Poll If you had the choice between 7700k or i-7 6950x

If you had a choice and money was not a factor would you take Kaby Lake 7700k or i7-6950X?


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UnrealCpu

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If money is no factor and you base it on productivity , gaming , and overall experience for future proofing.

Also consider depreciation and new options on Z270 motherboards for Kaby Lake and much bigger IPC improvement .

Does the 6950X have any future in gaming such as star citizen or any future games where more than 4 cores will help?

Or would you rather take the IPC advantage with the 7700k and have less performance in productivity , using CAD, movie making etc or just having multiple programs open at once. Maybe Virtual Machines?
 
Can't in good conscience recommend 6950X when so many better options exist in the $1500 range.
I mean, lutjens has a point: overclocked 6950X is easily better than most of Xeon line-up except 2679 and 2697+ chips.
 
I mean, lutjens has a point: overclocked 6950X is easily better than most of Xeon line-up except 2679 and 2697+ chips.

Yes, but if we're talking strictly about gaming, its inability to overclock well compared to Haswell-E start to make it less of a stellar offering.

If talking about multipurpose, only a fool would buy one over a comparable/higher-end Xeon when the main allure of it was supposed to be its unlocked core count (which goes unused in almost all games sadly, and for those which use more than 6c any lower-clocked Xeon will be fine since the game ends up GPU-hungry in the end). That goes out the window when OC takes a step backwards when you pay double for the extra, oft-unused cores which end up being useful only in non-gaming scenarios where a Xeon would've made more sense.

Great as a future upgrade option if prices go down. Otherwise lame for first-time X99 adopters.
 
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If talking about multipurpose, only a fool would buy one over a comparable/higher-end Xeon when the main allure of it was supposed to be its unlocked core count (which goes unused in almost all games sadly, and for those which use more than 6c any lower-clocked Xeon will be fine since the game ends up GPU-hungry in the end). That goes out the window when OC takes a step backwards when you pay double for the extra, oft-unused cores which end up being useful only in non-gaming scenarios where a Xeon would've made more sense.
The point is that 6950X is faster than about any Xeon for the price. In tasks that scale to any amount of cores.
 
True. For that scenario I could recommend at its current price. Those use-cases are very few and far between though, considering.
 
I'd sacrifice the benefits of the 7700k for the better overall performance I'd get with the 6950X. You might not feel the IPC advantage, but you'll feel the extra cores when doing multi core related tasks.
 
If I didn't have to pay for it, I'd get the 6950x w/o thinking, it's a no brainer.
 
if I were handed given a choice between the two systems and told I could keep one, I would keep the 6950X no questions asked.
however, if I were building a rig for daily use I would pick the 7700K; the 6950X is temperamental to overclock and has very poor single threaded performance compared to the 7700K (16% clock deficit, 10-15% IPC deficit), so you'll always have that nagging worry that your single-threaded performance is holding you back, and X99 is archaic in comparison to Z270.
 
Have you guys considered the 7700k is on average overclocking to 5ghz?
if I were handed given a choice between the two systems and told I could keep one, I would keep the 6950X no questions asked.
however, if I were building a rig for daily use I would pick the 7700K; the 6950X is temperamental to overclock and has very poor single threaded performance compared to the 7700K (16% clock deficit, 10-15% IPC deficit), so you'll always have that nagging worry that your single-threaded performance is holding you back, and X99 is archaic in comparison to Z270.

I have also been considering the idle power usage as well on the 6950x is alot higher then the 7700k , almost 50-70watts? correct me if i am wrong but this is a rough estimate.
I just wish programmers would at least take advantage of at least 6 cores. Not sure if gaming consoles are holding us back or what
 
If it's for gaming the 7700k
I'd take the higher clocks over a lot more cores any day

Even if you're doing video editing for a hobby

There is actually not that much free software that could benefit from all those cores
It's not like gaming +streaming/recording takes a lot of CPU power away
Usually you would let the graphics card handle that :ROFLMAO:

And if you're investing thousands of bucks into software, tart could actually use all those cores, then you would go with the 10 core anyway

Better save the cash, put more ram in and a bigger M2 SSD
Like 1 or 2 TB from Samsung

Have you guys considered the 7700k is on average overclocking to 5ghz?


