i5-2310 to i7-3770?

Current Machine:

• i5-2310 (Turbo overclocked to 3.6Ghz so it benches like an i5-2500)
• Z68 Micro ATX board
• 12GB RAM (2x4G + 2x2G)
• SSD and HDD
• Radeon 7850
• 530W PSU

My board will take a i7-3770k at max but those are a bit too expensive on the used market.

I could get a non-K 3770 used for around $200. (Or I guess a i7-2600 for $140.)

Will I see any kind of noticeable improvement for RAW editing or short 1080p video edits?

If $200 would keep the upgrade bug away for another 12-18 months then it might be worth it. But I do want to feel like the machine is peppier ( at least a little bit ).

tkbslc said:

Current Machine:

• i5-2310 (Turbo overclocked to 3.6Ghz so it benches like an i5-2500)
• Z68 Micro ATX board
• 12GB RAM (2x4G + 2x2G)
• SSD and HDD
• Radeon 7850
• 530W PSU

My board will take a i7-3770k at max but those are a bit too expensive on the used market.

I could get a non-K 3770 used for around $200. (Or I guess a i7-2600 for $140.)

Will I see any kind of noticeable improvement for RAW editing or short 1080p video edits?

If $200 would keep the upgrade bug away for another 12-18 months then it might be worth it. But I do want to feel like the machine is peppier ( at least a little bit ).

Click to expand...

My feeling is that it probably isn't worthwhile for most photo purposes; if your photo/video software is well multithreaded, you might see a decent improvement, but in general I'd save my money.



If you could find a i7-3770K cheap (used?) and overclocked a bit to, say 4.5GHz, that might start being noticeable.

Just my guess.

Austinian said:

tkbslc said:

Current Machine:

• i5-2310 (Turbo overclocked to 3.6Ghz so it benches like an i5-2500)
• Z68 Micro ATX board
• 12GB RAM (2x4G + 2x2G)
• SSD and HDD
• Radeon 7850
• 530W PSU

My board will take a i7-3770k at max but those are a bit too expensive on the used market.

I could get a non-K 3770 used for around $200. (Or I guess a i7-2600 for $140.)

Will I see any kind of noticeable improvement for RAW editing or short 1080p video edits?

If $200 would keep the upgrade bug away for another 12-18 months then it might be worth it. But I do want to feel like the machine is peppier ( at least a little bit ).

Click to expand...

My feeling is that it probably isn't worthwhile for most photo purposes; if your photo/video software is well multithreaded, you might see a decent improvement, but in general I'd save my money.

http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/425/Intel_Core_i5_i5-2500_vs_Intel_Core_i7_i7-3770.html

http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i7-3770-vs-Intel-Core-i5-2500

If you could find a i7-3770K cheap (used?) and overclocked a bit to, say 4.5GHz, that might start being noticeable.

Just my guess.

Click to expand...

I kind of suspect the same, I was just hoping maybe someone had some real-world experience to share. Some benchmarks say 15% improvement, others say 50%, but only for long running jobs like video transcoding, etc.

I miss the old days of massive improvements on each upgrade cycle. Upgrading my Q6600 to this i5 was literally a 100% improvement in every bench. And going from my Athlon 2500+ to the Q6600 was like a 400% improvement. Now it's been 4 years and a new Skylake i5 is looking maybe 20% faster?

tkbslc said:

Austinian said:

tkbslc said:

Current Machine:

• i5-2310 (Turbo overclocked to 3.6Ghz so it benches like an i5-2500)
• Z68 Micro ATX board
• 12GB RAM (2x4G + 2x2G)
• SSD and HDD
• Radeon 7850
• 530W PSU

My board will take a i7-3770k at max but those are a bit too expensive on the used market.

I could get a non-K 3770 used for around $200. (Or I guess a i7-2600 for $140.)

Will I see any kind of noticeable improvement for RAW editing or short 1080p video edits?

If $200 would keep the upgrade bug away for another 12-18 months then it might be worth it. But I do want to feel like the machine is peppier ( at least a little bit ).

Click to expand...

My feeling is that it probably isn't worthwhile for most photo purposes; if your photo/video software is well multithreaded, you might see a decent improvement, but in general I'd save my money.

http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/425/Intel_Core_i5_i5-2500_vs_Intel_Core_i7_i7-3770.html

http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i7-3770-vs-Intel-Core-i5-2500

If you could find a i7-3770K cheap (used?) and overclocked a bit to, say 4.5GHz, that might start being noticeable.

Just my guess.

Click to expand...

I kind of suspect the same, I was just hoping maybe someone had some real-world experience to share. Some benchmarks say 15% improvement, others say 50%, but only for long running jobs like video transcoding, etc.

I miss the old days of massive improvements on each upgrade cycle. Upgrading my Q6600 to this i5 was literally a 100% improvement in every bench. And going from my Athlon 2500+ to the Q6600 was like a 400% improvement. Now it's been 4 years and a new Skylake i5 is looking maybe 20% faster?

Click to expand...

Me too! I enjoyed building faster, better PCs every year or two. Now, I don't know when it'll be worthwhile replacing this i7-4790K build. Not soon, is my guess.

Intel's tick-tock has been replaced with a tick-tock-tweak. I doubt if Kaby Lake is going to bring anything major to the table.

AMD's got their Zen on the way, someday, but they've got the same semiconductor process issues as Intel, if not worse.

Short of a whole new chip technology (read: expensive!) it seems the big gains of the past are mostly history. Fortunately, what we've got is pretty good in most respects.

tkbslc said:

I kind of suspect the same, I was just hoping maybe someone had some real-world experience to share. Some benchmarks say 15% improvement, others say 50%, but only for long running jobs like video transcoding, etc.

