4790K or 6600K?

[ace_cheaply]

My wife is insisting on buying me a new processor. I already have a Gigabyte z87-UD5H that was given to me by my uncle after he RMA'd it and then bought the z97 Sabertooth.  I put a g3258 in it, it already has the bios update for Haswell refresh.  I've been meaning to upgrade it for a few months, and my wife is insisting on getting it for me in the next couple of weeks.

 

Should I just keep my current MOBO and RAM and  get the 4790K, or buy a new mobo and ram and get a 6600k. I live near a Microcenter, so I can get the 4790K for $290.The 6600K is $209, with an open box MOBO for $129 and the $20 bundle discount and $35 for a 8gb kit of dd4, the 6600K setup would cost me $353.

 

From what I've seen, the 6600k is performing substantially better than the 4790K clock for clock.  I'm going to mostly use this for a gaming rig, although also so Revit and Autocad work.  Is it worth it to upgrade to skylake for the gaming performance? What do you think? I know the i7 should outperform the non-hyperthreaded 6600k in most tasks outside of gaming, but are there other reasons to upgrade to skylake or is gaming performance compelling enough?  

 

Current Rig

CPU: G3258 @ 4.6ghz, 1.22Vcore

GPU: Asus R9 270x @1.150 GHZ

PSU: CX 600M

STORAGE: 2x WD blue 1GB

BOOT DRIVE: Transcend 512GB SSD

RAM: 16GB Corsair 1333mhz DDR 3

MOBO: Gigabyte Z87-UD5H

 

Thanks for your input.

[papapoi]

if my wife was willng to pay i would go for the 4790k and maybe upgrade that psu. 

[Elfuego]

4790K and PSU gets my vote.

[Enderman]

i would get the 6600k so that you have the latest platform

then upgrade to an i7 in 1-3 years whenever the new 1151 CPUs get released

 

the 6600k will be better for most programs and games, but slightly worse than the i7 for rendering stuff

it will still be very fast at 3d modeling and editing, just not AS fast

[ace_cheaply]

15 minutes ago, papapoi said:

if my wife was willng to pay i would go for the 4790k and maybe upgrade that psu. 

 

14 minutes ago, Elfuego said:

4790K and PSU gets my vote.

Eh, I know it's not the best, but from what I understand the modular CX line is a little better than the non-modulars.  I've never had any problems with it, no coil whine, surges, or heat.  With only the one card, I should only be around the 50% capacity, so it's not like I'm pushing it very hard. I bought it on sale for $35, and it's served me pretty well for a year or so.  

 

I've wanted the 4790K since before skylake even came out, haha.  And it would be much easier to swap out too. 

 

On the other hand,

 

13 minutes ago, Enderman said:

i would get the 6600k so that you have the latest platform

then upgrade to an i7 in 1-3 years whenever the new 1151 CPUs get released

 

the 6600k will be better for most programs and games, but slightly worse than the i7 for rendering stuff

it will still be very fast at 3d modeling and editing, just not AS fast

That is similar thinking to what put the idea in my head.  The single threaded performance is better, and if it takes an extra 10 seconds to edit something...big deal.  But it is an extra $65.  I do like the idea of Kaby Lake being on the same 1151 socket though, I hadn't known about that. 

[Elfuego]

2 minutes ago, ace_cheaply said:

 

Eh, I know it's not the best, but from what I understand the modular CX line is a little better than the non-modulars.  I've never had any problems with it, no coil whine, surges, or heat.  With only the one card, I should only be around the 50% capacity, so it's not like I'm pushing it very hard. I bought it on sale for $35, and it's served me pretty well for a year or so.  

 

 

That is similar thinking to what put the idea in my head.  The single threaded performance is better, and if it takes an extra 10 seconds to edit something...big deal.  But it is an extra $65.  I do like the idea of Kaby Lake being on the same 1151 socket though, I hadn't known about that. 

 

I put one in as a stopgap for a friend (non modular admittedly), after ~8 months it went bad. I have put plenty in office PC type things but I would not put one in a gaming PC out of choice. Even at 50% load. Also you won't see any noticeable diff between i7-4790K @ 4.5Ghz and a skylake at 4.3-4.4Ghz. For gaming IPC is like 2-5% for skylake and the hyperthreading will help in some games so its kinda meh for me.

[Enderman]

3 minutes ago, ace_cheaply said:

That is similar thinking to what put the idea in my head.  The single threaded performance is better, and if it takes an extra 10 seconds to edit something...big deal.  But it is an extra $65.  I do like the idea of Kaby Lake being on the same 1151 socket though, I hadn't known about that. 

