What CPU should I get for gaming?

[W01Fi3]

I've been having a little debate in my head ever since the new Kaby Lake cpus dropped, and that is should I get a 7700(K), 6700K, 6600K or 7600K? I currently have a i5-6500 and I'm already looking for an upgrade.

My build:

• Motherboard: Gigabyte Z170XP-SLI
• CPU: i5-6500 3.2GHz Quad-Core
• Ram: 2x8 GB DDR4-3000 Ripjaws
• GPU: GTX-1060 GAMING X 3GB
• PSU: EVGA Supernova 550 GS

Now games I'll play would include Unturned, maybe Subnautica, Payday, Arma 3 and Planetside 2. I might try to stream some games using OBS. Should I go for an i7 7700K/6700K or even consider the 6600K or 7600K? Is it worth considering the 7700K? Will computers get as simple as buying a console (nope)?

 

Edit: If it is my GPU that is the problem, what should I get?

[YaBoiHuni]

i5 is totally fine, believe me I used to game on an AMD fx-8350, an i5 will do the job. Unless you have the money to kill on an i7. How much is your budget?

[jj9987]

The only upgrade you have is to an i7, either 7700k or 6700k. But that is only viable if you actually play games or do stuff, that make use of additional cores. Otherwise, the gain is only clock-speed wise.

 

Other than that, I don't see a reason to upgrade, better invest it in somewhere else - some peripherals, a chair, new cooler or something.

[-rascal-]

** This is considering that you already HAVE a Z170 motherboard **

 

You are not going to see any substantial upgrade by going from your Skylake i5 to a Kabylake variant.

i5-6500 to i5-6600K or i5-7600K is not going to be a huuuge change.

 

If you need the extra threads, then the only option that makes any remote sense is the i7-7700K or i7-6700K.

Given how the i7-7700K is the same price or ($10 more, depending on where you look) as the i7-6700K, there no reason to pick up the i7-6700K...

 

Otherwise, to gain any more performance benefits, you'll need to switch over to the X99 (LGA 2011-3) platform.

[rn8686]

You dont really need to upgrade, you wont really see much of a performance boost from doing so. I would look more at your GPU, your shouldnt have bought the 3Gb. 

[Narnash]

Take a i7 ... which ever is cheaper for you. For streaming you really want that nice hyperthreading.

 

If you have the choice between a i7 6700k or a i7 7700 (non K) at the same price, take the I7 6700K you would benefit performancewise more by bit of overclocking than by the "newer" CPU. 

 

 

But an upgrade make only sense if you want to go for streaming or video production otherwise is your current i5 fine.

[Waqas409]

The games you mentioned above will run perfectly well on your current CPU.
I don't see the reason why you want to upgrade.
Tho from your current CPU, there is only an i7 CPU option left which you can buy. 

[W01Fi3]

13 hours ago, CR3DITorD3BIT said:

i5 is totally fine, believe me I used to game on an AMD fx-8350, an i5 will do the job. Unless you have the money to kill on an i7. How much is your budget?

I can buy any processor that's not Xeon or Extreme

13 hours ago, -rascal- said:

** This is considering that you already HAVE a Z170 motherboard **

 

You are not going to see any substantial upgrade by going from your Skylake i5 to a Kabylake variant.

i5-6500 to i5-6600K or i5-7600K is not going to be a huuuge change.

 

If you need the extra threads, then the only option that makes any remote sense is the i7-7700K or i7-6700K.

Given how the i7-7700K is the same price or ($10 more, depending on where you look) as the i7-6700K, there no reason to pick up the i7-6700K...

 

Otherwise, to gain any more performance benefits, you'll need to switch over to the X99 (LGA 2011-3) platform.

I do have a Z170 motherboard but wouldn't switching to a X99 LGA-2011 mean I would have to use an extreme processor? Is the cache and cores really worth it? I don't really want to swap to extreme. I see a youtuber has a 6700K and a GTX970(970s are good, aren't they) so I thought I would upgrade my cpu to a 7700K since they dropped and have similar prices. 

13 hours ago, rn8686 said:

You dont really need to upgrade, you wont really see much of a performance boost from doing so. I would look more at your GPU, your shouldnt have bought the 3Gb. 

Something I really don't get is that my gpu is never at full usage, its fan is always at 0RPM, it's temp is always comfortable and it never goes past like 50% usage for GRAM or clock speed. I don't know what's wrong. And also Planetside sometimes has to render 200+ people in a base, this results into my CPU usage spiking, and thus I lag to 25 FPS, so I thought that's what needed an upgrade. Also in Arma 3, again my GPU isn't being used much for some reason but I still get lag spikes and never go above 50 FPS in servers.

13 hours ago, Narnash said:

Take a i7 ... which ever is cheaper for you. For streaming you really want that nice hyperthreading.

 

If you have the choice between a i7 6700k or a i7 7700 (non K) at the same price, take the I7 6700K you would benefit performancewise more by bit of overclocking than by the "newer" CPU. 

 

 

But an upgrade make only sense if you want to go for streaming or video production otherwise is your current i5 fine.

I don't want to overclock my CPUs, I just want a stock CPU for now, but maybe later.

Would it change anything if I set the encoder option on OBS to GPU? Does this mean it would use the GPU for video rendering instead of my CPU so I wouldn't need hyper-threading?

13 hours ago, Waqas409 said:

The games you mentioned above will run perfectly well on your current CPU.
I don't see the reason why you want to upgrade.
Tho from your current CPU, there is only an i7 CPU option left which you can buy. 

Planetside 2 sometimes has to render 200+ people in one small area blasting the CPU usage and as I said above, my GPU is never being used. I don't know what is the problem and what to upgrade.

 

 

The main questions I have at this point in time is: 

• Why isn't my GPU ever working over 50%? I want it to! D:
• So my CPU doesn't need hyper-threading since games don't use that many threads, so should I go with the i5-7600K?
• Is it my CPU's fault for the low FPS, my GPU or the lack of an SSD? Planetside 2 would have lot's of players and things to keep track of.
• If the GPU is the problem, what's a recommendation? 1070? 1080? I wasn't planning on swapping the GPU.
• Is it ok to use AMD GPU with Intel?
• Should I swap to AMD?