Intel® Core™ i5-2500K Processor I no longer need.

I recently upgraded the CPU in my computer to a I7 3770K and have a Intel® Core™ i5-2500K Processor (6M Cache, 3.30 GHz) (also have the heat sink and fan) I no longer need.  It will fit in a motherboard with a Socket 1152 Only. It is in good condition and needs a new home. Make an offer if you're interested they list for $222 (US) on Amazon.com but can be found other places cheaper.  Here is a link to the Specs http://ark.intel.com/products/52209

So how did the upgrade go??   Did you notice the faster processor?

Z

It was slightly faster after the upgrade. There is only about a 10% + or - between the two CPU's. Where it really helps is in my photo editing, video editing and gaming. I decided to do this because I was in the United States last week and could buy the CPU for $150 cheaper than here in Mexico. Also I know the socket 1152 is no longer in production and soon it will be harder to find a CPU for my M.B.

I have an I3 3100, and 15 medium and a I7 medium and frankly I don't know the
difference. Yep I am sure video editing and gaming can make use of it but for most
of us folks even the slow I3 is plenty of power for email, browser work, and office
software. Note I do no video gaming or photoshop type stuff.  I guess for me the
slow CPU is plenty fast.  Memory does more for me as multitasking goes much faster.

Comments?

Z

Zed, you're correct. If you mostly use your computer for emails and writing letters then what you have is great! Also RAMM memory is what really helps to speed things up while multitasking with several applications open at the same time. I have 16 gigs of RAMM but so far never have used more than 3.4 Gigs of it at any time. For me of equal importance is my video card I currently have a GeForce GTX 480 (1280 Gigs of VRAMM) it was fine 1 1/2 years ago when I bought it but now it is just about minimum for the demands of the new games that are coming out like ARMA III a combat simulator that I own. At times I've been known to stress my computer by running a full backup at the same time as I'm gaming or watching videos.

If you happen to know the exact CPU's that you own you can look up the specs here to see the difference. Not all I3's, I5's or I7's are created equal. http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processor-comparison/compare-intel-processors.html another good site I like to use is (forgive me if you know this already) http://www.tomshardware.com/ that site is for all things computer. In the end if all 3 of the CPU's fit your motherboard I myself would be running the I7. It's faster, runs cooler and takes less power.

The one thing I have done was change my registry in WIN 7 as to "not" park one or more of the CPU's cores. I'm not sure if your aware of this but if you run WIN 7 or 8 by default the O.S. will park 1 or 2 of the cores to use less power. This is regardless of the need or not. Here is the information if your interested http://www.pcmtechhelp.com/2011/03/08/disable-cpu-core-parking-for-multi-core-processors-faster-7-episode-20/

After I installed the I7 I noticed in task manager that I was only using two of the four cores (while running a backup) after I un parked the other two cores and re-ran the backup I noticed that I now was using all four cores and the backup run faster.

For sure you have to have the rest of the hardware to take advantage of this. I have RAID-0 running on 5 Raptor H.D. , SSD for my O.S. and two other SATA III drives. One is to store my backups and the other is for photos and videos. While editing (photos & videos) I the programs (photo shop) run on the RAID-0 drives for faster transfer rates.

Each drive has two actuator arms, one for reading and one for writing. So in total there are 5 arms reading and 5 arms writing at the same time. This speeds things up a LOT. I also make sure that these drives are on there own channel and not a shared channel with on O.S. drive not my Backup up drive.

Interesting comments, BearDog. I had forgotten about the CPU parking. Sure enough, two of the cores on my AMD quad-core were parked.

I use PhotoShop, and a couple of video conversion tools. The difference between 4 gigs RAM and 16 gigs is light years. One of the video crunching tools shows a progress bar, and after I added extra RAM, it just ran across the screen like a scaredy-cat.

Interestingly, no matter how fast your CPU is, and how fast your Internet connection, your browser is the main stumbling block to speed. Firefox, at one time a great innovator, is now the slowest of the lot. Chrome is at least three times as fast at opening pages, but it has an ugly, unuseable interface.

Now days the cost of RAMM is coming down to a reasonable price. It's always my first suggestion to people when they say their computer is slow. H.G. Your correct on the web browsers and it's becoming harder and harder to find a "good" and fast web browser. I find myself using IE 10 and Chrome. Both have Large problems, something's work on one but not the other. IE is so darn slow but Chrome does not work with my password program that stores my passwords. Uhg!

At times the internet can be very slow here in Mexico. With Telcable I have found that they screw up their DNS server database far to often. Other times I find it's been a router down someplace between me and the other end I'm trying to reach. Here is a helpful program to find out if a router is down between Mexico and the USA or other countries. You may find useful at times. http://www.internettrafficreport.com/

Tx. Have you tried Namebench? It tests public servers vs. your own ISP's, then recommends the best for your needs. I see gains of up to 60%.

