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: Grand Theft Auto V
The highly anticipated iteration of the Grand Theft Auto franchise hit the shelves on April 14th 2015, with both AMD and NVIDIA in tow to help optimize the title. GTA doesn’t provide graphical presets, but opens up the options to users and extends the boundaries by pushing even the hardest systems to the limit using Rockstar’s Advanced Game Engine under DirectX 11. Whether the user is flying high in the mountains with long draw distances or dealing with assorted trash in the city, when cranked up to maximum it creates stunning visuals but hard work for both the CPU and the GPU.
For our test we have scripted a version of the in-game benchmark. The in-game benchmark consists of five scenarios: four short panning shots with varying lighting and weather effects, and a fifth action sequence that lasts around 90 seconds. We use only the final part of the benchmark, which combines a flight scene in a jet followed by an inner city drive-by through several intersections followed by ramming a tanker that explodes, causing other cars to explode as well. This is a mix of distance rendering followed by a detailed near-rendering action sequence, and the title thankfully spits out frame time data.
There are no presets for the graphics options on GTA, allowing the user to adjust options such as population density and distance scaling on sliders, but others such as texture/shadow/shader/water quality from Low to Very High. Other options include MSAA, soft shadows, post effects, shadow resolution and extended draw distance options. There is a handy option at the top which shows how much video memory the options are expected to consume, with obvious repercussions if a user requests more video memory than is present on the card (although there’s no obvious indication if you have a low end GPU with lots of GPU memory, like an R7 240 4GB).
| AnandTech CPU Gaming 2019 Game List | ||||||||
| Game | Genre | Release Date | API | IGP | Low | Med | High | |
| Grand Theft Auto V | Open World | Apr 2015 |
DX11 | 720p Low |
1080p High |
1440p Very High |
4K Ultra |
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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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We see performance parity between the chips at 4K, but for all other resolutions and settings, the OC chip again still can't make it to the level of the 7700K, often sitting midway between the 7700K at stock and the 2600K at stock.
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Ironchef3500 - Friday, May 10, 2019 - link
Still running one of these...warreo - Friday, May 10, 2019 - link
same here, it's still running greatNetmsm - Friday, May 10, 2019 - link
No! It dose not run great, this is 9700k that runs very disappointing.flyingpants265 - Saturday, May 11, 2019 - link
Hah, I get your point. But as of this moment, 9700k is one of the best desktop CPUs out there.Netmsm - Saturday, May 11, 2019 - link
:)It'd be better to say 9700k is one of the best Intel's desktop blah, blah, blah.
jgraham11 - Monday, May 13, 2019 - link
9700k can pump out the most frames per second but it is not the best by any means, its utilization it typically more than %80. Just like a few years ago when all those quad cores were doing so great compared to AMDs more cores and more thread approach. Now those quad cores that put out all those frames are struggling to keep up in modern titles, those AMD processors are still putting out descent frame rates! Another example of AMD's fine wine technology.With that said, is the frames per second really a good metric to determine longevity of a processor?? Or should be looking at CPU utilization as well.
lmcd - Thursday, January 21, 2021 - link
This article is old but "fine wine" about AMD's old processors is pure delusion. 2600k-age AMD looks horrible. Bulldozer was always horrible, and Piledriver has looked worse with age. Even Excavator gets absolutely smoked by most old Intel CPUs. While obviously not identical and much higher power, an Intel 3960X still went even with nearly every Ryzen 1 CPU. Fine wine my ass.yankeeDDL - Sunday, May 12, 2019 - link
Actually, this is a pretty fair summary. The 9700K, 9 years later, offers about 40% advantage over the 2600 (except in gaming, where more cores don't matter, today), which is quite abysmal.Vayra - Monday, May 13, 2019 - link
More cores don't matter? What results have you been looking at for gaming? 4K ultra?yankeeDDL - Monday, May 13, 2019 - link
Obviously, I was referring at the article. "More cores" meant going from 4 of the 2600 to 8 of the 9700. And no, they don't matter, unless you see a benefit of running at 300fps instead of 250fps. At high res, when the fps start coming close to 60fps, the 2600 and the 9700k are basically equivalent.A different story would be going from 2 to 4, but this would have nothing to do with the article...
Is it clear now?