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6700k upgrade or not

Soldato
Joined
22 Oct 2004
Posts
13,367
I have a 6700k and I'm getting the upgrade itch. But these days I'm quite sensible and expect to get a 50% performance increase at a minimum.
If I was to change this CPU for a 9900k or go and 2700x or even wait for amds 3000 series, I still don't think I would see much difference only in benchmarks.
But I think these days CPUs can keep for a very long time, especially people just changing their 2500k CPUs now.
It's a gaming computer and I'm probably better off changing my 1080 for a 2080 or Vega 7 but they don't seem a big jump from my 1080, and I'm not rich enough for a 2080ti.
I play at 3440x1440 60hz and I play a range of rpg and RTS games all single player.
 
Caporegime
Joined
24 Dec 2005
Posts
40,065
Location
Autonomy
The 6700k is a great chip and if you can sell it and your mobo and ram as a combo, an upgrade to 3600x Ryzen may not cost that much...

I sold my 6700k combo for £375 bought a 9900k then sold it for £480 after 8 weeks , returned the mobo and bought a Ryzen 2600 , B450 to drop in a 3700x in September.

Clocked to 4.1 ghz the Ryzen is a brilliant stop gap chip...

4 cores 8 threads is still good enough for gaming...and the 6700k is still a sellable chip...but if you can get 9900k performance for £200 with the 3600 Ryzen chips why wouldn’t you?
 
Soldato
OP
Joined
22 Oct 2004
Posts
13,367
A year has gone by and im still in the same situation of not needing to change my cpu which for a serial upgrader is a bit of a shock and a money saver. Im seriously thinking of not bother upgrading the cpu until AM5 comes along with its ddr5, what information do we know about AM5?
 
Soldato
Joined
2 Feb 2010
Posts
10,740
Location
East Midlands
The 6700k is a cracking CPU still. I really don't need to upgrade mine, but it was my birthday the other day and I'm bored with lockdown and wanted something new to play with, so bought a 3900x and x570 board :D

Will be my first AMD CPU since the old Athlon 64 claw hammer I had.
 
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Caporegime
Joined
1 Jun 2006
Posts
33,484
Location
Notts
6700k especially clocked is probably as quick as the new amd stuff apart from games that utilize the extra cores. a 2600 would be a waste of time probably slower than the 6700 in many games. wait for the new amd stuff. should be about christmas as long as this world stuff doesnt effect release times. thats the only upgrade worth doing. really.
 
Soldato
Joined
9 Oct 2009
Posts
9,223
Location
United Kingdom
I’m in the same boat. Running the i7 6700K at 4.5GHz 24/7. Solid performer but waiting to see what Ryzen 4000 and next gen Intel bring. Only really playing flight sim at present and with the pending release of Microsoft Flight Simulator will just wait to see which is the better performer.

I’m also gaming at your resolution/ultrawide with a 2070 super so pretty similar setups and I’m waiting for now. If on the other hand your not happy with the performance right now then just bite the bullet and upgrade.
 
Associate
Joined
11 Dec 2005
Posts
1,017
Location
Brighton
I was in the same boat also!

I have a 6700K clocked at 4750Mhz (for sale now ;) ) with memory running at 3240mhz on an Asus z170 DeLuxe and I upgraded last week to a Ryzen 3600 on a B450M Aorus with memory at 3366Mhz and I can tell you they perform very similarly in most normal tasks unless you can make use of the extra cores of the Ryzen like for example with Cinebench and Real Bench.

I run userbenchmark for easy comparison with the same GTX 1080 and got a very similar score on both of them:

6700K @ 4750Mhz 1.340v FSB at 101: Gaming 106% UFO, Desktop 120% UFO and workstation 89% Aircraft Carrier.

Ryzen 3600 @ stock settings but FSB at 101 boosting usually at 4100-4200mhz all cores and it peaks easily @ 4244Mhz (rarely 4340): Gaming 103%, Desktop 116% and workstation 99% (nuclear sub).

Both systems using an M.2 Corsair MP510 PCIe SSD and 240mm AIO (6700k using Corsair and the ryzen a cheap Coolermaster Lite)

In real gaming, I have to say the 6700k is a little bit faster with the games and benchmarks I have tried (Fortnite, Tomb Raider, COD modern warfare); I'd say like 10% faster with a GTX1080.

However, with the 6700k and playing Fortnite Creative mode with my son and his friends after an hour of heavy fighting, the system sometimes started stuttering and I believe it was because of the 4c/8t cores. I played yesterday Creative mode for the first time with the 3600 and didn't encounter any stuttering at all but need to play it more to be sure.

Playing outside of Creative mode, I have never encountered any problems at all with the 6700k with Fortnite and any other game I have tried, and it gets like 10-15 fraps more than the Ryzen 3600 which is important as I have a 2k 144hz refresh monitor and with the Ryzen I had to change 2 settings to medium to play comfortably between 120- 144hz mark (with the 6700K I was most of the time 120- 144hz mark with all epic settings).

Hope this experience/testing helps you to decide, and to be honest I don't regret getting the RYzen as the extra cores help in some scenarios.

Cheers
 
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Don
Joined
21 Oct 2002
Posts
46,744
Location
Parts Unknown
What ram do you have?

I have the same CPU, also running at 4.4, was using 2400 C15 ram, upgraded it to 8pack 3200 C14 and noticed a decent boost. Just feels snappier.

Waiting for next round(s) of CPUs again before upgrading.
 
Permabanned
Joined
8 Oct 2008
Posts
2,663
Location
In Lockdown England
I would personally wait. Unless you are currently restricted in what you use the system for I would wait it out a little longer.

You could probably sell your current setup and go the second hand Ryzen 2700 / 3600 route with little extra outlay. It would be an improvement overall just not single core wise. So it’s really all down to what you do with the system and if that’s the improvement you are after.
 
