Deciding between 6700K and 6800K

[Cr0nJ0b]

I'm upgrading an i5-3570K and looking for a good replacement. I just bought a 1080GTX, and want something to pair with it that will last a while.

I generally upgrade every 3 years or so and usually buy the CPU and Motherboard at the same time. I'm not sure that i've ever upgraded separately. I'm looking to buy in the next 2 months I think.

The Choice seems to be between the 6800K and the 6700K, but the price difference is really pushing me to the 6700K. The 6800K is like $400 and the 6700K is only $290. I looked at the AT benchmark comparison and they looked fairly close in a lot of tests. My workload would be mostly gaming with some content creation (video conversion and editing).

I mostly play FPS (CS:GO, ARMA, etc).

I'm not interested in AMD. I left that bus a long time ago.

your thoughts are appreciated.

thanks!

 

[24601]

Broadwell-E is bad, full stop.

Your choices are 6700k with 3000 MT/s DDR4 ram or higher or waiting a year for Skylake-E.

 

[Lyfer]

Broadwell-E is bad, full stop.

Your choices are 6700k with 3000 MT/s DDR4 ram or higher or waiting a year for Skylake-E.

How is broad well E bad other than it costing a bit more?

 

[Ken g6]

The 6800k has six slower cores; the 6700k has four faster cores. The games you mentioned can't effectively use those two extra cores. So slower cores mean slower games.

 

[coercitiv]

I looked at the AT benchmark comparison and they looked fairly close in a lot of tests. My workload would be mostly gaming with some content creation (video conversion and editing).

The HEDT Broadwell cores tend to hit the overclocking wall rather fast, somewhere between 4.1-4.3Ghz, while Skylake goes towards 4.6-4.8Ghz. What that means is whether you overclock or not, the 6700K will have a frequency advantage. This may make it the better choice in some games.

So:

• if you care more about the price difference and are willing to upgrade in the next few years (2-3), then 6700k makes sense
• if you care more about platform lifespan and overall performance during an extended period (3-5+), then 6800k will make a better choice

 

[mnewsham]

Since you seem pretty set on upgrading every 3 years you'd be best to get the 6700k. The 6800k would be fine as well, but it's meant for a longer lifespan, 5+ years. So upgrading in 3 years would just make it a waste of money.

Get the 6700k now and upgrade in 3 years to the new top midrange CPU.

 

[CakeMonster]

6700K easily for ~3 years.

 

[Gryz]

I'm in exactly the same situation. I bought a i5-3570K and a gtx680 in spring 2012. Both on the day they were released. I bought a gtx1080 2 weeks ago.

The framerates in The Witcher 3 and GTAV are a little lower than I expected. In both games, at the highest settings, 2560x1080, I get below 60 fps. 50-60fps in TW3 (without hairworks) and 40-50fps in GTAV (with 4x or 8xMSAA). I wonder if my CPU (and only 8 GB of RAM) are holding back my gtx1080 a bit.

 

[DigDog]

ok, calling it bad is a bit too harsh, but it's not the CPU you need. the X99 platform is more expensive and aimed at workloads which use more cores and more RAM (not that you'd need it, since Skylake can use, idk, 128Gb?). Skylake is faster, cheaper, and as said before, most games - and most normal apps - do not use more than 4 cores. Even a 6700K is overkill for most gamers.

 

[Cr0nJ0b]

Thanks everyone for the thoughtful responses.

 

[ddogg]

Was in the same boat a month ago except I had a 2500k. I picked up a 6700k and got a stable 4.8 OC with some DDR4-3200 ram that I overclocked to 3600. Extremely happy with my decision.

 

[beginner99]

I'm in exactly the same situation. I bought a i5-3570K and a gtx680 in spring 2012. Both on the day they were released. I bought a gtx1080 2 weeks ago.

The framerates in The Witcher 3 and GTAV are a little lower than I expected. In both games, at the highest settings, 2560x1080, I get below 60 fps. 50-60fps in TW3 (without hairworks) and 40-50fps in GTAV (with 4x or 8xMSAA). I wonder if my CPU (and only 8 GB of RAM) are holding back my gtx1080 a bit.

Yes to CPU bottleneck. More RAM woul dnot hurt either. That's why your GPU can be overpowered if you CPU can't feed it. You either need a new CPU or just play with DSR (virtual 4K) and maybe also turn down AA. That will increase image quality and probably not affect FPS too much since ur cpu is the limit.

EDIT:

A first step could be to OC the curretn CPU if nto already done.