I7-3770 Vs I7-2600

[Tamela]

Soa family member of mine is in need of a better computer for some light to medium gaming like Sims 4 and GTA 5. I pulled my old shiny red Inspiron 620 out of storage and did some upgrades. I had already upgraded the ram from 4GB to 8GB and the processor from an i3-2120 to an i5-2500 long before I stopped using it. I had a 650 watt EVGA power supply and an EVGA GTX-1050 laying around from when I upgraded about a month ago. I've seen a lot of people ask about compatibility with the 620 and the 2nd gen i7 processors but my question is has anyone tried it? I installed the newest bios, the socket type is correct and so is the chipset. The only thing stopping it from being compatible would be a bios limitation and some other forums said that was a possibility but nobody seemed to know if it was completely incompatible because nobody had tried it. Just thought I'd check with the community before I gamble away $70 on a used i7-2600.

I may still consider getting a 9010. Originally the system ran Windows 7 Home Premium so it had the COA still on top. I took the lame little 240GB SSD from my laptop and put Windows 10 Home on it using the Windows 7 COA. Then I set up the original 1TB hard drive as a storage drive for pictures and what not. I probably won't do a ram upgrade though because the current 8GB is fine. Thank you for all the info and research! ?

I forgot to add that I considered purchasing a used Optiplex MT like a 990 or 9010 but I'm trying do this for as little money as possible but get decent performance. This computer seemed like a good place to start and since I already had it and the other parts laying around I used to upgrade it with I haven't spent any money.

Yeah, I noticed this motherboard looked identical to the one in the Optiplex 390 and the Vostro 260. I read a fourm a couple years ago about someone getting 16GB of ram in their 390 when Dell claimed it only supported 8GB with a 2x4GB kit. I was checking out Ebay listings on the 620 a while back to see what it was worth and I came across one where a guy had a single 8GB stick in one slot and claimed it supported 16GB. He also had a picture of it but who knows. I haven't found anyone that attempted to put the i7-2600 in their Optiplex 390 or Vostro 260 but a lot of places said the H61 chipset supports it. But you're right it is a rather basic motherboard and it could be that bios limitation or it could be that Dell never tested it with the system at all but only stuck with the Pentium, i3 and i5 processors. I may still buy one and try it just to see what happens and if it doesn't work I could put it in an Optiplex 790 that gets used at my family's business. I'm usually an AMD guy so I don't know a lot about Intel. LOL. But I wasn't all that excited about the AMD processors of the time. The last Intel system I used before this one was when I was a kid and it was our Dimension 4600 with a Pentium 4.

Just curious if you ended up trying out the i7 on the 620 and if it actually worked? I'm in a similar situation and have an i5-2400 in the 620 right now and am considering picking up a relatively inexpensive i7-2600.

Sorry for the late reply... I never got a chance to try the i7 in it yet. I gave it to a family member and I figured the i5-2500 would be enough for what games she was wanting to play on it. I might still get one later on but we'll see. Were you about to buy one and try it?

Hi, I have a late 2012 21.5 iMac running the 2.7 Ghz i5. I'm planning on upgrading the CPU. Now, I know it is a lot of work, but I feel comfortable attempting it. I know the i7-3770S (3.1 Ghz, 65W TDP) was an bto option, so it should work (also confirmed in a thread I red here). Do you think the normal i7-3770 (3.4 Ghz, TDP 77W), which is far more common, would also work or does the Mac not boot up when it recognizes a different type of CPU (or TDP) than originally available for the machine ? Would be very grateful about an advice.

Also, I would have the option to get an i5-3570S (3.1 GHz, TDP 65W) for a very good price, so it would definitely be interesting to know if only CPUs used by the manufacturer, only CPUs with the same TDP or all CPUs of the same socket work?

I'm really starting to wonder why there are so many myths about working on the iMac and so few people with the balls to just give it a shot. It's not some magical box, it's just a computer after all...

I won't say myths. The iMac's are more like a laptop than a true desktop system so they tend to be harder to open and more work to gain access to some stuff. The newer Thin Series are more work and just fragile if you don't watch what you are doing. The risk of damaging the display assembly is very real and a very expensive mistake.

