Help with CPU/Motherboard bundle... Haswell or Skylake

[Az_GTi]

Chaps... please give me your opinion on upgrade...

I currently have i5 3570k @4.1Ghz, z77 mobo, 16GB ddr3 ram, SSD, 980ti, running on Windows 7. 3440x1440 resolution.

I do 50% gaming and 50% Photoshop work - raw files, batch processing etc.

I want to upgrade CPU but limited by my board so will go with a package - cpu, mobo and ddr4 ram and also a new case. What way should I go to? 6700k/z170 seems the best but can I run Windows 7 on it??? Just put my exisiting Win7 installed SSD in and go? I'm a bit confused by this as seems might not be compatible?

Or should I go Haswell 5820k? Or other? Budget about £800 but want to get best I can so can leave as is for a few years.

I really want to keep Windows 7 for compatibility with some games (mostly racing).

Cheers

 

[Disco_P]

My personal choice would be to grab a 3770K and overclock it and save the £650 for something else.

If you really want to spend though then the 5820K is probably the way to go. Can't say no to 50% more cores, more PCIe lanes and quad channel memory for less a small drop in clock for clock performance (less than 10%).

That being said it's not really going to improve your gaming experience.

Windows 7 is still supported by manufacturers so you should be fine. But Windows 10 has compatibility mode for windows 7 so older programs should work fine.

Always fresh install when you change motherboards. Bad things happen otherwise.

 

[~>Dg<~]

i would stick with what you got for a time your cpu is fine for a while yet.

there isnt really that many great options.


you have a very good gpu also so that rig will cope with games for 2-3 years yet.

 

[pastymuncher]

I would try and pick up a second hand 3770k for a reasonable price. If it wasn't for the photoshop stuff I would have said stick with what you have. Skylake just isn't worth the outlay for the small performance gain.

 

[Az_GTi]

Thanks chaps, much appreciated.

I've been properly researching things myself and reading reviews the last couple of days. In a nutshell for gaming it seems like (generally speaking) it's the clock speed (Ghz) that is most important as most games just use single core. The benchmarks I've seen all show that the graphics card is king with only 1-2 FPS swing either way whichever CPU is used.

For Photoshop and editing that's when the extra cores can be utilised. So that's why I'd like to upgrade, speed up the processing of Raw files and batches that I run. Some images currently take around 4 or 5 seconds to handle - not huge but when processing 300 images that's annoying.

So that's why I'm mostly looking to upgrade and if I could improve gaming too then great!

Yes there doesn't seem much point to go to 6700k. However looking into it maybe the 5960X would be a good move - but that's rather pricey! I mean is it "worth it"?! Perhaps I should hold off for the next batch - e.g 6850k, or maybe something else around the corner, who knows.

I know for certain that I need to upgrade motherboard and also Ram to DDR4 so I'm accounting for that.

Looked up 3770k on eBay as they can't be bought new anymore. Seems they are still holding strong money - averaging around £170. I put a couple of cheeky bids on some listed but don't think I want to spend best part of £200 for a 3 year old chip...