First Gen i7 extreme vs 6th Gen i5

[grilledcheez]

I'm sure this topic is beaten to death or topics similar to this one probably.

I'm running a first gen. i7 975 extreme overclocked to 4.0GHz on a X58 P6T MoBo. It's over 6 years old now. Only been upgrading my HDDs/SSDs and GPUs over the years.

Thinking with all the new feature sets in the new Z170 chipset and Skylake, maybe a good time to upgrade.

Anyways, I had a bit of a discussion going on another forum, but didn't get all the answers I was looking for. So, it sounds like the new Skylake is probably has roughly 30% better performance over my i7. The thing is, it seems like my i7 is still a beast, not even really taxed by Witcher 3 (My processor is slightly lower or slightly higher than minimum recommended CPU depending on the benchmarks you look at.), but again, looking at new feature sets it looks nice.

I was thinking about getting the i5-6600k, but it's only 4 threads vs the 8 threads in my i7 first gen. Now I'm not really an application guy so bare with me here. For gaming it sounds like the i5 would be fine, but I'm wondering if that would affect tracks when recording music that has multiple tracks?

I'm not sure if that is a real concern or not. I'm not sure what types of apps would actually make use of all 8 threads, or if I even use them. I guess I could just wait for the i7-6700k to be more readily available, but I was hoping to save a few bucks and just go with the i5-6600k... just trying to make sure I won't be disappointed.

Just looking for thoughts/discussions/suggestions.

Thanks!

 

[TechyInAZ]

Gaming while playing music simultaneously is very easy for any core i3 or i5. So you'll be fine.

I'd defiantly upgrade single core performance is probably in the 40% range, and overclocked will increase that even more!

 

[Y0GI]

Why do you want to upgrade? If your present system is "not even really taxed by Witcher 3", then what is the problem?

Do you have problems recording music or what??

Yogi

 

[grilledcheez]

Gaming while playing music simultaneously is very easy for any core i3 or i5. So you'll be fine.

I'd defiantly upgrade single core performance is probably in the 40% range, and overclocked will increase that even more!

Oh no, not playing music at the same time. I meant, recording music, multiple tracks. Not at the same time... that would be difficult.

 

[Eximo]

30% seems a little low to me. But the first gen 900 series are still pretty decent chips. I believe the 975 ends up as a tier 2 processor, and at 4.0 probably peaks its way into tier 1. General rule of thumb is to not replace a component until there is a 3 tier gap to see noticeable improvements.

If you want to stick to X series boards and chips the i7-5820k has 12 threads, DDR4, and the boards have a lot of new features that weren't available. NVMe, native Intel SATA III, PCIe Gen 3 just like the Z170 boards.

Haswell, Haswell-E, Skylake, all going to have newer instructions sets that might make your editing run faster in general and not just due to core/thread count and IPC. That would be software dependent.

Really depends on your budget I guess. Either way you are looking at Chip, Motherboard, Ram, and possibly OS. And if you wanted to pick up an M.2 drive or something along the way.

 

[grilledcheez]

Why do you want to upgrade? If your present system is "not even really taxed by Witcher 3", then what is the problem?

Do you have problems recording music or what??

Yogi

No, I'm looking at the new feature sets for the upgrade really. SATA III, PCIE 3.0, M.2, DX12 support (not sure if that matters with a DX12 dedicated GPU), USB 3/3.1/Type-C.

My main concern was going from 8 threads to 4 threads, if that could impact recording music with multiple tracks at all. I'm not even sure if my recording apps really even use all the threads.

I wasn't sure if the performance improvements would be enough if I had less threads.

 

[grilledcheez]

30% seems a little low to me. But the first gen 900 series are still pretty decent chips. I believe the 975 ends up as a tier 2 processor, and at 4.0 probably peaks its way into tier 1. General rule of thumb is to not replace a component until there is a 3 tier gap to see noticeable improvements.

