How trustworthy are the CPU benchmark tests?

[King_Edward]

Hello,
In about 2 months I am going to build a gaming PC worth between £1500 and £2000.
I am not much of an IT specialist and for picking the best CPU I use this website http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html
The everyday of my PC would be a few hours of games like Black Desert Online and Dark Souls 3 and working with Solidworks, Matlab and several other engineering and design programs.

Do you think starting from the top CPUs of this benchmark list is the best way to determine what CPU is the best in Performance/Money rate?

Another thing that I found from this benchmark list is CPU i7-5820k. Its score/cost is higher than lets say i7-6700k. Yet there are a lot of people who suggest using i7-6700k and barely anyone who would use i7-5820k. Can anyone give me an idea why it is so?

 

[CTurbo]

Those benchmark score can be misleading considering they only represent what a cpu is capable of when all cores are used 100% which is pretty much rarely going to happen in real world usages unless you're into heavy productivity. If you're gaming, you would get better information by clicking that sites single thread performance tab. That's why the 6700k is recommended over the 5820k. The 6700k's four very strong cores fair better in gaming than the 5820k's weaker 6 cores. A dual core i3 performs better than an 8 core FX8350 because the i3's 2 cores are like 50-60% stronger. Basically, fewer strong cores beats many weak cores.

 

[helpstar]

you can directly look at benchmarks on the solidworks homepage.

cpubenchmark alone should not be trusted

 

[Guest]

Hello,
In about 2 months I am going to build a gaming PC worth between £1500 and £2000.
I am not much of an IT specialist and for picking the best CPU I use this website http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html
The everyday of my PC would be a few hours of games like Black Desert Online and Dark Souls 3 and working with Solidworks, Matlab and several other engineering and design programs.

Do you think starting from the top CPUs of this benchmark list is the best way to determine what CPU is the best in Performance/Money rate?

Another thing that I found from this benchmark list is CPU i7-5820k. Its score/cost is higher than lets say i7-6700k. Yet there are a lot of people who suggest using i7-6700k and barely anyone who would use i7-5820k. Can anyone give me an idea why it is so?

To add to what CTurbo had to say about the strength of a cpu's single core performance, the discussion is often between what one needs and what one wants. For some need is all that is important since it deals mostly with the present. While want is generally concerned with more flexibility for now and one's possible future needs. I usually fit in the want group.

The Intel i5 6600K (4 core) or i7 6700K (4 core/8 threads) processors fill the need for many because they have fast single cores and are relatively inexpensive compared to the Broadwell-e Intel processors (which replaced the Haswell-e line that has the 5820K in it), the 6800K (6 core/12 threads), 6850K (6 core/12 threads), 6900K (8 core/16 threads), 6950X (10 core/20 threads).

However, those who may want more flexibility for now and the future (will they become a YouTube video content creator, for example?) or for those who actually have a strong need for the power of these processors (those doing video rendering, coding now.) these Broadwell-e and Haswell-e processors are the best for multi-tasking work where absolute speed of a single core is not as important as the number of cores, themselves. To give you a simple example aside from video editing and content creation, I have a chess playing program that can play chess much better than humans, and when evaluating a chess game, can use as many processors as my computer has available to it. The more cores the faster it can analyze a game. The number of cores matter more than the top speed of a single core. Massive power becomes more important than speed.

So, if modern games will be the greatest stress you put on your computer and you have no desire to branch out into heavy multi-core use, then the i5 6600K or i7 6700K are excellent choices. However, if you think you may have a need for more multi-core power, or just want it because you aren't sure what you will be doing in the next five or six years, then the Broadwell-e line of i7 processors are there. The i5 6600K and i7 6700K use a different motherboard than the Broadwell-e i7s, which is another reason picking the best processor for you - what you want or need - is important.

 

[lodders]

A friend of mine runs matlab on his i5 laptop (only 2 cores!). It takes a couple of hours to compile, but it still works.
A lot of people out there are gaming using i3 processors.

You don't really need 6 cores, but your computer is more responsive if you have them
Therefore the question is, how impatient are you?

As for me, I am a cheapskate. I go for maximum value for money, which IMHO is a fast i5, a samsung evo 850 ssd and about £200 worth of GPU. A PC based on those specs can be had for under £1000.
As an alternative, consider a xeon based PC. The processors are similar to an i7, but tuned for rock solid reliability, and without the onboard graphics.