Please help. i7 6850k vs i7 6700k

[cptCaptain 122]

Which one should i get? The 6700k with higher clock, or the newer 6850k? I use my rig for P3D, Xplane, and Photoshop. GPU will be a GTX1080.

[martin-w 3,234]

6850K is £569, as opposed to the 6700K which is £299. 

 

Some claim the extra cores and threads are advantageous in the sim... I've seen no "definitive" evidence that it's the case. 6850K is the old X99 chipset, none of the advantages that come with Z170. IPC is lower and CPU much more expensive. 

 

Is a hypothetical, unproven, minor advantage and a lower CPU IPC and none of the advantages of the Z170 chipset worth an additional £270? 

 

I would say no, especially when everybody that has upgraded to 6700K has been over the moon with their PC's performance.

 

As for Photoshop...

 

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Adobe-Photoshop-CC-Multi-Core-Performance-625/

 

 

1. • Photoshop does not work well with multiple physical CPUs. Most effects are not impacted, but anything that is highly multi-threaded (like many blurs) will actually take up to 30-50% longer if you have two CPUs versus just one. If you have a system with multiple CPUs, we highly recommend setting the affinity of Photoshop so that it will only ever try to use one of your CPUs.
   • Most actions in Photoshop are either single threaded or lightly threaded. This means that you will get the exact same performance whether your system has two CPU cores or twenty CPU cores. For these actions, a CPU with a high operating frequency is key.
   • Multi-threaded actions hit a point of diminishing returns after around 6 CPU cores, and most completely stop improving after 8 CPU cores. This includes effects like color mode conversion, many blurs, hue/saturation, brightness/contrast, and shadow/highlight. The best multi-threaded effect (converting to Lab Color mode) had a decent multi-threading efficiency of about 94%, but most of these effects had an efficiency closer to 80% which isn't so great.

    

    

[gboz 157]

On the other hand..... it would be great to have someone to test fly that 6850k.

 

gb.

[martin-w 3,234]

On the other hand..... it would be great to have someone to test fly that 6850k.

 

gb.

 

 

I agree, it would. What we need is a metric specific to the sim in question, that could be used to objectively make a comparison. A benchmark utility for the sim in question. 

 

Then of course we would have to test each CPU in the same rig, with the same settings. Two different rigs would introduce variables. 

 

Until we have that, we are left with subjective opinion. All we have at the moment is... "I think X was a bit smoother". Or, "you know what, I reckon I gained a few frames per second". 

[JasonW 32]

I started a similar thread. 

 

http://www.avsim.com/topic/490374-your-thoughts-on-6850k-over-6700k-for-p3d/

 

Ive decided to go with skylake vs taking a chance.  Ive seen too many skylake/1080 systems with sliders to the full right.

[martin-w 3,234]

I started a similar thread. 

 

http://www.avsim.com/topic/490374-your-thoughts-on-6850k-over-6700k-for-p3d/

 

Ive decided to go with skylake vs taking a chance.  Ive seen too many skylake/1080 systems with sliders to the full right.

 

 

Certainly true that the forums are replete with happy Skylake owners.

 

 

Good news is that Skylake has demonstrated that the yields are pretty stable. Almost all chips overclocking between 4.6 and 4.8.

[AnkH 2,233]

The 6700k with higher clock, or the newer 6850k?

 

Actually, although the 6850K was released after the 6700K, the architecture of the 6700K is newer. The 6700K is a Skylake CPU while the 6850K is a Broadwell-E CPU, basically the "high-end" version of a Broadwell CPU which was the direct predecessor of the Skylake CPUs. Long story made short: I would go for the Skylake processor. Higher clocks directly from the beginning, newer platform, newer architecture and in the end, those two additional cores you get with the 6850K still do not do any good in Prepar3d, at least not significantly.

[cptCaptain 122]

Ok thanks. I ordered the 6700k today  :smile: