Out of Pod Experience

I am about to build a new pc, and I am looking at the Core i5 3570K processor. With most effects off, the graphics card isn’t that vital, it’s the CPU power that matters.

So I was just wondering if any guys who have systems based on this processor could give an indication of the frame rates you get in large fleet battles.

Cheers

I am currently running an AMD Phenom II X6 1090T 3.2Ghz, which is really struggling (unsurprisingly) in fleet fights, running at 1680 x 1050.

I agree that all componenets will have an effect, but the grunt of the CPU does seem to play a big part. My current processor is maxed out on 1 core, the other 5 are running at around 5%.

I don't really want to spent the extra on an i7, if an i5 does a good job, there doesn't appear to be much of a difference in CPU power, per core, between the two. You just get the hyperthreading and that really.

60 frames a second, would do me fine :)

Huge fleet battles are still pretty CPU hungry, unlike PvE or small scale PvP, or even incursions, which have only modest CPU requirements. I have only extremely limited and anecdotal data as far as this is concerned, with no practical way to reliably test it for myself.
Allegedly, unless this changed recently (and I have no reason to believe it did), EVE still mostly uses a single core for large fleet battle physics processing (everything else unloaded on other cores being negligible), with screen resolution and most graphical options not really mattering all that much anymore since the GPU is no longer the bottleneck, which should mean single-core speed is the main bottleneck for FPS in those situations.
Stuff like turning off brackets and drone model display and other such CPU-heavy things should have a far heavier influence over performance than any texture, geometry, shader and shadow detail level or any other GPU-heavy things chosen.

I HAVE to say this again, I have practically as good as no actual experience with the subset of cases where EVE becomes CPU-bottlenecked, I only know that it allegedly happens in larger fleet battles.
I have no idea which exact settings have the greatest effect, and I have no idea just how single-core-dependent everything actually is.
All I can do is take somewhat educated guesses, so take everything with more than just a grain of salt.

...

So, as far as CPU selection goes, the Intel Core i5-3570 (not even the K version) should be the most economic choice one can make, and instead of doing a flat overclocking, just leaving the (usually default-enabled) TurboBoost2.0 option in play should more than suffice.
Both the i5-3570 and the i5-3570K have the same base and max dynamic turboboost frequencies per core (3.4 and 3.8 GHz, respectively), the only real differences being in the integrated graphics (which you will probably never actually use, at least not for EVE) and the ability to do static overclocking (which is probably not the best of ideas, though).
In comparison, an i7-3770 has the same base but a higher dynamic frequency (3.9 GHz), while the i7-3770K also boosts up the base frequency to 3.5GHz, alongside a slight cache increase (which is actually used for hyperthreading, which the 3570s do not have, but EVE will probably not make any use of anyway, so you're not really getting any EVE single-thread performance boosts beyond just the added frequency) which is to put it mildly not such a big deal, but the price difference is quite significant.

Just get the i5-3570 and leave the turboboost on with no manual overclock and you should be fine.
In fact, you'll probably be fine even with turboboost disabled if you just keep on tweaking graphic details.
The stock cooler should suffice in almost any situation (except if your room is quite hot and you seldom clean the dust from the heatsink/fan), and you probably don't need to overprovision the PSU power by much (if at all, since you probably already left more than enough slack there).

However, feel free to go with the i5-3570K instead, and overclock it to at least 3.9GHz, preferably 4GHz or more (since AFAIK, TurboBoost does not work while manually static overclocked).
If you only overclock to 3.8GHz, you might as well have not manually overclocked at all, since TurboBoost would have gotten you there without static overclocking at all whenever it mattered anyway for that particular single core that does get most heavily used and becomes the actual bottleneck.
Be prepared for a heavily ramped up CPU power usage and unavoidable extra heat (which would be far less of an issue with TurboBoost, because only one core would get the brunt of the temporary dynamic overclocking, but with manual static overclocking, you ramp up all cores indiscriminately and permanently), so a generously oversized PSU and a serious cooling system is almost a must (stock cooler is out of the question unless you have a very well ventilated case and keep your room AC on at all times and at most on 20C, and even then, still not a very good idea to remain with the stock cooler only).
Just be aware that you might end up spending not just the 10-20$ extra on the processor difference, but quite likely also 10-30$ extra on the PSU and possibly even much more for the cooling system, so 50-100$ extra in reality (or even higher if you go with, say, watercooling), for not really THAT much of a performance boost when it actually matters
(unless you do go with an expensive cooling system and do some heavy-duty overclocking, in which case, you should also probably consider the additional cost to your monthly power bill into those calculations - an extra of at least 150W to power usage over 160 hours a month your PC is most likely active means a power bill that's at least 300$ higher over the course of an entire year, probably even much higher than that, depending on how much electricity costs in your area and how long your computer stays turned on while heavily overclocked).

Intel and NVIDIA ftw

That combo has never set my PC on fire before... unlike AMD and ATI

It was a pretty fire, all green and blue