New Pascal Titan X!

[RussianSensation]

Hmm, I wonder how much good a new platform would do you. 6950X @ 4.3GHz would be about 20% faster per-core. I think you're best waiting for Skylake-X to drop in 2017, FWIW.

Why waste money like that? You keep recommending the BW-E platform when you already know a $340 i7 6700K @ 4.6-4.8Ghz + DDR4 3200-4000 would beat it in most games. Why do you keep doing it? Do you like to tell gamers to waste their money in hopes that in 3-5 years those extra cores on the 6900-6950X will help? By the time that happens in the majority of AAA games, we will already have Ice Lake and for sure Skylake-X. BW-E 6800K makes sense for a balance of some productivity and gaming but anything above means the gamer is either lying to himself and wants to waste $$ for bragging rights or is legitimately using the extra cores for productivity.

Z170 mobos are also a lot cheaper on average, yet another nice bonus.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Why waste money like that? You keep recommending the BW-E platform when you already know a $340 i7 6700K @ 4.6-4.8Ghz + DDR4 3200-4000 would beat it in most games. Why do you keep doing it? Do you like to tell gamers to waste their money in hopes that in 3-5 years those extra cores on the 6900-6950X will help? By the time that happens in the majority of AAA games, we will already have Ice Lake and for sure Skylake-X. BW-E 6800K makes sense for a balance of some productivity and gaming but anything above means the gamer is either lying to himself and wants to waste $$ for bragging rights or is legitimately using the extra cores for productivity.

Z170 mobos are also a lot cheaper on average, yet another nice bonus.

I literally recommended that Annisman wait for Skylake-X to drop.

 

[Annisman*]

You guys ever use this website to compare graphics cards ? It's probably not the most accurate, but it was fun seeing them rate the new Titan X 2,800% more powerful than the beastly 8800GTX that I used to have lol. http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-Titan-X-Pascal-vs-Nvidia-GeForce-8800-GTX/m158352vsm9271

 

[Termie]

Why waste money like that? You keep recommending the BW-E platform when you already know a $340 i7 6700K @ 4.6-4.8Ghz + DDR4 3200-4000 would beat it in most games. Why do you keep doing it? Do you like to tell gamers to waste their money in hopes that in 3-5 years those extra cores on the 6900-6950X will help? By the time that happens in the majority of AAA games, we will already have Ice Lake and for sure Skylake-X. BW-E 6800K makes sense for a balance of some productivity and gaming but anything above means the gamer is either lying to himself and wants to waste $$ for bragging rights or is legitimately using the extra cores for productivity.

Z170 mobos are also a lot cheaper on average, yet another nice bonus.

While your advice is sound for the general gaming population, your assumptions are in fact incorrect. A 6700K will not beat a 6900K in high-resolution gaming, especially for people who might move up to SLI. 5-10% more IPC means little in such situations, but running out of cores can make a significant difference, as can having 16 vs. 40 PCIe lanes.

For more information, check out the in-depth benchmark analysis I published looking at 4K gaming using GTX 1070 SLI on a 6700K and 6900K.

 

[Annisman*]

While your advice is sound for the general gaming population, your assumptions are in fact incorrect. A 6700K will not beat a 6900K in high-resolution gaming, especially for people who might move up to SLI. 5-10% more IPC means little in such situations, but running out of cores can make a significant difference, as can having 16 vs. 40 PCIe lanes.

For more information, check out the in-depth benchmark analysis I published looking at 4K gaming using GTX 1070 SLI on a 6700K and 6900K.

I will never go mGPU ever again, like ever again. So I think the 6700K works for my situation the best.

 

[Termie]

I will never go mGPU ever again, like ever again. So I think the 6700K works for my situation the best.

Sounds like a good plan. For a single-card setup, the only situation where the 6700K isn't the best option is in the few games that do in fact use more than four cores. There are a handful, and the number is growing, but you can always upgrade again when the demand for 6+ cores in gaming becomes more common.

 

[Annisman*]

Sounds like a good plan. For a single-card setup, the only situation where the 6700K isn't the best option is in the few games that do in fact use more than four cores. There are a handful, and the number is growing, but you can always upgrade again when the demand for 6+ cores in gaming becomes more common.

This is true, when I bought my 6 core back in 2012 I had anticipated more games to utilize it by now but it just never materialized, I probably would have been better off with a higher clocked quad.

 

[RussianSensation]

While your advice is sound for the general gaming population, your assumptions are in fact incorrect. A 6700K will not beat a 6900K in high-resolution gaming, especially for people who might move up to SLI. 5-10% more IPC means little in such situations, but running out of cores can make a significant difference, as can having 16 vs. 40 PCIe lanes.

