5930K or 6700K and the benefits of either.

Forkinator

Junior Member
Nov 29, 2015
5
0
0
So I've been doing a fair amount of research on these 2 cpus. I currently own a I7 920 @4.2ghz and am ready to upgrade my motherboard, ram and cpu.

I should note that I am not as tech savvy and educated on the current pc industry and what's best.

I understand that the 5930k is much older as the 6700k was just released. And that they are different sockets(1151/6700k vs 2011 v3/5930k) and with that comes different features of the motherboards and different amount of pci e lanes.

My question is for the hardcore gamers who want to get the most future proof and most performance from gaming.

Look at the below comparison of the 2 cpus.

http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-6700K-vs-Intel-Core-i7-5930K/3502vs2578

Can someone explain what makes single core performance so much better on the 6700k?


Basically my queation is;

I want the most future proof system and beat gaming rig. WI'll there be a newer socket 2011-v3 cpu coming out? I dont want to buy a socket 2011 cpu and have it be obsolete to a new HEDT cpu with a new socket. Thats a big deal for me so keep that in mind

Which cpu should I get considering the sockets of each. Why isn't there skylake with 6 cores If they made a K series? Is there no market or need for a 6 core skylake?

Better question is why isn't there an updated HEDT platform for gamers. Skylake is supposed to be mainstream and the performance gains over previous gen cpu is a marginal and at best a 10% increase. Haswell e is starting to age.

I want a 14nm successor to the Haswell-e 5930k that has better single core speeds than the 5930k.

What should I do? Since 2016 is around the corner, should I wait for kabylake or the q1 2016 cpu that's coming?(don't know the name of it)


TLDR: 6700k or 5930k? 6700k kills the 5930k in single core speeds and quad core speeds but the 5930k kills thw 6700k in everythING else inclubbing multi core speeds. Ch3ck the link above. I am mainly gaming at highest settings @ 2k and want a future proof rig.

Thank you for reading this.
 
Mar 10, 2006
11,715
2,012
126
Hi Forkinator

The x99 platform that you would buy with the 5930K supports the next gen HEDT CPU family known as Broadwell-E, so you will have an upgrade path.

IMO, the 5930K is better if you overclock (better get a good cooler!) and want something that will be "future proof."

6700K is better at stock out of the box and if you upgrade at a fairly rapid pace.
 

bystander36

Diamond Member
Apr 1, 2013
5,154
132
106
Unless you plan to go 3-way SLI, you should also look at the 5820K. It's also 6 cores, but with only 28 PCIe lanes. They are much less expensive as well. Possibly less expensive than the 6700K atm, due to inflated prices.
 

Head1985

Golden Member
Jul 8, 2014
1,863
685
136
Games uses max 4-8cores and skylake is way faster than haswell in this.

90% of games still uses 1-3cores MAX
Most MMOs 2cores MAX

What i know only 1 game can utilize more than 8 cores and that is crysis3.But skylake have 10-20% better IPC than haswell so to match performance with haswell you need games that can use atleast 10cores.
 
Last edited:

bystander36

Diamond Member
Apr 1, 2013
5,154
132
106
Benchmarks show ~5% performance increases with Skylake, clock for clock, though Skylake seems to get about .2Ghz higher OC's than Haswell-E.

The games which do show improvements past 4 cores, where Haswell-E does better, are the more demanding games, which are more often the ones you wish you had more speed. Dragon Age: Inqusition, Assassins Creed Unity/Syndicate, GTA V (in the CPU bound spots), show improvements over 4 cores, and have better minimums on 6 core CPU's.

While Skylake may show more performance of about 5% (10% max) in most games, the ones that need it the most often prefer Haswell-E. With DX12 promising to bring more multithreading, I personally would bet on the 5820K, especially considering that i7 6700K's are so expensive right now.
 

Forkinator

Junior Member
Nov 29, 2015
5
0
0
Benchmarks show ~5% performance increases with Skylake, clock for clock, though Skylake seems to get about .2Ghz higher OC's than Haswell-E.

The games which do show improvements past 4 cores, where Haswell-E does better, are the more demanding games, which are more often the ones you wish you had more speed. Dragon Age: Inqusition, Assassins Creed Unity/Syndicate, GTA V (in the CPU bound spots), show improvements over 4 cores, and have better minimums on 6 core CPU's.

While Skylake may show more performance of about 5% (10% max) in most games, the ones that need it the most often prefer Haswell-E. With DX12 promising to bring more multithreading, I personally would bet on the 5820K, especially considering that i7 6700K's are so expensive right now.


