i5 2500k vs i7 2600k

[Melonslise]

So I'm looking to upgrade my old core 2 quad q6600 to something newer and more capable on a very tight budget. I've finally settled on an i7 2600k, however the price of the i5 2500k has really caught my attention. The i5 is ~70 usd around here, while the i7 sits at ~160 usd. I've heard that newer games require 8 threads to run best so I'm afraid that the i5 will suffer a lot of stuttering in newer titles like For Honor and Battlefield 1, but I'm on a really tight budget so the choice is hard. Also, I won't be doing crazy overclocks, but somewhere around 4GHz should be enough for me.

 

[Ecky]

What's the total cost? Be aware that to overclock, you need a more expensive P67, Z68 or Z77 motherboard. If you go with a cheaper H or B chipset (e.g. H61) overclocking won't be available.

A Pentium G4560 runs about $60 and is very close to a (stock) 2500K in most titles. It can be used with a $45-50 H110 motherboard, which will have tons of new features a 6 year old socket 1155 board does not, as well as being brand new with a warranty.

The 2600K generally holds a 30-40% advantage over the 2500K in well-threaded titles. This is often the difference between ~45 and ~60fps in CPU-heavy games.

 

[Melonslise]

What's the total cost? Be aware that to overclock, you need a more expensive P67, Z68 or Z77 motherboard. If you go with a cheaper H or B chipset (e.g. H61) overclocking won't be available.

A Pentium G4560 runs about $60 and is very close to a (stock) 2500K in most titles. It can be used with a $45-50 H110 motherboard, which will have tons of new features a 6 year old socket 1155 board does not, as well as being brand new with a warranty.

The 2600K generally holds a 30-40% advantage over the 2500K in well-threaded titles. This is often the difference between ~45 and ~60fps in CPU-heavy games.

Looks like I won't be overclocking, because I was planning on getting a H chipset mobo.
I don't think the pentium is an option because of it's low amount of cores.
So should I get the i7 2600 then? But the price difference is still quite hefty 70 + 40 = 110 usd and 160 + 40 = 200 usd

 

[Ecky]

The Pentium is a 2 core / 4 thread CPU. Each core is something like 35-40% faster than the 2500K's cores because they're 5 generations of design newer, and hyperthreading adds another ~30% on top of that, so overall you end up with a healthy single-threaded lead with the Pentium, while being 80-90% as fast in multithreaded scenarios. Honestly, I'd say that at this point it's the better CPU. Plus, you'll be able to drop any 6th or 7th generation CPU into your board as an upgrade later.