Which one do you think will perform the best for my needs?
I play BF4, Arma 3, RCT3/2 and also multitask heavily during games.
So far I have an i5 build picked but I totally forgot about the Xeon series.
Well if gaming is primarily your purpose, and you plan on overclocking.. The 4670k is the better bet.
If you get a poor overclocker, and get stuck at 4.4-4.5GHz, you are still talking about 1000MHz over the baseclock of the Xeon, and 600MHz over the boost clock. If you get a good clocker the performance delta will be even higher. Depending on your GPU config, it really might not matter. But most games will benefit more from the clock speed than the 4 extra threads.
But if you plan on doing media encoding, video editing, or lots of streaming, then maybe buy the Xeon. But since you only mentioned games, Buy the i5. I did and I am very happy with it.
I use custom scenery made in sketch up will the xeon favor that over the i5 at all?
Sorry If I sound stupid but I'm always confused on how certain things run better on other processors.
As far as I know, Sketchup only uses a single core, so it wouldn't make a difference if you had hyper threading or not. The clock speed is more important for both gaming and Sketchup, so go with the i5.
i5 is totaly fine. i only recommend an i7 if you do video rendering or streaming and such. But for just gaming the i5 is totaly fine.
I guess the i5. Thing is, if you want to overclock, you aren't guaranteed any numbers, and you will have to drop more money onto things like a decent motherboard and after market cooler. With the Xeon you could literally buy any H97 motherboard and just use the stock cooler and probably be fine.
As mentioned, this is a overclocking vs not-overclocking question.
At stock speeds, the Xeon would be the better purchase for more future proofing (8 threaded application and game support.)
BUT if you are going to overclock, then the i5's speed boost will more than compensate for the lack of threads (especially considering that not too many games use more than 4 threads).
As a side note, the i5 has integrated graphics which COULD be useful if your GPU dies or needs to be replaced... the Xeon doesnt have that capability.
At the end of the day, there is really only 1 relevant question.. Will you be overclocking.
4690k*
the i5-4690k will perform better then the xeon in most cpu bound games.
Because of its higher clock speeds.
I agree, but if they aren't overclocking, then a Xeon will give more support for multi-threaded games that will be released in the future. For current games, both processors will be good enough already.
I would go for the Xeon they are better binned and that particular model has hyperthreading which is great if you do any encoding, compiling or anything of that nature. Overclocking is a lottery and you should not count on it by any means, your motherboard could have terrible vdroop and crash under load, the VRM's could not be properly cooled, the CPU could simply not take an overclock it happens. Also once you're ready to upgrade again you could swap the mobo out get some ECC RAM and build a FreeNAS box or a respectable hypervisor if that's your thing around that CPU.