Seeking opinions on 7700K vs E5-1630 v3, re: speculative future-proofing (performance, PCI-E lanes)

[Pokari]

Preface:

Introducing yours truly, a stingy, risk-averse hominid, who is finally starting to have to admit that his Intel Q8300 is showing its age.

And now, in an era of slowing chip manufacturing improvements for the foreseeable future, I'm hoping to pick out a CPU/mobo that will last me for a while (I hung on to the Q8300 for 7 years--maybe I can go a decade this time).

The Contenders:

The new Intel i7-7700k, which seems to be doing pretty well on the single-threaded performance charts from PassMark inasmuch as those can be trusted (And I'm going to have to say I don't care that much about multi-threaded performance, my most demanding use-case (games) usually are bottlenecked by one thread if at all). As a mainstream consumer CPU at the end of a tick-tock-tock... (how many tocks are we on now?) I'm expecting it to be a boring but reliable choice that won't be massively outclassed by anything anytime soon.

The only issue I'm seeing going forward is the maximum of 16 PCI-E lanes that comes with being a 1151-socket. It seems increasingly like I might want a few more as time goes on--processing power growth may be decelerating but bandwidth requirements don't seem to be; be it SSDs being too much for old SATA or people having to slot on dedicated USB cards to run their Occulus Rifts, it seems like I might want to have extra lanes for future-proofing (I know I can always steal 8 lanes from the graphics card, but...)

The Intel Xeon E5-1630 v3, a much less traditional choice, which despite being a couple years old seems to be decently powerful and of a comparable price. For this discussion this is probably interchangeable with some other similar processors--that is to say, any mid-price decently hefty workstation chip that comes with more PCIE lanes than I'll ever need.

Single-threaded performance seems decent (at least for a 2011-v3 chip) though now we're really getting into territory where I don't know how much to believe public PassMark scores; I expect it'd handle all my gaming needs without much fuss, but I worry that if I want to do VR gaming in the future, based on Vive's published min specs, I may be cutting things a little close.

Other thoughts:

If not for the price tag being distinctly a smidge past my comfort zone, an i7-6850K would seem like the appropriate compromise here.

I will be avoiding overclocking regardless.

Feel free to suggest other chips if you think I'm crazy, to bash any questionable bits of my reasoning or premise, etc. I'm just looking for opinions other than my own from people who might have thought of different aspects of this than I have.

 

[ak47jar3d]

In most cases the processors will perform similarly. The i7 7700k is a waste if your not overclocking. The Xeon E5-1630 v3 has more pcie Lanes and will have less single thread performance than its skylake counterpart. It really depends what your going to do with your rig. For setups with multiple cards or Nvme drivers, the Xeon E5-1630 v3 would suit you better. Otherwise, other quad core processors like i5s may be a better fit. Can't really recommend the 5820k for gaming as it wont due any better than most core i5s.

 

[Pokari]

In most cases the processors will perform similarly. The i7 7700k is a waste if your not overclocking. The Xeon E5-1630 v3 has more pcie Lanes and will have less single thread performance than its skylake counterpart. It really depends what your going to do with your rig. For setups with multiple cards or Nvme drivers, the Xeon E5-1630 v3 would suit you better. Otherwise, other quad core processors like i5s may be a better fit. Can't really recommend the 5820k for gaming as it wont due any better than most core i5s.

Most of that sounds like what I was thinking, except the bit about the 7700k and overclocking. I take it you're saying that the difference between, say, a 7700k and a 7600k isn't really worth the money, except when that difference is amplified through overclocking differences?

Anyway, thank you for the response. Having something other than just my own thoughts bouncing around in my head is always great.

 

[ak47jar3d]

In most cases the processors will perform similarly. The i7 7700k is a waste if your not overclocking. The Xeon E5-1630 v3 has more pcie Lanes and will have less single thread performance than its skylake counterpart. It really depends what your going to do with your rig. For setups with multiple cards or Nvme drivers, the Xeon E5-1630 v3 would suit you better. Otherwise, other quad core processors like i5s may be a better fit. Can't really recommend the 5820k for gaming as it wont due any better than most core i5s.

Most of that sounds like what I was thinking, except the bit about the 7700k and overclocking. I take it you're saying that the difference between, say, a 7700k and a 7600k isn't really worth the money, except when that difference is amplified through overclocking differences?

Anyway, thank you for the response. Having something other than just my own thoughts bouncing around in my head is always great.

Exactly. The gains won't be noticeable in the majority of games between the 7700k and 7600k. As for overclocking, both can do very well in that regard. As we move away from dx 11 towards dx 12 and vulcan apis, we likely to see even less need for i7 processors for gamers. i7 will have hyper-threading which will help in heavily threaded applications, but, for the most part, games never seem to take advantage of it.