6500 vs 6600k

[Littlelaner]

I am wondering how much better the 6600k is compared to its non overclockable counterpart the 6500. I realize it has a frequency that runs a little faster and is overclockable (if paired with a z170), but how much of performance increase do you think one would see with a 6600k compared to 6500? Is it worth the extra cash that is needed for the z170 mobo and processor itself? 

[danrey84]

Well having had the 6600k myself it is an absolute wonderful bit of kit but I have heard great things about the 6500 and even with some motherboards and when there BIOS was updated you can still overclock the 6500.

[Zyndo]

4 minutes ago, Littlelaner said:

I am wondering how much better the 6600k is compared to its non overclockable counterpart the 6500. I realize it has a frequency that runs a little faster and is overclockable (if paired with a z170), but how much of performance increase do you think one would see with a 6600k compared to 6500? Is it worth the extra cash that is needed for the z170 mobo and processor itself? 

4.6GHz up from 3.6GHz is about a 28% increase in speed. which means you can have ~28% more potential performance. Whether or not you can make use of that performance, or how well that scales (sometimes it will be more or less than that 28% number), will depend greatly on your application and the other components in your system.

[Zyndo]

5 minutes ago, wrathoftheturkey said:

Dude.... it doesn't work that way. AT ALL 

 

No. It will ALWAYS be less. A lot less

it actually works pretty much exactly like that. when talking about the same family of processors with the same architecture, core counts, and so on, you can pretty much just compare them straight up on the frequency side of things.

 

And it may be less. if hes using a 60 hz montor and can get  80 fps on his chosen game with a 6500, he will get 0% performance increase by having a 6600k at 4.6GHz (since he already has his maximum possible performance allowed by his monitor). conversely if hes trying to do some rendering, but he usually has a crapton of background processes going, he might see more than 28% scaling since a portion of his CPU was always engaged, and now that portion is much less of his total power.

 

The only notable difference between a 6500 and a 6600k is its frequency, so when making the comparison between those two CPU's, you make the comparison straight to the frequency. You couldn't compare a 4790k (at 4.0GHZ) to a 6700k (4.8GHZ) and say the 6700k is 20% faster, but you can definitely do it with a 6500 and 6600k.

[Littlelaner]

3 hours ago, Zyndo said:

it actually works pretty much exactly like that.

 

3 hours ago, wrathoftheturkey said:

Dude.... it doesn't work that way. AT ALL 

 

I mostly game and web browse, haven't gotten into video editing, super light photo editing is sometimes done and now and then I use CAD on my computer too. 

Which processor would be better for me in your opinion, and why? I currently have a 1080p 60hz monitor (24" if that makes a diff) and plan to upgrade my monitor and get a 1440p ultrawide sometime in the future. This CPU would be paired up with a GTX 1070. 

[Zyndo]

1 minute ago, Littlelaner said:

 

 

I mostly game and web browse, haven't gotten into video editing, super light photo editing is sometimes done and now and then I use CAD on my computer too. 

Which processor would be better for me in your opinion, and why? I currently have a 1080p 60hz monitor (24" if that makes a diff) and plan to upgrade my monitor and get a 1440p ultrawide sometime in the future. This CPU would be paired up with a GTX 1070. 

CAD, from my limited understanding, benefits highly from increased cores/threads CPU's. I would recommend going a 6700 (non k) if you can. It should work out to be a similar cost to that of a Z170 board+expensive CPU cooler+ 6600k.

 

That being said a 6500 may be plenty for what you as I have no real idea what the requirements of your program is, or how much work you plan to do with it. a 6500 is certainly plenty for 60 hz gaming for a few years yet and whilst a 1070 is a bit overkill to for gaming at that resolution, it isn't necessarily a bad thing as it will allow you to play with some more fancy settings and up that antialisasing and whatnot, as well as keep you pinned to 60 fps instead of getting some dips. You could always go 6600 for a couple extra bucks as it could help you out without having to invest in everything else that comes with overclocking.

 

so that's my bid.... 6500, 6600, or 6700 for you depending on what you feel you can afford =)

[YongKang]

Well, you can always get the 6400+ a cooler + z170 mobo to BCLK oc. I would recommend that if you're tight on budget.

If you can wait till next year for Kaby Lake and Zen, maybe you can get similar performance for cheaper. That said you can always get a 6700K and be done with it in 5-6 years.

[Littlelaner]

1 minute ago, YongKang said:

Well, you can always get the 6400+ a cooler + z170 mobo to BCLK oc. I would recommend that if you're tight on budget.

If you can wait till next year for Kaby Lake and Zen, maybe you can get similar performance for cheaper. That said you can always get a 6700K and be done with it in 5-6 years.

Is the overclockability the factor that people think the 6700k will last for 5ish years? How long will the 6700 stay relevant? 

[Littlelaner]

13 minutes ago, Zyndo said:

so that's my bid.... 6500, 6600, or 6700 for you depending on what you feel you can afford =)

Thanks! I think maybe the 6700 is a good option. Do you think it is still worth it to buy a  z170 board? I probably won't be upgrading super soon, and the sockets change kind of regularly(right?) so would it even be worth it? I wouldn't plan on BCLK ocing the chip, and I don't really need features such as SLI. 

 

Also, I currently am rocking an amd stock cooler on my processor(fx-6300) and I am wondering what kind of noise comes from a stock intel cooler compared to the AMD one. 