If you want to stick to X series boards and chips the i7-5820k has 12 threads, DDR4, and the boards have a lot of new features that weren't available. NVMe, native Intel SATA III, PCIe Gen 3 just like the Z170 boards.

Haswell, Haswell-E, Skylake, all going to have newer instructions sets that might make your editing run faster in general and not just due to core/thread count and IPC. That would be software dependent.

Really depends on your budget I guess. Either way you are looking at Chip, Motherboard, Ram, and possibly OS. And if you wanted to pick up an M.2 drive or something along the way.

This is the kind of discussion I'm looking for here. I'm looking at the latest features. Haswell-E seems like a good upgrade as well. My 8GB is starting to kill me on my current setup, easily remedied with going to 16GBs, but weighing the upgrade option, thinking instead of more upgrades to current setup, just maybe jump to newer build altogether for the features.

It is somewhat in budget for me to do a the i7-5820k, probably nothing higher than that, would like to stick to around the price of an i5-6600k, in the end I know I would be happy with an i7, but in the financial department, I worry I would not be as happy with an i5-6600k.

As much as I still like my i7- 975 extreme and the job it's doing. Feature wise it'd be nice to upgrade to Skylake or even the Haswell-E for that matter.

I don't think the Haswell-E processors have DX12 support, but I'm not sure that's an issue if you have a dedicated GPU that supports DX12, correct?

 

[johnnyb105]

This is stock clocks according to cpu boss

http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i7-965-vs-Intel-Core-i5-6600K

You still have a very viable cpu on your hands..

 

[Eximo]

Haswell-E doesn't come with a GPU at all, so that is correct.

Yes, the GPU, and more importantly the software, have to support DX12. It will not make a difference to any of the available games. I like to point this out every time as well. The consoles don't support DX12 completely, so we are stuck with DX11.2 for a while. Just like we were stuck with DX9 during the 360 and PS3 days for most game titles. Pretty much only PC exclusives, or game companies that cater to PC players like Epic and Crytek, will have support for DX12.

I don't think you would be disappointed either way. Not like you have to retire the 975 system, you could keep it around with some minor purchases.

I have an entire i7-950 system on loan at the moment.

 

[mcnumpty23]

test how well your current cpu is utilising 8 threads

run a task see the exact time it takes

turn off hyperthreading and run the exact same task--compare the times

i would assume if hyperthreading is of benefit it should do it faster with it on

though never tried this to see myself

 

[grilledcheez]

Haswell-E doesn't come with a GPU at all, so that is correct.

Yes, the GPU, and more importantly the software, have to support DX12. It will not make a difference to any of the available games. I like to point this out every time as well. The consoles don't support DX12 completely, so we are stuck with DX11.2 for a while. Just like we were stuck with DX9 during the 360 and PS3 days for most game titles. Pretty much only PC exclusives, or game companies that cater to PC players like Epic and Crytek, will have support for DX12.

I don't think you would be disappointed either way. Not like you have to retire the 975 system, you could keep it around with some minor purchases.

I have an entire i7-950 system on loan at the moment.

Touche, they don't come with GPUs. Indeed, for DX12, I would just need to upgrade my OS. I didn't even consider that most games will be stuck at 11.2 because of consoles. That's a good point. My plan was to transplant the MoBo/CPU/RAM into my wife's computer and upgrade the guts in mine. Take the guts in hers and make a small form factor PC, maybe make it a little server or something.

 

[grilledcheez]

test how well your current cpu is utilising 8 threads

run a task see the exact time it takes

turn off hyperthreading and run the exact same task--compare the times

i would assume if hyperthreading is of benefit it should do it faster with it on

though never tried this to see myself

That's not a bad idea, if I saw a noticeable difference, that would tell me at least whether the threads matter or not for that application.

 

[Y0GI]

test how well your current cpu is utilising 8 threads

run a task see the exact time it takes

turn off hyperthreading and run the exact same task--compare the times

i would assume if hyperthreading is of benefit it should do it faster with it on

though never tried this to see myself

That's not a bad idea, if I saw a noticeable difference, that would tell me at least whether the threads matter or not for that application.

