i5 6600k vs i7 6700

[numbuhzero]

I'll buy either i5 6600k with MSI Z170 Gaming M3 or i7 6700 with MSI H170 Gaming M3. GPU will be MSI GTX 1070 Gaming X 8G and I'll only play games, no rendering or streaming etc. I have lots of questions:

1-) I heard maximum safe OC is 3.5Ghz to 4.6Ghz. Is this true?
2-) I'll buy Cooler Master Hyper Evo 212 as the CPU cooler if I decide on i5 6600k. Would it be enough for the i5 6600k that runs at 4.6Ghz?
3-) What is the difference between the H170 and Z170 chipset? (Other than USB ports, better SLI/CF support CPU and RAM overclockability)

And the most important question is:

4-) Which would give more performance? Fully overclocked i5 6600k (4.6Ghz) or not overclocked i7 6700 (3.4Ghz)?


A few things to add: I'll never use SLI and configuration with i5 6600k and Z170 costs about $15 more (Because of the Z170 motherboard and extra CPU cooler) This means neither is cheaper than each other in a significant amount, so please don't tell me "Don't waste money on i7 and 8 threads, i5 will be enough and cheap" like I heard before.

I would be very happy If I get detailed information on every question I have in my mind. Thanks.

 

[MarkW]

1-) I heard maximum safe OC is 3.5Ghz to 4.6Ghz. Is this true?

The I5-6600K defaults to 3.5Ghz right out of the box.
The I7-6700K defaults to 4.0Ghz right out of the box.

So depending on which CPU you end up buying, those are your stock speeds, and there is an expection, especially since these are unlocked CPU's that you will be able to overclock them some. However, no two pieces of silicon ever overclock the same, so there is always a trial and error period as you work to find how far you can push the speed up.

One other point. It is generally accepted that an I5 CPU, especially the fastest one per release, it more than enough for gaming. The I7 is generally for someone that runs lots of business apps or servers.

2-) I'll buy Cooler Master Hyper Evo 212 as the CPU cooler if I decide on i5 6600k. Would it be enough for the i5 6600k that runs at 4.6Ghz?

Yes, lots of people use that cooler. Including myself.

3-) What is the difference between the H170 and Z170 chipset? (Other than USB ports, better SLI/CF support CPU and RAM overclockability)

Z170 allows for the CPU and/or memory to be overclocked.'
H170 does not support CPU or memory overclocking.

There are other features that the Z170 supports, that the H170 does not support, but its mainly things like more ports supported, and things that most people would never notice.

4-) Which would give more performance? Fully overclocked i5 6600k (4.6Ghz) or not overclocked i7 6700 (3.4Ghz)?

Your numbers are wrong, I7-6700K comes out of the box running at 4.0 Ghz. So it would never run at 3.4Ghz.

Again, the I5 is generally accepted to be more than good enough for any gaming needs, and you should not need to overclock it to get it to that status.

And the I7 is primarily a business CPU. There to no need to have 8 threads in a CPU for gaming. Games only look for up to 4 cores, and the I5-6600K is more than any game for the next 5 years will demand.

A few things to add: I'll never use SLI and configuration with i5 6600k and Z170 costs about $15 more (Because of the Z170 motherboard and extra CPU cooler) This means neither is cheaper than each other in a significant amount, so please don't tell me "Don't waste money on i7 and 8 threads, i5 will be enough and cheap" like I heard before.

For the third time in this post, I will repeat this. The I5-6600K is so damned fast as it comes out of the box that you simply do not need to spend the extra $100+ for the I7.

The Z170 motherboards cost more because they support overclocking. The H170 motherboards do not.

No matter which of these two CPU's you buy, you will also have to buy the CPU cooler as well. Every CPU must have a cooler, and nothing else changes that.

If you want to waste the money buy the I7. After all, it is your money to waste.

 

[FD2Raptor]

1-) I heard maximum safe OC is 3.5Ghz to 4.6Ghz. Is this true?

