Would you buy 6850k, if you already have 980x?

[Timmah!]

Serious question

I am planning to buy new GPU for almost a year, have been waiting for Pascal. The rest of my computer is gigabyte x58 ud7 mobo, 980x @ 3,78 GHz and 24GB DDR3... was not really thinking about dumping those, since i think its still decent, CPU about the level of current Skylake 6700...

but i helped my buddy to build his own machine recently, (lower end, under 1000 EUROs rig, mind), and when he sent me the picture with all the shiny new boxes prepared for the build, it struck me hard...now i have thoughts of my own to waste some hard earned cash, haha.

I am not buying those 1000 and more EUROs CPUs, thats just way over the top. Did that once in life with 980x and sadly, that has to be enough. So i am stuck with 6-core CPU as only option again - is it worth it? DDR4s too? Or should i wait for another gen, Skylake - E, or whatever, when 8-cores will potentially be dumped lower to current 6850k price-tag?

 

[Arachnotronic]

Serious question

I am planning to buy new GPU for almost a year, have been waiting for Pascal. The rest of my computer is gigabyte x58 ud7 mobo, 980x @ 3,78 GHz and 24GB DDR3... was not really thinking about dumping those, since i think its still decent, CPU about the level of current Skylake 6700...

but i helped my buddy to build his own machine recently, (lower end, under 1000 EUROs rig, mind), and when he sent me the picture with all the shiny new boxes prepared for the build, it struck me hard...now i have thoughts of my own to waste some hard earned cash, haha.

I am not buying those 1000 and more EUROs CPUs, thats just way over the top. Did that once in life with 980x and sadly, that has to be enough. So i am stuck with 6-core CPU as only option again - is it worth it? DDR4s too? Or should i wait for another gen, Skylake - E, or whatever, when 8-cores will potentially be dumped lower to current 6850k price-tag?

I say go for it. Resale value on those older components isn't bad (you can probably eBay the 980X for $230 or so), and you only live once. If you have the disposable income and it'll make you happy, then why not?

 

[Burpo]

I'd overclock the CPU for now and get a new GPU & wait if it were me, but as Arachno said, X58 parts are still bringing a premium, especially your board. I went thru a dozen of those boards and made decent money on them, but there's only 1 available on ebay right now and he wants $350 or best offer..

 

[PeckingOrder]

I wouldn't do it personally, it'd just not be enough of a performance jump for me to justify the new platform

I say go for an 8-core Broadwell or wait and hope Zen isn't a flop.

but then again I hate doing minor upgrades, I generally upgrade when the new part can offer at least 2x the performance of the old one.

 

[PliotronX]

I say go for it. Resale value on those older components isn't bad (you can probably eBay the 980X for $230 or so), and you only live once. If you have the disposable income and it'll make you happy, then why not?

I like this attitude.

 

[LTC8K6]

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/142?vs=1260

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/142?vs=1543

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/142?vs=1728

980X looks pretty far behind in many benches against stock newer chips, but for gaming it probably keeps up.

 

[therealnickdanger]

You only YOLO once.

 

[StrangerGuy]

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/142?vs=1260

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/142?vs=1543

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/142?vs=1728

980X looks pretty far behind in many benches against stock newer chips, but for gaming it probably keeps up.

Since the 980X 1-core turbos up to 3.6GHz; even it with an unlikely 4.4GHz OC a 4790K at stock is still 50% faster in ST and only just as fast in MT, and the power draw between both would be a day-and-night difference.

Given the insane resale values of X58, I see no good reason to stick with that power hungry, obsolete platform when one can sell to subsidize much of a new setup. It's already been 8 years, let it go already.

 

[aigomorla]

no one has asked the OP what he does with his machine...

are you having problems on the 980X?
do you have usb 3.0 or are you wanting usb 3.0?

do you find yourself lacking somehow in computation power?

If your just a gamer.... no... your not going to gain much on a newer platform
If your a day to day web browsing user... no... your better off on a tablet...
If you do massive encodes, rips bluray, and every last minute counts... then yes, a newer gen PC will get its work done with a couple minutes to spare..

but honestly the the entire 6800 and 6900 line to me is a utter piece of overpriced cow dung which offer no benifit over the 5800 lineup, especially if your an overclocking enthusiast.

