Upgrading from an Intel Core i7-2600K: Testing Sandy Bridge in 2019
by Ian Cutress on May 10, 2019 10:30 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Sandy Bridge
- Overclocking
- 7700K
- Coffee Lake
- i7-2600K
- 9700K
Gaming: Ashes Classic (DX12)
Seen as the holy child of DirectX12, Ashes of the Singularity (AoTS, or just Ashes) has been the first title to actively go explore as many of the DirectX12 features as it possibly can. Stardock, the developer behind the Nitrous engine which powers the game, has ensured that the real-time strategy title takes advantage of multiple cores and multiple graphics cards, in as many configurations as possible.
As a real-time strategy title, Ashes is all about responsiveness during both wide open shots but also concentrated battles. With DirectX12 at the helm, the ability to implement more draw calls per second allows the engine to work with substantial unit depth and effects that other RTS titles had to rely on combined draw calls to achieve, making some combined unit structures ultimately very rigid.
Stardock clearly understand the importance of an in-game benchmark, ensuring that such a tool was available and capable from day one, especially with all the additional DX12 features used and being able to characterize how they affected the title for the developer was important. The in-game benchmark performs a four minute fixed seed battle environment with a variety of shots, and outputs a vast amount of data to analyze.
For our benchmark, we run Ashes Classic: an older version of the game before the Escalation update. The reason for this is that this is easier to automate, without a splash screen, but still has a strong visual fidelity to test.
Ashes has dropdown options for MSAA, Light Quality, Object Quality, Shading Samples, Shadow Quality, Textures, and separate options for the terrain. There are several presents, from Very Low to Extreme: we run our benchmarks at the above settings, and take the frame-time output for our average and percentile numbers.
| AnandTech CPU Gaming 2019 Game List | ||||||||
| Game | Genre | Release Date | API | IGP | Low | Med | High | |
| Ashes: Classic | RTS | Mar 2016 |
DX12 | 720p Standard |
1080p Standard |
1440p Standard |
4K Standard |
|
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
| AnandTech | IGP | Low | Medium | High |
| Average FPS |  |
 |
 |
 |
| 95th Percentile |  |
 |
 |
 |
For Ashes we see performance differences between the chips all the way up to 4K, however the 7700K and 2600K overclocked perform almost the same at 4K. From 1440p and down however, the OC doesn't quite make the grade when being put against the 7700K, showing the difference between the two architectures and platforms.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
213 Comments
View All Comments
Danvelopment - Sunday, May 12, 2019 - link
This, they're dime a dozen because enterprise are dumping them and consumers are too scared to buy them. Mine is 8 core 16 thread with quad channel DDR3.StevoLincolnite - Friday, May 10, 2019 - link
Running a Sandy-Bridge-E setup... So even less of a need to rush out and upgrade... 6 Cores, PCI-E 3.0, Quad Channel DDR3... Overclocks to 5Ghz.Haven't found anything that I can't run yet. Been an amazing rig.
marc1000 - Sunday, May 12, 2019 - link
I'm trying to stay more focused on work and learning this year, so stopped using my i5-2500k@4ghz and re-activated an old laptop with i7-2620m (max 3.1ghz) with 12gb ram and an average SSD.As today world is heavily web-based for office-like productivity (basically reading emails, accessing online systems, and creating some documents), I'm actually amazed that this laptop is serving me so well. I use a newer i5-8350u at work, which obviously is faster, but the difference is not that much.
for users that want to stay at the top of the game, upgrading makes sense. for users that just want to use the device, it does not (unless your work actually depends of such performance increases).
soliloquist - Monday, May 13, 2019 - link
Still rockin' a 2500K!Over the years I have stuffed it full of RAM and SSDs and still works well for my needs.
AdhesiveTeflon - Monday, May 13, 2019 - link
I still have some CAD users rocking it on a 2600 (non-K) and and SSD just fine too.I left the PC world when the 2600K was king (and the glorious Q6600 before it) and came back when the i7-6xxx series was mid-life and man was I disappointed in the lack of performance jumps that we were so accustomed to from the athlon 64 -> Core 2 Duo/Quad -> i7-2600.
Alperian - Tuesday, May 14, 2019 - link
I'm still running one of these too and they were great like my Northwood before it.I am soon getting a 9900k R0 stepping if I hear good things and relegate this PC to a home Ubuntu server.
I do wish I could afford to upgrade more regularly though. 8 years is too many.
Marlin1975 - Friday, May 10, 2019 - link
Still running my 3770 as I have not seen that large a difference to upgrade. But Zen+ had me itching and Zen2 is what will finally replace my 3770/Z77 system.That and its not just about the CPU but also the upgrades in chipset/USB/etc... parts.
nathanddrews - Friday, May 10, 2019 - link
I originally wanted a 3770K, but missed the window to get a good deal when they were newer. My 3570K+1080Ti still scratches most of my itches, but it's the MMO-style games that really tank my CPU performance and starve my GPU.olde94 - Friday, May 10, 2019 - link
I had a 2500k and had to admit tha VR needed the 4 threads full so i found a brand new 3770k for 80$ which gave me 4 extra threads for the system. This was for me enough to pull most games with my gtx 970 as i rarely play MMO's....... but rendering have me keen eyed on a threadripper......
philehidiot - Friday, May 10, 2019 - link
Olde94.... I am desperately looking for an excuse to buy a Threadripper. I just can't find one.I suspect I'm just going to invest the money in a really sweet gun for target shooting instead but the nerd part of me still wants to cheap out on the gun and get a Threadripper....