Upgrade to Ivy or Wait for Haswell?

**Total War Strategist** · August 23, 2012, 04:00 PM

So right now I'm running an i5-2500 (yes, there's no 'k' on the end of that and I do know that I'm an idiot for not spending $20 more

), and my performance in large melee battles is pretty bad.

I'm currently in the range of 24 - 25 FPS when I run the CPU bench, and it seems like people who have the i7-3770K are getting around 40 FPS with good memory and a fairly high overclock.

So my question is would it be worth it to upgrade to the i7-3770K now, or should I wait for Haswell?

If I go with Ivy, I'll be getting a new motherboard, CPU, cooler, and RAM, so it'll essentially be a full system upgrade. I'd most likely have to wait until winter to do this as well.

**Total War Strategist** · August 23, 2012, 04:01 PM

Sorry, forgot my system specs:

CPU: Intel i5-2500

Motherboard: MSI P67A-GD55 LGA 1155

GPU: Asus GTX 670 DirectCU II TOP

RAM: G.Skill 8GB DDR3 1333MHz

PSU: Corsair 700W

HDD: Western Digital 7200RPM 750GB

HDD for Videos: Seagate 7200RPM 2TB

Case: Antec 1200 V3

OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit

Monitor Res: 1920x1080

**Bolkonsky** · August 23, 2012, 04:43 PM

Do you want to play Rome II as well?

You've got nothing to lose by waiting, really.

**Total War Strategist** · August 23, 2012, 05:06 PM

Originally Posted by Bolkonsky

Do you want to play Rome II as well?

You've got nothing to lose by waiting, really.

I'll definitely be getting Rome II.

And yeah, I suppose there's not much harm in waiting. It's just unfortunate that Shogun 2 is so poorly threaded that my CPU can't handle a large scale battle without bottlenecking my GPU.

**Bolkonsky** · August 23, 2012, 05:12 PM

Yeah, if only you had the k you could get a bit more performance by overclocking. Other than that though, your system looks really good.

**Total War Strategist** · August 23, 2012, 09:18 PM

Yeah, I'm really starting to regret that decision.

**Crazyeyesreaper** · August 23, 2012, 11:22 PM

just wait for haswell, yes it makes SHogun 2 better but if you need a few extra FPS disable Blood Pack DLC, that has a fairly noticeable CPU hit as its rendered in the CPU test

Sandy to Ivy is a 5-10% gain with better power consumption aka its the TEST for 22nm cpus,

Haswell will be the real deal Intel has a Tick Tock schedule

i7 920 = 45nm Tick
i7 930 = 32nm Tock

i5 2500k = 32nm Tick
i5 3570k = 22nm Tock

Haswell = 22nm Tick
Haswell Successor = xxnm Tock (to lazy to look up the info)

yes with about 4.4 you can get 30 + at all times with Ivy and a good GPU,

but Haswell should be another 20% gain

Nehalem to Sandybridge 20%
Sandybridge to Ivy 0-10%
Ivy to Haswell 20% give or take

Haswell and GTX 700 and HD 8000 series gpus will all launch before Rome II, so i recommend just holding out drop shadows 1 notch, and turn off blood pack if you have it and try and deal with it as best you can.

if you had a first gen i5 aka 750 or something id say upgrade but your already on Sandy and only a few games benefit from high clocks overclocking achieves

Bad Company 2
SKyrim
Shogun 2
off the top of my head anyway. otherwise it takes crossfire / multi gpu to see this kick into bigger effect in more titles, in which case memory bandwidth via the IMC on the cpu becomes more important in which case Sandy is just peachy there as well

**Darkpriest667** · August 24, 2012, 04:05 AM

I agree with crazy you've got nothing to lose by waiting.

the 1150 socket will be new and it will give you a chance to upgrade to broadwell in the future (or is it skylake I believe its broadwell)

you'll get native PCIE 3.0 along with some other goodies. I'd wait. Personally Im waiting for skylake to upgrade. I haven't even OC'd this 2600k yet and its still running games at a good frame rate.

**Bolkonsky** · August 24, 2012, 08:31 AM

Originally Posted by Crazyeyesreaper

just wait for haswell, yes it makes SHogun 2 better but if you need a few extra FPS disable Blood Pack DLC, that has a fairly noticeable CPU hit as its rendered in the CPU test

Sandy to Ivy is a 5-10% gain with better power consumption aka its the TEST for 22nm cpus,

Haswell will be the real deal Intel has a Tick Tock schedule

i7 920 = 45nm Tick
i7 930 = 32nm Tock

i5 2500k = 32nm Tick
i5 3570k = 22nm Tock

Haswell = 22nm Tick
Haswell Successor = xxnm Tock (to lazy to look up the info)

yes with about 4.4 you can get 30 + at all times with Ivy and a good GPU,

but Haswell should be another 20% gain

Nehalem to Sandybridge 20%
Sandybridge to Ivy 0-10%
Ivy to Haswell 20% give or take

Haswell and GTX 700 and HD 8000 series gpus will all launch before Rome II, so i recommend just holding out drop shadows 1 notch, and turn off blood pack if you have it and try and deal with it as best you can.

if you had a first gen i5 aka 750 or something id say upgrade but your already on Sandy and only a few games benefit from high clocks overclocking achieves

Bad Company 2
SKyrim
Shogun 2
off the top of my head anyway. otherwise it takes crossfire / multi gpu to see this kick into bigger effect in more titles, in which case memory bandwidth via the IMC on the cpu becomes more important in which case Sandy is just peachy there as well

I'm not sure about 20% as they're talking about 10%, as the developer you'd think they'd be putting up the higher specs. They seem to be focusing more on graphics and power saving, they're probably trying to compete with Trinity for the APU market. Considering that Llano still runs them into the ground, they will need miracles to dethrone AMD from that position. Also, the rumors about Broadwell being compatible with Haswell architecture is still up in the air I guess, since Broadwell might be multi-chip. Most of this is speculation though.
Broadwell will be 14nm, and after Broadwell will come Skylake.

Also, Sandy is tock, Ivy is tick, and Haswell is tock.

Originally Posted by Darkpriest667

I agree with crazy you've got nothing to lose by waiting.

the 1150 socket will be new and it will give you a chance to upgrade to broadwell in the future (or is it skylake I believe its broadwell)

you'll get native PCIE 3.0 along with some other goodies. I'd wait. Personally Im waiting for skylake to upgrade. I haven't even OC'd this 2600k yet and its still running games at a good frame rate.

You're looking at Q3, 2014 at the earliest.

**Total War Strategist** · August 24, 2012, 08:38 AM

Alright, my original plan was to wait for the Haswell and Maxwell architectures to be released before I upgrade, and it looks like I'll be sticking with that.

Thanks for the help!