The I5-6600K defaults to 3.5Ghz right out of the box.
The I7-6700K defaults to 4.0Ghz right out of the box.

So depending on which CPU you end up buying, those are your stock speeds, and there is an expection, especially since these are unlocked CPU's that you will be able to overclock them some. However, no two pieces of silicon ever overclock the same, so there is always a trial and error period as you work to find how far you can push the speed up.

One other point. It is generally accepted that an I5 CPU, especially the fastest one per release, it more than enough for gaming. The I7 is generally for someone that runs lots of business apps or servers.

2-) I'll buy Cooler Master Hyper Evo 212 as the CPU cooler if I decide on i5 6600k. Would it be enough for the i5 6600k that runs at 4.6Ghz?

Yes, lots of people use that cooler. Including myself.

3-) What is the difference between the H170 and Z170 chipset? (Other than USB ports, better SLI/CF support CPU and RAM overclockability)

Z170 allows for the CPU and/or memory to be overclocked.'
H170 does not support CPU or memory overclocking.

There are other features that the Z170 supports, that the H170 does not support, but its mainly things like more ports supported, and things that most people would never notice.

4-) Which would give more performance? Fully overclocked i5 6600k (4.6Ghz) or not overclocked i7 6700 (3.4Ghz)?

Your numbers are wrong, I7-6700K comes out of the box running at 4.0 Ghz. So it would never run at 3.4Ghz.

Again, the I5 is generally accepted to be more than good enough for any gaming needs, and you should not need to overclock it to get it to that status.

And the I7 is primarily a business CPU. There to no need to have 8 threads in a CPU for gaming. Games only look for up to 4 cores, and the I5-6600K is more than any game for the next 5 years will demand.

A few things to add: I'll never use SLI and configuration with i5 6600k and Z170 costs about $15 more (Because of the Z170 motherboard and extra CPU cooler) This means neither is cheaper than each other in a significant amount, so please don't tell me "Don't waste money on i7 and 8 threads, i5 will be enough and cheap" like I heard before.

For the third time in this post, I will repeat this. The I5-6600K is so damned fast as it comes out of the box that you simply do not need to spend the extra $100+ for the I7.

The Z170 motherboards cost more because they support overclocking. The H170 motherboards do not.

No matter which of these two CPU's you buy, you will also have to buy the CPU cooler as well. Every CPU must have a cooler, and nothing else changes that.

If you want to waste the money buy the I7. After all, it is your money to waste.

Second your opinion, but you missed the fact that he was not thinking about getting the i7 6700k but the non-K version to go with the H170 board and therefore he doesn't have to buy an aftermarket cooler in the H170 build.

 

[TMTOWTSAC]

He's comparing the i5 6600k to the i7 6700, non-k, which does run at 3.4Ghz. Not the 6700k, 4Ghz. That having been said, I'd probably go with the 6600k too. For games, single thread performance, and up to 4 cores/threads are most really take advantage of. That could certainly change in the future, but that's the future. And even a modest OC will push the 6600k ahead of the 6700 all but a few fairly notorious games, like Crysis 3.

 

[numbuhzero]

1-) I heard maximum safe OC is 3.5Ghz to 4.6Ghz. Is this true?

The I5-6600K defaults to 3.5Ghz right out of the box.
The I7-6700K defaults to 4.0Ghz right out of the box.

So depending on which CPU you end up buying, those are your stock speeds, and there is an expection, especially since these are unlocked CPU's that you will be able to overclock them some. However, no two pieces of silicon ever overclock the same, so there is always a trial and error period as you work to find how far you can push the speed up.

One other point. It is generally accepted that an I5 CPU, especially the fastest one per release, it more than enough for gaming. The I7 is generally for someone that runs lots of business apps or servers.

2-) I'll buy Cooler Master Hyper Evo 212 as the CPU cooler if I decide on i5 6600k. Would it be enough for the i5 6600k that runs at 4.6Ghz?

