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: Civilization 6 (DX12)
Originally penned by Sid Meier and his team, the Civ series of turn-based strategy games are a cult classic, and many an excuse for an all-nighter trying to get Gandhi to declare war on you due to an integer overflow. Truth be told I never actually played the first version, but every edition from the second to the sixth, including the fourth as voiced by the late Leonard Nimoy, it a game that is easy to pick up, but hard to master.
Benchmarking Civilization has always been somewhat of an oxymoron – for a turn based strategy game, the frame rate is not necessarily the important thing here and even in the right mood, something as low as 5 frames per second can be enough. With Civilization 6 however, Firaxis went hardcore on visual fidelity, trying to pull you into the game. As a result, Civilization can taxing on graphics and CPUs as we crank up the details, especially in DirectX 12.
Perhaps a more poignant benchmark would be during the late game, when in the older versions of Civilization it could take 20 minutes to cycle around the AI players before the human regained control. The new version of Civilization has an integrated ‘AI Benchmark’, although it is not currently part of our benchmark portfolio yet, due to technical reasons which we are trying to solve. Instead, we run the graphics test, which provides an example of a mid-game setup at our settings.
| AnandTech CPU Gaming 2019 Game List | ||||||||
| Game | Genre | Release Date | API | IGP | Low | Med | High | |
| Civilization VI | RTS | Oct 2016 |
DX12 | 1080p Ultra |
4K Ultra |
8K Ultra |
16K Low |
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All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
| AnandTech | IGP | Low | Medium | High |
| Average FPS |  |
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| 95th Percentile |  |
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Civilization is a game that isn't frame rate driven per se, and having all the settings turned up helps a lot. However even at 4K, there's difference in performance between the 2600K and the 7700K when both at stock, which gets halved when the 2600K is overclocked.
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Targon - Monday, May 13, 2019 - link
I made a similar comment, Civ6 added a new benchmark with Gathering Storm as well that is even more resource intensive. Turn length will show what your CPU can do, without GPU issues getting in the way.Zoomer - Friday, June 14, 2019 - link
Articles says that bmrk is being developed.nonoverclock - Friday, May 10, 2019 - link
Interesting article! I'm still sitting on an i7 4770 and am debating an upgrade, would be also interesting to see a Haswell i7 in the mix.HomerrK - Friday, May 10, 2019 - link
I'm one of those who bought the 2600K back in the day. A few months ago I made the move to the 9900K. Cores and price don't matter so much as feeling it will be a chip that will offer great bang for the buck for years. I think it is the spiritual successor to the 2600K and that it was a mistake to omit it.RSAUser - Saturday, May 11, 2019 - link
Not even close, it's near double the price.The Ryzen 2700 at $300 would be a way better "successor" as it's within a lot of people's budgets, offers good gaming performance and with 8 cores is probably going to last quite a while as we move to higher threading.
The Ryzen 2 chips moving to 7nm will probably have the largest leap in a while, so whichever one comes in around the $300 mark will probably be the "true" successor of the 2600K.
Targon - Monday, May 13, 2019 - link
The issue that some will have with the 2700X is that the clock speeds are not up there at the 5GHz mark, which is what many Intel systems have been able to hit for over four years now. Third generation Ryzen should get to the 5GHz mark or possibly beyond, so there wouldn't be any compromises. Remember, extra cores will only result in better performance in some areas, but single threaded and many older programs benefit more from higher clock speeds(with similar IPC).Don't get me wrong, I have a Ryzen 7 1800X in this machine and wouldn't step down to a quad-core chip again on the desktop, but I do appreciate that some things just want higher clock speeds. I expect a 40 percent boost in overall performance by switching from this 1800X to the 16 core Ryzen if it hits 5GHz, and that doesn't even count the increase in core count. I may end up paying $600 or more for the CPU though, but that will keep me happy for at least another five years.
crimson117 - Friday, May 10, 2019 - link
Finally retired my i5-2500K last spring for a Ryzen 2700X.But boy what a good run that CPU had.
jayfang - Friday, May 10, 2019 - link
Likewise only recently "demoted" my i5-2500K - still has tons of grunt as family PC / HTPCgijames1225 - Friday, May 10, 2019 - link
Same boat. I used a 2400k and 2500k for my two main PCs for years and years. Just replaced the 2500k with a Ryzen 5 1600 (they were $80 at Microcenter for some blessed reason). Tripling the thread count has down wonders for my compile times, but it's just amazing how strong and long lasting the IPC was on the 2ng generation Core i processors.qap - Friday, May 10, 2019 - link
You've convinced me. Staying with my Sandy Bridge for another year. At 1600p difference in CPU is not that high (definitely not worth 1000+ USD for completely new system) and for day to day work it is plenty fast. Up to four threads there's very little to gain and only when more threads are at play there is large enough difference (same goes for Ryzen only there I would gain almost nothing up to four threads).Perhaps Zen 2 will change that, or maybe 10nm CPUs from intel when they finally arrive with new CPU architecture and not rehash of 4 year old Skylake.