For more information, check out the in-depth benchmark analysis I published looking at 4K gaming using GTX 1070 SLI on a 6700K and 6900K.

Your own testing shows that 6900K is a $600 waste of money:

"Now, looking just at the numbers above, we might conclude the X99 platform used by the Core i7-6900K really isn't worth it, because even with dual cards, it's only 1% ahead."

The second part of your conclusion has no relevance since by the time what you predict may come true for most AAA games, the X99 platform will be old/superceded by 6-12 core Skylake-X and even faster mainstream 2018 Ice Lake:

"But going with Intel's HEDT platform also means you're going to be able to harness the power of six-, eight-, and ten-core processors, which matter a whole lot in productivity and professional apps, and can also make a difference in a handful of cutting-edge game engines."

For pure gaming, the best PC is a 6700K. You also tested games at high MSAA at 4K which is something many are unlikely to use at 4K.

Your testing also missed out a huge chunk of target market that may want to buy Pascal SLI for 1440p 144-165Hz.

Even though you claim that 5-10% increase in IPC won't make a huge difference, how is it logical to spend $600-1500 extra on the 6900/6950 in "hopes" that in some distant future they will start beating the 6700K?

I already clarified in my post that a good case can be made for 6700K or 6800K but unless using 6900/6950 for heavy productivity, they are a waste of $ for gaming. I am not sure why you are disagreeing with my post when all of your testing and professional shows the same.

Your analysis also seems to be missing many strategy games which is some of the most CPU intensive gaming genre. From the review above, 6700K demolishes all BW-E processors in Company of Heroes 2, Total War Rome 2 and Anno 2070.

Perhaps Titan XP SLI at 4K on X99 shows PCIe 3.0 8x/8x bottlenecks on Z170. Looking forward to your results should you get a pair

I have a hard time endorsing anything above 6800K when in some popular games not tested by TPU and other NA sites, even a $220 i5 6600 beats an $1000 8-core 5960X. That's embarrassing.

There are also less known games that people play worldwide where IPC/latest architecture matters a great deal. $300 6700 non-K beating the $1000 5960X. So much for 8-core "future proofness."

I literally recommended that Annisman wait for Skylake-X to drop.

OK fair enough but your post was confusing because you referenced 6950X @ 4.3Ghz in the reply implying that was one of his options.

Hmm, I wonder how much good a new platform would do you. 6950X @ 4.3GHz would be about 20% faster per-core. I think you're best waiting for Skylake-X to drop in 2017, FWIW.

There is nothing wrong with buying a Z170 board and a 6700K and using it for 12 months and upgrading to the SK-X. OTOH, the minute SK-X drops, the 6950X will lose a lot of $ in resale value while providing no tangible benefits in gaming over the 6700K from now until SK-X. Either way, I have no idea where you referenced the 6950X and not the 6800K or even 6900K.

 

[Termie]

...

For pure gaming, the best PC is a 6700K. You also tested games at high MSAA at 4K which is something many are unlikely to use at 4K.

Your testing also missed out a huge chunk of target market that may want to buy Pascal SLI for 1440p 144-165Hz.

Even though you claim that 5-10% increase in IPC won't make a huge difference, how is it logical to spend $600-1500 extra on the 6900/6950 in "hopes" that in some distant future they will start beating the 6700K?

Actually, in some games, the 6XX0 chips do beat the 6700K, even at 4K. And in reality, my 4K article was specifically focused on PCIe bandwidth bottlenecks. At 1440p, CPU power becomes more important, and it's here that BW-E may actually pull ahead of the 6700K more frequently due to its greater number of cores.

I'll soon be publishing an article looking at the GTX 1080 on the 6600K, 6700K, 6800K, and 6900K, all stock and OC'd to 4.4GHz, running games at 1440p. Look for it later this month.

The only reason I'd buy a Titan XP is for benchmarking. The value proposition doesn't speak to me, but at least I could sell it for near retail once I finished with it.

As for Titan XP SLI, well, that may be a bit much, but 1080 SLI is on the way as soon as EVGA actually starts sending out 1080 step-ups!

EDIT: the problem with all the benchmarks you cite is that they don't consider overclocking. Given that most Haswell-E processors have 50% overclocking headroom and BW-E has 40%, that makes a very significant failing in test methodology. A 6700K has 20% overclocking headroom, max, so foregoing overclocking puts the big chips at a huge disadvantage.

