CPU upgrade from Intel i7-6700K 4GHZ

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LFCNZ

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#272087 9-Jun-2020 04:04

Looking for some upgrade advice for my CPU above, had it for 4-5 years, still holds its own after all that time.

Really just looking for best bang for my $ - the Intel i7-6700K def served me well in that regard :)

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#2501089 9-Jun-2020 06:28

What doesn't the 6700K do that you need? My 2600K is getting a bit long in the tooth, but I'm holding out for the Ryzen 4000 desktop series which is expected by the end of the year.

The latest CPUs have about 50% better single thread performance than the 8 year old 2600K, which is why I've seen no need to upgrade yet. You might get a 10% single thread gain, 20% multi-core gain, moving to a new CPU. CPU speed improvements are fairly slow these days.

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#2501090 9-Jun-2020 07:04

what do you use the computer for? whats your budget?

are you wanting to stick with intel or would you consider AMD, who offer better multi thread speed and are generally cheaper overall.

as Timmmay mentioned i would probably wait for the AMD4000 launch and see whats available before making a decision.

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#2501097 9-Jun-2020 07:54

Yep, your 6700K remains the best bang for buck. If nothing's wrong, there isn't much to be gained - yet. Intel still uses the same basic core for their newer models, so you're just buying higher clock speed and more cores if you take an Intel upgrade path, and AMD is about on par with your 6700K, but offer significantly more cores for better prices. In the next 2 months (hopefully), the new AMD parts will hit the market with a newer revision of their Zen Architecture, which will certainly have IPC gains that will put them ahead of current Intel parts, and that's when it might be worth looking to upgrade for you.

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#2501099 9-Jun-2020 08:07

Im on a 4th gen i5, and still find it ticks along happily. As others have mentioned, depends what you want to do with a newer CPU.

XPD / Gavin

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#2501104 9-Jun-2020 08:16

Yup, 4th gen Devil's Canyon here, still melting hearts. Waiting for the next Zen train to pull into the station.

What are you hoping to get out of an upgrade?

Unless you have the compute-heavy use case to take advantage of the extra cores/threads of a newer platform, I doubt you will see much tangible improvement for games and general activities. Since Skylake already supports DDR4 RAM, there is not a huge incentive platform-wise to make the jump either, unlike some of us still rocking the DDR3-1600 RAM.

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#2501261 9-Jun-2020 10:59

4th gen i7k here with 32g ram. 980 card. All sad storage

No change needed.

Will see how new version Microsoft flight simulator runs before trying graphic card upgrade then maybe replace motherboard etc.

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#2501279 9-Jun-2020 11:09

Main reason to upgrade CPU these days, is to match with a modern video card for gaming. Video card I'm using is 10 years old, and only come across one game that it wont run, and thats Forza Horizon.

Runs everything else happily.

XPD / Gavin

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#2501283 9-Jun-2020 11:18

LFCNZ:

Looking for some upgrade advice for my CPU above, had it for 4-5 years, still holds its own after all that time.

Really just looking for best bang for my $ - the Intel i7-6700K def served me well in that regard :)

hey what are you using your computer for? are you a hardcore gamer or using anything heavily cpu bound? 6700K is a good CPU but you could definitely upgrade if you wanted a little more oomph

also if youre a gamer, whats your primary go to game?

GoranZ

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#2501310 9-Jun-2020 11:53

I see the new I3 from Intel are basically I7-6700K/7700 ..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tEMDOq-8wA

Thanks AMD for getting back in the game and forcing Intel into action 👍

So you could upgrade to a new I5 for more performance (the I5-10400 for example) but yeah with AMD 4xxx not far away just hang in there.

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#2501409 9-Jun-2020 12:25

timmmay:

What doesn't the 6700K do that you need? My 2600K is getting a bit long in the tooth, but I'm holding out for the Ryzen 4000 desktop series which is expected by the end of the year.

The latest CPUs have about 50% better single thread performance than the 8 year old 2600K, which is why I've seen no need to upgrade yet. You might get a 10% single thread gain, 20% multi-core gain, moving to a new CPU. CPU speed improvements are fairly slow these days.

my 3770K is really starting to suffer now. even at 4.5ghz all cores, i regularly sit at 100% and struggle.

I will also admit that my windows install is just pretty rough, it's years old, has been through many upgrades and probably a refresh would make it seem new again.

i blame all the meltdown etc fixes though i swear things just chugged since then.

I'm looking forward to being able to swap to WSL2 and run docker native rather than in HyperV though. i feel like that really hit with overhead.

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concordnz

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#2501452 9-Jun-2020 12:34

If you decide to upgrade.......how much are you looking for, for the 6700k ? :-)

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sm1ff

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#2501485 9-Jun-2020 13:26

I5 10600k, seems to be good price for gaming. I currently got a i7 5820k

Apsattv

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#2501709 9-Jun-2020 19:44

Just overclock the 6700k if you havn't already it should do 4.5-4.7 pretty easily

Im still rocking a 5820K @ stock

Dugimodo

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#2502107 10-Jun-2020 10:39

August 2018 I treated myself to a new PC with a Ryzen 2700X to replace my ~ 3 year old 6700K machine.

With twice the cores and threads my new PC ran.... pretty much exactly the same as the old one.

That said it's now 2 years on and some of the more demanding games are starting to push 4 core machines pretty hard so if I'd waited until now I may have actually noticed the difference a bit. The friend I sold the 6700K to is still very happy with it though.

If you are finding it is struggling now then sure upgrade it, but if not it's always worth waiting. Personally though I just like building PCs and keeping ahead of the requirements of games I play so I tend to upgrade every 2-3 years regardless.

The best "bang for buck" deal right now is probably a Ryzen 5 3600 but it will only match your 6700K for anything that uses 4 cores or less and may not really feel like you upgraded at all right now Yes for heavily threaded tasks it is quite a bit faster but they aren't all that common for the average user still

I'd suggest only do an upgrade if you can go for an 8 core machine without breaking the budget, 6 cores is enough but if you like to keep your PC 4-5 years or more 8 cores is more likely to go the distance.

teihoata

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#2502123 10-Jun-2020 10:56

Still happy with my 6700k OC'd over here. With a 1080ti it seems to run everything recent on 4k high.
A good rule I tend to follow for my gaming pc upgrade is wait till the next gen ram comes out and then go ham on whatever team is winning at that point.
Holding out for the sweet ddr5 support

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