So if your 980X can hold you off another year or so, id say possibly wait for skylake-e or just go on a 6700K with uber fast ram, if your a gamer and you want usb 3.0 + all the other wonderful options.

 

[jihe]

no one has asked the OP what he does with his machine...

are you having problems on the 980X?
do you have usb 3.0 or are you wanting usb 3.0?

do you find yourself lacking somehow in computation power?

If your just a gamer.... no... your not going to gain much on a newer platform
If your a day to day web browsing user... no... your better off on a tablet...
If you do massive encodes, rips bluray, and every last minute counts... then yes, a newer gen PC will get its work done with a couple minutes to spare..

but honestly the the entire 6800 and 6900 line to me is a utter piece of overpriced cow dung which offer no benifit over the 5800 lineup, especially if your an overclocking enthusiast.

So if your 980X can hold you off another year or so, id say possibly wait for skylake-e or just go on a 6700K with uber fast ram, if your a gamer and you want usb 3.0 + all the other wonderful options.

Pretty much this. And wait for Zen, hopefully AMD gives us something interesting.

 

[Timmah!]

no one has asked the OP what he does with his machine...

are you having problems on the 980X?
do you have usb 3.0 or are you wanting usb 3.0?

do you find yourself lacking somehow in computation power?

If your just a gamer.... no... your not going to gain much on a newer platform
If your a day to day web browsing user... no... your better off on a tablet...
If you do massive encodes, rips bluray, and every last minute counts... then yes, a newer gen PC will get its work done with a couple minutes to spare..

but honestly the the entire 6800 and 6900 line to me is a utter piece of overpriced cow dung which offer no benifit over the 5800 lineup, especially if your an overclocking enthusiast.

So if your 980X can hold you off another year or so, id say possibly wait for skylake-e or just go on a 6700K with uber fast ram, if your a gamer and you want usb 3.0 + all the other wonderful options.

I use the computer for all kind of stuff, including gaming, work and obviously web-browsing - predominantly that, heh. Clearly not considering to buy cause i want my Opera run faster

As fas as work is concerned, thats why i am going for new GPU. I have some archviz side-jobs from time to time, actually quite often recently and i use GPU renderer. So i am defo going for gtx 1080, very likely even 2. I am looking at AiO watercooled versions, cause with my current setup those 2 cards are going to be in neighbouring slots, but if i got a new mobo (i was looking at Gigabyte x99-p SLI, that would not be an issue anymore, so i could possibly go just for regular air-cooled GPUs. Have to say though, the possibility of dual watercooled 1080s intrigues me, never had watercooling before, seems they run way cooler and quieter...

So yeah, i guess i dont need it. Its just about random itch, seeing other people building new rigs, something i havent done since 2010 and surely you know the joy. So i was curious if i could somehow justify the upgrade with performance improvement, but i guess not really. It will probably eventually i go down to the fact, whether i could do enough of these side-jobs, cause i plan to finance any HW upgrades strictly from money i earn from them...

One last thing, funnily, the 8-core 6900k at 1000 does nothing to me, even if felt like paying 1 grand for CPU again, for whatever reason it feels underwhelming. Thats why i kinda feel content to stick just with another six-core at almost half the price. However, if 6950x was priced at 1000, i guess it would really bug me That would be hard to resist. But no way i would pay the price they ask for it now, 1700 or whatever it is? TBF, this was bit of a "dick" move by intel, sorry for profanity. They pretty much priced me out of it. I wonder how many others are there, who would consider paying 1000 for it, but if they cant have it, wont pay those 1000 for "just" 6900k...

EDIT: I am looking at all the available CPUs for socket 2011-3, including Xeons, at my e-shop of choice....there is 10-core Xeon (E5 2630 V4) for only slightly higher price than 6850k...huh? Its 2,1Ghz mind, is it OCeable? Where is the catch?

 

[jpiniero]

Yeah, Intel's locked down overclocking the Xeons pretty good now.

 

[RussianSensation]

Serious question

I am planning to buy new GPU for almost a year, have been waiting for Pascal. The rest of my computer is gigabyte x58 ud7 mobo, 980x @ 3,78 GHz and 24GB DDR3... was not really thinking about dumping those, since i think its still decent, CPU about the level of current Skylake 6700...

