Skylake i3 vs i5 vs i7 for gaming and futureproofing

[Purple_Skies]

I've been planning on building a small form factor PC using an i7 6700, but it has occured to me today that with the bottlenecks in gaming systems being primarily the gpu, am I really gaining much in shelling out for an i7?

The big question about this to me is how important multithreading is going to be in DirectX12. Initially, it looks like it'll be very important, but we can't be entirely sure of that and it's going to take a while for games to utilize it anyway.

My thinking is, I can spend a small amount on an i3 now, then if multithreaded performance makes a massive performance different and I find my i3 struggling, I can upgrade to an i7 Kaby Lake (or maybe Cannonlake, if it's compatible with the Z170 chipset) in the future.

Of course, I have the mid-range options of getting an i5 6600, but that's still double the price of an i3 6100.

What are everyone's thoughts on this? Am I better off futureproofing by getting the i7 now, or being frugal and waiting to see what DX12 brings?

 

[burgessanthony]

You cant future proof anything could happen.

I would honestly get best you can afford. I5 6600k with a decent overclock will smash any game. An i7 is a good buy if you can afford and doesn't eat your gpu budget.

 

[Purple_Skies]

You cant future proof anything could happen.

I would honestly get best you can afford. I5 6600k with a decent overclock will smash any game. An i7 is a good buy if you can afford and doesn't eat your gpu budget.

I do appreciate this, I'm just trying to justify paying twice the cost and wondering whether it'd be worth the performance gain. It's very possible I'd get a greater performance gain putting that extra money towards a better graphics card.