Gadgetory

the Intel i7 2670 Lin the last decade following up the Seminole in the hey LEM CPUs with major architectural improvements in the second generation core I Series at Sandy Bridge CPUs the 2600 was a soldered CPU with significant performance uplift over Nehalem 930 s and launched twin AMD's phenom 2 x6 cpus were already embattled with the previous intel architecture we revisited these CPUs at last year but we wanted to come back around to the 2600 K and 2018 to see if it's finally time to upgrade for hands-on to the one skinned CPU before that this video is brought to you by thermal grizzly and their high end thermal compounds thermal grizzly makes cryo not paste for high thermal performance and conductivity without being electrically conductive so you don't have to worry about shorting components Crona is particularly good for replacing stock GPU pastes as cryo not is a non curing compound learn more at the link in the description below sandy bridge marked the last massive uplift and performance if you look at processors core to core it's a bit different now because now we have things like the 9900 k where it's a core count increase along side frequency bombs but speaking strictly 2/4 core comparisons Sandy Bridge really posted big gains even over in a halo which was already a pretty big improvement over the cue 6600 and cue 9000 series quad-core CPUs so Sandy Bridge rightfully has a fond place in the industry for a lot of enthusiasts who likely got their start on the 2600 K 2500 K or similar parts the 2700 K is in there as well it was a refresh for the 2600 K it's about a hundred megahertz faster but we're looking at the original today the 2600 K and the launch date depending on how you line it up they were manufactured around 2009/2010 for the CPUs so it's get going on almost a decade at this points about eight years old depend on when you bought your Sandy Bridge CPU so the 2600 K it's still a damn good chip but there's a lot of stuff out there now it's been a good year for CPUs from Intel and AMD you've got rise in 2000 series in 9000 series 8000 series so we kind of bench it against all that stuff and see where the 2,600 K stands today even with overclocking because we can punch hours to about 4.7 gigahertz which is pretty damn good for those CPUs and that really changes things up in the stack and as noted we did this previously not too long ago actually but things have changed a lot in the Seaview market in the last couple of months so if you're new here the article below in the link in the description will include testing methodology information that'll help you get a firm understanding of what parts are using the test it also talks about things like what are 1% low as 0.1 percent lows and how are they sometimes flawed because it's a metric that we use for some of the benchmarks and you may not be familiar with it we choose games specifically as representations for the engines and api's that those games run so we focus on testing for example one ego engine game to cover all of code masters or you focus on testing maybe one popular DX out 12 title couple popular the x11 titles things like that you'll see through the list as we get through it how each one can represent its engine and API because if you have one firm representation of that engine that API you can pretty much extrapolate the performance differences across most of the games that use similar engines and api's so that's how we do our test and we'll have more information in the article if you're new here otherwise let's get into it for the 2600 K revisit of 2018 f1 2018 is up first using the ego engine by Codemasters F 1 2018 offers a strong representation of some of the most common racing games available this one tends to push extremely high frame rates even at 4k resolutions in our GPU benchmarks but this is a cpu benchmark so we'll start with 1080p for 1080p and high settings we tracked f1 2018 I was hitting 165 FPS average on the i7 2600 in the 1 skin i7 2670 3.9 gigahertz it's performing behind the r5 1600 stock CPU as well although we must give credit to the 2600 K for keeping up for as long as it has been 8 years now it's still perfectly capable in this particular title although it may be limiting for anyone who can see the difference at 200 Hertz generationally the 4790k and at 218 FPS average giving us an interesting mark for comparison and that's a large gain over the 2600 K although both are quite old the 2600 K is significantly older if you want to use percentages and this nonlinear metric of frame rate that'd be a 32 percent gain in terms of frame time differences you're still looking at roughly 4.6 milliseconds frames a frame interval for the 4790k or about 6.1 milliseconds on the 2600 k normalizing for this the increase is still about 30 1.5% improved the 8700 k ends up at 248 FPS average one stock for reference with the 9900 k stock cv at 284 FPS average these deviate from core account equivalence with the 2600 K but the 8700 K