Before upgrading the CPU you might want to take into consideration what applications you use. If they are truely multithreaded applications that harness the cache,S.S.E instructions and all the cores.Alot of games today still don't choke on intel core 2 quads. Programmers have a rough time catching up with modern parallel programming. Alot of games I run on my Intel core 2 quad q8300 don't even go beyond 25% of each core. So the game or application itself really is not using 90%+ of all the cores which it could be doing. Take the Witcher for example I think it's only programmed to utilize two cores even if you have 4 cores.Also the ivy bridge cpu's are in a tick stage, I personally would wait for the tock. You might want to google up on intel tick/tock.So beofre you go and put down some cash on a new motherboard to support the i5 series and the CPU itself you might want to take a look at just how many of you're games use more than 25% of each core and while you are at it you should see how much GPU usage you're games are using.
What is your answer?
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Visitor
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Beginner I5 months ago J-rgen-Oktober-Storm-Nestande-ThyrumI concur. My choice would be to wait a little and perhaps save up money so you can hit on a deal. I have a 3930K for music production (orchestral scores), but when it comes to gaming a hexa-core is a waste. The biggest performance improvements comes in professional industry software like video editing, music production, the Adobe suite etc, not gaming.
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Beginner I
Well, the Q8300 is one of Intel’s weaker quad-core cpus, so you’d probably see a nice performance boost. That said upgrading to the i5-3570k might simply move the bottleneck in your gaming from the CPU to the GPU since you’ll have a ton of power but lean on the GPU side.
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Beginner I
The Q8300 you have is starting to show its age, but it's still pretty serviceable. However, the 3570k DESTROYS it as you can see in this benchmark.
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core2-Quad-Q8300-vs-Intel-Core-i5-3570K
I'd say you should upgrade if you can afford it. I think it'd help you out.
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Beginner II
Simple answer in games you will see about anywhere from 8 -15% boost in frames per second depending on which games you play going from a Q8300 to a 3570k but if its just frames you are worried about try Overclocking that Q8300 to 3.2Ghz
upgrading your GPU or save some cash and go all in on the forthcoming Haswell chips which should provide a significant boost upwards of 8 to 10% faster than Ivy which would work out to about28% faster than your current CPU. -
Beginner II
i5 K - series only for 4.4+ overclocks otherwise any other would do as good and for lower price.
Thing is what FPS are you most comfortable to play on ? if its well above 60 upgrade.
Is it worth the full system upgrade price ? Possibly not... but performance will increase by large amount I bet that 6870 is chocking on this CPU especial if you run it a stock clocks you can easily find by how much checking benchmark sites take gpu intensive title like crysis and see.
You are packing solid gpu another easy test would be AA impact on fps if you see none from 0-4x thats and it's only minor drop at 8x a sign of well strangled gpu. With haswell around the corner I'd wait for it.
