we've been moving towards faster thread speed and away from multicore support.
Wait, what? Since when? Single core gave way to dual, then quad, smartphones have octacores, so do the consoles. All this while clockspeeds have stagnated around 3-4ghz. This statement honestly reads like the exact opposite of what's happened in the past decade or so. Yes single threaded performance is very important and a fast single core would be just swell if all people did was run one single threaded program at a time. But they don't, they multitask, admittedly those tasks may be single threaded themselves, but that makes multiple cores all the better when lots of them are running at once. And some of us, like the OP, have such heavily threaded workloads that an octocore or even a hex vastly, vastly outperforms even the best quads.
most games do not support more than 4 threads, and it's unlikely to change as the market itself has dictated that 4 cores is "ideal".
Games don't use more than 4 threads you say? Surely some mistake, you said single threaded performance is what 'we' have moved too, but now suddenly having 4 threaded performance is what matters? Come on, stay consistent with this at least. I assume you'd agree that an i5 would be much better at running modern games than a hypothetical 10ghz+ single core on the equivalent architecture. If you said that 4 threads is the ideal number for general workloads and gaming right now I'd be largely in agreement. Of course I'd have to question why you think we're moving away from multicore support at the same time as, erm, needing 4 threads for games, after a period where we used to have 2 threads as standard for games and then 1 thread even earlier. And you also concede that more cores do make sense for encoding, so this whole single-thread-is-king idea looks even more shaky.
There's definitely benchmarks showing hyperthreaded quads pulling considerably ahead of their cousins without HT and the hexcores also showing some advantage in the newest heavily threaded games, I'll go dig them out. But I said as much that quads are still the normal, perfectly viable choice for gaming now and the near future, I'm on a 6700 at the moment and expect it to be quite fine running games in 2017-18. I'm not arguing we should all run out and buy hexcores right now. I am arguing that we should perhaps look to history and see how single core progressed to dual and then quad, and suggest that when planning a long term build to be as future proof as is reasonably possible, that hexcore may well prove better for that.
Actually that's beside the point, right now 5820 is better for encoding and since the OP specifically asked for that to be considered that is the sensible choice. The 6700 would be great for a gaming only build for the next few years. But encoding? Nope. More cores every time.
6+ cores are work-dedicated processors and most consumers who buy games do not use them
Agree, but you seem to be insistent on ignoring the point that this discussion concerns the OP, who has a specific workload (encoding) that is perfectly suited for multithreading and he therefore is not the 'typical' gamer or user. I need to say it again, 5820 is barely slower if at all in any game you could find, overclock that 5820 to 4ghz and the differences vs a skylake (OC or not) are not worth worrying about. What is well worth worrying about is how much the 6700 will lose to the 5820 in encoding.
Edit: Suggesting that hexcores are somehow a poor choice for gaming because most gamers don't have one, is exactly equivalent to trying to argue the 980ti is a bad gaming gpu because, wait for it.....most gamers don't have one!
and on top of that, it will not be "some weird and obscure platform CPU' when he tries to sell it 3 years down the line.
2011 is a 'weird and obscure platform'? Now I've heard everything. I don't even know what to say about this. Might as well mention, again, that Broadwell E is coming out early next year, and Skylake E toward the end of the year according to a quick search. Both for that obscure socket 2011 you seem to have an irrational hatred for given this comment. You seriously think it'll be a struggle to sell a X99 platform in 3 years?
rendering is going to amount to what, 10% of the workload this PC does? 5%? one hour a week? two?
So what if it does? Who are you to start dictating about such things anyway? Because you are happy with encoding on a quad (so am I btw), does that set the standard and nobody else should be allowed to encode faster?
Facts are the OP asked for a build for a workload that benefits massively from extra cores, so the suggestion was made for a 5820, in which me and I imagine anyone else who posts here will agree on given it fits the budget
and plays games perfectly well too. I've no idea why you seem to be so determined to steer the OP toward a quad instead since it's objectively, factually inferior to the hexcore for encoding.
Heck if I was going to argue against a 5820 for encoding, I'd at least go for something like the extra heat produced over the much more power efficient 6700. That makes some sort of sense for someone who was constrained by heat or power requirements.
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