does replace its position in spirit overclocking the 2600 K to 4.7 gigahertz really helps its position and planting it firmly alongside the 4.2 gigahertz overclocks are five 2600 and the 3.9 gigahertz overclocked r7 1708 core cpu it has also closed in on the stock 4790k we're all proving an impressive chip even in 2018 let's look at some frame time numbers from f1 2018 at 1080 P this frame time plot will demonstrate frame to frame intervals in milliseconds between the i7 2600 alongside the 2700 stock and overclocked remember these charts are ultimately the most important not FPS charts FPS charts are also important and hard to beat for comparing a large amount of devices simultaneously but frame times illustrate real gameplay experience from one frame to the next lower is better but more consistent is better than lower for perspective sixteen point six six seven milliseconds is 60 FPS which you get by dividing 1000 milliseconds by 60 FPS on present frame time represents the interval of time between frames being shown to you in these results we can see some frame time spikes that are just the nature of f1 2018 these happen sometimes and are why our 0.1% lobe metrics are all over the place for this game no one CPU has a statistically significant amount more spikes than others it just appears to be native to the engine overall we see that Lee 2600 K a 4.7 gig and r7 2700 4.2 gigahertz to do the best but all of these remain clustered around four to six millisecond frame times which is overall excellent performance mind you most players would be happy with either device for perspective here's one of those plots with VI 999 hundred K versus the 2600 K in this one the 9900 sits closer to 4 millisecond times on average ranging between 3.8 and 4.5 with the 2600 K s thinking closer to a range of six point six to eight point four milliseconds when stock as for whether you can notice that difference well that's up to you but the United 900 K is obviously significantly better in overall performance in 2010 s at 2600 K and that also shouldn't surprise anyone at 1440p back to FPS charts the 2600 K keeps identical positioning as previously this makes sense because we're becoming GPU bound at the top and while CPU load remains the same even at 1440p and with the GPO truncating the max framerate there is still a significant improvement at the top end of performance with newer Intel CPUs a hard line is drawn at the 4790k in this benchmark where no AMD CPU has managed to cross just yet that said the 2700 is awfully close and one has to evaluate whether other workloads that may shift the CPU choice in favor of AMD's lineup that's again up to you it just depends on what you're doing if you're only playing f1 the stack is clearly in favor of higher frequencies from Intel let's look at another game for more perspective Assassin's Creed origins is up next giving us a look at a Ubisoft title with a commonly modified engine for other Ubisoft games at 1080p medium a CL ends the 2600 K stock CPU at 63 FPS average with lows at 43 FPS 1% and 35 fps 0.1% this game is a bit more consistent than some of the others we've tested and so the low values proved more useful here for rapid indications of frame time consistency that's what these are if you're not familiar the 1% in 0.1% lows are indicators for the worst frame times as converted to fps without looking at an outlier of minimums the 2600 K is stock numbers market has a bit better than the overclocked through port 9 gigahertz r3 1200 in average yes although measurable we should also know that this difference is imperceptible to any real user the low frame time performance Delta is within margin of error between them as well overclocking the 2600 K pushes it up to 76 FPS average ranking it between the modern r5 1600 stock CPU and the stock 2600 K performance here becomes limited rapidly as evidenced by our maximum frame rate of about 135 28 FPS average even the modern I 5 8400 is outperforming the 2600 K in big ways ranking 92 FPS average with the 6 core 6 thread configuration it's to fewer threads but the upgrades to cache and architecture as a whole have benefited the 8400 noticeably as has its frequency and turbo boost changes the stock 8700 K offers 113 FPS average roughly an 80% improvement over the stock 2600 K the r7 2700 ends up at about 45% higher in FPS when both are stock at this point nearly anything would be an upgrade to this 2600 K it'd be hard to be upset really with a modern i7 or 7 CPU when considering these results whether you go i7 r7 I 9 or other eyes will depend on budget and on other use cases like those exiting gaming we'll talk about that more in the conclusion and in the blender results at 1440p the 2600 k ends up in roughly the same exact positioning this makes sense because we're not hitting a GPU stresser at these performance levels nothing really changes about the stack once at 1440p at least nothing aside from the chart-topping cpu is where the 2080 ti actually becomes