Can we settle this: i7 5820K vs. i7 5930K for MGPU gaming?

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KickAssCop

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Which is better. The most I will ever do is 3 way SLi and that too on cards that run at 70 C full load on air cooling. Other than that, possibly will run only 2 way SLi.

Worth going 5930K over 5820K given the price differential of almost 200 bucks?

I will be running this with an ASUS X99 Deluxe, Corsair H110i GT, 16 GB G Skill 2666 ram and rest of specs in my sig.
 
I bought a 5930k for the pcie lanes. Only running one gpu right now. But loving my xp941 boot drive. Soon to be a sm951. Possibly 3 980Ti. But more than likely only two. Speed and longevity now days is tied to pcie lanes. I tend to keep my rigs a very long time. I was still running Core duo rigs until I built a Z97 rig. Then pulled my head out and went X99. I will have them for years.
 
If you can afford 3 way SLI, you can afford a 5930K.
Why even ask the question?

For SLI, 5820K is plenty.
 
The way I see it is,

5820k is overkill for Dual SLI, unless you want to add anything to the system that would compete with the GPUs for lanes (such as PCI-E SSD's), then 5820k is the ideal CPU if you are running dual GPU.

5930k running tri-SLI will run 16x/16x/8x, but if you add anything to that setup that competes for PCI-E lanes, it will automatically drop to 16x/8x/8x. How does this affect the tri GPU performance in general, I don't know, but I always assumed that in a multi-GPU setup, the whole setup would be bottlenecked by the card with the least number of PCI-E lanes, thus I thought 16x/16x/8x would be no better than say 8x/8x/8x outside of very rare cases (I know of only 2 games where the difference is greater than a few %).

I would have a bigger reason to run 5930k to run dual sli (since both cards would be at x16 with 8 lanes to spare) than to run 5930k for tri-SLI IMO.

Of course, this is entirely based on my limited understanding of how PCI-E lanes affect performance, especially when the lanes are not equal.
 
[H] did a review maybe two years ago (can't recall) showing 8x8x is only about 2-3% slower than 16x16x.

I think some folks put way too much emphasis on needing 16x16x, when it's not necessary. You'd be better of putting the $200.00 difference between the 5930k and 5820k towards better GPU's.
 
My current thinking is to put the following system setup.

i7 5820K
ASUS X99 Deluxe
16 GB G Skill DDR 4 2666
Corsair H110i GT

Then upgrade to 980 Ti once they are released. Indeed the 200 bucks will go a long way on the GPU front since if the cards are 650 a pop then it might be a problem for me.
 
5820K is an amazing CPU for the money taking into account you have a Microcenter near you for the $299 price point. DDR4 and the X99 motherboards are no more expensive than anything else.

If the Broadwell and Skylake leaked benchmarks are to be believed, then a 5820K @ 4.5ghz is still faster and cheaper.

Oh and you don't need the deluxe.

Get the Asus X99-A. Its the same exact motherboard as the deluxe other than no wifi and no fancy metal accents.
 
Agreed on the 5820K, I was debating the same and settled on the 5820K with one GPU for now.
I will upgrade to a dual in 6-12 months once I let finances settle.
Plus, there should be no issue adding a M.2 SSD onto my board once the tech is truly worth it (about the same time frame is my guess)
 
I think there are many test out there that shows there's no difference between 16x and 8x for dual GPU setup. You may run into issues at 3 or 4 GPU, but you probably wouldn't be spending on a 5820K if you could afford quad GPU setups anyway.
 
I think linus did a video showing that PCI lanes from 8x to 16x has no effect whatsoever in SLI/CF
 
wrangler said:
If you can afford 3 way SLI, you can afford a 5930K.
Why even ask the question?

For SLI, 5820K is plenty.
Click to expand...

tend to agree.

