Which cpu would be best?

Solution
I'd say it really depends on where your priorities lie. If you are primarily a gamer, that occasionally dabbles in rendering, video editing, or graphics design, then definitely the 4790K (or even a 4690K) would be good enough.

However if you make extensive use of multithreaded software for rendering, video editing and graphics design, then I'd shoot for a 5820K. Even though the 5820K has a limited number or PCI-E lanes, unless you're considering a multi-GPU system (more than 2 cards) then the 5820K is what you want. This will give you two more actual cores and 4 logical cores with HT. With the right software to leverage the available cores, this might be worth it. Of course this will not help games at all.
The 5820k is meh. It's more expensive, but doesn't have the extensive lanes offered by the 5930k, which is REALLY more expensive. Performance isn't that much better either. For gaming, it's really no better. For some purposes it might have some worthwhile features but for the most part it's not worth the extra cost of the CPU, motherboard and RAM.

Allow us to step away from the CPU world for a moment. Graphics cards usually have the problem of too broad a range. At the very top you have the models that people who want enormous frame rate monsters. Just below that are the models for people who want the best but can't afford it. At the other end are models for people who don't understand how good IGP have become. All the models that fall between them are, roughly, pointless. For a tiny bit more money you can get something better, and following that logic continues until your planned GTX550 becomes a GTX970.

'What has this to do with the Core i7-5820K?' we hear you ask.

It suffers from the problem of blandness. It's just not good enough at anything to stand out, or be worth the money. That isn't to say it's without merit. It's an Intel CPU and they are all good at what they do and you wont be disappointed with any of them. It's just, why would you buy this particular model?

If you're in the world of workstations and enterprise solutions but can't afford the eye-wateringly expensive Xeons then the i7-5960X is absolutely barnstorming and, relatively, cheap. If you want a gaming system then as we've demonstrated on countless occasions you'd be as good with a Pentium G3258 and then spend the rest on a beefy GPU as you would getting a 5960X. If you're not quite at the extreme ends of the "need" spectrum and want a good all-rounder then the 4770K or 4790K not only are more cost effective to purchase - given the huge price of DDR4 memory - but they overclock far better than the i7-5820K so you get more bang for your buck at a cheaper cost.


I'd go with the 4790k or if you're not in an immediate hurry, wait for the Skylake chips that are coming out later this year and should offer up to a 15% increase in performance over current architecture.
 
I'd say it really depends on where your priorities lie. If you are primarily a gamer, that occasionally dabbles in rendering, video editing, or graphics design, then definitely the 4790K (or even a 4690K) would be good enough.

However if you make extensive use of multithreaded software for rendering, video editing and graphics design, then I'd shoot for a 5820K. Even though the 5820K has a limited number or PCI-E lanes, unless you're considering a multi-GPU system (more than 2 cards) then the 5820K is what you want. This will give you two more actual cores and 4 logical cores with HT. With the right software to leverage the available cores, this might be worth it. Of course this will not help games at all.
 
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LetsPlayThisBro

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Mar 14, 2015
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The biggest difference in chips for editing/rendering video is the time factor involved, any chip can handle the job, it's just at what point do the dollars for time saved matter. I mean if you can render a video in 3 minutes with an i7-4790k that can be rendered in 2 minutes 30 seconds with a 5820k. Does it justify the extra cost for that 30 second savings? It may, depends on how much of it you're doing. Remember a lot of the work in editing and rendering can be put off to the GPU now depending on the software you are using but most of them have the "hardware acceleration" option, which moves a lot of the computing power to the GPU rather than the CPU.

One of the other factors is, are you upgrading a rig or starting from scratch? because if you're starting from an older rig you can save a few dollars by sticking with DDR3 class memory which you already have, but if you're starting from scratch it might be more worth it to jump to DDR4. Is budget a factor? Not just in pure dollars spent but also value for those dollars. What kind of GPU do you have? Might be more worth it to put more money into a better GPU, maybe not, but these are all factors to be considered.