6900K or wait for Skylake-E?

[Carfax83]

I have several high end CPUs in my possession at the moment; a 5930K which I use in my primary rig, a 4930K which is in another rig, and a 3930K. I'm thinking about selling all three of them, and buying a 6900K. I should probably end up paying around $200 for the chip, if I sell all of my old ones.

I think Skylake-E will be released probably in the 3rd quarter of this year if I'm not mistaken, so I will probably skip it and get the refresh version which will ship God knows when.

Reason why I want to sell them now is because I can get more for them, and also because hexcores are going to be mainstream eventually, which will reduce their prices even more.

So is this a bad move or what? I can just plop the 6900K into my current motherboard which means minimum hassle, and hopefully overclock it to 4.4ghz. This should satisfy my gaming needs a long time, as a 6900K at 4.4ghz is a beast that can rival or surpass the 7700K at 5ghz:

 

[LTC8K6]

I would want to move to the 2066 socket and the new chipset, I think.

 

[Carfax83]

But when is it coming out? In the meantime I have all of this excess hardware that I need to unload. The longer I wait, the less value it has.

 

[UsandThem]

But when is it coming out? In the meantime I have all of this excess hardware that I need to unload. The longer I wait, the less value it has.

Last I heard people talking about was in Q2 2017, likely announced at Computex (May 30 - June 3).

 

[moonbogg]

I heard August for Skylake-X. I just got back from Microcenter with a new 6800K and MSI X99A Gaming Pro Carbon myself. I didn't want to wait another 5 months for Skylake. Checking out the refresh version of it does sound nice though in a couple years maybe. By that time coffee lake 6 core mainstream may end up grabbing my attention. I'd grab that 6900K and roll with it. Its a beast and worth the money because it does pro apps and it can also game with the best of them. Best all around chip right now IMO with no compromises.

 

[Insomniator]

If you aren't using the other systems then yes sell them even if you don't buy a new chip right now. What do you even need the 6900k for? I would just sell the other two now and wait for Skylake-X.

 

[richierich1212]

Yeah I agree with Insominator, if you aren't using the other two systems, sell them off now.

 

[Carfax83]

Last I heard people talking about was in Q2 2017, likely announced at Computex (May 30 - June 3).

Did some looking about myself and this benchlife link seems to be the most persuasive. It says that the Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X CPUs will make their debut in late August.

I heard August for Skylake-X. I just got back from Microcenter with a new 6800K and MSI X99A Gaming Pro Carbon myself. I didn't want to wait another 5 months for Skylake. Checking out the refresh version of it does sound nice though in a couple years maybe. By that time coffee lake 6 core mainstream may end up grabbing my attention. I'd grab that 6900K and roll with it. Its a beast and worth the money because it does pro apps and it can also game with the best of them. Best all around chip right now IMO with no compromises.

May your venerable 3930K rest in peace Enjoy your 6800K!

If you aren't using the other systems then yes sell them even if you don't buy a new chip right now. What do you even need the 6900k for? I would just sell the other two now and wait for Skylake-X.

I don't need a 6900K, but I want it I'm a hardware enthusiast, so I like having a powerful CPU. Anyway, yeah I should have gotten rid of my 3930K and 4930K long ago. I was going to give my 3930K system to my nephew, but he wanted a laptop instead. Then I was going to sell my 4930K along with the motherboard and RAM, but somehow I never got around to it..

 

[xdfg]

.

 

[Carfax83]

I'm glad you told me about broadwell-e's poor overclocking. I did some research on that and it appears that the 6900K is a poor overclocker indeed, at least compared to haswell-e. Well that solves it then. I guess I will wait on Skylake-E later this year, and start dumping whatever hardware I can till then.

 

[Insomniator]

I guess if you really care about what the CPU says in system properties go for the 6900 now... its meaningless difference performance wise though.

 

[Timmah!]

Why would you want to buy 6900K now, when you can have Ryzen for half/third of its price performing pretty much the same? Not to mention you already have 5930K, which is not that far off from 6900K performance wise - really at 4,4GHz its almost equal to stock 6900K. Naturally you can OC 6900K too, but still...

In your place i would wait for Skylake-X or at least for Intel to slash prices of BW-Es to compete with Ryzen. Personally i am waiting for that, it has to happen.

