i5-6600K or i7-6700K for gaming

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Dean S

Commendable
Aug 9, 2016
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Hi, I'm looking to upgrade my AMD FX-6300 cpu to an i5-6600k or an i7 6700k but im having trouble deciding which to go for. I will mainly use this rig for gaming and i wanted to know if the i7 maybe overkill or if its worth the upgrade. I have a EVGA GTX 1070 ftw and i dont plan on overclocking.
 
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i5-6600k is the best choice for gaming hands down.
It can saturate any single GPU without difficulty, and even support SLI/Crossfire of top of the line cards without too much effort.

i7 is, in my opinion, reserved to those who use their computers to earn money, where seconds shaved off of render times mean real dollars in your pocket.
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i5-6600k is the best choice for gaming hands down.
It can saturate any single GPU without difficulty, and even support SLI/Crossfire of top of the line cards without too much effort.

i7 is, in my opinion, reserved to those who use their computers to earn money, where seconds shaved off of render times mean real dollars in your pocket.
 
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In most cases, the minimum framerates a 6600K (or even 6500) will provide will be capable of will be in excess of 60fps, making an i7 overkill. I'd consider the i7 if you play a lot of well-threaded games or if you're looking for 120-144fps.
 
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...i5 is perfectly capable of any FPS that the GPU is capable of pushing.
if you have a GTX 1080 with an i5 you will get insane frames, but you won't get any increase in frames by switching out to a i7.
 
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I only want 60fps on 1080p so I assume the i5 is enough for that. Also the upgrade from the Amd 6300 is well worth it? Lastly what motherboard would you recommend for the i5?
 
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Although not Skylake CPU's my i7 4470K doesn't perform any better than my son's i5 4670K in any of the games we have in common. There is a very small difference in clockspeed and hyperthreading. The clockspeed disparity is something that is easily corrected, and Hyperthreading has been shown over many years to have almost no impact on gaming.
 
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Heres a benchmark from a user (scuzzycard) on TH, GTA V Ultra settings:

Benchmark Setup:
i7 5820K - 4.6GHz Core / 4.4GHz Cache
Asus X-99 Motherboard
32GB DDR4 at 2400MHz CL11 / 500GB Samsung 950 Pro SSD m.2
Zotac GTX 980Ti 2X SLI overclocked to 1455/3748
3840X2160 resolution, FXAA, All settings on Very High

FRAPS 3.5.99 ------ MIN AVG
6 Cores, 12 Threads 96 163.8
6 Cores, 6 Threads 95 163.5
4 Cores, 8 Threads 96 162.9
4 Cores, 4 Threads 63 161.9
2 Cores, 4 Threads 38 157.7
3 Cores, 3 Threads 18 158.4
2 Cores, 2 Threads Failed to Load
 
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That is so weird, you guys are linking opposite results.
Hyperthreading seems to make a huge impact in the GTA V benchmark posted above, but if you look at that guy at techpowerup he is getting no improvement, even showing some negative impact of HT. His method is clearly outlined, so i'm much more inclined to believe the guy over at techpowerup.

Anyone have any other links? very interesting!


1. Intel Core i7 HT offers no improvement in single player games.

2. Intel Core i7 HT slightly hurts gaming performance in most of the tested single player games.
 
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The issue with Hyperthreading has always been two fold. First off, most games still aren't threaded heavily so you get diminishing returns when going beyond 4 cores. There have been a whole army of people carrying the multithreading banner saying that "now that the consoles have so many cores, games will finally start being coded to take advantage of all the cores in your system". For the most part this hasn't happened with the exception of a few outliers.

The other issue is Hyperthreading is no replacement for actual physical cores. For Hyperthreading to work, a single physical core must be scheduled two tasks that use two different parts of the CPU. So for instance a single physical core can execute on the ALU and FPU simultaneously (integer math and floating point math), however if two threads need access to the FPU at the same time, they must be executed consecutively, in this case the results are the same as if there was no Hyperthreading. Where Hyperthreading gives negative results, this is usually an issue with the OS thread scheduler getting messed up. It isn't really aware of Hyperthreading, it just sees the number of logical cores the OS reports and schedules them for work. I know both AMD and Intel have been working with MicroSoft to improve this. AMD doesn't have Hyperthreading yet, but they do have "cores" with some units duplicated, but only a single FPU. In the past (before MicroSoft reworked Windows 7 scheduler), FPU workloads could cause AMD's FX series of CPUs to choke.
 
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I think GTA V is one of those rare examples that benefits from more than 4 cores, and consequently has some scaling with Hyperthreading. Whether you see GTA V of a trend to come or the odd man out, is what should sway your opinion. If this is the new trend, then Hyperthreading and more than 4 cores might be worthwhile for gaming. If it's the exception rather than the rule though, then it might not be worth paying more for a few games that you may or may not play.
 
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So, for all intents and purposes outlined herein...

The HT benefit of an i7 currently provides zero advantage in gaming.
While there are some other differences between the 6700k and the 6600k, it is safe to assume they are minor at best.
Therefore, the i5 6600k will perform identically to the i7 6700k with regards to min, max, and average FPS in modern games.
 
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Yes that is the case for the most part when it comes to gaming. Again as stated there are a few exceptions. I've also read that BF4 seems to have a small improvement in minimum framerates with HT on.

In many cases the top i5 (K versions) seem to overclock better than their comparative i7's. I don't know if this is more of a factor of the stress testing though. Since most stress tests will utilize all of the logiical cores (Prime 95), the i7 will be stressed more, need more voltage as a result and push higher temps. It's possible if you disable HT in the BIOS, then it might even the field a bit.
 
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The other major factor that everyone (including myself up until now) has failed to mention is, most gamers, especially those with high end cards then to use really high detail settings. We try to make our games look as pretty as possible at high resolutions. Under these circumstance, the bottleneck is the GPU and not the CPU.

Even in most CPU bound games, the bottleneck is less about the number of cores, and more about the clockspeed.
 
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