X99 or Z170

[Bugses]

Hey everybody,

I'm looking to upgrade my 3570k, as it feels like its getting a little overwhelmed by the tasks I throw at it.
I use my computer for gaming in 1440p and streaming. I've been looking at possible upgrades, but I'm having a hard time deciding between X99 or Z170. The CPUs I'm looking at are the 5820k and the 6700k.
Heres the prices of the configurations in my country:

Intel Core i7-5820K + Asrock X99 Extreme4 would cost me around 690$.
Intel Core i7-6700K + MSI Z170A GAMING M7 would cost me around 625$.

As I said, I would be using my computer for gaming and streaming at the same time.
What are your thoughts?

 

[lehtv]

What software are you streaming with? What do you mean by "overwhelmed" - low fps, or some sort of stuttering?

Are you sure your graphics card is not the part that's getting overwhelmed? Or maybe you are running out of RAM? It's always helpful to list your full specs.

Are you going to be overclocking the CPU?

Also, what would 6800K cost?

Gaming M7 is a rather expensive board, I would probably look at Asus Z170-A or Z170 Pro Gaming instead. As for the X99 board I would also rather have Asus, the X99A/USB 3.1 is a good board. For 6800K, I would buy the new Asus Strix board.

 

[Bugses]

What software are you streaming with? What do you mean by "overwhelmed" - low fps, or some sort of stuttering?

Are you sure your graphics card is not the part that's getting overwhelmed? Or maybe you are running out of RAM? It's always helpful to list your full specs.

Are you going to be overclocking the CPU?

Also, what would 6800K cost?

Gaming M7 is a rather expensive board, I would probably look at Asus Z170-A or Z170 Pro Gaming instead. As for the X99 board I would also rather have Asus, the X99A/USB 3.1 is a good board. For 6800K, I would buy the new Asus Strix board.

Thanks for your input.
I'm streaming with OBS Studio. I dont know if my FPS are low or not, as I dont have anything to compare it with, but my CPU gets 100% load when I try to stream certain games, like ArmA or Rainbow Six Siege.

I got a R9 290, which I would also upgrade to a 1070, and I got 8 gigs of DDR3 which I would upgrade to 16 gigs for DDR4. I would be overclocking, but just a mild one. My current CPU is OC´ed to 4Ghz.

The 6800k CPU costs 535$ in Denmark.

Here is what your choices would look like:

6700k + Asus Z170-A = 565$
6700k + Z170 Pro Gaming = 520$
5820k + ASUS X99-A/USB 3.1 = 756$
6800k + ASUS X99-A/USB 3.1 = 830$

I think the 6800k version is a little too much to be honest, and I dont know what I would benefit for that over a 5820k right now. Also, if I choose the ASUS X99-A/USB 3.1 board with a 5820k, theres a possiblity that I couldnt afford a GTX 1070, as I also have to buy a case, PSU and of course RAM.

 

[Ken g6]

Good news! If you get any recent (9xx or 10xx) Nvidia video card, you can use Nvenc to encode for streaming. This uses almost no CPU, and doesn't much affect the GPU either.

So, I'd start with a new GPU, and then consider other upgrades.

 

[lehtv]

I'm streaming with OBS Studio.

You might try streaming with Shadowplay once you buy the NVIDIA card. It takes all the streaming load off of the CPU/RAM and uses the GPU/VRAM instead. The effect of ShadowPlay on fps is minimal and the quality is pretty good. In fact, it might be worth upgrading just the GPU first - if you find that Shadowplay gives you the performance you need, then you don't have to upgrade the CPU/motherboard/RAM at all.

Apparently OBS supports the use of NVENC encoder, so you can use OBS to record with the graphics card. edit Ken g6 beat me to it >.< /edit

I dont know if my FPS are low or not, as I dont have anything to compare it with

If your fps isn't low, or you don't know if it's low, what exactly is prompting you to think about upgrading? 100% CPU usage on its own isn't a problem as long as the game still plays fine and without hitches and stuttering.