a limitation far cry 5 is up next using the dunya engine by ubisoft we recently explained that this game has some frame time consistency issues on Intel CPUs with fewer than 8 threads or at least maybe a cache difference we're still researching it making far cry one of the best examples of why 1% and 0.1% load numbers don't always show the full story this is a known flaw on any FPS reporting and that's why we showed this frame time plot in the 9600 K review illustrating that occasional severe spikes can get averaged out when using even a 0.1% low average and these spikes although there aren't many of them are noticeable they freeze for 100 milliseconds at a time and cases this has nothing to do by the way with overclock stability as is made obvious by frame time plot and also by 1440p testing it's entirely to do with consistency of frame delivery on i-5 CPU is where we get sporadic frame to frame intervals we're still looking into this further anyway for a normal fps chart the i7 2682 FPS average this ranks the eight year old flagship CPU as roughly tied with an r3 1200 which is about 100 to 115 dollars in 2018 overclocking the 2600 k boosts it to 102 FPS average a significant uplift of about 26% this performance figure ties the 2600 K with the r7 2700 stock CPU even in frame time consistency there is no objective improvement to quote smoothness between the 2700 and the overclocked to 2600 K overclocked in the 2700 does provide further uplift of course as dozen 8700 K or similar 1440p by the way else further illustrate that far cry 5 frame time consistency is deeper than just overclocking as averaging yielded equally bad is your 0.1% low metrics on the 9600 case stock and overclocked for this round of tests that doesn't matter here though the 2600 K ends up again at 81 FPS average which is completely expected since we're not GPU bound civilization 6 provides an important benchmark for CPUs giving us a look at tournament resolution time requirements in Grand Campaign style games where AI players have to think about their actions considering thousands of options the CPU rapidly becomes the bottleneck as the GPU spins its wheels waiting for the occasional frame to come through in this instance turn time requirements on the stock I 720 600 K are fifteen point seven seconds per turn which is calculated against 5 AI players and averaged across multiple task passes this means that for a full rotation back to your own turn after clicking end to turn you'd be waiting about seventy eight point five seconds on the 2600 K for perspective a modern 99 hundred K stock CPU requires eleven point seven seconds to process a turn meaning that the full rotation takes 48 point five seconds considering that turn time goes up as campaigns drag on this Delta rapidly becomes significant for turn-based strategy enthusiasts the 8700 K also does well at twelve point five seconds stock an overclock in the 2600 K to 4.7 gigahertz provides a significant turn time requirement reduction of 14% putting it alongside the i-5 8400 stock CPU and r5 2600 stock CPU this game particularly likes frequency which is why you'll see the rise in CPUs with a higher clock outperforming their higher thread count ur parts from the risin families blender offers a look at realistic non-gaming workloads that a 3d artist might encounter we used blender to make our two second intro animation before this video that you likely saw and we also use one of the frames from that animation to benchmark Seaview before it's we made a couple of additional frames - like our monkey had rendered test for stress testing different workloads with the GM logo render as the primary benchmark the stock i7 2670 990 WX 32 core AMD CPU requires nine and a half minutes for that same render we move the decimal a whole point to the left in that comparison pretty remarkable differences and in that same render the more price consistent stock 8700 K requires about 33 minutes to complete the render no matter how you look at it every other CPU on the chart would be an upgrade overclock in the 2600 K the 4.7 gigahertz pushed it to 67 minutes a massive and noticeable render time reduction of 25% this puts it closer to the 4790k but still distant as the 4790k reduces its render time over the overclocked to 2600 case still by 18% this application is primarily where a.m. these offerings really start to shine the r7 27 hari completes the GM logo in about 32 minutes when stock which reduces render time against the stock 2,600 K by 64 percent overclocking the 4.2 gigahertz pushes it even lower down to 27 minutes render time if it 3d rendering or tile based rendering applications are urethane it would be worth looking into Rison as a high-performance part that comes in at a relatively low price this doesn't apply globally to all productivity applications mind you photoshop still really favourites frequency has those premiere both made by Adobe but does very well with tile-based rendering and 3d rendering like in