Not a chance this statement is even remotely true. i7 6700K OC will outperform a 4.8Ghz 2600K by 25-30%, sometimes more in CPU demanding games esp. when paired with fast DDR4 4000. Digital Foundry tested this as well.

Your CPU will get destroyed by an overclocked i7 2600K unless all you do is render/encode all day. Not even an i7 980X @ 4.66Ghz can keep pace with an i7 2600K OC outside of rendering/encoding.

vs.

As far as the X99 line goes, i7 6900 makes sense, a case can also be made for i7 6950X if money isn't a factor and you don't want to dual-build an i7 6700K + i7 6900K in the same case. i7 6850K makes no sense as the extra lanes are worthless. This is a repeat of the 5930K - another worthless CPU SKU. If you can afford $400-600 PCIe SSDs in Triple RAID 0 and 2x GTX 1080, then you can afford to step up to the 6900 and likely a 4K monitor.

For maximum gaming performance with 1080 SLI, i7 6700K @ 4.7-4.8Ghz is easily the best CPU. Even a 4.9Ghz i7 4790K is still up to 10%+ behind a 4.6Ghz i7 6700K in games.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5lfMogcrPU

For a good balance without breaking the bank, i7 6800K (or a discounted i7 5820K also makes sense).

For a powerhouse machine to keep for 5-7 years for work + gaming, i7 6900K could be a consideration although given how long you've kept your 980X, I think if you are ready to make that kind of a long-term investment, might as well go all in on SKL-E next year. Another option is to see how much used i7 5960X CPUs go for as they could be a nice bargain.

As far as 1080 SLI goes, yet another waste of $ upgrade imho when we know the real Pascal flagship will be 1080Ti and it's going to launch within 12 months or so.

1070 SLI gives you 85-90% of the performance of 1080 SLI. Also, don't even bother going 1070 SLI unless you at least have a 1440p 60Hz monitor.
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/geforce_gtx_1070_2_way_sli_review,16.html

One last thing, funnily, the 8-core 6900k at 1000 does nothing to me, even if felt like paying 1 grand for CPU again, for whatever reason it feels underwhelming. Thats why i kinda feel content to stick just with another six-core at almost half the price.

If you cannot actually use the 8-cores for work, then an i7 6700K or i7 6800K are still great CPUs.

I wouldn't do it personally, it'd just not be enough of a performance jump for me to justify the new platform

I say go for an 8-core Broadwell or wait and hope Zen isn't a flop.

but then again I hate doing minor upgrades, I generally upgrade when the new part can offer at least 2x the performance of the old one.

His CPU would already bottleneck a single R9 390/GTX970 in games. That means he has to get a new CPU if he plans to get GTX1070/1080 SLI or it's absolutely a waste of $. In fact, the CPU bottleneck is so severe that even at 1440p 980Ti SLI are bottlenecked by an i7 6700K without faster DDR4 memory. That means such a setup would be even more CPU limited by Nehalem/Sandy/Ivy/Haswell.
http://www.techspot.com/article/1171-ddr4-4000-mhz-performance/page3.html

All the data is literally here but people keep ignoring it and living in the past.

Even i7 6700K OC is a CPU bottleneck for GTX 1080 SLI at 1440p 60Hz.
1080p scaling = 25% (125% vs. 100%)
1440p scaling = 45% (145% vs. 100%)
4K scaling = 71% (171% vs. 100%)
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_1080_SLI/20.html

Just because you have some arbitrary bar that it's not worth upgrading the CPU unless it's 75-100% faster it doesn't mean this is a logical way to keep a modern PC up-to-date. Fact is, the fastest GPUs require the fastest CPU or there is no point whatsoever buying 1080 SLI over GTX980Ti/1070 SLI. With the OP's outdated CPU, for gaming, there isn't even a point even buying a single GTX 1070.

 

[2is]

Agree with RS. While the 980x is still a very capable CPU, it's no Skylake or even close to it for that matter.

 

[RussianSensation]

Agree with RS. While the 980x is still a very capable CPU, it's no Skylake or even close to it for that matter.

Thanks.

