Is it worth upgrading from 3rd Gen to 6th Gen Intel CPU?

i am still on 2nd gen
happy with my 2500k

i dont think so, the 3rd gen i - series cpu with the new 22nm and new everything else really blows me away, sure the 5th/6th gen are 14nm and are "better" no doubt, but unless ur moving from a 3rd gen i5 to a 6th gen i7 i wouldnt do it unless u are rich and money is not an object, instead, keep your 3570k and get a better graphics card, even the GTX 1080 which is not even out yet, would run great on ur i5 3570k chip, it really is an awesome little quad core u got there, i have the i5 3470s model (2.9ghz-3.6ghz turbo) and it blows me away, stays around 3.5ghz while gaming and man oh man is it a powerful cpu, blows my old 7850K 4.00ghz quad core away(had the igpu disabled and was running an r9 280x and it did okay i guess but this i5 3470s makes it look like a dual core lol, oh wait i think technically it is a 2 core/ 2 thread per core, falsely advertised as a quad core, or maybe it is a "quad core" but it was ok as in fast and snappy, but nothing compared to this itty bitty 65 watt i5 3470s i just installed today, this thing runs soooo energy efficient and soooo powerful, im just so amazed, if only i had the 3570k (Day Dreams o/c that little beauty)

Whether it's worth it or not would be up to you. For heavier multitasking especially if using adobe products I'd consider another 8gb of ram for starters. Photoshop and a few other applications open can easily use 8-16gb of ram. An i7 would give slightly better performance when it comes to video encoding.

It will depend on the program used, but here are some examples.

If you went to an i7 3770k for your current board using blender for video encoding you'd see a 37% speed improvement. Or if you went with a current 6gen i5 6600k you'd see a 30% improvement comparing a 3rd gen to 6th gen quad core (no hyper threading). Going to a 6th gen i7 6700k would get you a 56% speed improvement or essentially cutting the time of the project in half. Encoding a video in blender that takes 3min 55sec on your current cpu would take just over 1min 30sec on the 6th gen i7.

Photoshop would see a noticeable boost if doing heavy rendering tasks going from 3rd to 6th gen either to the i5 6600k or i7 6700k from your current cpu. Going to a 3770k on your current motherboard would show almost no difference in photoshop.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/skylake-intel-core-i7-6700k-core-i5-6600k,4252-5.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/skylake-intel-core-i7-6700k-core-i5-6600k,4252-7.html

I wouldn't bother sli'ing your 760, instead consider a newer single gpu for better performance. Not all games play nice with sli and vram doesn't stack so you'd be stuck with still 2gb of vram rather than 4gb or even 8gb. Pascal cards are releasing soon, you may want to wait for the 1070 to become available.

This is an i7 6700k build well within your budget. It allows room for a gtx 1070 when they become available even if they were to run close to $400. You may not need the operating system or the optical drive, this is a worst case full build scenario. Of course case is a matter of choice but many nice cases to choose from in the $100 range give or take and still have funds left over if you wanted to added a couple extra case fans. The cooler is listed this way because pcpartpicker thinks it's out of stock even though amazon has it for that price (free shipping).

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz Quad-Core Processor ($339.99 @ B&H)
CPU Cooler: CRYORIG H7 49.0 CFM CPU Cooler ($34.99)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z170X-Gaming 5 ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($154.99 @ Micro Center)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3200 Memory ($69.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($85.79 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Western Digital RE4 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($53.65 @ Amazon)
Case: Fractal Design Define R5 w/Window (Titanium) ATX Mid Tower Case ($99.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA G2 550W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($79.98 @ Amazon)
Optical Drive: Asus DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS DVD/CD Writer ($18.89 @ OutletPC)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM (64-bit) ($84.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $1023.25
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-05-21 04:38 EDT-0400

@ synphul

You suggested adding 8 additional gigs of ram, but IMO he should test how much ram the programs he is using are actually using of the 8G he has running, he can test that with Task Manager, if he is already coming no where near using the 8G he has now, adding more ram does not ensure it will even be used.

I went from 32G, down to 16G, and I am now just running 8G because even the 8G is never being fully addressed no matter what I throw at it.

So he is better off to test memory usage first, and see just how much system memory the applications he is running is actually using before assuming he needs to buy more.

@ xs4amit

I am running a 3770K with Hyper Threading disabled which is the equivalent of your 4 core 3570K, the difference being mine is overclocked to 5ghz but I am presently testing it's gaming performance at 4.5ghz and it seems to be running my GTX Titan just fine so my suggestion to you is to use some of that $1500 and upgrade to a 1T Samsung EVO SSD and when they become buyer available a GTX 1080 and you will have one killer of a machine sir for about $1000.

The SSD will blow you away with it's performance and the GTX 1080 single card will massacre your SLI setup, and going to a single graphics card will get you completely away from the occasional and frequent SLI problems.

My 2 cents. Ryan

I'm only speaking from using photoshop myself, yes you can get away with 8gb of ram. Most people don't get photoshop just to fiddle with a handful of family photos, adding lighting fixes to them. They can do that with less expensive and easier to use photo software. However once you have more open than just photoshop it runs much better especially once you begin applying changes to a handful of layers. Working in photoshop and illustrator with bridge open to move files back and forth along with nothing more than a browser open I can easily hit 14-15gb used.

I ran photoshop for years with 8gb of ram but 16gb made a noticeable improvement. More than adding the ssd did and the extra 8gb of ram was less expensive than a 240gb ssd. Usually when an ssd makes a larger difference on a system with 4-8gb of ram in photoshop it's because it's speeding up swapfile access. Something that's not near as much of an issue with more ram.

If you're not using all 8gb of your current ram it's very possible but also likely you don't have much open. When I run a couple different browsers and skype along with other piddly things like the calculator, antivirus, win explorer and realtemp open I'm currently sitting at 6.95gb used. I don't even have photoshop or anything open at the moment.

You're right, it's best to see what's needed though given the $30 difference may as well get a matched set of ram that will work together. Buying some now and some later could present compatibility problems. Only going by the experience of many others, personally I've mixed and matched ram but from the way others talk I've had better luck than people usually do. For a $1500 system what's $30.

That is why I said he needs to test and see how much of the 8g he is actually using, as everyone does different things with their computers, and even different things with Photoshop.