this benchmark closing this one out then it's it's still a really good cpu I 2600 K you really have no reason to feel bad about still using it because for pure gaming and a lot of those games f1 is a great example there's really nothing wrong with its performance now if you put a 20 atti in there or even a 1080i in a lot of instances yes the card will be bottlenecked by the GPU but for a lot of these games that are really more intensive on a single thread or maybe two threads the 2600 K still does just fine once it's overclocked to modern frequency standards and 4.6 4.7 gigahertz isn't too hard to achieve with a decent cooling solution and maybe 1.3 5 volts or something around there so it still does really well as always when it comes to upgrading you just have to ask yourself am i happy with the current system I have is it holding me back if the answer is yes I'm happy with it no it's not meaningfully holding me back I keep using it but one of the best things you can do if you're not ready to upgrade either because you just really like the build you don't have the money for it something like that you're not happy with the current part selection on the market then one of the best things you can do is to bring a 2600 K back to life or any CPU that's dated is to just do a clean install of Windows completely fresh start over put an SSD in there make sure it's wiped clean install fresh OS get all the drivers installed you'll be impressed with how much performance you can claw back because if you've been using the 2600 K since it came out that's a long time first of all it's a older version of Windows but that's a long time for Windows to just get cluttered with stuff that slows down the whole experience even when you're launching games so one of the best things we can recommend is a clean install if you're not ready to migrate just yet and that's something that people often overlook when they think about benchmarks because your framerate is probably a hell of a lot lower than it could be if you're running on a build from 2010 for the software but if you are ready to upgrade clearly in the gaming department there are plenty of options from Intel and these I was pretty well there these days as well with the r7 2700 for example and pricing is good for AMD but if you want just pure gaming Intel's doing well at the top half of most of these charts if you want something with a mixed workload capability that is stronger and things like 3d rendering performance maybe do some 3d modeling then AMD is an excellent choice to consider the second generation sort of second generation it's a surprise it's a Zen plus process second dish generation of risin risin mm is it carries important updates for BIOS that improve stability improved memory timings all that kind of stuff so if you've been wanting to move to a new processor but you were hesitant about the first gen rise and launch just know that with the new motherboards that have come out with all the BIOS updates it's significantly improved and so it's a very competitive and compelling product now especially the r7 2700 or the i-5 20 the r5 excuse me 2600 now that said that's kind of a lateral move for a gaming performance um a lot of these games that we demonstrated today so if you're just gaming you're not really going to get much of a a meaningful performance uplift with that kind of migration you would have to go 8700 K maybe 9900 but the price jump there is just its massive a 9900 K if you can even find one is functionally an h EDT priced product this is 7900 accent price so we hesitate on that recommendation but if you want something that more that's more price equivalent to the 2600 K when it launched you can look at the 9700 K which we haven't yet tested the 8700 K which we have tested and does very well or if you have more money in 900 K is worth consideration and again just ahead there if you do have some production applications that are maybe more threat intensive like tile based rendering then Rison is an excellent choice to consider for those kinds of workloads as well so totally depends on what you're doing the CPU market has a lot of choices these days where it's it's a great opportunity to select almost entirely based on your specific use case there's no longer a case where it's just like this Intel CPU is the best period because now there are different options and different price categories now that AMD has entered the market a stronger position than it was previously able to so hopefully that helps you out as always look at the charts form your own opinions on what you need but hopefully that gives you some guidance on how you can move for the 2600 K if you're still running it consider overclocking it put a new cooler on it something like that and reinstall windows and you might be be with it for another year or so subscribe for more as always get a store doc gamers Nexus dotnet that helps out directly or patreon.com slash gamers Nexus and we'll see you all next time