Thank you for your answer. However, I'm sorry to say, but this is simply wrong. The late 2012 21.5 iMacs have a normal socket and not soldered CPUs. Look at the iFixit teardown and there even is a manual on how to replace the CPU... (You can even see it on the picture you attached. The CPU sits on the left side, under the heatsink and is secured in its socket by four screws holding the heatsink down. What you referred to as soldered chip is on the right hand side. But that's the Nvidia GPU, GT640/650M, which are indeed soldered onto the logic board).

Your right! I messed up! It's the 2013 models on forward that don't have a removable CPU (Haswell). I guess I needed that second cup of Joe this morning. Sorry for the confusion on that point. I still don't think its much of a gain.

No worries, I'm thankful that you at least bothered to read the question and reply ;) Since I think no one tried yet, I will try to get a hold on the i7 3770 and i5 3570S, since I'm fairly certain the i7 3770S would work anyways, and I will just give it a shot. I'm curious to see what happens.

If you are looking for a speed bump, I think you would be much happier upgrading the hard drive to an SSHD or SSD. You'll get a lot more bang for the buck than a CPU upgrade. If you are interested we cn give you some options and also how to address the thermal sensor issue that comes with it.

Me too, Eddie. Folk are referring to the old 2011 units which did have a thermal sensor cable: but besides, there are a variety of free fan controller softwares out there, and too the SSD doesn't sweat it and get hot like the old HDD. There's not even a lead for a thermal HDD sensor in the 2012s anyway!

I've upgraded loads of the thin iMacs 2012 onwards to SSD and to be honest you need to be no more or less careful than you needed to be with the previous models. Just use a good-quality 'pizza-cutter' wheel to open it up and good quality strips to seal it with. Sure, you do have to take care with the video and power cables but they are no more or less delicate that the video cable on the old unit. I didn't bother trying to squeeze the SSD back into that rubber surround as it doesn't need any shock-proofing,..

I just used good-quality double sided sticky pads. No need to take the speaker out beside the HDD location either, you can use a piece of bent steel to tuck in behind the SATA cable to persuade it back onto the SSD.

I've upgraded the iMac 2012 to the i7 3770S without any issue. Good fun, not that difficult. Nice to have accomplished. Sure it's not *that* much faster, but once to know I've upgraded it to i7 for a lot less than Apple would have charged for it when new. You can add RAM while the board is out...

Back in 2010-2011, life was simple. We were relishing in benchmarks like CineBench R10, SuperPI, and no-one had even thought of trying to transcode video on any sort of scale. In 2019, the landscape has changed: gamers gonna stream, designers gonna design, scientists gonna simulate, and emulators gonna emulate. The way that software is designed has changed substantially as well, with more care taken for memory allocations, multiple cores and threads, and with fast storage in mind. Compilers are smarter too, and all the optimizations for the older platforms are in those code bases.

Ultimately, benchmarks have changed too. What we tested back in 2011 in our Core i7-2600K review was indicative of the way people were using their computers then, and in 2019 we are testing how people are using their computers today. On some level, one expects that what would have been the balance of compute/storage/resources back then might have adjusted, and as a result, older parts may perform better or worse than expected.

For this review, I wanted to compare an eternal idol for enthusiast desktop computing with its more modern counterparts. The Sandy Bridge Core i7-2600K that was released in 2011 was an enthusiasts dream: significantly faster than the previous generation, priced right, and offered a substantial performance boost when overclocked. The fact that it overclocked well was the crux of its staying power: if users were seeing 20-40%+ performance from an overclock and some fast memory, then the several years of Intel offering baseline 3-8% performance increases were scoffed at, and users did not upgrade.

Features like new instructions, better integrated graphics, or the platform are valid reasons to push an upgrade, even if the raw performance gain in most tasks is minor. Moving to PCIe 3.0 for graphics, or moving to DDR4 to access higher capacity memory modules, or shifting to NVMe storage with more diverse chipset support all helped users that bypassed the popular 2600K.

The GPU testing had a different result. From 2011 to 2019, enthusiast gamers have moved from 1080p in one of two directions: higher resolutions or higher framerates. The direction moved depends on the type of game played, and modern game engines are geared up to cater for both, and have been optimized for the latest hardware with the latest APIs.

For users going up in resolution, to 4K and beyond, the i7-2600K when overclocked performs just as well as the latest Core i7-9700K. The stock 2600K is a little behind, but not overly noticeable unless you drill down into specific titles. But the overclocked Core i7-2600K is still a great chip for high resolution 60 FPS gaming.

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