I would classify anything below 60 fps to be worth improving, but it'd be hard to justify an upgrade worth hundreds of $ if the dips below 60 aren't serious. If you're gaming on 144 Hz, even framerates above 60 can be worth improving.

Whether your fps is low for you is subjective, but to measure the actual fps numbers, you can use any fps meter like MSI Afterburner OSD, FRAPS, DXtory etc. or in-game console commands.

I got a R9 290, which I would also upgrade to a 1070

:thumbsup:

Here is what your choices would look like:

6700k + Asus Z170-A = 565$
6700k + Z170 Pro Gaming = 520$
5820k + ASUS X99-A/USB 3.1 = 756$
6800k + ASUS X99-A/USB 3.1 = 830$

I think the 6800k version is a little too much to be honest, and I dont know what I would benefit for that over a 5820k right now. Also, if I choose the ASUS X99-A/USB 3.1 board with a 5820k, theres a possiblity that I couldnt afford a GTX 1070, as I also have to buy a case, PSU and of course RAM.

6700k + Z170 Pro Gaming = 520$ looks like the best option then. Combine with 2x8GB DDR4-2666 such as Corsair LPX or Kingston Fury, whichever is cheapest.

as I also have to buy a case, PSU and of course RAM.

What are your current case and PSU?

 

[Bugses]

Sorry for the late reponse.
My case is a Cooler Master Storm Trooper and my PSU is Corsair VX550. I was thinking about upgrading my case to a Phanteks Enthoo Pro, and I'm not sure about the PSU yet. I dont think I could use Shadowplay for streaming, as I also use an overlay for my stream, which I dont think Shadowplay supports.
What I do know though, is that x264 is pretty good for streaming, and that setting likes more cores, which speaks more in favor of the 5820k. Its hard to tell if I'm being bottlenecked by my CPU currently, and its also hard to tell when to upgrade from an old CPU to a newer.

The GPU upgrade will happen, and I'm about to order a 1070. If I were to upgrade the rest of my stuff, I would just build a whole new computer and give this to my girlfriend.

 

[lehtv]

But OBS supports NVENC which is the NVIDIA encoder ShadowPlay uses, as far as I'm aware. NVENC with overlay should work. Never tried it myself though, this is just based on quick googling

 

[Bugses]

Yeah, I think NVENC should work, but according to the OBS forum, the quality is lacking. I havent tried it myself, so I cant comment on it.

 

[mnewsham]

any hardware encoding will be lacking in quality compared to software, but the trade off is almost no CPU usage. So for MOST people the trade off is worth it since you're streaming the content anyway and not using it for a bluray or something similarly high quality.

If you really want to make sure you have the highest quality (for example you run a large youtube channel and want good production quality) then you may wish to use software encoders and beefy CPU to get the highest quality encode you can.

But for live streaming via twitch or similar, usually hardware encoding is fine, either via quicksync on the CPU(the 6700k has guicksync but the 5820k does not) or NVENC on a modern Nvidia GPU.

 

[Bugses]

any hardware encoding will be lacking in quality compared to software, but the trade off is almost no CPU usage. So for MOST people the trade off is worth it since you're streaming the content anyway and not using it for a bluray or something similarly high quality.

If you really want to make sure you have the highest quality (for example you run a large youtube channel and want good production quality) then you may wish to use software encoders and beefy CPU to get the highest quality encode you can.

But for live streaming via twitch or similar, usually hardware encoding is fine, either via quicksync on the CPU(the 6700k has guicksync but the 5820k does not) or NVENC on a modern Nvidia GPU.

Thanks for explaining that. So you think, that NVENC or similar is good enough to stream for something like 720p?

 

[mnewsham]

Thanks for explaining that. So you think, that NVENC or similar is good enough to stream for something like 720p?

Yup, that's what most people use on twitch and other live streaming platforms generally.

Trying to run CPU encoding while gaming is just not easy to do, even with a 5820k (i have one and it can manage 720p fine without dropping frames, but 1080p encoding AND gaming is a bit of a stretch even with the extra cores)

 

[Bugses]

Cool, I've ordered the 1070, so I'll just wait and see how it goes then. Thanks for your help