I miss the old days of massive improvements on each upgrade cycle. Upgrading my Q6600 to this i5 was literally a 100% improvement in every bench. And going from my Athlon 2500+ to the Q6600 was like a 400% improvement. Now it's been 4 years and a new Skylake i5 is looking maybe 20% faster?

Click to expand...

The CPU market hit a clock speed wall years ago, and the response was to multi-core, multi-thread to try to improve overall throughput performance. The ability of s/w to exploit those architectural improvements has been marginal, and GPUs have stolen some of that thunder with many cores running in parallel for things like video rendering, etc.

I'd wager that you won't feel much improvement except with video editing where it can use the i7 hyperthreading. Photoshop is mostly about single thread performance. For cheap thrills, might be worth finding a 2500K and overclocking, but you're gonna need a bigger cooler, which may not fit in a mini ATX case (assuming that's what you have?)

How old is your SSD? I ask because I just upgraded my 3 year old 240GB drive to a new 480GB, and my boot times dropped significantly. I did a drive clone, not a fresh Windows install. Photoshop launches faster, too. My 240 GB drive was an Intel 335, and was at 100% health according to the Intel SSD toolbox. The new drive is an Intel 535, which is not known for its performance, But...it gave my system a pretty good kick for boot and app launch times. AS SSD benchmarks my 335 as the faster drive, but in usage that's not the case. I guess there is something to that "SSD degradation" stuff. I've now got the 240GB drive setup as a working drive for RAW editing.

There are numerous objective tests you can research concluding that there is little difference to the end user in perceived speed ranging from Sandy Bridge to Skylake. The biggest perceptible difference to the end user is the switch from a mechanical boot drive to an SSD which you already have.

Regardless of processor generation (comparing Sandy Bridge through Skylake) there is not a significant difference to the end user experience in every day use comparing i5 and i7 processors of equivalent clock speed (the clock speeds just have to be in the same ballpark, not identical). The i7 has larger on die cache and virtual cores but few programs effectively utilize/need those so that does not translate into end user experience.

The only exception is video rendering where there is a notable difference in the speed of processing large files comparing Sandy Bridge and Skylake and comparing 4 core to 6 or 8 core machines. You still have to walk away from your machine and wait but the wait is not as long. For "short" and presumably occasional 1080 video renderings you may initially see a difference with an i7 if your video program can use all 8 virtual cores but I don't think it will be overwhelming.The i7 may require a BIOS upgrade and Windows and PS (and Office et al) will have to be reactivated (not an issue for CC).

For ardent gamers the GPU is what matters. There are again multiple tests showing that a high end GPU will deliver the same frame rates with all these classes of CPUs with little difference between i3 and i7 CPUs in most instances. So if you play games upgrading the GPU can make a perceptible difference, if your power supply can handle the card. If AMDs newly announced $200 card delivers the goods it is not clear what high end GPU will mean anymore.

I have an unlocked Sandy Bridge i7 running at stock clock and an overclocked i7 Skylake machine. I assure you that I can not perceive any difference using Photoshop on the same files on either machine. I used to overclock the Sandy Bridge but something happened and I never changed the settings back and never missed the difference. In fact the Skylake goes through a prolonged self check at boot because of the over-clock so the Sandy Bridge boots way faster--does that make it the faster machine?

Austinian said:

tkbslc said:

Austinian said:

tkbslc said:

Current Machine:

• i5-2310 (Turbo overclocked to 3.6Ghz so it benches like an i5-2500)
• Z68 Micro ATX board
• 12GB RAM (2x4G + 2x2G)
• SSD and HDD
• Radeon 7850
• 530W PSU

My board will take a i7-3770k at max but those are a bit too expensive on the used market.

I could get a non-K 3770 used for around $200. (Or I guess a i7-2600 for $140.)

Will I see any kind of noticeable improvement for RAW editing or short 1080p video edits?

If $200 would keep the upgrade bug away for another 12-18 months then it might be worth it. But I do want to feel like the machine is peppier ( at least a little bit ).

Click to expand...

My feeling is that it probably isn't worthwhile for most photo purposes; if your photo/video software is well multithreaded, you might see a decent improvement, but in general I'd save my money.

http://www.cpu-world.com/Compare/425/Intel_Core_i5_i5-2500_vs_Intel_Core_i7_i7-3770.html

http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i7-3770-vs-Intel-Core-i5-2500

If you could find a i7-3770K cheap (used?) and overclocked a bit to, say 4.5GHz, that might start being noticeable.

Just my guess.

Click to expand...

I kind of suspect the same, I was just hoping maybe someone had some real-world experience to share. Some benchmarks say 15% improvement, others say 50%, but only for long running jobs like video transcoding, etc.

I miss the old days of massive improvements on each upgrade cycle. Upgrading my Q6600 to this i5 was literally a 100% improvement in every bench. And going from my Athlon 2500+ to the Q6600 was like a 400% improvement. Now it's been 4 years and a new Skylake i5 is looking maybe 20% faster?

Click to expand...

Me too! I enjoyed building faster, better PCs every year or two. Now, I don't know when it'll be worthwhile replacing this i7-4790K build. Not soon, is my guess.

Intel's tick-tock has been replaced with a tick-tock-tweak. I doubt if Kaby Lake is going to bring anything major to the table.

AMD's got their Zen on the way, someday, but they've got the same semiconductor process issues as Intel, if not worse.

Short of a whole new chip technology (read: expensive!) it seems the big gains of the past are mostly history. Fortunately, what we've got is pretty good in most respects.

Click to expand...

I have a build with that CPU. It is quite impressive without overclocking.