Skylake VS x99 VS DC setup?

[Nexus18]

Think I will upgrade my i5 750 @ 4GHz over the next couple of months so just curious as to what will be the best for my needs:

- gaming (most types of games)
- future proofed, just like my i5-750, I will likely be keeping this for a good 4/5 years at least thus would like a m.2 PCI slot or 2....
- I never intend on going with more than 1 GPU
- I will overclock but only when I need to get more performance which I imagine won't be for a good 1 or 2 years
- runs cool
- It will be paired with my 290 to start of with but next year I might switch to a 980ti or pascal
- Decent onboard audio would be nice just in case my essence STX 2 were to fail
- Prefer to keep to gigabyte motherboards

So recommendations for CPU, motherboard and RAM (16GB) for <£500? Is it really worth spending more for the x99/skylake over DC? Since I am not interested in having more than 1 GPU, I will probably be better of keeping to the i5's too.

 

[Nexus18]

Thanks for the advice.

Some games I play:

- bf 3/4
- battlefront
- GTA 5
- all the batman games
- tomb raider
- mad max
- crysis games

etc.

Currently playing at 2560x1080 but will be upgrading to a 2560x1440 or 3440x1440 monitor end of this year or next.

And yes I feel the same too, I still have no problems maxing most games and getting 60fps most of the time, however;

- I quite fancy an upgrade
- have this odd problem that never seems to go away (PC will black screen and I have to restart or in the case of last night, my pc red screened and had the audio loop sound during a bf 4 session, I had this problem a year ago when I first got my 290, thought it was just drivers or the gpu but it went away, the issue is completely random, doesn't matter what I do or when, for all I know, I might not have the issue for another year....tried everything I can think of as well as suggested fixes so was hoping that this might fix this problem once and for all)
- I feel like my min. FPS are suffering by quite a bit, at least in gta 5

Another thing I forgot to mention is I would like there to be good spacing between the PCI slots as my essence STX 2 is sitting right on top of my 290.

All of this will fit in my antec p100 but I would like to move to MATX at some point so any advice for MATX motherboards too?

 

[Nexus18]

I have tried everything, resetting bios/overclock, fresh install of windows, different gpu drivers, reflashing bios, some AMD GPU driver tweaks. My temps are fine too (re-applied thermal paste a few months ago)

With it being so random, I just have to wait until the next time, which could be right now as I post this or maybe in 7 months time.

 

[Nexus18]

Yeah I don't use my PC for any other extensive tasks so don't feel that i7 and the extra cores of x99 would benefit me and whilst I would like to use 2+ GPU's, I don't want the faff of games/drivers not supporting the SLI/crossfire or/and having annoying niggles i.e. texture flickering, micro stuttering etc.

Are there any game min. & average FPS comparisons showing an overclocked i5-750@4GHZ or a chip of similar performance to i5 DC/SL?

 

[Nexus18]

My most recent FPS test in bf 4 was done with the 15.7 drivers:

MAX settings @ 2560x1080 doing the siege run in an empty server with a ping of 40-50:

Mantle:

Battlefield 4 - Frame Time Analyzer Report
Logs Selected: All (Merge Logs)
FTS Selected: 2 ms

			Game - FT	CPU - FT	GPU - FT
Average Frame Time:	13.889		13.89		13.13
StdDev (FT): 		1.677		1.716		1.573
Minimum FPS: 		49.764		49.116		52.329
Maximum FPS: 		89.526		106.724		95.012
StdDev (FPS): 		8.624		8.904		9.053

Time Spent:		Game - FT	CPU - FT	GPU - FT
Above 200 FPS:		0%		0%		0%
Above 144 FPS:		0%		0%		0%
Above 120 FPS:		0%		0%		0%
Above 100 FPS:		0%		0.119%		0%
Above 90 FPS:		0%		0.907%		7.804%
Above 60 FPS:		93.89%		93.508%		98.449%
Above 45 FPS:		100%		100%		100%
Above 30 FPS:		100%		100%		100%


Total Data Points Read: 	4190
Total Erred Points Detected: 	1
Total Files Read: 	1

DX:

Battlefield 4 - Frame Time Analyzer Report
Logs Selected: All (Merge Logs)
FTS Selected: 2 ms

			Game - FT	CPU - FT	GPU - FT
Average Frame Time:	14.429		14.428		13.933
StdDev (FT): 		1.78		1.957		1.708
Minimum FPS: 		44.823		37.154		45.351
Maximum FPS: 		85.288		114.482		88.378
StdDev (FPS): 		8.358		9.157		8.641

Time Spent:		Game - FT	CPU - FT	GPU - FT
Above 200 FPS:		0%		0%		0%
Above 144 FPS:		0%		0%		0%
Above 120 FPS:		0%		0%		0%
Above 100 FPS:		0%		0.246%		0%
Above 90 FPS:		0%		0.761%		0%
Above 60 FPS:		87.448%		86.465%		92.041%
Above 45 FPS:		99.975%		99.681%		100%
Above 30 FPS:		100%		100%		100%


Total Data Points Read: 	4071
Total Erred Points Detected: 	1
Total Files Read: 	1

And frame latencies, frametimelog001 (red line) is mantle:

Min. fps is around 45 fps so by the sounds of it, if I were to get a new cpu, I might only see an increase of 10 fps for the min. figure, doesn't really sound like it is worth me spending £400+ on cpu etc. :/ Saying that, I think for the likes of gta 5, I probably see quite a boost for min. fps.

I might hold of on this for the time being then and just put the money towards something else.

 

[Nexus18]

I find that siege is the most demanding on my pc especially at c building for some reason, fps really tank there with ultra.

I would like a new gpu but:

- I feel that my 290 is still pretty good for the majority of games so couldn't really justify the cost for the likes of the 980ti
- I don't want to upgrade to anything new until something gets sorted with regards to free/g sync, don't fancy being locked to one vendor, besides, nothing on the monitor market for me until the end of this year or next