 

[alcoholbob]

Your own testing shows that 6900K is a $600 waste of money:

"Now, looking just at the numbers above, we might conclude the X99 platform used by the Core i7-6900K really isn't worth it, because even with dual cards, it's only 1% ahead."

I don't think his tests are very good at showing the gains above 4 cores. In general I would say for pure gaming there's no difference between 4 cores and 6+. The only time you are going to see a difference is if you are running a lot of background apps, and in certain game genres that are particularly CPU bound--I'm thinking of a big RPG with a lot of AI overloading the CPU like Assassin's Creed Unity, you can easily hit 90+% utilization on a 4 core CPU just from the game itself.

When that happens and you don't have anything other than the game running, you're fine. But any background apps (let's say you are streaming music, or even recording/streaming the game, or have voice/chat apps open, or playing youtube videos in the background or on a second screen) the quad core won't be enough, will hit 100% utilization and you'll get stuttering slow downs. A typical video card/CPU review where each application is tested independently doesn't show typical use performance.

Essentially what a 6+ core CPU allows is the user to be careless in running background apps, and still maintain full performance without slowdowns/hitching.

 

[Sushisamurai]

....the problem with all the benchmarks you cite is that they don't consider overclocking. Given that most Haswell-E processors have 50% overclocking headroom and BW-E has 40%, that makes a very significant failing in test methodology. A 6700K has 20% overclocking headroom, max, so foregoing overclocking puts the big chips at a huge disadvantage.

 

[Sushisamurai]

I feel like I should address that OC comment. As a user of 5930K, there is a lot of OC room, and yes, 50% sounds like a cool number but doesn't factor in that the 3.7GHz boost is single core only at stock, with base 3.5GHz for all 6 cores. My chip can clock to 4.6 GHz (all cores, and that's ur 50% OC) under water with reasonable temps, at the expense of 250W draw (give or take). However, under gaming conditions, even with a trifire set up, I haven't noticed a significant gain in FPS even with that OC (I usually run either 3.8 or 4.0, depending on what I'm doing), and I'm guessing it's because I'm either GPU limited or the games don't make use of my additional cores. With that in mind, the $1000 spent on MB/CPU could have been reduced with a 4 core 8 thread chip, clocked the same (less power demand too) and probably gotten the same results.

Productivity wise, the 6 cores are nice when editing/computing numbers.

I have to agree with Russian sensation here - he is the voice of reason here

 

[nathanddrews]

You guys ever use this website to compare graphics cards ? It's probably not the most accurate, but it was fun seeing them rate the new Titan X 2,800% more powerful than the beastly 8800GTX that I used to have lol. http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-Titan-X-Pascal-vs-Nvidia-GeForce-8800-GTX/m158352vsm9271

It's fun to glance at it when considering the theoretical maximum capabilities of GPUs, but not very useful beyond that.

 

[IEC]

I feel like I should address that OC comment. As a user of 5930K, there is a lot of OC room, and yes, 50% sounds like a cool number but doesn't factor in that the 3.7GHz boost is single core only at stock, with base 3.5GHz for all 6 cores. My chip can clock to 4.6 GHz (all cores, and that's ur 50% OC) under water with reasonable temps, at the expense of 250W draw (give or take). However, under gaming conditions, even with a trifire set up, I haven't noticed a significant gain in FPS even with that OC (I usually run either 3.8 or 4.0, depending on what I'm doing), and I'm guessing it's because I'm either GPU limited or the games don't make use of my additional cores. With that in mind, the $1000 spent on MB/CPU could have been reduced with a 4 core 8 thread chip, clocked the same (less power demand too) and probably gotten the same results.

Productivity wise, the 6 cores are nice when editing/computing numbers.

I have to agree with Russian sensation here - he is the voice of reason here

Exactly this. It's the reason I skipped LGA 2011-v3 for my most recent gaming rig upgrade. A 4.4GHz Broadwell-E is pretty much the max OC you will get, and compared to a 4.8GHz 6700K the latter will give you better frames and gaming experience most of the time. Especially when using higher speed DDR4 modules.

Now triple or quad card setups along with heavy streaming... I would more strongly consider Broadwell-E.

 

[finbarqs]

wow.. just started playing quantum break on PC because finally 21:9 support is here!!!!! 3440x1440p!!! sucks that my gtx 1080 could not run it at a decent frame rate at max detail (minus AA) without frame scaling. Frame scaling then the FPS shoots up to 60!!! anyways... Titan X pascal? Probably wouldn't even make it run at 60 either...

 

[tweakboy]

My card isn't even on the list

 

[tweakboy]

My card isn't even on the list lol