i7 4790k or i5 6600k for gaming next 4 years

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Jenish_J

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Mar 3, 2015
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I'm planning for a complete new build during Christmas.

1. Whether i7 4790k is sufficient for next four years of gaming or should I get i5 6600k?

2. There is higher bandwidth PCIe lanes, DDR4 memory, etc in skylake build. Whether these things make a real difference in gaming for next 4 years when compared to Haswell build?

3. Whether GTX 970 is enough for 1080p gaming? AC Syndicate requires 3gb VRAM for Full HD and its just a matter of time before the minimum requirement for future game would be 4gb VRAM. Should I consider r9 390 8gb card or can I stick with gtx 970?
 
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geofelt
On a new build, I think Skylake.
Few games can use more than 2-3 cores so I7 is not really of help to the gamer.
Of the two, the i5-6600K is going to be a bit cheaper and game better when overclocked.

GTX970 is considered very good for 1080P gaming.
VRAM has become a marketing issue.
My understanding is that vram is more of a performance issue than a functional issue.
A game needs to have most of the data in vram that it uses most of the time.
Somewhat like real ram.
If a game needs something not in vram, it needs to get it across the pcie boundary
hopefully from real ram and hopefully not from a hard drive.
It is not informative to know to what level the available vram is filled.
Possibly much of what is there is not needed.
What is...
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But AMD card suffers from heat and driver issues. Can anyone throw some light on this?
 
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On a new build, I think Skylake.
Few games can use more than 2-3 cores so I7 is not really of help to the gamer.
Of the two, the i5-6600K is going to be a bit cheaper and game better when overclocked.

GTX970 is considered very good for 1080P gaming.
VRAM has become a marketing issue.
My understanding is that vram is more of a performance issue than a functional issue.
A game needs to have most of the data in vram that it uses most of the time.
Somewhat like real ram.
If a game needs something not in vram, it needs to get it across the pcie boundary
hopefully from real ram and hopefully not from a hard drive.
It is not informative to know to what level the available vram is filled.
Possibly much of what is there is not needed.
What is not known is the rate of vram exchange.
Vram is managed by the Graphics card driver, so there may be differences in effectiveness between amd and nvidia cards.
Here is an older performance test comparing 2gb with 4gb vram.
http://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Video-Card-Performance-2GB-vs-4GB-Memory-154/
Spoiler... not a significant difference.
And... no game maker wants to limit their market by
requiring huge amounts of vram. The vram you see will be appropriate to the particular card.
 
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Solution


AMD drivers haven't really been an issue for around 5 generations of cards now. The 390 isnttwice as hot or even 1.5 times as hot, yeah it runs a bit warmer but the word hot doesn't really apply. The 390 is slightly faster, but for me the 970 seems like the better option because of the option to further overclock it and the lower power requirement. In most situations you would be hard pressed to note the difference in performance.
 
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I personally have the evga ssc atx 2.0 970 and i love it, i've just heard a general consensus that r9 390 8gb runs better in benchmarks, and many have hailed it as a better card. It is definitely somewhat hotter, so if you want a computer that is as quiet and as energy efficient as possible 970 is a great option. You get what you pay for.
Here's another thread discussing the CPU's you are talking about, as I personally have the fx-8350 and I don't know anything about intel CPU's 😀
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2761103/6600k-4790k.html
 
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i7 4790k is around 28k in India. But I'm getting it at the price of 18k from my friend which he bought but didn't even open the box. Thats a tempting offer for me to go for Haswell build, whereas i5 6600k costs 20k.Also I should go for DDR4 memory for skylake build. Whether DirectX 12 has anything to do with CPU? May be helps to utilize all the cores?


This point makes sense.
 
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I've never used an AMD product. I've always been with Intel & Nvidia which didn't let me down. Still my 3 years old i7 860 is running fine. In most of the places people say AMD is power hungry and hot.
 
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So u r a proud owner of gtx970 :)
Thanks for sharing the link. But I read that before creating this forum question.That link had only few suggestions thats why I created this one.

 
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Both i7 4790k and 6700k are great choices.Core i7 and i5 processors today in no way bottleneck performance in terms of fps,pixel rate etc. as a fact many top tier gaming pc's are using i5 3930 etc processors.

i7 4790k is a beast of a processor.It's a worthy card and can handle almost anything you throw at it (Rendering,Video Editing,AutoCad,Maya,blender,Photoshop,Solid Works).I can assure you it will remain untouched for atleast 3 years.

But since this a new build and not upgrading,go for Skylake.It'll be a decade or half before games utilise DDR4 memory or HBM for that matter.If you want to future proof your system with scope of upgrading look no further.I also agree with @geofelt vram is just marketing.

For sole gaming and Professionals both are excellent choices

Stay Frosty.
 
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I'm not going for i7 6700k which is 29k(~$440) in India. Since I got an offer of a sealed i7 4790k for just 18k(cheaper than i5 6600k) I thought I would get that coz 4790k is almost on par with 6700k. There arised the confusion between haswell and skylake.

If Haswell will hold good for next four years of gaming, I'll happily go for it since the goodies of skylake platform couldn't be felt visually. I mean the performance difference between haswell and skylake builds.
 