Just wanted to add this too.

i7-960@4.0 vs i7-4790 (4.0) in 4 Games (R9 390)

GTA V
0:42 sec
39 fps vs. 52 fps

0:48 sec
34 fps vs. 52 fps (!)

0:52 sec
32 fps vs. 51 fps

The Witcher 3
2:19
36 fps vs. 52 fps (!)

2:21
39 fps vs. 53 fps

2:23
41 fps vs. 59 fps (!)

2:25
43 fps vs. 63 fps (!!!)

2:56
45 fps vs. 68 fps

2:58
38 fps vs. 62 fps

3:04
34 fps vs 64 fps

3:07
45 fps vs. 69 fps

Crysis 3
4:51
37 fps vs. 56 fps

4:54
31 fps vs. 58 fps

5:07
41 fps vs. 62 fps

5:08
36 fps vs. 65 fps

5:14
40 fps vs. 60 fps

5:15
39 fps vs. 60 fps :sneaky:

5:47
43 fps vs. 71 fps

5:51
39 fps vs. 69 fps D:

World of Tanks
7:44
51 fps vs. 79 fps

7:50
49 fps vs. 76 fps

7:53
48 fps vs. 73 fps

7:59
48 fps vs. 84 fps :sneaky:

8:35
48 fps vs. 73 fps

i7 960 @ 4.0Ghz is faster than OP's 980x @ 3,78 GHz. Nehalem architecture is completely outdated for R9 390/GTX970. We also know that i5 2500K OC is also outdated and that's faster than any Nehalem CPU.

As I said earlier, it's either upgrade everything and get GTX 1070/1080 (SLI) or have to wait next year and jump into SKL-E + 1080Ti.

980X looks pretty far behind in many benches against stock newer chips, but for gaming it probably keeps up.

No, not even close. His CPU is already a severe bottleneck for an R9 390/970 level GPU. The absolute minimum CPU required for GTX1070/980Ti card is a 2600K OC, nothing less. For someone who plays modern strategy games, the requirements are even higher.

 

[Headfoot]

I'd do it. x58 parts get an unreasonable amount of resale value on eBay right now and I have no idea how much longer that is going to last. X99 is going to be a pretty noticeable upgrade even if you stay 6 core.

 

[MajinCry]

The Nehalem proccies are about as fast as a Phenom II + 500 mhz (Phenom IIs need +500mhz to reach performance parity), except when it comes to draw calls.

Now that we are finally having games that are using the cores for more than just a bit of AI and draw calls, Nehalem's showing it's age.

 

[LTC8K6]

It's a little bit odd thinking about it because most of the chips being compared are 4C4T, while the 980X is 6C12T.

But the architecture is just too old.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

I still destroy people in UT4 on a 6 core 1366 socket chip, and a GTX 670

 

[Arachnotronic]

Looks like there are some really good arguments for why you should upgrade to Broadwell-E. However, I wouldn't spend the extra on the 6850K, go with the 6800K. Better bang for the buck, IMO.

 

[Geforce man]

I think based on his needs a 6700k would do him quite well. Get it clocked up to 4.4-4.6Ghz, and it will be a HUGE improvement gaming wise. If he does this now, he may actually be able to do it w/out spending money, if he can get top $ for his current board and processor, which seem to be holding their resale value quite well.

 

[2is]

I still destroy people in UT4 on a 6 core 1366 socket chip, and a GTX 670

That's all UT4 needs to run at 100+ fps so that isn't saying a whole lot lol

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

That's all UT4 needs to run at 100+ fps so that isn't saying a whole lot lol

It says that my machine is running the new UE4 engine without struggling. If there are issues with other game engines my statement just exploits their problems.

 

[2is]

It says that my machine is running the new UE4 engine without struggling. If there are issues with other game engines my statement just exploits their problems.

Is it really "their problems" though? If you come across an engine that doesn't run well, you can say it's their problem, but unless they decide to "fix" it to run well on legacy hardware, it ends up being your problem.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Is it really "their problems" though? If you come across an engine that doesn't run well, you can say it's their problem, but unless they decide to "fix" it to run well on legacy hardware, it ends up being your problem.

Yeah it is their problem, just like with Crysis 1, and RO2, Rising Storm. Gaming wise there is nothing I haven't come across to warrant a platform upgrade. Even CS:GO is usually > 250fps