Core i5-2500K vs Core i5-3570K vs Core i5-4670K vs Core i5-6600K vs Core i5-7600K vs Core i5-8600K vs Core i5-9600K vs Core i5-10600K Bottleneck: RTX 2080 Ti Analysis

I have 8gb ram and a 2500k in my back up pc. It has an rx 550 right now and its not good for 1080p gaming. Looking to upgrade to the rtx 3060 this year

I’m pretty sure it will bottleneck the shit out of it

Your actually still cpu bottlenecked at around 9% loss, in comparison, without the overclock your at a 18%. Your cpu is extremely outdated.

Remember its not all about the easy to see numbers. Even though your running at 4.5ghz, a new chip running at 3.7ghz will be significantly better.

Then what sub $40-$50 cpu do you recommend? I live in Russia and the cpus that get sold locally are overpriced, so it's better if I buy it online.

In gams that scale well for 6 or more cores yes it will. I saw this quite starkly in Apex going from a quad core i7 920 to a six core Xeon.

Hi, I was wondering if a i5 2500k would present a bottleneck when paired with an original GTX Titan. As long as the bottleneck isn’t too bad it’s fine. If someone could help me out that would be great. Thanks!

Very dependent on what you're doing with that rig. For video games (which most people here are asking about), some games don't need more than 4 threads so they'll run just fine on a 2500k. Some games need way more than 4 threads and will run poorly.

Same goes with more productivity-oriented workloads. It depends on if your program is CPU-intensive or not.

I don't know specifically about that pairing but there's a video by Gamers nexus called "Ryzen 3 3300X Bottleneck Benchmark vs. 2080 Ti, 2070 Super, 2060 KO, & More GPUs" that has great info regarding this general subject. Worth the 20 minutes if you want a data driven approach.

Yeah, that's not a bad idea although his CPU is a bit worse than a Ryzen 3300X (his is just 4C/4T). His is closer to a 3200G, dunno if Steve has that one on his benchmarks as well.

My last graphics card a 780 was struggling a bit with some of the more modern games, so I took the plunge on a gtx 2060 super with the intention of upgrading the rest of the system next year. I've overclocked the 2500k to 4.2ghz, any higher and the temps get so high the cpu throttles after a few minutes at full load. I ran hardware monitoring software and some games to test everything out. The gpu was showing hitting 96% load at one point. Does that mean the cpu is good for a while or is it actually bottleneck the system and I'm reading things wrong. I'm gaming at 1080p 144 hz at the moment.

Yes, it is, but not in an aggressive way. The 2500k is still a good-ish cpu but, if I were you, I would upgrade it

The GPU hitting 96% is a good thing. You're set until you can afford to upgrade because the most significant thing will probably be the reduced stutters or frame skips.

1080p 144hz, yes, yes it is.

Run a quick (free) check with shadow of the tomb raider built in benchmark in the demo to get an idea of how much.

Mobo is z68xp-ud3 by Gigabyte.

You will experience a lot of little stutters that kinda make the experience worst in games.

I've had 4 vehicles since that chip came out. That's interesting to think about.

on a budget so im doing "research"

Greetings everyone here, I currently need to upgrade from my garbo 3570k and 960 2gb and found a 5700 xt for really good deal only until sunday but I can't afford to upgrade my entire computer immediately so I've settled on upgrading the gpu first and to 3600 or 4th gen if it's released by holidays. I should be able to have a smooth gaming experience for the meantime with my 3570k in the meantime right? (no stuttering etc), I have a b75 board so overclocking is out of the question. Thanks for taking your time reading my post.

If you want to know, most demanding game I'm playing is probably MW

Edit: for those who wanted to know, I'm playing at standard 1080p

It's going to bottleneck. My 3570K @ 4.4ghz bottlenecked my GTX 970 pretty hard so I upgraded to a 3700x. Your gpu is faster so it's going to bottleneck for sure.

The 970 should not be hard bottleneck for a oc’ed 3570K at all

So yeah, title. I have no GPU atm so was thinking of getting a new GPU first, then build up funds for the rest. I only have a currently stock clocked 3570k though, so would stuttering and lag and frame drops in games like Dark Souls 3, Sekiro, Total War 3 kingdoms, Skyrim be very bad with that combo? Played at 1080p, ideally on ultra settings for most games. This is just a stop gap for the next few months.

What I was planning to do was use the 2060S for the time being, and when it comes time to build an entire new system later in the year, sell it on ebay and get the next gen GPUs (the new navis or the new nvidia 3000 series gpus)

thanks!

I had a gtx 1060 and a i5 3470k overclocked and it bottlenecked in 99% of my games so i guess it will bottleneck but depends on your ram too

By bottleneck do you mean terrible stuttering and lag, or simply that it wasnt fully utilising your GPU to its capacity?

"The bottlenecking", is that some sort of forest troll that makes PCs slower for no good reason? Don't want that, noooo sir.

LOL I certainly hope not!

But yeah I just read on linustechtips and places that the cpu being too weak for the gpu causes major stuttering and stuff, but I guess not?

You will not get major stuttering or lag but your CPU/ram will limit the performance of your card some yes. It highly depends on the game though. Actually your ram speed might be a bigger bottleneck at the moment since you still run ddr3. What is your ram speed ?

Thanks. My RAM is 8GB ddr3 I believe, the G.Skill PC3-10667U.