EDIT: BTW 6900K at 4,2 is as fast as 5960x at 4,5-4,6. On topic of poor overclocking.

 

[Carfax83]

I guess if you really care about what the CPU says in system properties go for the 6900 now... its meaningless difference performance wise though.

Two extra cores, slightly more IPC and 5MB extra of L3 cache is hardly meaningless.

 

[Carfax83]

Why would you want to buy 6900K now, when you can have Ryzen for half/third of its price performing pretty much the same? Not to mention you already have 5930K, which is not that far off from 6900K performance wise - really at 4,4GHz its almost equal to stock 6900K. Naturally you can OC 6900K too, but still...

I'm primarily a gamer, and Ryzen as of right now is slower than Intel's HEDT parts when it comes to gaming. My 5930K hits 4.4ghz with only 1.23v, and uses less power to boot than a comparable Ryzen processor.

As for why I would want to buy a 6900K right now, I already explained that in my OP. I said I could dump all my old hardware (including my current CPU) and get almost as much money as I would need for a 6900K brand new. In a few months, these CPUs will be worth even less than they are right now so I wouldn't be able to get as much money for them.

Sometimes doing something like that is the best option. I'd pay around $100 for the 6900K, and if I wanted a Skylake-E/Cannonlake-E platform, I would just sell the 6900K and my motherboard and pay about 65% of the price.

In your place i would wait for Skylake-X or at least for Intel to slash prices of BW-Es to compete with Ryzen. Personally i am waiting for that, it has to happen.

Intel already cut prices. But their high end CPUs are still costly.

EDIT: BTW 6900K at 4,2 is as fast as 5960x at 4,5-4,6. On topic of poor overclocking.

I realize that Broadwell-E has greater performance, but I'm shocked at how poor the overclocking is. I figured it would be a better overclocker than Haswell-E, but this doesn't appear to be the case.

 

[Insomniator]

Two extra cores, slightly more IPC and 5MB extra of L3 cache is hardly meaningless.

If you are mainly a gamer that is mostly meaningless right now.

 

[Carfax83]

If you are mainly a gamer that is mostly meaningless right now.

Indeed, but I never said the reason why I was thinking about buying it was for performance. My 5930K at 4.4ghz is plenty fast for me. The reason why I'm considering the Broadwell-E is because I think that if I sell my old hardware now, I will have enough money to buy the CPU for probably a little over $100.

So why do this now instead of when Skylake-E makes its debut? Simple, by that time, people will be dumping their old hardware on eBay and elsewhere which will flood the high end CPU market and cause prices to drop. Also, when it comes time to sell again, a 6900K will be much easier to offload in the future due to it being an octacore rather than a hexcore, which will be mainstream next year with Coffee Lake.

 

[tamz_msc]

Broadwell-E overclocking shouldn't come as a surprise - Intel's 'ticks' had always been poor when it came to overclocking. Consider Sandy Bridge vs Ivy Bridge - it was very easy to clock a 2600K to 4.5GHz, and 4.7-4.8GHz achievable with a bit more tweaking. The whole solder vs TIM thing started with Ivy, and even discounting that aspect, it did not clock as high. Haswell corrected that to a certain extent, and then the saga repeated itself at 14nm with Broadwell and Skylake/Kaby Lake.

 

[escrow4]

If anything you should scrap them all and pick up a 7700K. Don't recommend X99 anymore. Old chipset, expensive parts and for gaming you can get by with way less. I scrapped my old 5930K for an i5 and meh. Everything is still perfectly functional.

 

[Carfax83]

I just bought it for $979.99!

So what I will do, is sell my 5930K for about $425, one of my DDR4 3200 32GB kits for about $200 (RAM prices have gone up), my 4930K for $250 + 16GB of DDR3 2133 for $100 + motherboard for $150. The 3930K I will sell for $150 as I abused the hell out of that chip.

Altogether, that should be more than enough to cover the cost of initial expenditures.

 

[Carfax83]

If anything you should scrap them all and pick up a 7700K. Don't recommend X99 anymore. Old chipset, expensive parts and for gaming you can get by with way less. I scrapped my old 5930K for an i5 and meh. Everything is still perfectly functional.

