger/popular. is AMD gona sell CPU's now? maby 1 or 2

?

thx

 

[chudley]

^^ yeah but replacing the 1156 means that all of us who bought one less than a year ago now need to spend extra dough on a new motherboard as well, something I did not / do not want to do.

Top review though as usual

 

[Nerdfighter]

Great review Tom. Somehow I'm not really impressed... They do overclock to 5GHz, but with those voltages, it can't be used. And only few CPUs and motherboards can even reach 5GHz. So overclocking hasn't really been improved much, maybe by 300 MHz. The only bigger architectural change is the monolith design and the better graphics. The new chipset isn't that good either. Only 2 SATA 6GB/s ports and no native USB 3.0. The only reason for this seems to be for Intel to get more money, since some stupid people will go and upgrade their LGA1156 rig...

This means though that if Bulldozer is as good as claimed, it might have a fair chance against Sandy Bridge. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

 

[ExpertLayman]

Great review.

Just a layman's question. If turbo kicks and increases the core speed according to usage, does that mean the chip uses a lot less energy/power when it is idle?

 

[benj3]

Great review Tom! Will aria be selling the 2500k as that is my first purchase of the new year

!

 

[Rastalovich]

Some fantastic results to be had, both artificially and professionally for me. The mobos will only get better imo, I'd lookout for some nice MSI/Gigabyte/ASUS releases in the near future.

As a point of personal interest, and just to look up some comparisons on a gaming pov. The purely gaming pc I have based on 775, real decent quad, el crappo memory, 480 and a physx card and a mobo I need to swap out for a spare cos it's stopped liking overclocks (needs a new psu also, but that's besides the point). I quickly installed the benches in the video to see:

3D Vant: P21489, G:19238, P:33107

3D 11: P5114

Heaven: 52.9 fps / Score 1333

Plays all the games on 1920x1200 without issues and massive quality settings, physx and so on.

Gaming wize, I still don't think there's a requirement to upgrade this generation. Of course, if you have to buy new, you have plenty of reasons. Luckily I have spares and sources.