I5-7600K decent upgrade from i5-6500?

[chad.joseph.gibbons]

Recently up here in Canada, Newegg slashed the prices on their 7-series CPU’s to move some stock around.

Im currently sitting on an i5-6500 but I want a little more juice out of my Z170 mobo before the full upgrade swaps, preferring to wait until IceLake drops for a system overhaul.

The i5-7600K gives some nice bumps in FPS as well as over clocking support. It it worth the upgrade for ~$200? Overclocked it’s numbers happily chase the i5-8400’s in games (healthy 20+ FPS boost) and I don’t stream or do pretty much any encoding. It’ll be opening up a heavily CPU bound 1070 Ti.

Rest of current system:
Gigabyte Z170-HD3
8GB G.Skill Ripjaws V DDR4 3200Mhz
Corsair HX1000W PSU

Bonus question: Will a stock Intel cooler handle this CPU without overclocking until I can grab a EVO 212 or Noctua U12S?

 

[superninja12]

only you can decide that but dude look at the benchmarks... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWFbdK9SBJk
I know this is not your cpu but you know that its clsoe enough , its not IN MY OPINION worth the 200 dollars.


if u go pro, get yourself an 2700x or i7 8700k.

 

[Chasingfaith]

The i5 7600k will offer you a really nice performance boost and I think it's worth the price considering you've already invested in a z170 mobo and a gtx 1070 ti.

As for your bonus question, the stock cooler that came with your current cpu will be able to handle the i5 7600k at stock speeds, but you should overclock it anyway to achieve the best performance gain. Therefore an aftermarked cooler is a must. The coolers you mentioned will be sufficient for a decent oc.

Also, make sure you upgrade your motherboard's bios first! Otherwise it will probably not support the kaby lake cpu.

 

[Chasingfaith]

@Superninja12

The video you shared shows an i5 6600k running at stock speeds being compared to an i5 7600k running at stock speeds and therefore there obviously isn't much difference between the two and the comparison is quite irrelevant.

A better comparison would be an i5 6500 running at stock speeds (3.3 GHz over 4 cores) vs an moderately overclocked i5 7600k (about 4.8 GHz over 4 cores). Needless to say, there would be a huge improvement!

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

for $200 dollars. No, it's not a worthy upgrade. Seriously. For 20% better FPS, are you really gonna pay $200. That's madness in my eyes. In that case, just get a 6700k and have more threads, nearly identical performance to the 7600k (in pure FPS) and beat it hands down in any other task.

edit: you say you want to open up the 1070ti, don't hobble it by putting in a marginally better CPU. At the frames you'll be hitting with the 1070ti, is getting 100FPS with the 6500 or getting 110 fps with the 7600k gonna make that much difference? In CPU dependant games you still gonna be stuck with 4 cores/4 threads! A 6700k/7700k would be much better. And pretty much the max upgrade you can go for. Not a sideways step.

 

[superninja12]

I know what sources im picking are you really going to pay 200 dollars? you kniow 200 dollars for 10 better fps and msot of the time 5.
thats madness!

 

[chad.joseph.gibbons]

It’s not so much the increases in average FPS but the massive bump in minimum FPS that makes the upgrade so attractive to me. All the average in the world doesn’t mean anything if my current CPU drops it to ~35 regular and often.

And chasingfaith’s comparison of a stock 6500 vs overclocked 7600K is a much better representation of how I view the upgrade. Also don’t forget, the value of CAD is heavily inflated. A more accurate representation to US posters would be like upgrading for $150 instead of ~$200.

With that in mind I would still love a few more opinions, and I’m a little wary of jumping to the i7 Kaby Lake because de-lidding to get normal temperatures seems like a huge pain.

 

[sizzling]

4 core cpu’s are now entry level even with an overclock. Personally I wouldn’t bother upgrading to another 4 core cpu.

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

The i5 7600k will offer you a really nice performance boost and I think it's worth the price considering you've already invested in a z170 mobo and a gtx 1070 ti.