As a matter of interest, would it perhaps be better to buy a cheaper 1660ti or something if the performance gains on the 2060 will be dampened quite a bit (though the flip side to that is having a good backup gpu can come in handy, and the price of a 1660ti will pobably depreciate insanely by next year whereas if I wanted to sell the 2060S I'd imagine i'd get a decent price for it even next year).

bottlenecking doesn't cause performance drops, the hardware itself not keeping up with the demands of the game causes that.

Oh does it not? I read up a bit on this before I posted and what I read said there could be major stuttering and lag drops and the like.

I’d be getting a brand new 500gb SSD to run the OS off, and I have 16gb of RAM (easily upgradable to 32gb if necessary). Basically I want to be able to play games like Valorant, Overwatch, the new Modern Warfare etc with maybe two years of “future proofing” before I’m forced to run new games on medium-low settings. I’ve heard the i5-3570k is still a solid chip if paired with the right parts, so I’d like y’all’s input.

I have not upgraded in a while and not the most up to date on technology.

My rig currently has i5-3570K with MSI Z77A-GD65 motherboard and ASUS GTX 770 graphics card and 850W PSU all purchased around 2013.

Can I upgrade my graphics card only so it is viable for my setup? Want high fps and play games such as CSGo and Valorant.

Or do I need to start a new build completely?

It will even bottleneck an gtx 1650 in some games, for high fps a cpu is more important, but the gtx 770 should be enough for 144fps in csgo

It would depend on what graphics card you’re upgrading to, like if you wanted 1660-ish performance you’d probably be fine in most games but obviously if you’re going for a 2080 ti you’d be bottlenecked quite a bit. Just depends on what card you want.

What would be the highest I can upgrade to without running into issues like bottleneck?

Also, will I run into same issue whether I go Nvidia or AMD?

Yes you can upgrade it, but also yes, most modern cards would be bottlenecked by your CPU. You’d still see a definite improvement in games, just not as big an improvement than if you got a new CPU/MOBO/RAM also.

Still running my old i5-3570k (sometimes stock, sometimes at 4.x Ghz - overclocking is a real pain with the Asus z77 LE-Plus mboard I have - it never seems to stick), currently with a GTX 970.

Grabbed an evga 2060 super with the $350 Amazon deal. I mostly play racing games (Dirt Rally 1.0 and 2.0, Assetto Corsa) but occasionally play some other games as well - and I want to MAYBE try those at 4K. I don't do anything competitively / online, just for my own fun.

I can still return the card. Would it be massively unbalanced, and I'd barely get any improvement out of the 2060s? Or would I be losing like 5-10% max?

Some sites suggest I'd lose 20-25% of the power of the 2060s, even running the 3570k at 130% clock speed - does that seem realistic?

What's a good bang-for-buck gaming CPU these days? Intel or Ryzen? I have a Ryzen 1700 in my Linux desktop/workstation, but for gaming, it doesn't seem to be much of an improvement according to gpucheck..

I don’t have numbers for how much it’ll bottle neck the GPU but my friend has the same CPU as you and uses a 1660 TI and has been pretty bottlenecked across all games.

A good option on a budget is ryzen 2 like 2600 or 2700x. If you can swing it I’d recommend a 3600

If you're gonna upgrade that CPU I'd go Ryzen. The 2600 is a great six core processor and you can find it for a good deal almost anywhere.

Get the 1600 zen plus rehash for 85$ on amazon(assuming you dont have a microcenter) which is a 2600 all but in name.

The 3570K's main weakness is being limited to 4 threads, so any modern multi-threaded game that can use more than 4 threads will be bottlenecked by the CPU. This means less FPS, especially if you game above >60 Hz refresh rate. It's worth experimenting with graphics settings and running at 4K resolution to see if you can shift some of the bottleneck away from the CPU and onto the GPU.

As for rebuilding your computer, I recommend the newest Ryzen 3000 series. I have a 3570K and RX480, so I feel your pain.

Thanks for the quick responses and good feedback.

Probably time to return the card then, and wait for next gen and do a full rebuild. $$ isn't so much of a concern, but I don't game THAT often.

OTOH, seems the Ryzen 3600 is a bit better and only $40-50 more?

2600 would absolutely get the job done but the 3600 is more future proof and would last longer.

https://pc-builds.com/calculator/Core_i5-3570K/GeForce_RTX_2060_SUPER/0dm14plu/16/

Thanks - I did look at that.. Seems to say that my 970 is a perfect match for my 3570k...

Bottlenecking varies from game to game, and there's no point in getting a slower card. Just upgrade the CPU when you can.

depends on resolution & Fps

I ran my 2500K @ 4.1GHz on a 1660Ti, but resolution is @ 2560x1080x75Hz. 1660Ti is just right no bottleneck, any faster GPU is bottleneck. Ran Assassin Creed unity, Syndicate, Rise of Tomb raider, Dishonored 2 at max detail at those fps/resolution. CPU/GPU usage % is pretty balance never more than 5-10% difference.

If you are on 1920x1080p or faster refresh rate monitor, I think the fastest you can support is 1060.

I just upgraded from a 970 and 3570k.

I now have a Ryzen 3700X and a 2070 Super. The differences are night and day. The 3570k will be a bottleneck for almost every GPU that exceeds the 970 in performance.

The best "bang for your buck" CPU right now is probably the Ryzen 3600.