6 core Haswell or 4 core Skylake?

Tamatinz

Reputable
Jan 18, 2016
7
0
4,510
This is for a high end gamin / photo editing build that will have a Nvidia 980Ti. I am trying to workout what will be the pros / cons with going with the Haswell / Skylake option? I have talked to a number of 'experts' and there seems to be no definitive answer! While I was leaning towards the Haswell I am a little concerned that I may be missing newer features on the Skylake (even though I don't necessarily know what those might be!).
Any clarification or pointers would be helpful.
Cheers!
 
Solution
Pickup a 980TI and overclock your CPU and youll be satisfied for more time to come. The x99 platform is more expensive, even with the premium of the skylake processors right now. If you still decide to upgrade, You can get a nice mid-range motherboard for $250+. Anything from ASUS, Gigabyte or MSI would do. I tend to need and want the best of the best, so my next build will likely have the MSI Godlike board but that runs around $500+ :)
It just depends on what kind of workload youll be doing. Youll be happy with either choice, but if your doing cpu intensive workloads, youll benefit more with the additional cores/threads. I personally went Skylake 6700K and am very happy but wouldnt of minded going the X99 route and had the expandability it offers over the skylake. Skylake is newer, has the faster clocks, lower power consumption etc. However, x99 has more PCI lanes, more memory dimms, hexacore+ processors etc. Im intrigued by the future processors X99 will offer, but I believe the skylake platform wont disappoint either. I just may build me a 2nd system and have both. My 6700k is blazing fast, overclocks quite well and im happy with the features my motherboard offers.

Read this if you are using Photoshop/lightroom, this may help you understand the support of multicore/ multi-threaded processors

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Adobe-Photoshop-CC-CPU-Multi-threading-Performance-625/#Conclusion
 
The 5820k is on the x99 platform, and it is Intel's HEDT platform for maximum flexibility. Most gamers choose it if they want more than two GPUs (though that is possible with some ultra-high end Skylake boards too), but it can also be used for other expansions as well.

For gaming, you'd certainly be happy with either....but if you have media editing in your normal workflow, the 6 cores and twice the cache is well worth it. Skylake does have some advantages over the Haswell Refresh line, but the Haswell-E negates most of those with it's 28-40 PCIe lanes.

The m.2 slot(s) will burn into your PCIe allocation (both being PCI 3.0 x4), but you have more of them to work with. Skylake runs them through the DMI connection freeing up PCIe lanes, which is important as you only have 16 to work with. Skylake also has USB 3.1 in the mix too, but again, many Haswell-E boards come with that or an add-in card standard.....again eating up PCIe lanes, but you have them to work with (28 in the case of the 5820k).

What it really comes down to is flexibility of the platform, and x99 offers that. Being that you're right on the cusp of purchasing though, I'd consider waiting just a month or so for your purchase decision. Broadwell-E is coming out, and manufacturers have signaled that they will be coming out with new x99 boards to welcome the next HEDT chips. Not that you need one of those boards or the Broadwell-E's (you don't), but prices tend to soften right at that time, and would be great to hit a deal.
 
Wow thanks Geekwad and Gamer1985 especially for your indepth answers! Do you have an X99 motherboard recommendation? Probably mid spec to keep the price down a bit as it climbing rapidly!

Also my current 3 year old rig is
i7 3770K (not overclocked)
ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. P8Z77-V LK (LGA1155) motherboard
32GB DDR3 RAM 9-9-9-24
2 x Nividia 2GB GTX680s in SLI.

Do you think I will see much realworld improvement with the new system in both games and editing?

Cheers!
 
Pickup a 980TI and overclock your CPU and youll be satisfied for more time to come. The x99 platform is more expensive, even with the premium of the skylake processors right now. If you still decide to upgrade, You can get a nice mid-range motherboard for $250+. Anything from ASUS, Gigabyte or MSI would do. I tend to need and want the best of the best, so my next build will likely have the MSI Godlike board but that runs around $500+ :)
 
Solution


For boards, I concur with the above. I myself use an Asus R5E 3.1, but I think this was outside of what you were looking to spend. Anything Asus would be great though, but almost any of the other brands you recognize would be more than acceptable.

Simply putting the 980ti into your existing rig will make the most noticeable difference in games, but if you compared that rig (upgraded GPU) to a Skylake or Haswell-E with that GPU, you wouldn't have dramatic difference in games. Overclock your Ivy and it would close the gap even more.

Heavy workload could be a different story though. You would certainly notice your time spent waiting go down, but it would be up to you to decide if what you're experiencing is not acceptable. Just as general advice though, you may start with GPU and then take it from there.