H.P. no I haven't tried it. I'm going to look into it today. Thnks

Other than more power usage, are there any detriments to unparking all the CPU's?

IE. Will the computer run hotter?

The CPU will run a little hotter Bob but not much at all. The only way that this would be noticeable (as far as heat) would be if you run a benchmark on the CPU putting it at 100% Processing power. Even then the cooling fan would keep it safe. I see it this way, it will only be better that's why we bought a 4 core CPU to crunch more at the same time.
My CPU will get hot when I'm gaming at times but that's mostly because of the sort of realistic games I run.

Perfect. I just unparked all mine with that link you provided.

Gracias

Your welcome, :-)

My I7 is on my big laptop so I am thinking that turning on the CPUs will cost you
more battery. Something to think about for a battery operated device.

Z

Mine is too however I rarely use my laptop on the battery.

Zed your correct! If you un-park the other cores then your battery will discharge at a faster rate.

The Telmex internet slows to a crawl. Sometimes I think the servers are overloaded, sometimes I think Telmex is 'choking' the lines - after a certain amount of bandwidth used, it slows down the line. This would limit a heavy user of VOIP or Netflix streaming for example. What I usually do is go into Command, 'ipconfig/release all' then 'ipconfig/renew'. This prompts the DNS to get a new server number and most of the time - internet is back.

I enquired about a static IP address - but these are very expensive with Telmex. You have to up grade to a business account for a start. So I was very interested in the Namebench app. I have it running now, but it is stuck at 'sending 250 queries to 11 servers'. When it comes up with recommendations, I will change the DNS address as instructed here. Is this right? I have been recording Telmex servers which seem to work with ipchicken.com

Me&BearDog wrote:Zed your correct!  If you un-park the other cores then your battery will discharge at a faster rate.

 I use the large HD I7 laptop for video streaming from the internet. It is always on AC. Any advantage to turning on the other
CPU's for video streaming work of this kind?  I can't imagine its needed for that kind of work especially when watching videos
I don't multitask while streaming or playing from the laptop.

Z

CHILLIN wrote:The Telmex internet slows to a crawl. Sometimes I think the servers are overloaded, sometimes I think Telmex is 'choking' the lines - after a certain amount of bandwidth used, it slows down the line. This would limit a heavy user of VOIP or Netflix streaming for example. What I usually do is go into Command, 'ipconfig/release all' then 'ipconfig/renew'. This prompts the DNS to get a new server number and most of the time - internet is back.

I enquired about a static IP address - but these are very expensive with Telmex. You have to up grade to a business account for a start. So I was very interested in the Namebench app. I have it running now, but it is stuck at 'sending 250 queries to 11 servers'. When it comes up with recommendations, I will change the DNS address as instructed here. Is this right? I have been recording Telmex servers which seem to work with ipchicken.com

Yes they do throttle quite a bit NOB. I see no reason why they wouldn't throttle certain customers here especially with the server
situation. I know one person who has been throttled down here but have not heard of anything official from Telmex.  I don't know
much about DNS to comment.

Z

I had to rerun namebench and the result was that the existing DNS addresses of Telmex were the fastest. So it does not measure consistency. I guess the solution is to have another windows or linux identity setup up with another slower, but more consistent DNS account, when Telmex is down then reboot with the other account. Mexico is supposed to be setting up a countrywide public DNS server.

[quote="CHILLIN"]I had to rerun namebench and the result was that the existing DNS addresses of Telmex were the fastest. So it does not measure consistency. I guess the solution is to have another windows or linux identity setup up with another slower, but more consistent DNS account, when Telmex is down then reboot with the other account. Mexico is supposed to be setting up a countrywide public DNS server.[/quote]

When you ran it the second time were you doing anything else with the computer at the same time? Surfing the internet? Running any virus scans? To a differing degree this would change the results of the second scan. Also (for sure!) if they were done at two different times of day, that too makes a difference. 2am there are less people on line than at 4:30 or 5:00 PM that's when some people check emails and internet after work. Remember these dns servers are in USA (many not all) and there are patterns of traffic across the internet for different times of day. In Iowa at 12 noon was the most busy and anytime after 7pm on weeks day are not so busy. The one exception was after 7 pm of Friday, that was a slow time.

This was in the namebench program. I was not running anything for that one, it was quite fast maybe because I lowered the queries to 150. The strange thing was most of the messages said "google.com has been hijacked". I was concerned about that because it seems like google is often the first site to clog up. I did a google search and one forum said it might be a registry error or bug, he recommended a free download from Kaspersky called tdskiller.zip. I ran this and everything was clean. The Telmex technician in Mexico City the lines in this area need upgrading - and it is supposed to be happening.

It seems the busiest time here (meaning no access) is 2:30 to 4:30, I thought maybe kids doing their homework, etc.

I get the "google hijacked" comments every time I run the program, last two or three years. Never knew what it meant.