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: Final Fantasy XV
Upon arriving to PC earlier this, Final Fantasy XV: Windows Edition was given a graphical overhaul as it was ported over from console, fruits of their successful partnership with NVIDIA, with hardly any hint of the troubles during Final Fantasy XV's original production and development.
In preparation for the launch, Square Enix opted to release a standalone benchmark that they have since updated. Using the Final Fantasy XV standalone benchmark gives us a lengthy standardized sequence to record, although it should be noted that its heavy use of NVIDIA technology means that the Maximum setting has problems - it renders items off screen. To get around this, we use the standard preset which does not have these issues.
Square Enix has patched the benchmark with custom graphics settings and bugfixes to be much more accurate in profiling in-game performance and graphical options. For our testing, we run the standard benchmark with a FRAPs overlay, taking a 6 minute recording of the test.
AnandTech CPU Gaming 2019 Game List | ||||||||
Game | Genre | Release Date | API | IGP | Low | Med | High | |
Final Fantasy XV | JRPG | Mar 2018 |
DX11 | 720p Standard |
1080p Standard |
4K Standard |
8K 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 Final Fantasy, all chips performed essentially the same from 4K upwards (the OC run failed at 8K for some reason), but at 1080p resolutions the OC chip still sits between the 2600K/7700K at stock almost easily in the middle.
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Ranger90125 - Tuesday, May 14, 2019 - link
Using a 4790K for years and increasingly disillusioned with Intel's shady practices and lack of progress. Last AMD processor was an Athlon 64 3400 from the glory days of Intel decimated by the competition. Next processor will be 7nm Zen and I look forward to Intel being under the cosh for as long as AMD can manage it. Thanks for a great nostalgic read...I liked the lean and mean Cutress LAN machine :)akyp - Tuesday, May 14, 2019 - link
In less than 5 months my i7-860 will celebrate its 10th birthday. I've been keeping an eye on Ryzen 3 and Navi but never feel the need to upgrade (unless something goes wrong). It doesn't feel any slower than my work-issued i7-6700.curley60 - Tuesday, May 14, 2019 - link
About 5 years ago I went backwards and downgraded(?) my Core i7 2600K to a Gulftown Core i7 990x when they became affordable. The Core i7 990x on my Asus Rampage Formula is running @ 4.660 and is really quite faster in all benchmarks than the Core i7 2600K. Those gulftown processors were ahead of their time. Sure a core i7 7700k is 18% faster in single core work but the 990x destroys it in multi-threaded work. As long as it keeps running I'm going to keep using it with my current GTX 1080ti.Potatooo - Wednesday, May 15, 2019 - link
Would like to see comparisons with a more budget GPU (e.g. 1060/580) and 1080p gaming, probably a more realistic pairing.Bash99 - Wednesday, May 15, 2019 - link
It's wired Handbrake 1.1 hevc 1080p encoding can have 60 fps with x265, even in very fast setting, I can only got 1x fps.rexhab - Thursday, May 16, 2019 - link
I just upgrad from a 5 2500 to a i7 2600K ;) ^^ballsystemlord - Thursday, May 16, 2019 - link
Spelling and grammar corrections:"Sandy Bridge as a whole was a much more dynamic of a beast than anything that's come before it."
Excess "of a":
"Sandy Bridge as a whole was a much more dynamic beast than anything that's come before it."
"They also have AVX2, which draw a lot of power in our power test."
Missing "s":
"They also have AVX2, which draws a lot of power in our power test."
oktat - Sunday, May 19, 2019 - link
would you update the civilization vi ai turn time when technical issues fixed?bullshooter4040 - Wednesday, May 22, 2019 - link
This was a fun article to read through. A great look into the CPU that defined the decade and a wonderful send-off (or not!?!) to the greatest CPU processor since the Core 2 Duo.Up until last year, I had the younger cousin: i5 2500k, which with a lack of hyper-threading, made it much more difficult to keep up in much more CPU intensive tasks (even for a gamer) in 2018 and I made the switch to team orange.
Ryzen is here now, promising longevity, of not just its CPU, but more importantly - the AM4 platform - something that Intel did not accomplish with any of it's processors.
With the Ryzen 3000 series, It's time to jump on board.
PyroHoltz - Thursday, May 30, 2019 - link
NVMe is fully possible on the 2600k gen motherboards, just takes a bit of BIOS modifications to add the appropriate drivers.