i7-6900k or i7-6700k

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Oliver_32

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Jun 18, 2016
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Here it is again... I know "read the other topics" but somehow I can only find topics from 2012-14 or something so sorry for this. I just want to hear what you guys have to say nowadays? It will be used for gaming and alittle video editing but nothing on professional part where the more cores will be needed, only reason i'm thinking about this is if you guys know if the upcoming games this year and next year will be taking advantage of the more cores? Or is the 4 cores just fine? I'm looking to keep this PC for a very long time 6years+ and it is build from scratch so it's not an "upgrade" it's a whole new rig.
Also i've been wondering if the more cores makes it easier 2 run 4k or it all rely on GPU? Kinda stupid question as I already kind of know it plays no part in resol but idk for sure

Thx on advantage.
 
Solution
DonkeyOatie
For mostly gaming, the faster, higher IPC i7 6700K is superior. It will edit videos well. It's not about 'cores' it's about 'threads'. Modern games mostly run on four or fewer threads. The i7 6700K can handle eight threads at once. That's plenty.

For most games the CPU builds a 'model'; and electronic representation of the 'reality', and the GPU renders that 'model' to the screen. The higher the resolution, the more work the GPU needs to do to render the 'model, so more cores does not help with higher resolution, a better GPU does.

Only now are there single GPUs capable of giving a good 4K gaming experience at high levels of effects. This can be achieved, in many cases, by comparatively old CPUs.

Some games are poorly...
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DonkeyOatie

DonkeyOatie

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Sep 16, 2014
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For mostly gaming, the faster, higher IPC i7 6700K is superior. It will edit videos well. It's not about 'cores' it's about 'threads'. Modern games mostly run on four or fewer threads. The i7 6700K can handle eight threads at once. That's plenty.

For most games the CPU builds a 'model'; and electronic representation of the 'reality', and the GPU renders that 'model' to the screen. The higher the resolution, the more work the GPU needs to do to render the 'model, so more cores does not help with higher resolution, a better GPU does.

Only now are there single GPUs capable of giving a good 4K gaming experience at high levels of effects. This can be achieved, in many cases, by comparatively old CPUs.

Some games are poorly structured and struggle on any CPU.

Finally, the i7 6900K is very new (and crazy expensive). It will do what Intel says it will, but to wring the best out of it will take a stepping or two as Intel refines the manufacturing process.

If gaming is your primary focus and you are not making money from editing or rendering, then the i7 6700K is the right choice. Games still need to run on laptops to sell enough, so the i7 will be fine for years.
 
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Oliver_32

Commendable
Jun 18, 2016
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I'm sorry to ask again, but I didn't find out if you knew or if any1 knows if there will be taken advantage of more cores within the new 1-2 yrs or so? Cause, I can see Black Ops 3 and many other games from 2014/15 does take advantage of quad cores so, why would it be so unlikely that more than quad cores will be in handy within the few years?
 
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DonkeyOatie

DonkeyOatie

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Sep 16, 2014
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Because it's not about cores, it's about threads. COD BOIII will run on a two core i3 CPU, which can handle four threads. The i7 6700K will run eight threads.

Most modern games have yet to take full advantage of four threads. If they NEED more than four, that wipes out all the i3 and i5 systems and most laptops where even i7s have only two cores, which is probably 75% of the market, so it isn't happening. Four Cores won't be NEEDED for a longish time. It is only in the last year that more than two threads has become required, making Pentiums obsolete for gaming, and the i3 as the 'entry' level.
 
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Oliver_32

Commendable
Jun 18, 2016
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I understand now, thank you very much :) And have a good day^^
 
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happyguy82

Distinguished
Aug 25, 2012
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Hi,

But the hotter and less efficient 6900K supports 40 PCI-e lanes vs only 16 on the 6700K. How does this affect using 2 high end GPUs in SLI configuration?


 
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urbanj

Honorable
Dec 27, 2012
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If you are using multiple GPUs, plus NVMe drive, and multiple SSDs, you would likely be better off running a 6900k if money is not an issue.

Basically, every piece of hardware that interfaces with the CPU will use up a lane in some way shape or form.
Some hardware can share, some cant.

Part of this lane business relies on your CPU, the other on the motherboard.
As an example this Asus X99 board shows in the specs that you can run 3 GPUs in x16/x16/x16 with a 6900k, but only x8/x8/x8 with a 28 lane cpu.
 
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happyguy82

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Aug 25, 2012
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Hello,

Thanks. I have since done some research on this topic. The PCI-e lanes won't be a bottleneck for today's GPUs as they are still way fast enough to support the bandwidth of these cards even with a few lanes. It turns out that the 6700K is much faster than the 6900K for gaming, the reason being the additional cores and PCI-e lanes place an overhead on the CPU.

Real world tests have shown that the 6900K puts out significantly lower FPS at the same setting. In fact by going into the BIOS to disable 4 of the 6900K's cores, the performance went up but still fell short of the 6700K's as the latter has a higher clock speed.

Therefore it seems that the 6700K is better for gaming while the 6900K is better suited to other highly multi threaded computing applications.
 
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