i7 5820k worth it for gaming?

arcon33 · 29 May 2015 at 16:36

Is the i7 5820k worth the extra outlay (around £150 or more including mobo & ram) for a gaming only rig over a i7 4790k z97 setup? do the extra threads make a real difference in gaming or would the extra cash be better put towards a gpu

Speedy Pete · 29 May 2015 at 16:45

At the moment no game really sees any benefit from having more than 4 cores.

Just get the 4790k.

passey89 · 29 May 2015 at 17:16

Nope only if ur adding more gpus as they have more pci-e lanes and in certain benchmark tools.

For just gaming put the extra £150 towards better fpu and ram

rodt99 · 29 May 2015 at 20:16

DX12 should make multi-threading games easier for developers so the extra cores could come into their own at that point. At the moment I think the higher clocks of 4790k have the advantage.

But I would wait for Skylake.

Vinno · 30 May 2015 at 01:12

Same as above. Put the saved money into a GPU.

Perfect_Chaos · 30 May 2015 at 03:45

Skylake aint much better than what's around now from the benchmarks i have seen tbh, it was first rumored 30% or so IPC increase, then 15% but i haven't even seen that much difference in the leaks. So it could be even lower than that, the game benchmarks still had the 5820k ahead as well.

If you're doing extra stuff that will use the cores as well as gaming, then i would say go for x99 instead. The extra cores could well improve performance more with DX12 games as well so it's not a waste.

You could wait for Skylake, but it seems to be quite underwhelming from what people were expecting.

Just my opinion.

Rroff · 30 May 2015 at 03:50

Having more than 4 cores can be useful if your gaming with other stuff also running like fraps/shadowplay, teamspeak, twitch streaming, etc. and/or ultra high end setups with multiple GPUs (at 60fps especially with vsync of limited value but can make things smoother for 120+fps gaming) but very little in a gaming context will really see significant gains from more than 8 cores (real or virtual).

smogsy · 31 May 2015 at 08:54

as above not for the game but for other things.

Hopefully DX12 will also help with extra cores too

Muel · 31 May 2015 at 09:38

Nope not worth it. If it's purely gaming performance you want, you could get a Xeon X5670 and a decent X58 motherboard second hand for a total of about £250, decent overclock on it, 12gb of quickish ram for at most £100 and that wouldn't bottleneck many GPU setups IMO, apart from crazy stuff like tri-SLI GTX980s.

If however you prefer to buy new, or enjoy hardware/specs/numbers just a little bit, it's only £150 more for 2 extra cores and DDR4 so I think you'd be daft not to, which is why I went for a 5820K, Asus X-99S and Corsair Vengance 2800mhz 4x4gb combo. It came to about £700, and I would much rather that, than spend £550 and every time I looked in my case I'd be missing a bank of RAM.

Skylake isn't worth waiting for IMO. The improvements are minimal, they're not starting production until Q1 2016 and the CPUs will work in the majority of current X99 boards anyway. Personally my plan is to run this setup for many years, then pick up a Skylake Xeon when they start to get ripped out of data centers and sold on the cheap. (Just like the X5650, X5670, X5680 etc are now).

abui1806 · 31 May 2015 at 15:35

Muel said:
Nope not worth it. If it's purely gaming performance you want, you could get a Xeon X5670 and a decent X58 motherboard second hand for a total of about £250, decent overclock on it, 12gb of quickish ram for at most £100 and that wouldn't bottleneck many GPU setups IMO, apart from crazy stuff like tri-SLI GTX980s.

If however you prefer to buy new, or enjoy hardware/specs/numbers just a little bit, it's only £150 more for 2 extra cores and DDR4 so I think you'd be daft not to, which is why I went for a 5820K, Asus X-99S and Corsair Vengance 2800mhz 4x4gb combo. It came to about £700, and I would much rather that, than spend £550 and every time I looked in my case I'd be missing a bank of RAM.

Skylake isn't worth waiting for IMO. The improvements are minimal, they're not starting production until Q1 2016 and the CPUs will work in the majority of current X99 boards anyway. Personally my plan is to run this setup for many years, then pick up a Skylake Xeon when they start to get ripped out of data centers and sold on the cheap. (Just like the X5650, X5670, X5680 etc are now).

It will not work on X99.

Skylake is for 100 series chipset with socket 1151.
However, Broadwell-E may work fine even though there life cycle will not be as long.

Boomstick777 · 31 May 2015 at 18:37

3770K > 4770K > 4790K > 5820K > There really isn't much in it for just gaming tbh.

If you're benching, video encoding / workstation type stuff then X99 / 5820K is worth the lil extra. If just pure gaming 4790K is prob best bet tbh.

Sylver123 · 31 May 2015 at 19:31

If you want good Xeons based on Skylake with lots of cores, etc then we will need to wate till 2016-2017 for them and these will likely be compatible with future Skylake socket like the E platform.

Dave2150 · 31 May 2015 at 20:26

Wait to see the official 6700K (Skylake 4790k replacement) benchmarks when it launches in 1-2 months. It may make the 5820k completely pointless for gaming.

ginjaninja · 31 May 2015 at 20:34

Dave2150 said:
Wait to see the official 6700K (Skylake 4790k replacement) benchmarks when it launches in 1-2 months. It may make the 5820k completely pointless for gaming.

even if the new skylake performs better for typical gaming workloads of 4 cores, the 5820 will still be more than fast enough..

when games/dx12 start to use 6 cores, the 5820 would probably have longer legs (even if in the short term/4 core era...skylake out performs it).

arcon33 · 31 May 2015 at 21:27

Thanks for the advice as ever I think I'll pass on the x99 platform and use the extra pennies for gpu, I've decided to go with an itx build so I'll need the most powerful single gpu I can afford, the price drop on the i7 4790k looks too good to resist atm as it was nearly £300 not so long ago, I'd love to get the skylake platform but I don't think I'll be able to hold on (is it September release?)

Doogles · 31 May 2015 at 21:44

If I was going to build a PC now I'd want the i7 5820k because I would only want more cores, it is the only place I feel like my current PC is rather weak and that maybe I should have gotten a i7 when I made my build 3 years ago, don't be me

If the money is tighter and that £150 can be added to more RAM and better GPU you probably are better off with a i7 4790k though.

Boomstick777 · 31 May 2015 at 21:46

arcon33 said:
Thanks for the advice as ever I think I'll pass on the x99 platform and use the extra pennies for gpu, I've decided to go with an itx build so I'll need the most powerful single gpu I can afford, the price drop on the i7 4790k looks too good to resist atm as it was nearly £300 not so long ago, I'd love to get the skylake platform but I don't think I'll be able to hold on (is it September release?)

Good choice, the 4790K is a great chip for gaming.

EdgeDs · 1 Jun 2015 at 07:22

For a little extra having more cores does sound tempting but at this point in time you wont get any extra performance in games but in the future this may well change and if it does then the extra money will seem too be very well spent

Muel · 1 Jun 2015 at 07:44

abui1806 said:
It will not work on X99. Skylake is for 100 series chipset with socket 1151.
However, Broadwell-E may work fine even though there life cycle will not be as long.

Derp, I guess I meant Broadwell-E. The next gen of X99 chips anyway.

rtho782 · 1 Jun 2015 at 08:09

To me the big benefit of x99 is the ability to do 3/4way SLI.

On Z97 you need one of the very rare motherboards with a PLX chip which also adds latency and doesn't improve total bandwidth to the CPU/System RAM.

Every so often I consider a 3rd 980, if I was on x99 I'd probably have done it but it's too much hassle to side-grade the motherboard etc.