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SOME INSIGHT ON X99 VS Z170

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DefiantReaper

Member
Joined
Aug 6, 2015
Location
Indiana
OK so i am truly stuck between the two platforms... i will be overclocking them
i originally was planning on getting the i7 5930k but realized it didnt really offer me anything i needed except more pcie lanes which i didnt need.
also i will be getting top notch motherboards for which ever i go with.
X99 will be MSI GODLIKE GAMING ($550) with i7 5820k ($390) hoping to hit 4.5GHz min. under major water.
Z170 will be MSI XPOWER GAMING TITANIUM ($300) with i7 6700k ($410) hoping to hit 4.7GHz.
the system will run 2 MSI GTX 970's and my theme is red. acrylic watercooling.
so i know that the average for the 5820k is around 4.4GHz... so really what would the difference be between 4.5GHz 5820k and a 4.7GHz i7 6700k.
This system is for gaming and looks only (epeen)
My initial reaction was to go premium route with X99 but questioning if its really worth it. the only price difference is $200 because of motherboard.
 
Gaming, go Z170. Faster per-clock, less heat in the room, less money spent, and higher overclocks.

That said, any reason you need a $300 mobo for a gaming system?
There are plenty of amazing motherboards for a LOT cheaper.
 
well i am a msi fan and i am wanting to go with a red and white theme..
my ax1200i has all white braided cables and all of my watercooling fittings are white while the rest of my system is red including the water.
The case is the STH10 from caselabs.
how much of an OC did you get on the 6700k?
 
nobody will be able to persuade me to buy a cheaper board.
I am dead set on the very best from either MSI or ASUS.
I am getting G.Skill TridentZ 3200MHz 16GB as well. Or maybe some Avexir RAM undecided.
I just think the XPOWER TITANIUM will look beautiful with red di going through the loop...
 
I have never been a big fan of MSI boards since I had a board that wouldn't post brand new out of the box. The RMA service was a joke and I had difficulties sending it back even though it was purchased from newegg. The boards may have improved in the last two years but I don't know for certain. I can say that every ASUS board that I've owned has worked flawlessly for years, my x58 still fires up every time.

If you only plan on doing gaming and not heavy work loads or multiple gpu's then I would certainly recommend z-170 over x99. If I'm still correct games are very well optimized for 4 core cpu's and higher clock rates. The clock cycles on skylake are much faster the haswell-E and should net you an extra few fps.

What gpu do you plan on using?

That ax1200i is a bit overkill for your current rig...
 
No such thing as overkill in the pc world :) i got it for like $100. total STEAL.
Anyhow ive had 3 msi boards and 2 asus boards. both are absolutely excellent. too bad youve had a bad experience.
i prefer the bios on MSI over ASUS. I actually fried a z87 asus and replaced it with msi and loved.

i am using 2 msi gtx 970.

edit.. also @ peanutbudder my old rig was 9590 and 3 7970s packed in there
 
I'm not going to talk you out of a X99, 5820k if you have the money, why not. I just like to tell the truth about gaming vs work loads using parallel processing, that is why I posted the link above.
 
Some people hit the wall like you said i7 6700k 4.6-4.8Ghz. The 5820k is not behind on gaming you can use a sandy bridge with SLI GTX 970.
 
oh no i didnt mean like literally behind.. i meant its behind skylake on clock to clock performance. 5% i think.
but realistically it would be a minuscule difference in the real world and im sure the 5820k would blow the 6700k away in benches.
will the z170 have an upgrade path like the X99 will?
 
Depends if they drastically change the architecture or maybe it will be just a refresh with a Bios update for z170.
 
This is a tough one. I don't think you'll get a definitive answer either way. I was in much the same decision mode...the price of the two processors was so close...what to do?

I ended up going for the 5820K as the overclock potential was close (if you are planning on overclocking)...worst case, you see the 5820K at 5% lower for single core on overclock.

I chose 5820K simply because I believe that more cores is better! While most games now won't take advantage of more than 4 cores...that's now. I've read all this BS about multi-threaded programming being hard...so games won't take advantage...blah blah. It's not that hard...heck .Net 4.5 made it trivial.

But, you don't get a 1 for 1 improvement in performance when you multithread...so a 6 core CPU will not be 50% faster than a 4 core CPU at the same clock speed.

In the end, I decided on more cores is better...and I'm happy with it.
 
The problem with games they don't run with equal parallel processing. The game engine has to have a lead core for all the coordination in player movements, Graphics, sound, when playing a game. So instruction per cycle is the most important factor, cores can only help with load.
 
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The problem with games they don't run with equal parallel processing. The game engine has to have a lead core for all the coordination in player movements, Graphics, sound, when playing a game. So instruction per cycle is the most important factor, cores can only help with load.

This.

This is why I wrote my first post the way I did.
Anything that's 4c/8t is all the threads you need for any of today's games and any games coming down the pipeline.

Even though a 6700K might hit a wall at 4.6-4.8GHz, when was the last time you saw someone on X99 running anything over ~4.4GHz for 24/7 usage?
Also, you're going to gain another ~5% in games over X99 with Z170 because the IPC is higher.
So; higher clocks, enough threads for all modern games, and a higher IPC all contribute to better framerates in games with Z170.

X99 is targeted toward users that need the threads; heavy photo/video editing, 3D CAD, etc.
 
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