Thank you and everyone else for the great replies. My question is, when is the next HEDT platform coming? And for gaming with sli, is the 6700k enough with the shortage of pci e lanes? If I go with a 5930K, is now the time to buy? (Cyber monday) or wait till the prices go down on the 5930k? Thanks again
 
Last edited:

Head1985

Golden Member
Jul 8, 2014
1,863
685
136
benchmarks sucks you need to test it yourself.
99.99% websites dont know how to test cpus.They test it in GPU bottleneck scenes or in wrong games.
Skylake have 10-20% IPC gain over haswell in CPU bottleneck scenes.
Decent test is here with good CPu bottleneck games
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5lfMogcrPU
As you can see skylake 4.6Ghz is way faster than haswell 4.9ghz
I also tested fallout4 and here are results: as you can see 5960x is way slower than 6700k in that cpu bottleneck scene.
http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=37846391&postcount=75


And in other part you are also wrong.
1) skylake have improved HT and scale much better up to 60% in crysis3
http://www.overclock.net/t/1578480/i5-2500k-4-5ghz-vs-6700k-4-5ghz-in-games/10#post_24549601
2)because skylake have much better IPC and HT scalling haswell need use more than 8cores to beat skylake that is fact.But no game today except crysis3 can utilize 10 and more cores.

We need wait for dx12 to see how performance change, but in today games skylake is just much better.
 
Last edited:

aaksheytalwar

Diamond Member
Feb 17, 2012
3,389
0
76
Checkout Fallout 4. A stock 6700k thrashes a 5960k @ 4.2 Ghz. The difference is night and day. This just might be a glimpse of days to come.

For gaming I would go with Skylake. BW-E won't be an upgrade over HW-E either apart from more cores.
 
Mar 10, 2006
11,715
2,012
126
Checkout Fallout 4. A stock 6700k thrashes a 5960k @ 4.2 Ghz. The difference is night and day. This just might be a glimpse of days to come.

For gaming I would go with Skylake. BW-E won't be an upgrade over HW-E either apart from more cores.

Could you provide a link to this? I'm very interested. Thanks!
 

Raftina

Member
Jun 25, 2015
39
0
0
My question is, when is the next HEDT platform coming? And for gaming with sli, is the 6700k enough with the shortage of pci e lanes?
The next HEDT is releasing in H1 2016. I think the last we heard was Q2. If you are not in a hurry to upgrade right now, waiting to 2016 is advisable.

As for PCIe lanes:
If you go tri-SLI, the 6700k is not enough. The 5820k is, provided that you choose a motherboard that supports 8/8/8: Many will use 16/8/4. The 4 is too slow for SLI. The 5930k is enough.

For 2 card SLI, the 6700k is enough, assuming you do not use the CPU PCIe lanes for anything else. For example, you would not be able to use PCIe SSDs as well. The 5820k is enough for 2 card SLI even if you are using other PCIe lanes.

This is because most cards at the moment can't saturate 16 PCIe lanes, so going down to 8 will not significantly impact performance.
 

tential

Diamond Member
May 13, 2008
7,355
642
121
http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=37846391&postcount=75

Even if FO4 turns out to be an exception, chances are a 6700k OC won't lag too much behind a 5930k for most games over the next year or two, not with single GPU setups.

But if it is what it really is, then a 6700k OC will end up being 50% faster than a 5930k OC for games that only use 4 cores.

If this wasn't done with the tweaks then does it really matter? You can force Fallout 4 to use more cores. Test should be done with that tweak enabled and then see the performance.
 

MrTeal

Diamond Member
Dec 7, 2003
3,554
1,658
136
http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=37846391&postcount=75

Even if FO4 turns out to be an exception, chances are a 6700k OC won't lag too much behind a 5930k for most games over the next year or two, not with single GPU setups.

But if it is what it really is, then a 6700k OC will end up being 50% faster than a 5930k OC for games that only use 4 cores.

What are all the test parameters for those systems? From the thread it seems like people submitted their results to Head1985 and he compiled the results.
 

Face2Face

Diamond Member
Jun 6, 2001
4,100
215
106
What are all the test parameters for those systems? From the thread it seems like people submitted their results to Head1985 and he compiled the results.

We loaded a save game that he provided. We then loaded the game and took a capture of the frame-rate without touching anything else. I will say, if you look at the CPU and GPU usage it's actually very low, so something is telling me the game engine isn't as optimized as it should be? Skylake has the fastest IPC of any Intel CPU, so it appears it does better at that specific scene than any other CPU. I only have a 4-core CPU and I've never seen CPU utilization at 100%, though I see GPU utilization at 100% very often.
 

poohbear

Platinum Member
Mar 11, 2003
2,284
5
81
benchmarks sucks you need to test it yourself.
99.99% websites dont know how to test cpus.They test it in GPU bottleneck scenes or in wrong games.
Skylake have 10-20% IPC gain over haswell in CPU bottleneck scenes.
Decent test is here with good CPu bottleneck games
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5lfMogcrPU
As you can see skylake 4.6Ghz is way faster than haswell 4.9ghz
I also tested fallout4 and here are results: as you can see 5960x is way slower than 6700k in that cpu bottleneck scene.
http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=37846391&postcount=75


And in other part you are also wrong.
1) skylake have improved HT and scale much better up to 60% in crysis3
http://www.overclock.net/t/1578480/i5-2500k-4-5ghz-vs-6700k-4-5ghz-in-games/10#post_24549601
2)because skylake have much better IPC and HT scalling haswell need use more than 8cores to beat skylake that is fact.But no game today except crysis3 can utilize 10 and more cores.