5820k and spend the extra cash on a psu that can keep up with what you are asking...

seeing spikes of 700ish watts coming outta my setup... my poor poor 860ax... :(
 
Well I went with the 5930K processor and guess what, this whole system upgrade was completely pointless from 2600K @ 4.8 GHz to 5930K @ 4.5 GHz. I highly recommend against it.

See specs in sig for new PC. This is the most worthless upgrade I have done for over a decade. Last one was move from Pentium 2 400 to Pentium 3 450 lol.
 
you need to add one more card for the 2011 platform to show its benefit. 16/16/8 multi gpu nets tangible improvements over the 8/8/4 afforded by z97 chipsets not only in framerate but smoothness.
 
Will need to change case for that. Currently no space. Even my Corsair 110i GT is hanging lol.
 
KickAssCop said:
Well I went with the 5930K processor and guess what, this whole system upgrade was completely pointless from 2600K @ 4.8 GHz to 5930K @ 4.5 GHz. I highly recommend against it.

See specs in sig for new PC. This is the most worthless upgrade I have done for over a decade. Last one was move from Pentium 2 400 to Pentium 3 450 lol.
Click to expand...

Main upgrade that show difference are old hdd to ssd.
Nowadays its like a sad tragic comedy with upgrades.
Changes I made was win 8 was faster than win 7 in use, new 850ssd was a bit better than my older crucial ssd.

I am like, what to upgrade to have a noticeable difference in my use?
GPU will be upgraded but then I am likely to have 2 more years before I even consider upgrades and I like new tech...
 
KickAssCop said:
Well I went with the 5930K processor and guess what, this whole system upgrade was completely pointless from 2600K @ 4.8 GHz to 5930K @ 4.5 GHz. I highly recommend against it.

See specs in sig for new PC. This is the most worthless upgrade I have done for over a decade. Last one was move from Pentium 2 400 to Pentium 3 450 lol.
Click to expand...

To see the difference, you'll need to have the application that will actually take advantage of the extra performance. Your OCed 2600K is still more than capable for most games.

For now, I believe the people who are going to see the actual benefits are those who do stuff like video rendering.
 
Right, the 5820k is really only for people who need those extra cores for encoding or REAL WORK, or feel like 4 cores is so last week. The 5830k is a better platform for 3xGPU gaming.

For everyone else, 4 cores are just fine. And this will go double in August with the release of Skylake K, which will have 20 PCIE lanes in the CPU, and double the bandwidth of the ones on the chipset (28 PCIe 3.0 total). That will solve any remaining bandwidth issues for people running 2x GPU + PCIe SSD.
 
KickAssCop said:
Well I went with the 5930K processor and guess what, this whole system upgrade was completely pointless from 2600K @ 4.8 GHz to 5930K @ 4.5 GHz. I highly recommend against it.

See specs in sig for new PC. This is the most worthless upgrade I have done for over a decade. Last one was move from Pentium 2 400 to Pentium 3 450 lol.
Click to expand...

At least on paper, you should have seen an improvement in your 3dmark scores. A 2600k gets 7820 3d mark physics score while a 5930k gets 12370. That's almost a 60% increase in physics score.

Also, Cinebench reports a 17% single core increase and 72% multi core increase.

However, we all know this doesn't really translate into fps. But don't sweat your purchase. You have six core goodness now for dx12. ;)
 
The CPU wars have died down for at least the past 5 years. I have a 2500K, and I see no need to upgrade, but back in the 90s and early 2000s keeping a 4 year computer would have been unimaginable to me.
Old timers tend to forget that things change.
 
Yup, I'm absolutely amazed how many years I've gotten out of my 2500k. In the past I upgraded my CPU every 2 years to feed the hunger of new games.
 
wrangler said:
If you can afford 3 way SLI, you can afford a 5930K.
Why even ask the question?

For SLI, 5820K is plenty.
Click to expand...

I'm still on a 3930k with 0 problems. Spend the extra $200, will add some longevity from a future upgrade. Only doing 1080p ultra settings on everything.
 
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