Why not just go to the website for the maker of the recording software and see what their "Minimum System Requirements" are?

Yogi

 

[mcnumpty23]

test how well your current cpu is utilising 8 threads

run a task see the exact time it takes

turn off hyperthreading and run the exact same task--compare the times

i would assume if hyperthreading is of benefit it should do it faster with it on

though never tried this to see myself

That's not a bad idea, if I saw a noticeable difference, that would tell me at least whether the threads matter or not for that application.

worth trying just to see

obviously make it a pretty rigorous task not something too easy

 

[rgd1101]

skylake will be "easier" to overclock too. HT avg about 50% of a real core thread anyway.

Got a 1st gen i7 too. Going to upgrade this winter to a skylake too.
Depend on what I getting for dad, he need a laptop and want a new desktop. i5 6600k for sure, i7 6700k maybe.

 

[grilledcheez]

Thanks for all the suggestions and info guys. This will definitely help me make up my mind as to which direction to go. Gave me more to consider! Much appreciated!

 

[Cake__876]

You've probably already made up your mind on what to do but I'll give my point anyway...

The i7 975 has a much older manufacturing process of 45nm whereas the i5 6600k, a possible replacement CPU you mentioned, has a newer manufacturing process of 14nm. When run the i7 is kicking out 4GHz creating a certain amount of heat. The i5 can also produce 4GHz when overclocked but would create much less heat, therefore allowing you to overclock even more until you reach its maximum potential (4.64Ghz, I believe).

The manufacturing process of the i5 means that the processor does not need much cooling at all, which may save you money in the long run. In addition, the i5 gives out 10x more performance per watt of power consumed. Furthermore the i5 will not meet heat walls whereas I imagine the i7 will.

Overall, if there's nothing wrong with your i7, keep it. However just remember that you will probably need to upgrade sometime in the near future so why not now?

 

[grilledcheez]

That is also some good info. You are correct though, I've already built my new system. Ended up going with an i7-6700K back in October after all. With my kid on the way I ended up trading in my sports coupe, which I heavily modified. Ended up getting some good coin back from selling my parts off and used that to build my new system. I had a friend at work who use to own a computer shop and still had ties with the distributors and got a good deal on the i7-6700K for both of us.

New Parts in my rig:
Gigabyte GA-Z170X-Gaming 7
Intel i7-6700k
G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 16GB DDR4 2400MHz
MSI GTX 980 GAMING 4G
CRUCIAL BX100 1TB
Corsair H100i GTX

Old parts I kept:
2x 1TB WD Black Hard Drive in Raid 0
Cooler Master HAF 932
Corsair TX750W

 

[Lucky Monkey]

That is also some good info. You are correct though, I've already built my new system. Ended up going with an i7-6700K back in October after all. With my kid on the way I ended up trading in my sports coupe, which I heavily modified. Ended up getting some good coin back from selling my parts off and used that to build my new system. I had a friend at work who use to own a computer shop and still had ties with the distributors and got a good deal on the i7-6700K for both of us.

New Parts in my rig:
Gigabyte GA-Z170X-Gaming 7
Intel i7-6700k
G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 16GB DDR4 2400MHz
MSI GTX 980 GAMING 4G
CRUCIAL BX100 1TB
Corsair H100i GTX

Old parts I kept:
2x 1TB WD Black Hard Drive in Raid 0
Cooler Master HAF 932
Corsair TX750W

Why not spend a little more for 980ti, i think gtx 980 is not worth buying atm.

 

[grilledcheez]

Why not spend a little more for 980ti, i think gtx 980 is not worth buying atm.

I had actually already bought the 980 in July. It was just too much to buy the 980 Ti, canadian price for the card is outrageous, mind you 980 was still too high as well and I wanted something better than the 970.