What is the current sweet spot for a CPU?

[bruinwar]

What is the current sweet spot for a CPU, value/performance? I'm helping one of my son's friends build a rig & yes, I am lazy/short-of-time, & I've not been following the latest hardware. My rig still runs great with a 2600k at 4Ghz so I avoid the hardware forums so I don't catch "upgrade fever". Although I think a new video card is in my future.

He of course has limited funds & needs everything, case, PS, everything. Just seeing the prices Intel is charging, I think I will be recommending AMD, but then again, that is why I am posting this here, to hopefully find some folks to be find enough to provide some guidance.

We may do some overclocking, if the new CPU is capable.

Thanks in advance!
Joe S.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Whats the purpose of the PC? For gaming, forget AMD at all. Price and performance tend to go hand in hand. Same reason why your 2600K today is fine.

 

[bruinwar]

Yes, it's for gaming. No way for AMD eh? That just makes me sad. They fell a long way since the XP chips, CPU of the year & my overclocked Opteron.

So the FX-8320 is just too slow you think?

 

[Leyawiin]

Yes, its too slow. Its also old (basic architecture is four years old, FX-8320 is three). The only thing they can offer is low price and I'd rather have a current i3 for the same $$.

 

[bruinwar]

OK, good to know, thanks for your replies.
-joe

 

[dark zero]

What is the current sweet spot for a CPU, value/performance? I'm helping one of my son's friends build a rig & yes, I am lazy/short-of-time, & I've not been following the latest hardware. My rig still runs great with a 2600k at 4Ghz so I avoid the hardware forums so I don't catch "upgrade fever". Although I think a new video card is in my future.

He of course has limited funds & needs everything, case, PS, everything. Just seeing the prices Intel is charging, I think I will be recommending AMD, but then again, that is why I am posting this here, to hopefully find some folks to be find enough to provide some guidance.

We may do some overclocking, if the new CPU is capable.

Thanks in advance!
Joe S.

Better to stay at 2600K.... and wait for Canonlake...
Someone will say that an OCed Core i3 6100 at 4.8 Ghz can defeat that chip (yeah, I saw some coments on the web D... better to ignore that.

 

[fourdegrees11]

You can get a 4690k and z97 mobo for right around $300 right now. I would say that is a pretty "sweet" spot for everything but massively threaded work loads. These chips are pretty stellar with a 1 ghz oc, just add a decent cooler.

 

[bruinwar]

You can get a 4690k and z97 mobo for right around $300 right now. I would say that is a pretty "sweet" spot for everything but massively threaded work loads. These chips are pretty stellar with a 1 ghz oc, just add a decent cooler.

YES! Sounds like we got a winner right there. Thanks!

& thanks everyone for your input, seriously, this forum is the best tech forum around. Once we decide on the build, I will post it here. 4690k sounds right though.

 

[TheELF]

You where talking about limited founds so a skylake/haswell ι3 might be better so you (he) can get a better GPU.

 

[frozentundra123456]

A budget would be useful, as well as what games the user wants to play.

Unless funds are *extremely* limited though, I would really hesitate to go lower than i5 for the cpu. A better gpu at the expense of the cpu would give better performance short term, but with the slow progress in cpus and with 14/16 nm much improved gpus coming out in a year or so, I would go for a good cpu, and perhaps upgrade the gpu in a year or two.

 

[TheELF]

but with the slow progress in cpus and with 14/16 nm much improved gpus coming out in a year or so, I would go for a good cpu, and perhaps upgrade the gpu in a year or two.

Maybe,but also maybe dx12 will grant weaker cpus enough power to drive much better gpus,getting rid of the driver thread alone will be a nice boost for the i3 getting it much closer to the i5.

But yes, if the budged allows it, go for the i5.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Nobody knows what DX12 will bring. But my understanding was that it would be just the opposite. It would bring more improvement to more cores with slower clocks. So I would expect more improvement to the slower clocked locked i5 chips than to the higher clocked but less real cores, i3. But that is just my guess. I dont think anyone really knows.

 

[TheELF]

Nobody knows what DX12 will bring. But my understanding was that it would be just the opposite. It would bring more improvement to more cores with slower clocks.

Yes (nerfed) athlon 5150* speeds slow cores will benefit greatly from the renderer being able to use all cores since one core alone has a snowballs chance in hell of playing any game (running the driver thread) at more than 10-15 FPS.
Faster than that CPUs not so much, outside from GPU heavy benchmarks.
If your core is multiple times faster than the 5150 you are not forced to run all the threads of the graphics driver at the same time on different cores to get some speed.

*That's the CPU of the ps4/xbone1

 

[ShintaiDK]

Nobody knows what DX12 will bring. But my understanding was that it would be just the opposite. It would bring more improvement to more cores with slower clocks. So I would expect more improvement to the slower clocked locked i5 chips than to the higher clocked but less real cores, i3. But that is just my guess. I dont think anyone really knows.

None of the 2 current DX12 alpha/beta games gives any benefit to more slow cores. i3 runs around FX8xxx.

 

[Dresdenboy]

None of the 2 current DX12 alpha/beta games gives any benefit to more slow cores. i3 runs around FX8xxx.

Interesting. So they are possibly bottlenecked by the slow caches, one general construction core problem (in comparison).

 

[frozentundra123456]

None of the 2 current DX12 alpha/beta games gives any benefit to more slow cores. i3 runs around FX8xxx.

