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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nandnandnand - Friday, May 10, 2019 - link
Just get a 12 or 16-core Ryzen in 2+ months.mode_13h - Saturday, May 11, 2019 - link
If you get a gun, you'll just have to waste more money on ammo.And the thing about targets is they don't shoot back. So, it gets boring pretty quickly. Paintball is more fun.
Ghodzilla5150 - Saturday, May 11, 2019 - link
I just built an AMD Rig with a Ryzen 7 2700X, ASRock X470 Taichi Ultimate, Sapphire Nitro+ RX 590, 32gb G.SKILL RIPJAWS Series V & 2x 1TB M.2 drives (1 for OS and other for Gaming). Boots to Win 10 Pro in 8 seconds. Blazing fast in games.I just bought a Smith & Wesson 686 Plus 357 Magnum so I know what it's like to want a gun as well. I'm looking at getting a LMT Valkyrie 224.
mode_13h - Saturday, May 11, 2019 - link
Get a Ryzen 9 with 16 cores.MrCommunistGen - Friday, May 10, 2019 - link
I'm in almost exactly the same boat. I have a 3770K on Z77 running at 4.2GHz. That's all that I could get out of my chip without thermal throttling under heavy load with a 212 EVO... already running the lowest possible voltage that it is stable. Remounted the cooler several times, upgraded the fan, and switched out the paste to Thermal Grizzly but it didn't help enough to get me to 4.3GHz.I considered throwing a bigger cooler at it but decided to save that money for my next build instead.
Running 1440p 75Hz Freesync (only 48-75Hz range) display that I picked up before Vega launched with the intention of buying Vega when it released -- but I missed buying it at launch, then it was unavailable, then it was expensive, then the crypto boom meant you couldn't get one... so I bought a 1080Ti instead. Even with the newly added Freesync compatibility I'm getting a reasonable bit of stutter that frustrates me.
Strongly considering Zen2 when it comes out. I never seriously considered upgrading to anything else so far, not Haswell through KBL due to lack of performance increase for the price, and not CFL or CFL-R due to high cost. 2700X just doesn't quite have enough single-thread performance increase, but based on the swirling rumors I think Zen2 will get there.
Polyclot - Saturday, May 11, 2019 - link
I have a 2600k/z77-a. I was under the impression that the mobo wouldn't go above 4.2. At least that's where I'm at. Love the combo. No complaintsCaedenV - Saturday, May 11, 2019 - link
Nope, the cap is for the non-K chips. There you have a 42x multiplier cap with a 100 MHz clock, so you are limited to 4.2... unless you also change the base clock, but that causes other issues that are not worth the effort to address.If you have a K chip, the only limits are your RAM, and cooling. Almost all Sandy chips can hit 4.5GHz, with a majority capable of going above 4.8!
XXxPro_bowler420xXx - Saturday, May 11, 2019 - link
I have a non k 3770 running at 4.2ghz all core, 4.4 single. It's also undervolted to 1.08V and hits a MAX temp of 55-56C after months of use on a corsair AIO and liquid metal . Usually runs in the high 40s under load. Before de-lidding it, it ran in the high 60s at 4.2ghz on a corsair air cooler and arctic mx4 paste. Why are your temperatures so high?AsRock z77 extreme 4 and 16GB 2133 ram.
XXxPro_bowler420xXx - Saturday, May 11, 2019 - link
Also I agree with you on zen 2. Finally a worthy successor.CaedenV - Saturday, May 11, 2019 - link
Yep, if I were to upgrade today, it would be an AMD chip. And that is hard to say/admit with all of my inner Intel fanboy.