What is the Best CPU for Gaming?

[Willovax]

     Hello, my name is Willovax and I am going to be building a dream PC specifically for gaming, and I am currently looking for the best processor. From my own research, I found the core I5 6600K to be the best option from multiple YouTube videos, and some other websites. Although I still do not know if this is the best option, and the only requirement I have is that it has to be an Intel processor. So that is why I am here. What are your opinions on the best CPU's for gaming as of now? Thank you.  

[minibois]

Some games take advantage of the extra threads presented by CPU's like the i7 6700K (4 core, 8 threads), but more often than not a good quad core (like the mentioned i5 6600K) will do good. Especially with a good overclock on it.

[Julian5]

budget?

[TidaLWaveZ]

Absolute best - 5960x/6950x depending on overclock

 

Bang for buck - 6700k

 

WaveZ choice - 5820k

[aisle9]

1. What type of games are you playing?

2. What GPU are you interested in pairing with it?

3. What's your overall budget?

4. Why Intel? If you're on a tight budget, the Athlon X4 860K and APUs are solid options.

[Willovax]

1 minute ago, Julian5 said:

budget?

I have an infinite budget.

[aisle9]

1 minute ago, Willovax said:

I have an infinite budget.

i7-6700K with dual 1080s in SLI.

[HKZeroFive]

'Best' would be the i7 6700K but the i5 6600K should be more than an adequate since hyperthreading isn't used frequently within games.

2 minutes ago, TidaLWaveZ said:

Absolute best - 5960x/6950x depending on overclock

No, the i7 6700K remains the 'best' CPU performance-wise for gaming.

 

 

[Willovax]

2 minutes ago, aisle9 said:

1. What type of games are you playing?

2. What GPU are you interested in pairing with it?

3. What's your overall budget?

4. Why Intel? If you're on a tight budget, the Athlon X4 860K and APUs are solid options.

1: CS:GO, SMITE, Garry's Mod, GTA 5 ect.

2: 2 MSI GTX 1080s in SLI (the new one)

3: Infinite.

4 As I said, infanate. 

 

[alexyy]

5 minutes ago, TidaLWaveZ said:

Absolute best - 5960x/6950x depending on overclock

 

Bang for buck - 6700k

 

WaveZ choice - 5820k

 

Calling a 6700k bang for your buck is actually beyond retarded. 

[Djole123]

A Xeon?

[Virtual01]

It basically comes down to architecture and clock speed. Right now the 6700K is the best. While it's still largely unconfirmed if >4 cores has a meaningful impact in DX12/Vulkan games in real-world scenarios, it's a good choice and you have no real reason for getting anything higher unless you want a multi-GPU setup.

 

The reason why the 6700K is the winner for now is because it has the highest clock speed out of all the high-end i7 processors, while having the requisite number of cores to run demanding games (4). You'll notice that CPUs with more cores also have lower clock speeds, which often leads to decreased performance when it comes to gaming. This is because a lot of games are still heavily single-threaded, meaning that the bulk of the operations are done on one thread or core. Because of this it is beneficial to have the most powerful single core performance you can muster.

 

That being said, the 6600K is pretty much just as capable but you'll have to OC it some to get it to the level of the 6700K. You also might lost a bit of performance on games that can utilize hyperthreading, but it's a very small amount.

 

 

[Matias_Chambers]

12 minutes ago, TidaLWaveZ said:

Absolute best - 5960x/6950x depending on overclock

 

Bang for buck - 6700k

 

WaveZ choice - 5820k

The 6700K will still beat the 5960X/6950X due to better IPC. I would say the best bang for the buck is the 6600K.

[Dark]

9 minutes ago, Djole123 said:

A Xeon?

Best?  No.

 
Some games struggle with core counts greater than 8 (GTA-V for example).

Also, Xeons are usually clocked lower.

[Matias_Chambers]

6700K.

[Electronics Wizardy]

16 minutes ago, Willovax said:

I have an infinite budget.

no you don't

[typographie]

Technically the best CPU for gaming is probably the i7-6700K… it's as good as the 6600K and occasionally edges it out, and it's higher clock speed and faster architecture usually makes it as good or better than Haswell-E/Broadwell-E in games.

 

Where it gets a little hazier is that basically everything from the i5-6600K and up all perform within a few percentage points of each other in most games, and so the i5-6600K is probably the most reasonable option for a pure gaming system unless money is no object.

[themaniac]

for games if the game only uses 2 cores then a heavily overclocked skylake pentium(with the new asrock boards if intel doesn't kill them), if the game uses at most 4 cores then a heavily overclocked skylake i5, and if the game uses more the 4 cores then a a heavily overclocked skylake i7/ extreme edition broadwell/haswell i7(not sure if the skylake extreme edition i7's have been released or not)

[Willovax]

3 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

no you don't

I was exaggerating, but I do have ALOT of money. 

[TidaLWaveZ]

16 minutes ago, HKZeroFive said:

'Best' would be the i7 6700K but the i5 6600K should be more than an adequate since hyperthreading isn't used frequently within games.

No, the i7 6700K remains the 'best' CPU performance-wise for gaming.

 

 

True, I have a mindset that everyone with a high end PC will use it for more than just gaming even though OP blatantly said specifically for gaming.

[TidaLWaveZ]

24 minutes ago, alexyy said:

 

Calling a 6700k bang for your buck is actually beyond retarded. 

 

Maybe in your country jackass.

 

Which best gaming CPU is better bang for your buck?

 

As clarified earlier it's the best gaming CPU

Hyperthreading-Turbobost-Good Overclocker

You can get it under $300us

[Yoobsterlol]

3 minutes ago, Willovax said:

I was exaggerating, but I do have ALOT of money. 

What is that in actual value? 2500? 2000?6000?

 

[typographie]

2 minutes ago, Willovax said:

I was exaggerating, but I do have ALOT of money. 

Well, the i5-6600K gets recommended not because it's better than the i7's, it's because it's cheaper and still gets you 95% of the performance most of the time. If you want to spend more, my personal recommendation would be the i7-6700K for a single or dual-GPU system, or an i7-5820K if you would use the extra PCIe lanes. I don't see any gaming value in going higher than that, regardless of your budget.

[Willovax]

1 minute ago, Yoobsterlol said:

What is that in actual value? 2500? 2000?6000?

 

Well the value for the PC as a whole is $15,000 including peripherals. Although I do not see myself of using it all because I have to, and specifically for the CPU I can go basically anywhere. 

[Willovax]

1 minute ago, Willovax said:

Well the value for the PC as a whole is $15,000 including peripherals. Although I do not see myself of using it all because I have to, and specifically for the CPU I can go basically anywhere. 

Or I should say my budget for the PC as a whole is $15,000.