Like I said, nobody knows. But I am also considering some of the Mantle benchmarks as indicative of what DX12 will be like, and there we did see benefit to lots of slow cores in some games. I dont think any reasonable inference can be made from those AOS "benchmarks" TBH.

 

[toyota]

if you want to maintain 60 fps in all games then do it right and get a 6700k and 16gb of fast DDR4. then you have no need to upgrade the cpu for several years.

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

if you want to maintain 60 fps in all games then do it right and get a 6700k and 16gb of fast DDR4. then you have no need to upgrade the cpu for several years.

LOL, all the trash talking about AMD -- and you picked the CPU that just barely outpaces the AMD FX 9590 in multithreaded tasks......
(Passmark scores for the i7 is 11001 Vs. AMD's 10267). The older (and considerably cheaper) devil's canyon edges both out with a passmark score of 11227.
The 4790k was just on sale for $249 -- and the 6700k is hovering around $419 when you can actually buy one. What a joke.

The i7 6700K is woefully overpriced after the recent price increases. The 4790K is a much better gaming CPU for the money. DDR4 doesn't really outperform DDR3 at a significant level right now.

 

[toyota]

LOL, all the trash talking about AMD -- and you picked the CPU that just barely outpaces the AMD FX 9590 in multithreaded tasks......
(Passmark scores for the i7 is 11001 Vs. AMD's 10267). The older (and considerably cheaper) devil's canyon edges both out with a passmark score of 11227.
The 4790k was just on sale for $249 -- and the 6700k is hovering around $419 when you can actually buy one. What a joke.

The i7 6700K is woefully overpriced after the recent price increases. The 4790K is a much better gaming CPU for the money. DDR4 doesn't really outperform DDR3 at a significant level right now.

maybe brush up on your reading comprehension.

I was simply saying for the best gaming experience without ever having to worry about dropping below 60 fps is the 6700k would be the choice to make. it makes that 9590 look like a damn joke in some games. of course the 4790k is the better deal but sometimes getting what best meets your needs is the better in the long run.

 

[bystander36]

Nobody knows what DX12 will bring. But my understanding was that it would be just the opposite. It would bring more improvement to more cores with slower clocks. So I would expect more improvement to the slower clocked locked i5 chips than to the higher clocked but less real cores, i3. But that is just my guess. I dont think anyone really knows.

From what I have read, DX12 does look to improve single core usage, but also to add better threading. Both sides of the coin should be improved.

What the dev's do with those improvements is another story. Are they going to continue to reduce CPU load as much as possible, will they take the new found freedom and no longer stress about reducing CPU loads, or will they push the envelope leaving us just as CPU taxed as we are now, only across more cores.

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

maybe brush up on your reading comprehension.

I was simply saying for the best gaming experience without ever having to worry about dropping below 60 fps is the 6700k would be the choice to make. it makes that 9590 look like a damn joke in some games. of course the 4790k is the better deal but sometimes getting what best meets your needs is the better in the long run.

Maybe you should read some damn benchmarks -- because the 4790K nearly always performs identically to a 6700K in games.... In several games, the 4790K is actually faster..... The OP is asking for the sweet spot -- the 6700K is a lousy chip for $419, when the $249 - $299 4790k generally outperforms it. Skylake really hasn't improved on Haswell performance for gaming.

 

[toyota]

Maybe you should read some damn benchmarks -- because the 4790K nearly always performs identically to a 6700K in games.... In several games, the 4790K is actually faster..... The OP is asking for the sweet spot -- the 6700K is a lousy chip for $419, when the $249 - $299 4790k generally outperforms it. Skylake really hasn't improved on Haswell performance for gaming.

http://media.gamersnexus.net/images/media/2015/intel/i7-6700k-witcher.png


http://media.gamersnexus.net/images/media/2015/intel/i7-6700k-gta-v-2.png

wow thanks because I had no clue how those cpus performed at all. maybe if you had a clue about Skylake then you would know it scales great with faster memory and they only used 2133MHz in that test you linked to.

some other sites and even head1985 right here on the forums has done some in depth testing and it is indeed faster especially with faster memory where cpu limitations exist. hell he could get 60 fps in the parts of Fallout 4 that I could not even maintain 50 fps in.

again I agree that the 4790k is the better value and yes I know the 6700k is not the "sweet spot" but I was again just saying if you want to best long term chip that gets 60 fps in ALL games then that is the best.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Better to stay at 2600K.... and wait for Canonlake...
Someone will say that an OCed Core i3 6100 at 4.8 Ghz can defeat that chip (yeah, I saw some coments on the web D... better to ignore that.

Do you ever even read the threads??

He's looking to help one of his son's friends build a system. This isn't for the OP.

 

[TheELF]

Interesting. So they are possibly bottlenecked by the slow caches, one general construction core problem (in comparison).

It's a single thread game (the game itself not it's benchmark) so of course the i3 will be much faster at running it.

 

[TheELF]

Maybe you should read some damn benchmarks -- because the 4790K nearly always performs identically to a 6700K in games.... In several games, the 4790K is actually faster..... The OP is asking for the sweet spot -- the 6700K is a lousy chip for $419, when the $249 - $299 4790k generally outperforms it. Skylake really hasn't improved on Haswell performance for gaming.

1-2 fps difference could also be the statistical error,it's pretty obvious that the GPU is at the limit in these tests and that's why the cpus are so close together.