I have an old 980X that has served me well, but today I am staring underperformance in the face.
In Fallout New Vegas, no less.
The game is a single-core beast, unfortunately. I literally cannot get a solid 60fps from it with the 980X, even with a decent OC (and a GTX 1070). Cooling doesn't even matter on CPU or GPU because it technically doesn't push either all that well. So I'm fed up with that. Also fed up with waiting for an obvious must-buy CPU. If ever there had been one, it was the 4790K, an eternity ago.
Today, I don't even know. It pretty much sounds like I'll be buying something two years old no matter what I pick. So let me phrase the question exactingly:
If I am strongly interested in single-core performance, but also don't want to spend $200 on a motherboard that's literally going to be useless for whatever CPU I buy two or three years down the road, and also do not want to be left wanting if some game comes along that actually takes advantage of six cores, what on earth should I be looking at? (Worth noting: I'm talking about high-end CPUs with a typical budget, which means I'd be looking at a 4790K, 5820K, 6600K, 6700K etc., not the grossly overpriced CPUs that enjoy a 2% advantage over these.)
That's a three-part question. Six cores may or may not be important at a relevant point in the future. I personally expect it soon, just because console developers have more than that many cores to work with, but I'm no expert. The motherboard question is real. My current motherboard was used initially for an i7-920 and is now using the i7-980X because I found a bargain on that dated CPU at some point. Some six years of service and counting. Incidentally, I will be LOATHE to abandon it because I'm using a PCI (not PCIE) soundcard (Xonar Essence ST) and there are zero, count them, zero options for continuing to use such a card on whatever I end up buying. (PCI->PCIE converters do not work. Leastwise for a card that demands precision voltage.) Recommendations on that front are welcome; it's a headphone amp, basically, and sounds superb. Lastly the single-core consideration. All this for New Vegas. If a given CPU doesn't have the best single-core performance I can reasonably afford, either its pro's need to outweigh that con or the actual performance difference needs to be adequately negligible.
Last but not least, an eye toward the immediate (as in handful of months) future. If there was an obvious "You idiot! Just wait a couple of months and this will be available!" CPU on the horizon, I wouldn't be asking. I'd grit my teeth and wait. But I'm not seeing anything of the sort. AMD's ZEN seems to be turning out to be merely competitive with Intel, not a beast that is the new king that everyone will be buying. This in spite of Intel themselves making only the tiniest gains in the past half decade thanks to their monopoly. But maybe I'm wrong and there's something I really ought to be waiting on, without question, for the reasons that fall under my areas of concern. Definitely would appreciate being corrected on this matter.
Thanks in advance.
In Fallout New Vegas, no less.
The game is a single-core beast, unfortunately. I literally cannot get a solid 60fps from it with the 980X, even with a decent OC (and a GTX 1070). Cooling doesn't even matter on CPU or GPU because it technically doesn't push either all that well. So I'm fed up with that. Also fed up with waiting for an obvious must-buy CPU. If ever there had been one, it was the 4790K, an eternity ago.
Today, I don't even know. It pretty much sounds like I'll be buying something two years old no matter what I pick. So let me phrase the question exactingly:
If I am strongly interested in single-core performance, but also don't want to spend $200 on a motherboard that's literally going to be useless for whatever CPU I buy two or three years down the road, and also do not want to be left wanting if some game comes along that actually takes advantage of six cores, what on earth should I be looking at? (Worth noting: I'm talking about high-end CPUs with a typical budget, which means I'd be looking at a 4790K, 5820K, 6600K, 6700K etc., not the grossly overpriced CPUs that enjoy a 2% advantage over these.)
That's a three-part question. Six cores may or may not be important at a relevant point in the future. I personally expect it soon, just because console developers have more than that many cores to work with, but I'm no expert. The motherboard question is real. My current motherboard was used initially for an i7-920 and is now using the i7-980X because I found a bargain on that dated CPU at some point. Some six years of service and counting. Incidentally, I will be LOATHE to abandon it because I'm using a PCI (not PCIE) soundcard (Xonar Essence ST) and there are zero, count them, zero options for continuing to use such a card on whatever I end up buying. (PCI->PCIE converters do not work. Leastwise for a card that demands precision voltage.) Recommendations on that front are welcome; it's a headphone amp, basically, and sounds superb. Lastly the single-core consideration. All this for New Vegas. If a given CPU doesn't have the best single-core performance I can reasonably afford, either its pro's need to outweigh that con or the actual performance difference needs to be adequately negligible.
Last but not least, an eye toward the immediate (as in handful of months) future. If there was an obvious "You idiot! Just wait a couple of months and this will be available!" CPU on the horizon, I wouldn't be asking. I'd grit my teeth and wait. But I'm not seeing anything of the sort. AMD's ZEN seems to be turning out to be merely competitive with Intel, not a beast that is the new king that everyone will be buying. This in spite of Intel themselves making only the tiniest gains in the past half decade thanks to their monopoly. But maybe I'm wrong and there's something I really ought to be waiting on, without question, for the reasons that fall under my areas of concern. Definitely would appreciate being corrected on this matter.
Thanks in advance.