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Its not worth the monies for a full DDR4 build atm for a small performance difference. I bought a 2600k 4 years ago and still going strong. Its the G-card thats important. You can always upgrade that every two years. A 970 should be fine for now but two years time you will want something better. The i7 will be fine and last more than long enough.
 
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FWIW.
I recently changed from a i7-4790K to a i5-6600K @4.8 and feel like I am performing better.
I play a lot of civ5 which is single threaded and very compute bound between turns.
Single thread performance is particularly important for strategy games, sims, and mmo types.
For fast action shooters, the graphics card is usually more important.
 
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4790k is still a good choice.I personally think skylake is for programmers and developers who need high density ram.
I think they will soon release z170 motherboards with socket 1151 and support for ddr3 ram which would be cost effective
 
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Imo you would only get the 4790k if you were content with limitations. And what i mean by this is non upgradable, obviously i dont mean you cant just buy a new cpu, because you of course can, but thats not really cost effective if money is an issue.

You should get the i5 6600, get the R9 card 380/390, or save to extend your budget and get a gtx980(highly reccomended).

The way i look at it, is that with the skylake chip you would get a better motherboard/chipset(more future usage/compatability)
So youd get a z170.

Which with that being said youd open up yourself to having a M.2 Sata Nvme ssd in the future to add into your system if you arent already purchasing one of those drives.

A lot of people get confused about 4790k chips because of price ranges and budgets and costs, as well as the common guy that just comes along and flames at you to get one. But i think the 4790k is nearing the end of its usability era in time.(in my opinion).

And if you went with it, you may just see limitations in next years games and possibly even bottlenecking issues.

If your really looking for the gpu that will hold its own with games for the next 4 years i would suggest a 980, because remember you can also in the future, sli them and get a second one, to play 4k games, which would extend your builds lifespan to 6-7 years, which i think by then most games would be 4k.
 
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Go for a quadcore cpu. DDR4 rams are not recommended for gaming, as they are more expensive and often have a slower cas latency than DDR3. Even though you can get higher Mhz at DDR4, there´s no improvement in terms of gaming, since after 1600 Mhz there is virtually no gains for gaming. This means you´ll save money on both mobo, ram and cpu.

Also, there is a common misconception that more cores always is better. As for gaming today, more than four cores isn’t better. It’s often worse. And that’s because most games won’t make use of the additional cores. Intel’s highest-clocked chips are quad-core, not six- and eight-core. In reality, the difference isn’t enough to actually feel in games. Four cores is usually plenty for gaming.

There are a few titles like BF4 that are designed to use more than 4 cores, however BF4 is bottlenecked by GPU not by the amounts of cores and there are no reports that even on a Titan X card, that more cores will mean meaningful performance increase. However running multiple graphics cards in SLI/CrossFire or Titan Z, may benefit from more than 4 cores. However, SLI and Crossfire doesn´t always proove like an optimal solution.

That´s why Sandy Bridge is going so strong, even today.

Four cores are enough for a foreseeable future, Benchmarks of DX12’s new multi-threading show no benefit beyond four cores, sometimes it even performs worse. Surprise surprise.
See here. http://www.anandtech.com/show/8962/the-directx-12-perfo...


tl;dr
Get Intel Core i5-4690K or a spend a little more and get the 4790k.
Skylake is overrated, and so is 6/8 cores.
 
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I noticed no one anwsered your directx 12, Vulkan and mantle question. Yes you will get about 10 percent or better performance then the 6600k. they utilize all 8 threads to offer much less overhead. I personally wouldnt get a 4 Core 4 thread processor if i was building a pc right now. Directx 12 is the future so is vulkan those cores will be more utilized as the apis get better.
 
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I would ignore DX12 as a selection criteria for now.
DX12 improves the graphics driver path and multitasks it.
There may, in time be the ability to use diverse graphics cards in concert.
All good things.
But, it first of all requires windows 10.
Next, it requires that a game be coded to utilize DX12. None are out yet, but yes, they are coming.
I would not expect that any game maker would REQUIRE DX12 to the exclusion of DX11. They would severely limit their market.
 
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Got windows 10 runs amazing. I already use low level api in many games(mantle). And directx12 is available on a dozen titles already and it's slaTed to be supporting many AAA titles In the future. Including the 110 million dollar crowd funded game star citizen. Which I can't wait to play once it becomes more of a full game.
 
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wtf Jenish u r getting an i7 4790k at just 18k
FISH HOLY COW U R SOOOOO LUCKY MANN
REALLY JEALOUS
OF U
 
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Hey there mate.

1. i7 4790k would be okay, however the i5 6600k would be a greater choice as the upgradeability will be greater due to new i7's lowering price in next 4 years etc. i7 6700k and other reasons.
2. Yes higher bandwidth will make a difference most likely within the next four years as am steps up and competition kicks in again, this feature will most likely be helpful, along with the compatibility of DDR4 Ram which will make a difference to mostly specific areas of music/video production and gaming.
3. The 970 will be great for standard 1080p gaming, right now however triple a games come out all the time and are increasingly demanding on the GPU so I would recommend upgrading to R9 390 8Gb or if possible a RX Series, maybe the RX 470.
 
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