Why do People Buy the 6700K over the 5820K?

[turkey3_scratch]

It just baffles me. The 5820K has been cheaper for quite a long time, has 2 more cores and 4 more threads. Both X99 and Z170 boards support DDR4, M.2, so no benefits there. Why would anybody consider paying $50 more for the 6700K? Is it just because people think, "This is a higher number. Must be better" or what?

 

[larkspur]

Yes agreed. But you specifically said that you don't need 4 sticks for max performance making it sound like two sticks will have the same memory performance of four sticks.

 

[razamatraz]

You don't need 4 sticks of RAM for max performance. That is not true. If you use 2 sticks, you can run dual channel just like on a Z170. And if neither CPU is at 100% utilization on any cores while gaming, then the 6700K has no benefit.

You are correct, you CAN use dual channel but why buy X99 and not use its full potential? You can buy a 6700K stick it on a cheap ass H170 board and put 8 Gigs of the cheapest DDR4 on it and it will outperform the 5820K in almost every game as long as the GPU is not the bottleneck.

For a person scared of overclocking but willing to pay the price of either a 6700K or 5820K the 6700K wins period and the platform is much cheaper. 6700K with 5% better IPC and ~20% better clock speed is ~25% faster in most games. Even in the few games that will use the extra cores it still wins most of the time because those games are horrible at efficiently using the extra cores. You can talk future proof, DX12, etc all you want but why would game devs make games that need 6 cores when there is no user base that has them? You have to be able to sell your game so until the mainstream platform gets 6 cores that won't happen.

If you will overclock then the platform gets closer in price (Z170 instead of H170 and faster DDR4) and the 5820K becomes a much better choice. It's still not a clear winner if all you do is game though. IF you want to game and stream it wins, if you want to re-encode video it wins. If you want to play Battlefront it loses.

The other issue with going Haswell-E right now is that Broadwell-E is around the corner. You might get a 40 lane chip for the current 5820K price....or not.

In my actual opinion, if you want to game, get a decent Z170 board, 16 gigs of fast DDR4 and an i5-6600K and put the extra $$ into more GPU power. Clock that thing to 4.5 (or more if it will go) and run it until it dies. The 6700K is really a product that doesn't offer much for the price...it still beats the 5820K if you want to spend that price tag though. Where I live the 5820K is $5 more than the 6700K.

 

[turkey3_scratch]

Games games games that's all you guys care about! I'll say it again: The I7 is not a gaming CPU! If you are purchasing an I7 for gaming, you have no rights to talk about wasting money when an I5-6600K is available far cheaper for the same performance. An I7 is not for gaming. An I7's purposes include video editing, heavy multitasking, Adobe products, modelling and rendering, recording and streaming high quality and high resolutions.

Buying a 6700K on an H170 board is pointless. Just buy the 6700 non-K for $50 cheaper.

 

[larkspur]

The i7-6700 has a base clock of 3.4ghz... the i7-6700k has a base clock of 4ghz... Clockspeed does make a difference. Hyperthreading, not so much although like I said way back up there, an i3 (2 cores 4 threads) is far preferable than a Pentium (2 cores, 2 threads) in today's games. No real need for an i7 in today's games but some people feel better having those extra threads even though they don't need them.

 

[turkey3_scratch]

Hyperhtreading benefits the I3 over the Pentium solely because it can execute 4 threads. Games are programmed for typically 1, 2, or 4 threads, rarely more. Making an I7 not a smart choice for gaming. Let's face it, people buy the 6700K for gaming, "Just because... it's probably better because it has a '7'. More FPS it must do!" I hate to describe them that way, but it's true.

 

[ThisChunkyMonkey]

there are not a lot of good x99 boards. While z170 boards get praised because how well they are.Msi z170 titanium edition is one of the best

 

[turkey3_scratch]

there are not a lot of good x99 boards. While z170 boards get praised because how well they are.Msi z170 titanium edition is one of the best

Proof of your statement?

 

[razamatraz]

Hyperhtreading benefits the I3 over the Pentium solely because it can execute 4 threads. Games are programmed for typically 1, 2, or 4 threads, rarely more. Making an I7 not a smart choice for gaming. Let's face it, people buy the 6700K for gaming, "Just because... it's probably better because it has a '7'. More FPS it must do!" I hate to describe them that way, but it's true.

This is old now but I was away on vacation. Look up the digital foundry videos. i7 6700K and i5-6600K clocked at same speed and there are quite large performance improvements going to the i7 . More threads actually are coming into play now for many games.

I still agree with you that no one should buy the 6700K as the 5820K is far better for the same price but that weird ass case of a gamer with too much money and no balls for overclocking is the one place where the 6700K has as place.