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Digital Foundry - 6700k vs 5820k vs 5960x Gaming Shootout

David Bisset said:
/me facepalms

They open with a spiel about how the x99 system can handle more graphics cards better and how that's an advantage then decide to run test with only one card. By the end of that paragraph they should have had an 'oh, wait' moment, realising that 'making the bottleneck be CPU' isn't always such a good idea regardless of if you're comparing CPUs or GPUs.

Besides anything else, being totally GPU bound and thus the CPUs drawing is also a legit outcome, never mind there is no opportunity for the higher-end stuff to actually flex it's legs.

DigitalFoundry should have thought of this and run a more likely setup for the CPUs - sure, have one set of tests be one card if you really want, but at a higher resolution, also try 2 / 3 / 4 card options as that's where the biggest difference lies. Also lacking minimum framerates is idiotic, it's been highlighted as the most important measurement for a while (though framereate graphs / frametime graphs are better yet to give an idea of if it's a brief dip in one particular loading area or a frequent problem)
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You need to get a clue.

The most popular X99 CPU by FAR is the 5820k. It has 28 PCI-E lanes, so in an SLI/Crossfire configuration, it's identical to the 6700k - both are limited to 8x/8x lanes. Only the 5930k/5960X can do 16xX16x.
 
There's barely a difference between them except for in Far Cry 4

rsz_results.png
 
Quite an interesting read. Not surprised the 6700k marginally beats the other two chips, but I can't imagine many people with Titan Xs will be running 1080p screens. At 1440p+ I'd think the GPU bottleneck would bring any disparity between the frames achieved by all chips right down to near zero.
 
Dave2150 said:
You need to get a clue.

The most popular X99 CPU by FAR is the 5820k. It has 28 PCI-E lanes, so in an SLI/Crossfire configuration, it's identical to the 6700k - both are limited to 8x/8x lanes. Only the 5930k/5960X can do 16xX16x.
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As I said, more cards. What configuration does a 6700k run for tri-SLI again?

I know you love your skylake build, we all get it, and it's a good chip. But hunting for any setup where it's faster is ridiculous. Picking a couple of favourable games and dropping the res down isn't exactly trying to reflect 'real life'.

Read some other comparisons and you get different results. Doesn't suddenly make your chip bad just cause someone else finds a different chip faster by a tiny fraction in a couple of games.

e.g.the youtube clip earleir in this thread the 6700k doesn't do as well. That's fine, it's not saying "don't buy this chip". I stopped advising against skylake when the price premium stopped being stupid. Doesn't suddenly make it the best chip overall, though it's a lot better for it's cost than it was.

Give the setup here I suspect a 6600k would perform just fine as well to be honest, in those games at those settings you'd probably find it matched the 6700k - which doesn't make it as good a CPU, just shows the test is borked. I'm not having a go at the 6700k at all, I'm having a go at the sites poor comparison basis.
 
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For tri sli on Z170 your gonna need an uber expensive PLX board which iirc will run at x8 per slot. Then there's the issue of latency when running such a setup, unlike native lanes on X99.
 
How many users run tri-SLI again, for this to even be worth the energy to type about?

Sure, for tri-quad SLI, you want x99. You don't want a 5820k with only 28 lanes though, you want all 40 from a 5930k/5960X, which are much more expensive.

Point is moot anyway, since it's such a small percentage of users we're talking about here.

'Mainstream' highend = X99 5920k or Z170 6700k. Most common GPU configuration by far = single GPU. Most common after that? SLI with two cards, which the 6700k and 5820k handle identically, thanks to both running x8/x8.

Most likely going to grab a Broadwell-E setup later this year anyway, since I now have a need for an additional system, and it's fun to play with new toys :) Thought I'd mention that since you seem to believe that I only have eyes for the 6700k. I don't, both the 5820k and 6700k are fantastic CPU's, can't go wrong with either for gaming, though Skylake has the edge for CPU bound games running on 1-2 cores, of which there are still many out there.
 
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With the poor state of multi gpu at the moment, tbh it wouldn't matter which CPU you have. But, either are fine cpu's for gaming with any modern gpu. Both much cooler running than previous chips.
 
Pretty sure 5820k and 6700k are not "identical" when it comes to sli config. 1 is usually running at x16 with the 5820k while on the 6700k both are at x8. Not that it makes massive impact in daily use but still not "identical"
 
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