If you're not a high end gamer, then yeah, you shouldn't spend money on the HEDT platforms. That said, there is no way you're going to convince me that an i5 is going to provide a similar gaming experience as 5930K, unless you overclocked the i5 and left the 5930K at stock.

But if you still want to argue, may I direct you to this excellent article from Computerbase.de. NVidia's excellent multithreaded drivers plus game developers moving their engines over to the task based multithreading model has paid off it seems, because core count is definitely affecting performance.

 

[tamz_msc]

Frankly, if you have a 5930K clocked at 4.4GHz@1.23V, then unless you do anything that absolutely needs two more cores, and all you do is primarily gaming, then I see no reason to upgrade to a 6900K.

 

[Carfax83]

Frankly, if you have a 5930K clocked at 4.4GHz@1.23V, then unless you do anything that absolutely needs two more cores, and all you do is primarily gaming, then I see no reason to upgrade to a 6900K.

For God's sake man, you're making me repeat myself.

Like I said before, my decision to get a 6900K is not driven by performance. It's driven by market conditions. This is the best time to offload all of the extra hardware that I have so I can get the most amount of money for it. RAM prices in particular have gone up, and I have a perfectly good 32GB DDR4 3200 RAM kit sitting around that I paid $207 for originally, which is now worth $250 brand new on the market.

When Skylake-E drops, RAM prices might still be high, but used CPU prices will drop due to all the people trying to sell their CPUs. Hexcore CPUs in particular will lose the most amount of value, because Intel will be making hexcores mainstream next year. So like I've been saying, this is purely a financial move.

 

[tamz_msc]

For God's sake man, you're making me repeat myself.

Like I said before, my decision to get a 6900K is not driven by performance. It's driven by market conditions. This is the best time to offload all of the extra hardware that I have so I can get the most amount of money for it. RAM prices in particular have gone up, and I have a perfectly good 32GB DDR4 3200 RAM kit sitting around that I paid $207 for originally, which is now worth $250 brand new on the market.

When Skylake-E drops, RAM prices might still be high, but used CPU prices will drop due to all the people trying to sell their CPUs. Hexcore CPUs in particular will lose the most amount of value, because Intel will be making hexcores mainstream next year. So like I've been saying, this is purely a financial move.

The financial decision that you want to make right now may not leave you with the best high-end CPU that you can get at the end of 6 months, provided Intel's schedule goes according to plan. If you take the plunge with the 6900K, then you'll be stuck with LGA-2011 while Skylake-HEDT will bring a new socket, certainly better overclocking, new features(optane perhaps, if you're interested that is), and if Intel is really aggressive post-Ryzen, better pricing.

That is the real trade-off you're making.

 

[escrow4]

If you're not a high end gamer, then yeah, you shouldn't spend money on the HEDT platforms. That said, there is no way you're going to convince me that an i5 is going to provide a similar gaming experience as 5930K, unless you overclocked the i5 and left the 5930K at stock.

But if you still want to argue, may I direct you to this excellent article from Computerbase.de. NVidia's excellent multithreaded drivers plus game developers moving their engines over to the task based multithreading model has paid off it seems, because core count is definitely affecting performance.

Of course an i5 can't go up against a hexa core. But even for "high end" gaming you way as well buy the highest clocked i7 quad rather than a server platform that has been rejigged for the consumer market. The obsession with chasing FPS will only drain your wallet.

 

[Carfax83]

The financial decision that you want to make right now may not leave you with the best high-end CPU that you can get at the end of 6 months, provided Intel's schedule goes according to plan. If you take the plunge with the 6900K, then you'll be stuck with LGA-2011 while Skylake-HEDT will bring a new socket, certainly better overclocking, new features(optane perhaps, if you're interested that is), and if Intel is really aggressive post-Ryzen, better pricing.

That is the real trade-off you're making.

Not really. There's nothing stopping me from selling the 6900K+ motherboard if I really want the Skylake-E. In fact, I would recoup more of my money with the 6900K than if I would have kept my 5930K, since the former is a more high end processor. What I will likely end up doing though is keep the 6900K until Cannonlake-E comes out, which should hopefully have PCI-e 4.0.

Essentially though, I am getting the 6900K for free, since I will make up all of the money and then some by selling my hardware.