I have also been considering the idle power usage as well on the 6950x is alot higher then the 7700k , almost 50-70watts? correct me if i am wrong but this is a rough estimate.
I just wish programmers would at least take advantage of at least 6 cores. Not sure if gaming consoles are holding us back or what

I think if anything consoles would help us from this moment forward

Before this generation consoles were strange creations CPU wise
Just because the Cell processor had like 16 cores didn't mean games looked any way better than on PC
Now they are AMD parts

Not just easier to port, but since its PC parts, more or less, doing optimization towards multithreading would (hopefully) benefit PC gaming as well

Also im happy about my 7600k with 5ghz prime stable on air
Maybe I can get it prime stable at 5.2 under water :D

But seriously
Most things gaming related would benefit (if at all) more from a +800-1000Mhz boost then 6 more cores/12 more threads
 
Neither, I got my 2696v4 (NOT ES, 1 turbo bin better than 2699v4) for $1600 and it was a big ebay bucks day too :) For truly multi threaded stuff far better than an unlocked 10 core, not to mention BW-E overclocks suck.
I built a 6700k and Titan XP for gaming this xmas.
 
if I were handed given a choice between the two systems and told I could keep one, I would keep the 6950X no questions asked.
however, if I were building a rig for daily use I would pick the 7700K; the 6950X is temperamental to overclock and has very poor single threaded performance compared to the 7700K (16% clock deficit, 10-15% IPC deficit), so you'll always have that nagging worry that your single-threaded performance is holding you back, and X99 is archaic in comparison to Z270.

i7-6950X is not at all temperamental to overclock...you just hit a wall. Once you get there, you back off slightly. Nothing hard about it at all. It may not overclock to 5GHz, but the multi-threaded performance of an [email protected] is impressive to say the least.

You say X99 is archaic...yet I have a full 40x lanes without worrying about a stir stick DMI interface choking throughput. I'd rather an older chipset that has higher performance potential than a newer one that has limited potential. Less chance of new chipset issues as well...;)
 
I have a 7700k and 270 mb coming next week. Son wanted a faster clocked cpu. So i get his 5960x which should be fun to play with.
Hopefully all goes well.
Seems Intel is super baby stepping these cpu's....
 
What does exactly 40 pci lanes give a user ? I am hearing online it doesn't do anything for gaming or productivity. Is this true?
Also does it help with hard drive transfers to multiple drives?
 
What does exactly 40 pci lanes give a user ? I am hearing online it doesn't do anything for gaming or productivity. Is this true?
Also does it help with hard drive transfers to multiple drives?

Kind of a silly question. Depends completely on what those 40 lanes are used for. 40 lanes gives you.... more PCIE lanes. What you choose to do with them is up to you (and depends on which motherboard you buy). It also depends on where those lanes come from.

Z170 with 7700K you get 16 PCIE 3.0 lanes from the processor (that can be used for graphics) and 20 PCIE 3.0 lanes from the PCH for 36 Total.
Z270 with 7700K you get 16 PCIE 3.0 lanes from the processor (that can be used for graphics) and 24 PCIE 3.0 lanes from the PCH for 40 Total.
X99 with 6950X you get 40 PCIE 3.0 lanes from the processor (that can be used for graphics) and 8 PCIE 2.0 lanes from the PCH for 48 Total.

So you can see that with a 7700K you would have only 16 PCIE lanes from the CPU, so you are limited to 16x for a single video slot or 8x/8x for SLI/Crossfire.
With a 6950x you could have 2 16x video slots, or as many as 4 8x video slots for quad-SLI/quad-crossfire, and even still have some CPU PCIE lanes left over.

Motherboards can give you some flexibility with how the lanes are assigned. For example, my EVGA x99 board allows me to do triple-SLI with my 5820K, which only has 28 CPU lanes, because it assigns 8x CPU lanes to each of the first 3 PCIE slots which most boards don't do. My board has some compromises as a result however, such as not having an M.2 slot.

Lanes from the PCH can be used for anything other than primary graphics generally. More lanes won't give you a performance boost in anything unless you were previously restricted somehow by lack of lanes. Also keep in mind that the lanes from a Z170 or Z270 PCH are PCIE 3.0 whereas the lanes from the X99 PCH are only PCIE 2.0. That makes the chipset lanes on the Z170 and Z270 much more "useful", but they still can't be used for primary graphics.
 
Kind of a silly question. Depends completely on what those 40 lanes are used for. 40 lanes gives you.... more PCIE lanes. What you choose to do with them is up to you (and depends on which motherboard you buy). It also depends on where those lanes come from.

