I finally have the answer to the question I've been asking myself and others for months - is it worth upgrading my i7 860 @ 4.0GHz to an i5 6600k? The answer is yes. At least in terms of gaming.
Before deciding to upgrade, I tried to identify if my CPU was causing a bottle neck. Even though it didn't reach 100% in any of my games, I had my suspicions.
I went ahead and bought a 6600k, 16GB of DDR4, and a new motherboard. Before I disassembled my old PC, I ran 9 benchmarks that I hoped covered a broad range of tasks to test the PC. I then ran these again with the new PC and it produced some interesting results. The GPU remained constant. Specs at the bottom for both systems. Bench results in the spoiler tags.
At first I started with Heaven and really didn't see an enormous difference - only small gains. In Cinebench CPU and the 3D Mark physics test, the old i7 pulls ahead, especially in firestrike.
The real interesting scores are the Steam VR test, Cinebench Open GL, Alien Isolation, and DiRT Rally. Alien Isolation shows an increase of 70% in average frames per second, and Cinebench Open GL is a 59% increase. The frame times have come way down in Alien Isolation, and I believe this reduces the appearance of stutter. In Steam VR, out of a maximum score of 10, it jumped a whole point upwards. I'm kicking myself for leaving v-sync on in DiRT rally when testing the Lynnfield system as this would have shown an enormous jump had it been off.
I know it's not strictly testing just the CPUs due to the different OS and RAM, but as the question of whether a CPU upgrade is worth it is rather common I thought it was worth sharing.
Lynnfield PC
OS: Windows 7 SP1
CPU: i7 860 @4006 MHz 8 Threads
GPU: R9 290 @1103 MHz/1403 MHz
RAM: 8GB DDR3 1908 MHz
Skylake PC
OS: Windows 10
CPU: i5 6600k 3500 MHz 4 Threads (stock)
GPU: R9 290 1103MHz/1403 MHz
RAM: 16GB DDR4 3000 MHz
Before deciding to upgrade, I tried to identify if my CPU was causing a bottle neck. Even though it didn't reach 100% in any of my games, I had my suspicions.
I went ahead and bought a 6600k, 16GB of DDR4, and a new motherboard. Before I disassembled my old PC, I ran 9 benchmarks that I hoped covered a broad range of tasks to test the PC. I then ran these again with the new PC and it produced some interesting results. The GPU remained constant. Specs at the bottom for both systems. Bench results in the spoiler tags.
The real interesting scores are the Steam VR test, Cinebench Open GL, Alien Isolation, and DiRT Rally. Alien Isolation shows an increase of 70% in average frames per second, and Cinebench Open GL is a 59% increase. The frame times have come way down in Alien Isolation, and I believe this reduces the appearance of stutter. In Steam VR, out of a maximum score of 10, it jumped a whole point upwards. I'm kicking myself for leaving v-sync on in DiRT rally when testing the Lynnfield system as this would have shown an enormous jump had it been off.
I know it's not strictly testing just the CPUs due to the different OS and RAM, but as the question of whether a CPU upgrade is worth it is rather common I thought it was worth sharing.
Lynnfield PC
OS: Windows 7 SP1
CPU: i7 860 @4006 MHz 8 Threads
GPU: R9 290 @1103 MHz/1403 MHz
RAM: 8GB DDR3 1908 MHz
Skylake PC
OS: Windows 10
CPU: i5 6600k 3500 MHz 4 Threads (stock)
GPU: R9 290 1103MHz/1403 MHz
RAM: 16GB DDR4 3000 MHz