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 |  |
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| 95th Percentile |  |
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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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RSAUser - Saturday, May 11, 2019 - link
10nm Intel desktop is earliest 2021 or so probably, wouldn't bother holding out for that.PeachNCream - Friday, May 10, 2019 - link
The only reason why I upgraded from a Sandy Bridge laptop to a Haswell-U laptop was because it was $30 cheaper to get a refurb PC with Windows 10 preloaded than it was to just buy a Windows 10 Pro license for my Sandy Bridge system so I could finally get off WIndows 7. Oddly enough, I spend more time on my Sandy Bridge laptop after moving it to Linux Mint than I do on the newer Windows 10 laptop. The Haswell-U is simply here for a handful of things that I can't do in Linux which are mainly a few games lacking a Linux version that are iffy or uncooperative in WINE. It really had nothing at all do do with a lack of compute power and more to do with EOL on 7. I'd argue that these days, pretty much any Sandy or newer system is adequate from a compute power perspective for most mundane chores and a number of heavy lift tasks.29a - Friday, May 10, 2019 - link
You can buy a Win Pro license for about $7, I've done it multiple times.MDD1963 - Saturday, May 11, 2019 - link
sounds real 'legit', does it not?29a - Monday, May 13, 2019 - link
They're legit, they activate. They just come from the grey market.BushLin - Saturday, May 11, 2019 - link
You can still take the free upgrade from Win 7 to Windows 10, Microsoft never stopped this from working. Do one upgrade the dirty way, get activated and future clean installs will activate too.Targon - Monday, May 13, 2019 - link
You could have thrown a Windows 10 flash drive in there and upgraded your Windows 7 to 10 for free.Irata - Friday, May 10, 2019 - link
Thanks for the article - it is really interesting.I think it shows very well why the PC market was stagnant for a long time. Depending on ones use case, the only upgrade that seems worth while is going from the top Early 2011 4C CPU to the top late 2018 8C consumer CPU.
I would love to see a similar article comparing the top of the line GPU with the 2600k in this time frame to see what performance difference a GPU upgrade made and contrast this with a CPU upgrade.
siberian3 - Friday, May 10, 2019 - link
I am running a 2600k at stock on 16 gig 1333 ram ddr3 and dont plan to upgrade until mobos with ddr5 and pci express 4 i only play 1080p anyway so thats enough for me i guess29a - Friday, May 10, 2019 - link
Thank you, thank you, thank you. I've been wanting to read something like this for a while.