Z170 with 7700K you get 16 PCIE 3.0 lanes from the processor (that can be used for graphics) and 20 PCIE 3.0 lanes from the PCH for 36 Total.
Z270 with 7700K you get 16 PCIE 3.0 lanes from the processor (that can be used for graphics) and 24 PCIE 3.0 lanes from the PCH for 40 Total.
X99 with 6950X you get 40 PCIE 3.0 lanes from the processor (that can be used for graphics) and 8 PCIE 2.0 lanes from the PCH for 48 Total.

So you can see that with a 7700K you would have only 16 PCIE lanes from the CPU, so you are limited to 16x for a single video slot or 8x/8x for SLI/Crossfire.
With a 6950x you could have 2 16x video slots, or as many as 4 8x video slots for quad-SLI/quad-crossfire, and even still have some CPU PCIE lanes left over.

Motherboards can give you some flexibility with how the lanes are assigned. For example, my EVGA x99 board allows me to do triple-SLI with my 5820K, which only has 28 CPU lanes, because it assigns 8x CPU lanes to each of the first 3 PCIE slots which most boards don't do. My board has some compromises as a result however, such as not having an M.2 slot.

Lanes from the PCH can be used for anything other than primary graphics generally. More lanes won't give you a performance boost in anything unless you were previously restricted somehow by lack of lanes. Also keep in mind that the lanes from a Z170 or Z270 PCH are PCIE 3.0 whereas the lanes from the X99 PCH are only PCIE 2.0. That makes the chipset lanes on the Z170 and Z270 much more "useful", but they still can't be used for primary graphics.


I gotcha so 40 lanes is a waste of money

you answered my silly question
 
7700K.
Hardly anything needs better except games but it clocks well so you are golden.
By the time better is needed, there will be more options.
I have zero need for 6 cores + HT or higher.
 
Xeon 14/28 for < $360 running happily at 3.0Ghz. Best deal ever. At 4k Gaming, no game suffers from lower clock speed and yet in everything else it brutally kills any desktop CPU
 
If money wasn't an issue you'd probably be running multiple Titan X, multiple NVME drives, 10 gigabit, and a PCIe sound card. Dictating the need for X99.
 
Xeon 14/28 for < $360 running happily at 3.0Ghz. Best deal ever. At 4k Gaming, no game suffers from lower clock speed and yet in everything else it brutally kills any desktop CPU
At 3ghz? Where are your benchmarks against a 7700k at stock speed and at 4.5ghz+?
 
If money was no consideration, then I would do the 7700k now, and then upgrade when the next new faster thing came out.
 
6950x because it still can be overclocked decently as lutjens says. If it can hit 4.2 or 4.3 GHz, it won't be at too much of a real-world disadvantage compared to a 7700k at say 4.8 GHz. How much of a difference would that 0.5 GHz and the small IPC increase matter in a game? I'm guessing not that much, and then you have 10 cores for any multithreaded jobs you might need for work or multitasking
 
6950X, all day. As strange as it may seem to many, gaming isn't the only thing some people use a computer for. After running a decently OCd 5960X for a couple of years - and even some gaming - there's no way I could could go back to a quad core as my "workhorse" machine. I still have i3-4130, i5-4960, and i7-3770K rigs in use, but for heavy lifting they can't touch the octo core. I guess if I was gaming at 1080p the extra zing of a 5GHz 7700K might be noticeable, but the i5 HTPC is the only thing I have in 1080p any more.
 
I've gotten bored of 4 core/8 thread CPU's so 7700k is out of the question for me. Some of the newer games do take advantage of only 4 cores/8 threads, but I personally like the headroom of having additional cores available to run windows and other apps in the background.

6950x is intriguing but I don't feel like the clocks are high enough although that might be my pick if I had to buy something today.

I'm going to wait until LGA2066 and see what is available. A 10 core CPU at 4.5GHz or more would be nice!
 
If money is no consideration why do you even bother to ask? Just buy both. It's certainly what I'd do.
 
1 simple question will tell you what you want.

Do you need many cores? No? get the 7700K Period!

almost everything is single thread from web browsing, games, OS, nearly ever fucking program ever written is single thread limited.

If you are not 100% positive you need many cores get the damn quad.
 
Has anyone compared a overclocked 7700k vs a 6950x in battlefield 1?

battlefield 1 is supposed to use all threads /cores
 
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