As for your bonus question, the stock cooler that came with your current cpu will be able to handle the i5 7600k at stock speeds, but you should overclock it anyway to achieve the best performance gain. Therefore an aftermarked cooler is a must. The coolers you mentioned will be sufficient for a decent oc.

Also, make sure you upgrade your motherboard's bios first! Otherwise it will probably not support the kaby lake cpu.

It’s not so much the increases in average FPS but the massive bump in minimum FPS that makes the upgrade so attractive to me. All the average in the world doesn’t mean anything if my current CPU drops it to ~35 regular and often.

And chasingfaith’s comparison of a stock 6500 vs overclocked 7600K is a much better representation of how I view the upgrade. Also don’t forget, the value of CAD is heavily inflated. A more accurate representation to US posters would be like upgrading for $150 instead of ~$200.

With that in mind I would still love a few more opinions.

You're misunderstanding something. Higher clock speeds do not translate to higher min FPS. Higher min FPS is more attributable to more host processing. i.e more core/threads., which also helps frame time variances/drops, and thus less stuttering in games.

Key to all of this of course, is what resolution monitor are you playing on? Otherwise higher/avg/min FPS and what CPU to choose is almost moot.

 

[Chasingfaith]

Considering there is no ipc improvement, the i5 7600k will be 40/50% faster than the i5 6500, and it will get rid of any gpu bottleneck at 60fps. The i7 6700k will be an equally good upgrade if you can find it at a similar price. It will perform slightly worse at older titles but slightly better at multitasking or when running newer titles that make good use of the extra threads.

Whether it's worth the 250 CAD for the cpu+cooler is personal opinion. I would want to spend the money if I had already invested in a gtx 1070 ti and z170 mobo, some people might not.

 

[chad.joseph.gibbons]

I thought clock speed directly affected your gains in games, but if this is not the case then why does Ryzen have so much trouble trying to output the same frame rate / minimums compared to intel procs with a superior core & thread count?

I only ask because the Ryzen family has become another avenue for upgrade at this point and I’m considering them as well once prices drop.

EDIT
Nevermind, someone explained that it’s a matter of future proofing with more and more game releases relying on cores and efficiency compared to current titles leaning on raw clock speed. Games would play well today but suffer in the future.

 

[chad.joseph.gibbons]

Thank you for all of your opinions everyone. After a good back and forth on the CPU’s merits and researching the actual gains by looking up reviews past of the 7600K comparing it to both the 6400 and 6500, the consensus seems to be that the upgrade is not worth the performance gain, even if overclocked. I will wait until a more attractive option arrives with more cores, or simply wait for the 8700K / 2nd Gen Ryzens to come down in price. Thank you all for your time. ^^

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

Thank you for all of your opinions everyone. After a good back and forth on the CPU’s merits and researching the actual gains by looking up reviews past of the 7600K comparing it to both the 6400 and 6500, the consensus seems to be that the upgrade is not worth the performance gain, even if overclocked. I will wait until a more attractive option arrives with more cores, or simply wait for the 8700K / 2nd Gen Ryzens to come down in price. Thank you all for your time. ^^

that's a good option right now

 

[mdd1963]

If staying with same MB for while, jump to 8 threads w/ the 7700K....; still quite competitive in all titles currently...

 

[superninja12]

If staying with same MB for while, jump to 8 threads w/ the 7700K....; still quite competitive in all titles currently...

those threads are meaningless in gaming.

 

[superninja12]

If staying with same MB for while, jump to 8 threads w/ the 7700K....; still quite competitive in all titles currently...

those threads are meaningless in gaming.

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

If staying with same MB for while, jump to 8 threads w/ the 7700K....; still quite competitive in all titles currently...

those threads are meaningless in gaming.

not so, any more. Just look at thread usage on the latest AAA games BF1, Wolfenstein 2 etc.

Admittedly there are still the majority of games that don't get better performance from more cores/threads, because they are not coded to take advantage of the resources, but that's changing as we speak, and will be the way forward.