Will a Core i7-6700 suffice for a new PC?

[locutor]

I saw a deal for a Dell XPS Tower with a Core i7-6700 and 16GB of memory for around $700. That's a good price, but I'm wondering if this 6th gen. CPU will serve me for the next four years or so. Gaming is probably my most processing-intensive activity, although I do like to be able to run a bunch of apps simultaneously. Thoughts?

 

[captaincharisma]

the 6700 is getting pretty dated now since intel just released new CPU's yesterday. i say it will be a good gaming PC for the next 2-3 years as long as it has a decent GPU too

 

[chemmajorp53]

That sounds like a decent deal to me, but remember that whatever upgrades you decide to make will also need a new PSU and be limited by your case and mobo. I feel like it would be easy to find a used gaming rig that's already been put together with quality components

 

[jaguarskx]

The i5-6700 should be suitable for games for many years. You do not always need to have cutting edge tech to get good game performance. As long as the price / performance ratio is good, going with older tech is pretty viable. Let's take a look at the old 2nd generation i5-2500k and see how well it performs in modern games with modern GPUs...

Here's CPU benchmarks for the game For Honor with a Titan XP GPU; it is a bit dependent on the CPU. Of course, the i5-2500k does not perform as well as the i7-7700k, but a used PC with an i5-2500k would cost much less than a new PC with an i7-7700k. Given it's age, the i5-2500k actually does perform well; performing a little bit better than the i7-5960X.

https://www.techspot.com/review/1333-for-honor-benchmarks/page3.html

Doom 3 is an example of a game that is more dependent on the GPU, than the CPU so even the i5-2500k holds up very well compared to an i7-6700k.

https://www.techspot.com/review/1173-doom-benchmarks/page5.html

Fallout 4 (like Skyrim) is a pretty CPU dependent game, yet despite the i5-2500k's age it can still handle the game quite well with a modern GPU.

https://www.techspot.com/review/1089-fallout-4-benchmarks/page5.html

 

[vMax]

If used predominantly for gaming and some multi-tasking, then yes, no problems at all, I am running a 6700K chugging away for the last year and a half at 4.5Ghz...and it is just awesome..Is that $700 for a complete system, including CPU, Ram, PSU, HD etc?...if so, then it is a grood price..

 

[locutor]

Thanks very much for the useful replies, folks! I do plan to have a good GPU, which is probably a bigger factor in gaming performance, and probably update it every couple of years or so.