$65 is quite a lot more

where are you buying from? sometimes places jack up the price when stock is low or on backorder

because the i5 should definitely cost less than the 4790k new

 

and yeah unless you're rendering stuff that takes hours, the difference between the i5 and i7 wont be a lot

[papapoi]

if its only a year old then its probably ok, you could alternatively go with the 6600k and u will have parts that you could put into an another build or sell on ebay as a bundle  or separately to recover some of the cost or maybe even go with a 6700k

[ace_cheaply]

3 minutes ago, Elfuego said:

 

I put one in as a stopgap for a friend (non modular admittedly), after ~8 months it went bad. I have put plenty in office PC type things but I would not put one in a gaming PC out of choice. Even at 50% load. Also you won't see any noticeable diff between i7-4790K @ 4.5Ghz and a skylake at 4.3-4.4Ghz. For gaming IPC is like 2-5% for skylake and the hyperthreading will help in some games so its kinda meh for me.

Yeah, I've definitely heard a lot of stories similar to that one...But most of them on the non modular line.  The cx550m as an 8.4 at JonnyGuru, and then the 750 only has a 7.1.  He never reviewed the 600M, but techpowerup did, and they found mostly a lack of connectors to be the downfall, but still rated it a decent value.  I plan on upgrading it eventually so if I find a good deal, I'll probably go for it.  As far as ipc goes, on the DigitalFoundry benchmarks, and the few other's i've seen, the 6600K overclocked gets a consistent 5-15fps better in GTAV, Witcher 3, and Far Cry 4.  Three of my favorite games, albeit I won't have the Titan X to go with it. 

 

7 minutes ago, Enderman said:

$65 is quite a lot more

where are you buying from? sometimes places jack up the price when stock is low or on backorder

because the i5 should definitely cost less than the 4790k new

 

and yeah unless you're rendering stuff that takes hours, the difference between the i5 and i7 wont be a lot

Well, that's including the price of getting a new MOBO, and 8GB of DDR4 it would be $65 more for all of it than to just get the 4790k. 

 

1 minute ago, papapoi said:

if its only a year old then its probably ok, you could alternatively go with the 6600k and u will have parts that you could put into an another build or sell on ebay as a bundle  or separately to recover some of the cost or maybe even go with a 6700k

Another option I was thinking about too. I'd like to build my wife a rig for her little photoshop projects. 

[Moonzy]

if you dont have core components yet

get the latest platform `-`

 

a bit of autocad work on an i5 is no problem lol

 

that psu though `-`

replace it if its more than 2 years old

[ace_cheaply]

1 minute ago, Moonzy said:

if you dont have core components yet

get the latest platform `-`

 

a bit of autocad work on an i5 is no problem lol

 

that psu though `-`

replace it if its more than 2 years old

I have the MOBO and RAM for the 4790K already.  It would cost $65 more for the complete skylake bundle with a 6600k.

[Moonzy]

1 minute ago, ace_cheaply said:

I have the MOBO and RAM for the 4790K already.  It would cost $65 more for the complete skylake bundle with a 6600k.

well i personally would go for the i7 4790k

a bit of gaming performance wouldnt matter

 

and DX12 should favour i7 more than i5

[Enderman]

4 minutes ago, ace_cheaply said:

Well, that's including the price of getting a new MOBO, and 8GB of DDR4 it would be $65 more for all of it than to just get the 4790k. 

oh, i missed that part about what you already had

 

does that price include the selling of your old parts?

[ace_cheaply]

3 minutes ago, Enderman said:

oh, i missed that part about what you already had

 

does that price include the selling of your old parts?

No, I would most likely keep the old stuff and probably buy a second hand i5, or e3 1231 v3, and give it to my wife for her hobbies. 

 

 

[ace_cheaply]

4 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

well i personally would go for the i7 4790k

a bit of gaming performance wouldnt matter

 

and DX12 should favour i7 more than i5

I thought DX12 would lesson cpu overhead, making the I7 less important.  The cpu overhead in the DX11 drivers was killing performance, i think. At least with AMD cards. 

[Moonzy]

4 minutes ago, ace_cheaply said:

I thought DX12 would lesson cpu overhead, making the I7 less important.  The cpu overhead in the DX11 drivers was killing performance, i think. At least with AMD cards. 

DX12 will utilise multithreaded cpu cores better iirc

 

yea, amd cards have higher cpu overhead in dx11 lol