Best gaming processor within £200 - £260 range?

LG_Porter

Commendable
May 25, 2016
2
0
1,510
I've had my eye on a i7 6700 for a while now, and I've been looking around for any competitors to compare with. Im not a fan of overclocking, so the K variant isn't an option here.

I'm upgrading from an old i5 3330, which is starting to become sluggish with tasks. I mostly game, but i do some photoshop work and video rendering on the side as well.

Of course I'll be buying a new mobo with a fitting socket and DDR4 support if need be, but the prices of those components are out of the picture.

My GPU is an AMD R9 380.

All suggestions welcome.

EDIT: I am also looking to have a CPU that's at least a tad future proof.
 
i5-6500 is pretty good also, i7 is a bit of an overkill unless you are looking for maybe another year of good speed at high settings in games at the end of life and want to render things faster. I guess it's fun to see how fast you can encode a video on a fast CPU, and if you have the money, nothing wrong with the i7 you want.
 

lodders

Admirable
i5 6600 for £174.

Because all the more expensive CPU are not worth the extra money for gaming.

But an i7 will be faster for rendering, but also not worth it unless you do a lot of rendering and hate waiting around
 

LG_Porter

Commendable
May 25, 2016
2
0
1,510
Had a snoop around on what you guys suggested and they seem quite good for basic gaming. Im looking to future proof some parts of my pc, and I'm starting with the cpu.

Looked into an i5 6600K and read some reviews. If i did a little overclocking it would near the performance of the 6700. I guess I could overclock a tad. That being said, wouldnt a 6700K be a better choice? Theres only a £10 difference, and it would garner a little bonus performance.
 

lodders

Admirable
an i7 has hyperthreading, which means that although it has the same 4 cores as an i5, when necessary it pretends to have 8 slower cores.
This gives a 30% boost when unzipping big files, video editing or rendering
almost all games only need 4 cores or less.
Therefore hyperthreading makes very little difference to FPS.
A 6600 turbos to 3.9Ghz. It is going to be a looong time before that is not enough for gaming..
The 6600k effectively costs $100 more than the 6600 because you have to buy a cooler and a better motherboard

6600 and a h110 or h170 motherboard FTW