• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

CPU advice

JoeUk

JoeUk

JoeUk

Associate
Joined
2 May 2006
Posts
137
Hey all -

I'm really angling to get my new PC built but not quite sure which way to go.

I'm mainly going to use it for gaming, programming and getting into some video editing but nothing too heavy.

I know the kirbylake CPUs are coming but they don't appear to be worth me waiting for them?

So should I go for a 6700k or step up and get a 6800k / 6850k? What would the real world differences be?

Any good motherboard suggestions to go along side either choice would be nice too - I hope to get that new style of SSD.
 
Personally I'd say you get a better bang for your buck with the 6700k while there are advantages to the additional cores you'll only rarely see them for the extra cash you're laying out. On a side note there's an announcement coming from AMD this evening, which is likely to be details of the ZEN line of processors. Likely not going to completely flip the world on its head, but might be worth waiting till we know what they are coming out with... possibly something close to a 6800k at a lower price point.
 
Yeah thats what I'm leaning towards - I guess I just liked the idea of future proofing or for encoding but might not be worth it for another 200 on top.. are the motherboards similar in price or more expensive too?

Zen sounds interesting but I have memories of AMD being trounced in gaming that would make me a little wary to jump straight on!
 
The x99 motherboards do tend to be more expensive, £200+ vs the Z170s £100-£200 range. So yeah, becomes a fair bit more money.

this bundle seems a pretty good deal.

My basket at Overclockers UK:

Total: £531.04
(includes shipping: £11.10)
​


​

I do think its worth seeing what ZEN is offering though. Last couple AMD generations have been kinda poops, but they have been ahead of the game in the past, and Intel haven't done much in the last few years. AMD could come out swinging... fingers crossed :P
 
I'll keep that bundle in mind! I'm still tempted by getting a 6800k or 5930k because I wonder how much I'll need that extra game performance of the 6700k but it might just me wanting more of things haha.

I'll try and hold on for some early benchmarks.. I'm staring at my empty desk everyday though!
 
I have the same quandary at the moment.

I just remember when everyone was saying go for the higher clocked dual cores when quads first appeared. Then a year or so later quads were slaughtering duals in games.

So I'm wondering if more cores is the way to go as ipc and clockspeed improvements have slowed to a crawl.
 
IvanDobskey said:
I have the same quandary at the moment.

I just remember when everyone was saying go for the higher clocked dual cores when quads first appeared. Then a year or so later quads were slaughtering duals in games.

So I'm wondering if more cores is the way to go as ipc and clockspeed improvements have slowed to a crawl.
Click to expand...

Exactly this, I remember people laughing when the q6600 came out and the main suggestion was to get the e8400. As time went by the q6600 outlived the dual core even with its very good overclocking.
 
Yeah, problem with that at the moment is that the software isn't really pushing the hardware along. Games especially, even games that make good use of multi threading cap out after about 4 threads. As much as it pains the enthusiast in me to say it, but until we change the way we make games just about anything over 4 cores is a little bit of a waste.

This is heading away from the topic a bit, but I hope that with ZEN we'll see more good mainstream PC CPUs with 6+ cores and that pushes developers to make use of them.
 
Back in the core 2 days I always thought it was ludicrous to suggest the 8400 over a q6600 or a 9550.

The Ipc and clocking abilities were very similar.
 
IvanDobskey said:
I have the same quandary at the moment.

I just remember when everyone was saying go for the higher clocked dual cores when quads first appeared. Then a year or so later quads were slaughtering duals in games.

So I'm wondering if more cores is the way to go as ipc and clockspeed improvements have slowed to a crawl.
Click to expand...

Yep....I fell into that Faster Dual Core > Slower Quad Core trap as well....made sense to anyone who changed their CPU around every 6 months perhaps....

....likewise, when I bought my current PC base (2600K + 8GB Ram), 8Gb RAM was 'pointless', but these days 8GB is bare minimum for decent gaming PC.

With that said, Bulldozer proved that more cores just for the sake of more cores was indeed totally pointless at this point in time. I suspect that when all is said and done, AMD will be releasing CPUs that are slower then their Intel counterparts, but with more cores/threads.....'they' are saying that DX 12 is set to make much more efficient use of cores/threads. If this proves true, then a 4C/8T AMD Zen CPU, may well prove a better gaming CPU than a 4C/4T intel i5 a couple of years down the line, although in the meantime, the Intel CPUs will likely continue to pwn their AMD price point competitors.
 
JoeUk said:
So should I go for a 6700k or step up and get a 6800k / 6850k? What would the real world differences be?
Click to expand...

Right now you would be best off waiting for a month or two as AMD are about to drop a new CPU that trades blows with the 6900k for about half the price. Even if you have no interest in AMD it's worth waiting as Intel obviously weren't expecting this so will have to drop their prices to remain competitive.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom