Hardware & Technical i7 6700k vs i5 6600k?

h347h

h347h
((If any DEVs have insight on which would be better in the long term(wink wink) with out any spoilers any recommendations would be nice.))

Anyways from players with i7s out there how do you feel about Elites usage of multi threading and o you think it is worth the extra cash to grab one over an i5? I could use that extra $100 or so else where if it does not seem like there is not much to gain from the extra cores.
 

Cynaqq

Cynaqq
As far as I know, for performance in ED, i7 6700k should make no difference over the i5 6600k.

I'm basing this on info from a friend who is very knowledgeable both in the electronics and the programming of processors but I can't cite a written source so take that with a grain of salt.
 

AveMe

AveMe
they have same amount of cores. i7 just has hyperthreating that is... hmm a bit hard to explain.
Anyway sometimes i7 will be abled to do 2 things on one core, it isn't nearly as effective as just having more cores and gives almost no performance gains, at best it allows to better utilize your cpu power.
As somebody with 6700k: It is worth if you're using computer to things other than gaming, play very cpu-demanding games ( like arma 3fps, medieval engineers, space engineers... ) or just don't want to change cpu for many many years.
and elite isn't very cpu demanding anyway so I don't think you're going to see difference.

TL;DR: if you only want to play games get i5 and invest those 100 bucks in gpu. you're going to get a lot more performance out of that.
 
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Devari

D
h347h said:
((If any DEVs have insight on which would be better in the long term(wink wink) with out any spoilers any recommendations would be nice.))

Anyways from players with i7s out there how do you feel about Elites usage of multi threading and o you think it is worth the extra cash to grab one over an i5? I could use that extra $100 or so else where if it does not seem like there is not much to gain from the extra cores.
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Always go with i7 if you are using Win 10 with DX12. In the future games will (hopefully) be coded to take advantage of more efficient hyperthreading and more cores will be better than slightly higher clockspeed in fewer cores. This is not currently the case (and has not generally been the case with games using DX11) because game coders did not have the incentive or architecture to make it worth their time to truly optimize gaming code for multi-core processors. Within the next 3-5 years however I expect this to change as DX12 becomes better understood and implemented.
 

Odan Brota

Odan Brota
h347h said:
((If any DEVs have insight on which would be better in the long term(wink wink) with out any spoilers any recommendations would be nice.))

Anyways from players with i7s out there how do you feel about Elites usage of multi threading and o you think it is worth the extra cash to grab one over an i5? I could use that extra $100 or so else where if it does not seem like there is not much to gain from the extra cores.
Click to expand...

I use the 6700k in my personal system, while my wife uses a 4690k in hers (which is very similar to 6600k performance, within 10% in most cases), and the main difference between the two is how easy it is to do other things on the machines.

Both systems play Elite easily and manage good frame rates. Neither system will chug during gameplay. However, if I choose to stream or do anything else that is even slightly heavy, then my system shoots ahead of hers.

If you have no plans to do anything else that is CPU heavy whilst playing Elite, then the 6600k will do you fine. If you want to stream, or have the CPU last longer*, I suggest the 6700k.

*the 6700k with 8 threads will be better prepared to deal with heavily threaded workloads than the 6600k's 4 threads, and since DX12 apparently utilizes multiple threads easily, then more threads is the answer.
 

Lord Megadrive

L
I use an AMD A8-7650K and with a decent gpu (an R9) my frame rate is about 3-4 frames slower than my friends i7 6000 series with a 970 titan (at 1080p at higher res well that is a different story...)
 

Dash

Dash
Go for for the most expensive you can justify. For games, the i7 won't bring you noticeable advantage. You'd be better off saving the money and putting it into a better graphics card.
 

Fluffy Whiskers

F
h347h said:
i5

I already have enough to get a EVGA FTW GTX 1080. So I'm going to spend that extra 100 on a higher storage SSD most likely.
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If your mother board supports it, I would suggest getting a SSD with NVMe support. I can personally recommend the Samsung 950 Pro M.2 SSD. It is very fast (> 2GB/sec transfer rate).
 