Yes, lots of people use that cooler. Including myself.

3-) What is the difference between the H170 and Z170 chipset? (Other than USB ports, better SLI/CF support CPU and RAM overclockability)

Z170 allows for the CPU and/or memory to be overclocked.'
H170 does not support CPU or memory overclocking.

There are other features that the Z170 supports, that the H170 does not support, but its mainly things like more ports supported, and things that most people would never notice.

4-) Which would give more performance? Fully overclocked i5 6600k (4.6Ghz) or not overclocked i7 6700 (3.4Ghz)?

Your numbers are wrong, I7-6700K comes out of the box running at 4.0 Ghz. So it would never run at 3.4Ghz.

Again, the I5 is generally accepted to be more than good enough for any gaming needs, and you should not need to overclock it to get it to that status.

And the I7 is primarily a business CPU. There to no need to have 8 threads in a CPU for gaming. Games only look for up to 4 cores, and the I5-6600K is more than any game for the next 5 years will demand.

A few things to add: I'll never use SLI and configuration with i5 6600k and Z170 costs about $15 more (Because of the Z170 motherboard and extra CPU cooler) This means neither is cheaper than each other in a significant amount, so please don't tell me "Don't waste money on i7 and 8 threads, i5 will be enough and cheap" like I heard before.

For the third time in this post, I will repeat this. The I5-6600K is so damned fast as it comes out of the box that you simply do not need to spend the extra $100+ for the I7.

The Z170 motherboards cost more because they support overclocking. The H170 motherboards do not.

No matter which of these two CPU's you buy, you will also have to buy the CPU cooler as well. Every CPU must have a cooler, and nothing else changes that.

If you want to waste the money buy the I7. After all, it is your money to waste.

Thank you for your detailed reply. But as the other people said, I'm planning to get the i7 6700, not the i7 6700k. A few friend of mine already told me that i7's are for server and business purposes. But as you can see, i5 configuration cost more money. Is i7 6700 irrelevant to gaming and shouldn't be bought for gaming at all, or is it unnecessarily powerful for it? Is it okay if i buy it and use it for gaming?

 

[TMTOWTSAC]

Ok, there's two different comparisons being made here. The first is between i5 and i7 desktop processors. (Mobile versions are different.) Both have 4 physical cores. The main difference between them is that the i7's have Hyperthreading, or HT. Hyperthreading allows one core to run two threads instead of one. So the i5 can run 4 threads, whereas the i7 can run 8. i7's also have more cache, primarily to feed HT.

How much difference does this make? In practical terms...it depends. A core generally does not operate at 100% efficiency. Pipelines aren't always full, sequential instructions can hold things up, software is waiting for user input, cache hit misses, branch prediction, etc. So they have some left over processing power that isn't being used. Hyperthreading is a way to take advantage of that left over power, by doing more. For applications that crunch a lot of data, such as transcoding, that can be a lot of extra work. If you're multitasking, giving each task its own thread makes it much more responsive. For games? Most games aren't written to take advantage of >4 cores. A few are though, and perform accordingly.

Now, the next comparison. k vs non-k. K chips are unlocked, meaning they can be overclocked. non-k cannot. K chips also start at a higher clock frequency than non-k out of the box. How much better are k chips? The stock speeds are easy to compare. Overclocking is often referred to as the silicon lottery, because you never know how much headroom you'll get. Either way, you also have the added expense of an aftermarket cooler, and a motherboard with a chipset that supports overclocking.

To answer your question then. i7's have hyperthreading, and cost more than i5's. k chips are unlocked, faster stock speed, and cost more than non-k. But a non-k i7 can cost less than a k series i5. i7's at the same clock as an i5 generally perform similarly until the workload exceeds 4 threads. Beyond 4 threads, i7's pull ahead. Both work great at gaming right now. Whether or not most games will start using more threads depends on things like market penetration (how many i7's vs i5's are out there) and how quickly dx12 is adopted. For servers handling thousands of simultaneous connections, they can never have enough threads, hence the new Xeon with 72 cores and 288 threads (4 way HT).