We need wait for dx12 to see how performance change, but in today games skylake is just much better.

99.99% of sites don't know how to test for games? They're all idiots except you huh?

You keep using words like "way" faster or "way" slower, when in reality the difference is pretty paltry. There's just no way(pun intended) a CPU upgrade from one gen to another is gonna produce "way" better results in any resolution that's GPU bound.
 

Head1985

Golden Member
Jul 8, 2014
1,863
685
136
99.99% of sites don't know how to test for games?
yep
i am testing only in cpu bottleneck scenes.
Show me fallout 4 CPU review/benchmarks where 3570K 4.8Ghz have 52fps and its still CPU bottleneck
Yes there is none because they just dont know how to test it.
 
Last edited:

bystander36

Diamond Member
Apr 1, 2013
5,154
132
106
yep
i am testing only in cpu bottleneck scenes.
Show me fallout 4 CPU review/benchmarks where 3570K 4.8Ghz have 52fps and its still CPU bottleneck
Yes there is none because they just dont know how to test it.

While there is some truth to that, testing one still scene is not exactly the best test either.
 

moonbogg

Lifer
Jan 8, 2011
10,635
3,095
136
Intel forces us to choose IPC or more cores, otherwise we can buy both platforms if we want. We don't get both anymore. It almost seems like they are doing a marketing test to find out what people want more: Cores or IPC? I don't like how they taint the release cycles by tempting us with IPC on one side and cores + PCI-E lanes on the other. Its actually very irritating and frustrating and I wonder if Intel is aware of that fact.
 

bystander36

Diamond Member
Apr 1, 2013
5,154
132
106
Intel forces us to choose IPC or more cores, otherwise we can buy both platforms if we want. We don't get both anymore. It almost seems like they are doing a marketing test to find out what people want more: Cores or IPC? I don't like how they taint the release cycles by tempting us with IPC on one side and cores + PCI-E lanes on the other. Its actually very irritating and frustrating and I wonder if Intel is aware of that fact.

It's possible they are pushing out the faster new uarch's first, to get it right before they cram more cores into them. The 4 cores are the test subjects, then they push the high core count later.
 
Aug 11, 2008
10,451
642
126
Yea, I have been saying that for quite a while. They really need a mainstream hex core. I would much rather see that than 10 core BW-E. I cant believe that intel is so stupid as to not know what they are doing. I think they simply want to increase margins by getting rid of server rejects. I think now though, that this strategy is going to backfire. Since ipc increases are so small anyway, and more apps are starting to use more cores, enthusiasts are just going to ignore the quads and go for HEDT, or just not upgrade at all.
 

ShintaiDK

Lifer
Apr 22, 2012
20,378
145
106
Intel forces us to choose IPC or more cores, otherwise we can buy both platforms if we want. We don't get both anymore. It almost seems like they are doing a marketing test to find out what people want more: Cores or IPC? I don't like how they taint the release cycles by tempting us with IPC on one side and cores + PCI-E lanes on the other. Its actually very irritating and frustrating and I wonder if Intel is aware of that fact.

Because you are caught between mobile/desktop and server. Without servers, a HEDT product would never be viable.
 

ShintaiDK

Lifer
Apr 22, 2012
20,378
145
106
Yea, I have been saying that for quite a while. They really need a mainstream hex core. I would much rather see that than 10 core BW-E. I cant believe that intel is so stupid as to not know what they are doing. I think they simply want to increase margins by getting rid of server rejects. I think now though, that this strategy is going to backfire. Since ipc increases are so small anyway, and more apps are starting to use more cores, enthusiasts are just going to ignore the quads and go for HEDT, or just not upgrade at all.

With all respect I think its you that dont have any idea what you demand. Intel on the other hand delivers exactly what the 99% crowd wants.

The HEDT platform is not server rejects either.
 

WhoBeDaPlaya

Diamond Member
Sep 15, 2000
7,414
401
126
Why not a 5820K, especially if you have a Microcenter nearby and don't need the extra PCI-E lanes?
 

moonbogg

Lifer
Jan 8, 2011
10,635
3,095
136
Because you are caught between mobile/desktop and server. Without servers, a HEDT product would never be viable.

Has it always been that way? The first gen i7's didn't have this kind of technology split, did they? I seem to remember the best of both worlds, ipc and cores, being available from the start of the new gen.
Actually, I think there were only quads and the hex cores came later. If you wanted more cores you had to go xeon and buy a straight up server board, right? But now they offer server boards as HEDT, is that right?