Associate
Joined
11 Dec 2005
Posts
1,017
Location
Brighton
I am still tuning the 3600 (non X) and got around 2% more speed yesterday using 1usmus power plan and better secondary memory timings. Now 3 cores boost often to 4.35 which is quite amazing considering the chip is rated for a 4.2 boost clock! Don't forget this is under a cheapo Coolermaster 240mm lite (still waiting for the am4 fittings for my Corsair H100i V2 240mm)> Performance under air cooling was disappointing!

New results with the 3 SSD hard drives (1 m.2 PCIe and 2xSSD) around 50% (so not new install) and without overclocking the GTX 1080 using userbenchmark are:

Gaming 104%, Desktop 119% and workstation 102% (so workstation went from nuclear sub to UFO status ;) lol

I also notice a small improvement in Fortnite with 3 or 4 more average fraps.

Nothing to write about but it is a free improvement!
 
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Soldato
Joined
14 Apr 2014
Posts
6,571
Location
Sunny Sussex
I was in the same boat also!

I have a 6700K clocked at 4750Mhz (for sale now ;) ) with memory running at 3240mhz on an Asus z170 DeLuxe and I upgraded last week to a Ryzen 3600 on a B450M Aorus with memory at 3366Mhz and I can tell you they perform very similarly in most normal tasks unless you can make use of the extra cores of the Ryzen like for example with Cinebench and Real Bench.

I run userbenchmark for easy comparison with the same GTX 1080 and got a very similar score on both of them:

6700K @ 4750Mhz 1.340v FSB at 101: Gaming 106% UFO, Desktop 120% UFO and workstation 89% Aircraft Carrier.

Ryzen 3600 @ stock settings but FSB at 101 boosting usually at 4100-4200mhz all cores and it peaks easily @ 4244Mhz (rarely 4340): Gaming 103%, Desktop 116% and workstation 99% (nuclear sub).

Both systems using an M.2 Corsair MP510 PCIe SSD and 240mm AIO (6700k using Corsair and the ryzen a cheap Coolermaster Lite)

In real gaming, I have to say the 6700k is a little bit faster with the games and benchmarks I have tried (Fortnite, Tomb Raider, COD modern warfare); I'd say like 10% faster with a GTX1080.

However, with the 6700k and playing Fortnite Creative mode with my son and his friends after an hour of heavy fighting, the system sometimes started stuttering and I believe it was because of the 4c/8t cores. I played yesterday Creative mode for the first time with the 3600 and didn't encounter any stuttering at all but need to play it more to be sure.

Playing outside of Creative mode, I have never encountered any problems at all with the 6700k with Fortnite and any other game I have tried, and it gets like 10-15 fraps more than the Ryzen 3600 which is important as I have a 2k 144hz refresh monitor and with the Ryzen I had to change 2 settings to medium to play comfortably between 120- 144hz mark (with the 6700K I was most of the time 120- 144hz mark with all epic settings).

Hope this experience/testing helps you to decide, and to be honest I don't regret getting the RYzen as the extra cores help in some scenarios.

Cheers

That’s really interesting for me as I’ve got a 6700k with a 1080. My 6700k isn’t overclocked yet either. Just bought some new RAM as my old stuff is 2400MHz. I’ve got a Dark Rock Pro 3 so should be good to overclock to 4.6, just need to find the time to do it.
 
Associate
Joined
11 Dec 2005
Posts
1,017
Location
Brighton
I had a dark rock b4 the 240mm water-cooling kit and I recommend you to go AIO, which allowed me to increase the speed the 6700k by 350 MHz.

The problem I personally noticed with the big and beautiful & silent D Rock 4 is it gets the hot air from the graphics card as it was sitting literally on top of it so no matter how many fans you got in the case (i had 3x12cm in the front and 2 out)

With the dark rock 4 the 6700k was sitting at 4.4ghz @ 1.275v 24/7 and with the AIO 240mm I increased clocks to 4750 @ 1.340v 24/7 also (i believe only 2 blue screens in 8 months)
 
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Soldato
Joined
14 Apr 2014
Posts
6,571
Location
Sunny Sussex
I had a dark rock b4 the 240mm water-cooling kit and I recommend you to go AIO, which allowed me to increase the speed the 6700k by 350 MHz.

The problem I personally noticed with big and beautiful & silent D Rock 4 is it gott the hot air from the graphics card as it was sitting literally on top of it so no matter how many fans you got in the case.

With the dark rock 4 the 6700k was sitting at 4.4ghz @ 1.275v 24/7 and with the AIO 240mm I increased clocks to 4750 @ 1.340v 24/7 also (i believe only 2 blue screens in 8 months)

I went from AIO to air as I’ve found AIOs to be too noisy. My Dark Rock is whisper quiet :)

Would rather prioritise noise over performance
 
Caporegime
Joined
17 Jul 2010
Posts
25,659
I’m in the same boat. Running the i7 6700K at 4.5GHz 24/7. Solid performer but waiting to see what Ryzen 4000 and next gen Intel bring. Only really playing flight sim at present and with the pending release of Microsoft Flight Simulator will just wait to see which is the better performer.

I’m also gaming at your resolution/ultrawide with a 2070 super so pretty similar setups and I’m waiting for now. If on the other hand your not happy with the performance right now then just bite the bullet and upgrade.
Also running a 6700K, 2070Super and 1440P ultrawide. I keep looking at Ryzen 3000, something like a 3700 or even 3800 but then keep realising nothing I throw at my current rig is exactly struggling. I’ve resigned myself to waiting to see how Cyberpunk 2077 runs and by then more info and maybe even benchmarks will be available for Ryzen 4000 series.
 
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