For your specific scenario, an i5 6600k would outperform an i7 6700 non-k at stock clocks, in all but heavily threaded applications. Depending on overclock, it could potentially beat the 6700 in heavily threaded applications too. But you could also consider the i5 6600 non-k, which would be less expensive than either, not require the OC chipset, or aftermarket cooler.

What you should really do is look at the games you intend to play and then check out some benchmarks that compare them on various processors. There's a bunch right here on Tom's. That will give you a good idea of what to expect, and what you feel is worth paying more/less for.

 

[numbuhzero]

Ok, there's two different comparisons being made here. The first is between i5 and i7 desktop processors. (Mobile versions are different.) Both have 4 physical cores. The main difference between them is that the i7's have Hyperthreading, or HT. Hyperthreading allows one core to run two threads instead of one. So the i5 can run 4 threads, whereas the i7 can run 8. i7's also have more cache, primarily to feed HT.

How much difference does this make? In practical terms...it depends. A core generally does not operate at 100% efficiency. Pipelines aren't always full, sequential instructions can hold things up, software is waiting for user input, cache hit misses, branch prediction, etc. So they have some left over processing power that isn't being used. Hyperthreading is a way to take advantage of that left over power, by doing more. For applications that crunch a lot of data, such as transcoding, that can be a lot of extra work. If you're multitasking, giving each task its own thread makes it much more responsive. For games? Most games aren't written to take advantage of >4 cores. A few are though, and perform accordingly.

Now, the next comparison. k vs non-k. K chips are unlocked, meaning they can be overclocked. non-k cannot. K chips also start at a higher clock frequency than non-k out of the box. How much better are k chips? The stock speeds are easy to compare. Overclocking is often referred to as the silicon lottery, because you never know how much headroom you'll get. Either way, you also have the added expense of an aftermarket cooler, and a motherboard with a chipset that supports overclocking.

To answer your question then. i7's have hyperthreading, and cost more than i5's. k chips are unlocked, faster stock speed, and cost more than non-k. But a non-k i7 can cost less than a k series i5. i7's at the same clock as an i5 generally perform similarly until the workload exceeds 4 threads. Beyond 4 threads, i7's pull ahead. Both work great at gaming right now. Whether or not most games will start using more threads depends on things like market penetration (how many i7's vs i5's are out there) and how quickly dx12 is adopted. For servers handling thousands of simultaneous connections, they can never have enough threads, hence the new Xeon with 72 cores and 288 threads (4 way HT).

For your specific scenario, an i5 6600k would outperform an i7 6700 non-k at stock clocks, in all but heavily threaded applications. Depending on overclock, it could potentially beat the 6700 in heavily threaded applications too. But you could also consider the i5 6600 non-k, which would be less expensive than either, not require the OC chipset, or aftermarket cooler.

What you should really do is look at the games you intend to play and then check out some benchmarks that compare them on various processors. There's a bunch right here on Tom's. That will give you a good idea of what to expect, and what you feel is worth paying more/less for.

Thanks for the response. Now can we say that i7 6700 and GTX 1070 are going to enough for any game for the next 4-5 years?

 

[MarkW]

For gamers, hyperthreading is useless. Hyperthreading is the sharing of a single CPU core between 2 threads. It has pretty much been proven countless times that an upper end Intel I5 CPU is more than enough of a CPU for gaming in virtually all cases. The CPU mostly just pushes data to the GPU, but some games do also use the CPU for other things as well.

No CPU is ever utilized 100% of the time outisde of some special stress testing programs. So in some business software, there is an advantage to having hyperthreading. But gaming is a very different animal. Hyperthreading can hurt game performance more than it helps at times. So the vast majority of the games refuse to use hyperthreading, even when it is available.

And there are always exceptions to everything. So please do not come bck and tell me that some game written in the year 1652 runs best on hyperthreaded CPU's.