Is this a worthy upgrade? (Ditching AMD)

[Distance03]

Hey guys, what's up?

I've been rocking an AMD 8350 now for three years, and I've been busting at the seems to get back on board with Intel.

I'm looking at the i7 6700k - would this be a substanial upgrade from the 8350?

Of course, with that being said, I need to change MoBos... I was looking at this one http://www.amazon.com/DisplayPort-H170-Motherboards-PRO-GAMING/dp/B014F7BQUG?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00

I'm throwing my ole' GTX 980 Ti on this build as well, with some old-ish DDR3 RAM (16GB)

Thoughts?

 

[synphul]

The i7 is a bit of an investment though I think it would be a noticeable improvement. It should also set you up with a sound system for several years going forward so the investment would be worth it in my opinion. However if going to skylake I'd do it properly. The 6700k doesn't have much clock speed over the 6700 and the main feature is that it's a K series unlocked chip.

To get the most out of it I'd pair it with a z170 board since the h170's aren't meant for overclocking. Or stick with the h170 and go with a locked 6700. The other main advantage to skylake is moving forward with ddr4 ram. Ddr3 isn't recommended, skylake was intended for lower voltage ram. Either ddr3L (low power ddr3, not standard ddr3) or ddr4. How much damage it could result in hasn't been shown though intel has warned against it.

Pairing skylake with a ddr3 board is a gamble in my opinion. Especially since the integrated memory controller is part of the cpu, not the motherboard. I think the cpu manufacturer would be better equipped to say what's safe vs the motherboard manufacturer since they have no part in the memory controller or its limits.

Another route to go would be socket 1150 with an i7 4790k and z97 motherboard. Then you could reuse your ddr3 ram. People say 1150 is dead which is true. Although since there's no point in upgrading only one generation pretty much all intel boards are 'dead sockets' since they change every couple generations. Going with haswell means you'd be hanging onto it long enough to skip skylake, kabylake and likely cannonlake. It's even less of an issue since you're considering the i7's which are the top chips for either socket, 1150 or 1151.

Cpu's and motherboards are basically bought as a set anymore since the boards don't last for 3 or 4 generations and the releases they will support are so similar it's a sidegrade vs an upgrade. Back in the day it was a big deal to move from a p2 266 to a p2 450. Now it's taking several generations to get real world performance/speed improvements that feel noticeable.

 

[DonkeyOatie]

I'm with synphul and the Haswell recommendation. I would not use 'old' DDR3 with Skylake. (DDR3L would be fine). The i7 4790K is a mature chip and with the refinements to the manufacturing, you should get a good overclock. of at least 4.7Ghz on a good Z97 motherboard. That should hold you for five years or so.

A somewhat more 'budget' solution would be a H97 board combined with a Xeon 1231v3 or 1241v3 and DDR3; whatever price/performance works for you. (They are cheap locked Haswell i7 equivalents)