Overclock.net banner

Another "Tired of waiting - What CPU do I get?" post

559 views 14 replies 8 participants last post by  Xaltar 
#1 ·
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.
 
See less See more
#2 ·
There's actually a decent amount of Z170 boards in the sub-$150 range that also have PCI slots. I remember my PCI Asus ST fondly and miss it dearly.

Beyond that, I would get a 6600K for right now and wait for Kaby Lake. Worse case scenario, KE isn't impressive but Skylake prices go down and you upgrade to a 6700K for cheap.
 
#4 ·
6700k or 7700k. Like you, IPC performance was of utmost importance to me since I play many older games (whether actually older or just using outdated engines like New Vegas which is one of my absolute favorite games). Zen won't beat Skylake in this regard. You might be interested in waiting for a 7700k since they might get an extra 300-400 MHz over the 6700k when overclocked, on average.

Intel doesn't support PCI from what I understand although some boards still have it. I'd get a different sound card especially if you play other older games... games that use DirectSound3D or OpenAL in particular. Creative sound cards are needed to enable all of those lovely features from older DirectSound3D games, features that blow newer games out of the water. The Creative Sound Blaster ZxR is Creative's counterpart to the Essence STX (so it's PCI-E x1). Largely the same sound quality, but Creative DSP and it works with Creative ALchemy. This thread might be relevant to you if you go that route.

But the ZxR has quite the absurd price. The Sound Blaster Z has the same headphone amp I believe, just an inferior DAC. The Sound Blaster Omni works well too, and it's even cheaper.
 
#5 ·
I like my i5 6600k oc 4.5GHz and Gigabyte Z170 HD3 budget board also with 2 PCI slots. I use it for everything, mostly gaming.
smile.gif
 
#6 ·
the 4790k is still a beast cpu but in your case i'd say just go ahead with 6700k and z170 which should also support the new 7700k when released plus new ddr4 memory at faster speeds improves fps otherwise i'd say 4790k which is like 5-8% behind the 6700k. either of those will be a huge jump in single core speed, actually a overclocked 4790k single core speed is like twice as fast as a stock 980x
 
#7 ·
Z170 with 6700k or 7700k (or both) sounding like a plan. Anyone have a recommended Z170 board, given that I need one regular PCI slot (not two or zero)? That's pretty amazing that I may have a modern option without having to toss out a soundcard I still pretty much can't replace with anything better.

Edit: Since I still use DDR3 and don't really buy that DDR4 is a huge boon for the cost of outright replacing all my ram, it'd be a nice bonus if the board could support DDR3 without sacrificing too much for that.
 
#8 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Asterra View Post

Z170 with 6700k or 7700k (or both) sounding like a plan. Anyone have a recommended Z170 board, given that I need one regular PCI slot (not two or zero)? That's pretty amazing that I may have a modern option without having to toss out a soundcard I still pretty much can't replace with anything better.

Edit: Since I still use DDR3 and don't really buy that DDR4 is a huge boon for the cost of outright replacing all my ram, it'd be a nice bonus if the board could support DDR3 without sacrificing too much for that.
Non of the motherboards support 1 PCI slot, all that have PCI slots have 2.

GA-Z170-HD3 DDR3 supports DDR3 LINK http://www.gigabyte.us/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5488#ov

 
#9 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by wingman99 View Post

Non of the motherboards support 1 PCI slot, all that have PCI slots have 2.
I actually randomly found a board that has just one PCI slot - the ASUS Z170-A ATX. But the real challenge, it seems, is in finding a good deal on a board that doesn't have a history of failing within one month, with the manufacturer refusing to honor the warranty. This goes for both Asus and my mainstay, Gigabyte.

As for ram, yeah, I guess I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and get DDR4. At this point it's just a hundred bucks to get me the minimum 16GB I think I can get by on (with Win7).
 
#10 ·
So, uh... I know if I can't find it with Google, there probably is no answer, but do we have a pretty good idea of when the 7700K will be available? If not a specific date then at least a specific range? I don't even know if it may come out tomorrow or if I am looking at waiting half a year.
 
#11 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Asterra View Post

So, uh... I know if I can't find it with Google, there probably is no answer, but do we have a pretty good idea of when the 7700K will be available? If not a specific date then at least a specific range? I don't even know if it may come out tomorrow or if I am looking at waiting half a year.
Since you don't seem to mind the heat of the bigger chips, i think you should go X99. You'd end up with a hexacore minimum, and if you needed to upgrade to the 10 core extreme edition down the road you could. BF1 i think is one of the first games to show an advantage on the cpus with more than 4 threads.

https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/battlefield-1-beta-cpu-scaling-performance.2485172/

You can see that the i7 with 8 threads has a noticeable advantage over the i5, and i expect the trend to continue. It could peak at the quad core though since consoles have 8 cores just like an i7 with hyper-threading.
 
#12 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Asterra View Post

So, uh... I know if I can't find it with Google, there probably is no answer, but do we have a pretty good idea of when the 7700K will be available? If not a specific date then at least a specific range? I don't even know if it may come out tomorrow or if I am looking at waiting half a year.
Some time in the first quarter of 2017.
 
#13 ·
My 2c? Wait for Kaby Lake and Z270 boards to hit as well as AMD's Zen lineup. From what I have been reading it should be worth the wait. There are already a few leaked benchmarks on the intel CPU side and I suspect there will be some fairly significant improvements in the Z270 chipset too.

While there is certainly nothing wrong with Skylake we are so close to the release of Zen and I don't doubt for an instant intel is ready to counter. This could quite possibly be the biggest architectural leap in the CPU market in over a decade. I already have plans to pick up both Zen and Kaby Lake once they hit and give them both a thrashing then sell whichever comes in second.
 
#14 ·
There is no IPC (Instructions per cycle) improvement with Kaby Lake. Just clock speed improvement.
 
#15 ·
So it would seem, it looks like the biggest "leap" on intel side will be the 200 series chipset enhancements over the 100 series. The hype is starting to clear as we get closer to launch.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top