Sons PC Build 4790k vs 5820k opinions wanted

[rbarr110]

My youngest son is building his first PC. He has saved up his money, sold his Legos, and is ready to buy parts.

First and foremost, it is primarily a gaming machine, so he and I are not sure which processor route to go. As of right now there is about a $40 price difference between the 4790k and the 5820k.

The 4790k has the faster core clock, but the 5820k has a slower core clock but has more cores and outscores the 4790k in synthetic bench marks. However, we know that alot of games aren't using a ton of hyper threading in their coding, and core clock speed often is more beneficial than more cores.

So if you were buying, for a primarily gaming machine, which route would you go?

 

[GotNoRice]

We are at a point now where some DX11 games are finally able to fully utilize four cores. In addition, DX12 is just around the corner with clear benefits in terms of multi-threading. The era of 4 cores being "more than enough" has lasted nearly a decade as software and games struggled to catch up, but is now coming to a close.

No one knows how exactly DX12 will shape up and what sort of real-world impact it will have on multi-threaded CPU utilization, but the relative value of CPUs with extra cores will only increase over time compared to chips with less cores as those cores are more effectively utilized.

If you are really only looking for 4 cores, I would try to go with a 6700k or even a 6600k. If not, I feel that the 5820k is the pretty easy choice. Also, if you overclock, you can close most of the frequency gap.

 

[QuiteSufficient]

Just got a 6700k. My brother has an X79/3930K six core, and I used to have an X58/980X 6 core. Both of the 6 core systems felt better/smoother to me in real world use - real world being when you have Steam, Origin, GOG, all their updaters, teamspeak, web browsers, etc all open behind the game youre playing.

If I had to do it again I would get a 5930k from Microcenter for $399 - not much more than I paid for the 6700k.

In your example I see no reason to go 4970k. I'd either go 6600k or 5820k.

 

[mls1995]

go skylake

 

[samm]

Go skylake for the board features. Go haswell E for the extra cores. Just note that higher core count does not mean better performance. Plus on the off chance the cannonlake refresh rumors are true, skylake board could support 8 cores with a bios update

 

[melk]

+Skylake for the newest features... 4790k if not. More clockspeed over more cores.

None of the options will be 'bad' or 'slow'.

 

[Criticalhitkoala]

I haven't etc a 5820 or 5930 that can't do 4ghz. Yeah a 6700 may go faster but it gets to a point that you don't notice the speed difference between 400 mhz.

Personally I would recomend a 4690k and spend the extra on a better video card. If he's like your typical kid than games and small level application stuff with little high level processing and encoding will happen.

I love my 5930k but having owned a 4790k before can say a lot of the floof I have doesn't amount to much of a difference in performance.

 

[williacm]

I just recently upgraded from Sandybridge to Skylake and have been quite happy with the gaming performance increase. DDR4 is now relatively cheap and as others have mentioned there are nice features with the Z170 mainboards. I will forewarn, however, that I have found that Skylake for some reason does not play well with certain coolers. When I purchased mine I had terrible temperatures using the same Corsair H100 that I had great results with on my sandybridge setup. Since I didn't have any other equipment to test it with I ended up sending it to Siliconlottery.com and hadm071109 them delid it as well as check what numbers they would get with clock speeds and temps. He used a corsair H105 AIO cooler and got great temps before and after delid so that helped me narrow things down. I also saw a recent post where someone else had the same issue and fixed it by simply going to a different cooler so I did the same. After getting an H110i everything has been perfect. 4.7Ghz and it never goes over 66 degrees even in stress testing.

Hope that helps and have fun with whatever you choose to build!

 

[Beaflag VonRathburg]

I chose the 5820k because I was able to buy one used for $290 versus paying $399.99 for the 6700k like Newegg wanted at the time. If you were choosing between x99 and 1150 I would honestly just find the best deal. If your son is selling legos to pay for a computer it isn't like he is going to be upgrading the thing a lot in the next few years. Get the most bang for your buck and let it ride.