Best i5 value (used) in Z270 platform

craigdt

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This is for my wife's current Pentium G4400/1060 3GB/1440p 60hz system.

We'd like to be able to play Farcry 5 together... but the G4400 is a serious bottleneck.

Not going to overclock, as she has a pretty basic air cooler.

Obviously the 8th Gen i5 are seriously better value, but we are not interested getting her a new motherboard too.

Looking into used i5 6 and 7 series on eBay:
It appears the i5-6500 is the best value, at roughly $128 (ugh) for a used one.

Am I right in assuming there really isn't a ton of difference between the same models of the 2 generations?

Would a 7600k perform significantly/noticeably better than a 6400? She's used to playing Zelda on the Wii...
 
This is for my wife's current Pentium G4400/1060 3GB/1440p 60hz system.

We'd like to be able to play Farcry 5 together... but the G4400 is a serious bottleneck.

Not going to overclock, as she has a pretty basic air cooler.

Obviously the 8th Gen i5 are seriously better value, but we are not interested getting her a new motherboard too.

Looking into used i5 6 and 7 series on eBay:
It appears the i5-6500 is the best value, at roughly $128 (ugh) for a used one.

Am I right in assuming there really isn't a ton of difference between the same models of the 2 generations?

Would a 7600k perform significantly/noticeably better than a 6400? She's used to playing Zelda on the Wii...

Clock for clock the differences won't be truly noticeable, it's the maximum clock speed what matters when comparing those CPUS, and there's a HUGE difference in a 7600k versus a 6400 (a fully 1.0 - 1.1ghz when all cores are loaded...
 
Clock for clock the differences won't be truly noticeable, it's the maximum clock speed what matters when comparing those CPUS, and there's a HUGE difference in a 7600k versus a 6400 (a fully 1.0 - 1.1ghz when all cores are loaded...

In my instance, will the difference be noticeable during game play?
A few FPS just isn't worth the extra cost in a machine that gets used a few hours each week.
 
Personally, I would go for the 7600k or even the 6600k, and overclock. I know you said you have a generic AIR cooler, but your wife's board is capable of changing multipliers, and you can still probably get an extra 400mhz out of it.


There is a posting on my local Kijiji selling a 6600k for $180 in Canadian dollars (so about $135USD)
 
Personally, I would go for the 7600k or even the 6600k, and overclock. I know you said you have a generic AIR cooler, but your wife's board is capable of changing multipliers, and you can still probably get an extra 400mhz out of it.


There is a posting on my local Kijiji selling a 6600k for $180 in Canadian dollars (so about $135USD)

I'm sure the 6600k is the better bet as they are essentially the same chip with different multipliers.
 
I'd get a 6600K and a good air cooler or one of the $50 AIO water coolers; you should be able to do 4.6GHz all cores. The extra 1.4GHz will be quite noticeable in some games now, and more noticeable in the future as games use more and more threads.

I'm sure the 6600k is the better bet as they are essentially the same chip with different multipliers.

The 7600K is good for another 200MHz as it is an updated process, and has the iGPU functionality needed to decode the DRM on 4K Netflix streams.
 
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