To be fair, it could be my case fans, and GPU fans are not the quietest. But any idea what to expect there? Is it worth it to buy something like a 212 EVO or something along those lines? 

[YongKang]

Just now, Littlelaner said:

Is the overclockability the factor that people think the 6700k will last for 5ish years? How long will the 6700 stay relevant? 

It's not about overclockability but rather hyper-threading. Hyper-threading gonna be more and more utilized by applications and API in the future. There's a reason why "the whole I5 is irrelevant in few year" steam from.

[Littlelaner]

Just now, YongKang said:

It's not about overclockability but rather hyper-threading. Hyper-threading gonna be more and more utilized by applications and API in the future. There's a reason why "the whole I5 is irrelevant in few year" steam from.

I am correct in thinking the 6700 non-k has hyper-threading on board too, right?

[SnowyMus]

3 hours ago, Littlelaner said:

I am wondering how much better the 6600k is compared to its non overclockable counterpart the 6500. I realize it has a frequency that runs a little faster and is overclockable (if paired with a z170), but how much of performance increase do you think one would see with a 6600k compared to 6500? Is it worth the extra cash that is needed for the z170 mobo and processor itself? 

Depends on what your workload is. If you're doing purely CPU-intensive applications, and we'll assume there's no I/O or RAM bottlenecks, your performance will linearly with your frequency. Such an ideal scenario isn't going to happen outside of synthetic workloads, as you'll always see some diminishing returns at some point, but it can be close to linear.

 

If we're talking gaming workloads, almost all of the time, you're already going to be well above 60 FPS, even if you were CPU-bound. You won't see a huge improvement with an overclock in most games outside of something extreme like SLI at 1080p, which will make anything CPU-bound.

 

If you take this into consideration and you plan on purely gaming, the extra money should be spent somewhere else, like on a better GPU. However, if you don't include the aftermarket heatsink into the price or you were going to buy an aftermarket cooler anyway, the 6600K has better price per gigahertz, at least in the US, so it's still something to consider even if you're buying a non-overclockable board.

 

3 minutes ago, Littlelaner said:

I am correct in thinking the 6700 non-k has hyper-threading on board too, right?

All i7s have hyper threading.

[Zyndo]

6 minutes ago, Littlelaner said:

Is the overclockability the factor that people think the 6700k will last for 5ish years? How long will the 6700 stay relevant? 

well the good thing about skylake, is that kaby lake is going to be compatible as well (assuming your mobo receives a BIOS update for compatibility). You could always get a 6500/6600 now. and in a year or two or three or whenever you feel that is no longer adequate you could get a 7700 or 7700k.

 

As far as how long something will be relevant will entirely depend on what you expect your computer to do. Earlier this year I built a super rig with a 6700k and 980ti (best GPU out there at the time). I already feel the itch to get a 1080ti or titan XP when it comes out (I've even picked up a second job part time to be sure I can afford it). However before the 980ti I had a GTX 260 for 7-ish years. and I was happy with my 260 for 7 years (even though I was gaming on low-medium graphics). So your hardware will be relevant for as long as you are happy with your performance, and that is entirely subjective.

 

a 6700 could last a very long time. a 6700k at best is only going to be 15%-20% faster than a 6700, and that is assuming you spend the extra cash for an expensive cooler, and decent motherboard. That is also assuming you're comfortable running it at 4.6GHZ-4.8GHz all day long and the thermals that come with it.

 

2 minutes ago, Littlelaner said:

Thanks! I think maybe the 6700 is a good option. Do you think it is still worth it to buy a  z170 board? I probably won't be upgrading super soon, and the sockets change kind of regularly(right?) so would it even be worth it? I wouldn't plan on BCLK ocing the chip, and I don't really need features such as SLI. 

 

Also, I currently am rocking an amd stock cooler on my processor(fx-6300) and I am wondering what kind of noise comes from a stock intel cooler compared to the AMD one. 

To be fair, it could be my case fans, and GPU fans are not the quietest. But any idea what to expect there? Is it worth it to buy something like a 212 EVO or something along those lines? 

AMD cooler definitely louder than stock intel cooler. but the Intel cooler isn't exactly quiet either.

 

If you don't plan to overclock and don't plan to SLI, then there isn't a ton of reason to get a Z series baord as those are the two primary features they offer... you can get pretty much anything else on a H170,B150, or H110 board. That being said there are also some reasonably cheap Z series motherboards out there (like a Z170-HD3P from Gigabyte) that are decent and priced competitively against other H170 boards.

 

But if you're talking about getting a Z series board, an aftermarket cooler (even a cheap $20 one) for acoustic reasons, then you may as well pay a few extra bucks and get a K series chip in case you ever wanted to try it. As far as how long a motherboard/socket is going to last, there is a rare situation where 1151 is being used again in the upcoming kaby lake chips. So its very likely that your motherboard will be able to run one of those chips with a simple BIOS update. That being said, the performance difference between a 6700k and 7700k is likely not going to be all that much (probably somewhere between 5%-10%. I would recommend it if you were thinking about getting a 6500 or 6600 now because of budget limitations, then you could get a Z series board and just grab a 7700k in a year or two. But if you're considering a 6700 or 6700k the upgrade to Kaby lake is unlikely to be too significant.