Devari

D
Lord Megadrive said:
I use an AMD A8-7650K and with a decent gpu (an R9) my frame rate is about 3-4 frames slower than my friends i7 6000 series with a 970 titan (at 1080p at higher res well that is a different story...)
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In your case you're using a quad-core AMD vs. a quad-core Intel so the difference there is probably more due to the GPU than anything else. Historically the issue I've had with AMDs approach is that AMD has been using 8 mediocre cores in their octa-core designs while Intel uses 4 good cores in their quad-core designs. It's sort of like having a well-tuned V6 (Intel quad-core) that is fuel-efficient and responsive compared to a poorly-tuned V8 (AMD octa-core) that doesn't have enough performance to actually offset the extra weight of the engine. Given that most games are not even well-optimized for dual core systems (let alone quad-core) and we have yet to see a large impact from gaming developers really utilizing the benefits of DX12 for quad-core designs it seems unlikely that AMDs octa-core approach will really find a niche in gaming. Once developers fully utilize DX12 however then there may eventually be a push toward octa-core designs again but at this point it doesn't seem beneficial to go beyond a quad-core.

Odan Brota said:
the 6700k with 8 threads will be better prepared to deal with heavily threaded workloads than the 6600k's 4 threads, and since DX12 apparently utilizes multiple threads easily, then more threads is the answer.
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I expect there will be at least a 2-3 year delay until we see truly optimized DX12 games. The issue here is that while DX12 gives developers an excellent "toolkit" to optimize hyperthreading for quad-core usage they actually have to learn how to do this and implement it. In practice many games are poorly optimized for this, generally because it means that they have to do less work by assuming that their games will be run mostly on dual-core systems. In fact in some games I have seen massive CPU bottlenecks where they are not even optimized sufficiently for dual-core and we actually have what amounts to a single-core "bottleneck" where almost all of the CPU load is sent to one core even if there are four cores available. One core is running at full clockspeeds and temps and the other three are essentially sitting idle and there is nothing the CPU can do about this because of how poorly the game is optimized. In these cases I have seen results where a slightly faster i5 dual core with a marginally higher clock speed outperforms an i7 with a slightly lower clock speed because they are each using only a single core. I expect this to change with DX12 eventually but the programmers need to put more work in to optimize this as well.
 
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AveMe

AveMe
@up
actually almost all new games are created for 4 core machines. Well, some don't even work on dual cores.
And dual core focused games were standard for like 5 years.
Though old singlecore games are still here. I rembember playing sins of the empire with battlestar galactica mod. Game was tanking fps really badly while using about 40% of GPU and only... 25% CPU. battlestar galactica battles are fighter based and simulating a lot of fighters uses a lot of cpu power.

Omg... offtopic is real. lets consider this thread closed, ok? :D
 

GG7

G
Runis said:
I recommend Samsung 850 Evo. You can get the 250 gb one for around 100.
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SSD is definitely the way to go for running ED. Makes maps incredibly fast loading. And I agree with going with Samsung as a brand. You also want to make sure that you use the SSD as your system drive with all your games installed on that same system disk.

I'm running my system and ED off a 512GB Samsung 950 Pro M.2 Nvme. The difference in load times compared to a traditional drive is amazing. I have zero load times for the Galaxy map, and literally 1 second or less for system maps depending on the system. Pretty much anything in ED that requires things to load in become instantaneous.

I'm running an overclocked 6700k on my rig, and the one area that a 6700k might be better is in the case of overclocking it. Mine is able to run stably at 4.7ghz and it runs ED like a hot knife through butter with everything set to ULTRA or whatever the highest setting is.
 
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MickyG1982

M
Lord Megadrive said:
I use an AMD A8-7650K and with a decent gpu (an R9) my frame rate is about 3-4 frames slower than my friends i7 6000 series with a 970 titan (at 1080p at higher res well that is a different story...)
Click to expand...

I use it's GPU - Less sibling the Athlon 860k & a GTX 960 Strix. Runs the game perfectly well & I seem to have avoided most of the problems that people with higher end machines have faced. Mostly because I know the limits of the machine & tend to err on the side of caution when it comes to graphics settings.

Still, when the new Zen processors turn up, it will be dropped faster than seagulls droppings over a freshly washed car!
 
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