Which processor best with 980 ti

Hi, in the next couple of weeks i am building a gaming pc and I can't decide the processor, in the UK the i7 4790k and the i5 6600k are a similar price. My question is which would give me the best gaming experience when paired with an EVGA superclocked 980 ti.

Other specs:

Processor ?
Mobo ?
Ram ?
GPU: 980 ti
SSD: 250 gb samsung evo
PSU: EVGA G2 650w
CASE: h440
NZXT x31 AIO Cooler

Many thanks,

P.S: I will also be doing some work on this PC if that makes a difference in which processor to use.

If they are the same price then my £££'s would go to the i7 4790k all day long.

Similar power consumption but the i7 4790K is better across all cores and in single thread performance too.

I've had the i7 4790K before I 'downgraded' for reasons, and it's the best CPU I've had!

Gosh there is a 100 pounds diffrence between the 4790K and 6700K according to partpicker
Thats rediculous realy, not sure why that is. but it makes no sense.
The 4790k would be obviously a better buy then in terms of price to performance.

I'd personally go for the 4790K because you're probably gonna be able to save a bit of money with the motherboard and ram and if you're planning on doing some light workstation stuff its gonna be a quite a bit better

According to motherboards, that depends a bit on what kind of specific feutures you need,
Form factor and color theme you like, if that is something that matters to you.

I could recommend you a couple of nice boards in diffrent price ranges.
But according to the cpu, i would probably grab the 4790K in this case anyday.
Of course a core i5 is basicly all you realy need for gaming, however for arround the same price it never realy hurts to step on the i7, and be able to utilize those extra threads in certain workloads.

4790k all the way. I have a 4690k and it bottlenecks it in 2 or 3 games. Also as @MisteryAngel stated the price jump for a 6700k makes no sense, it isn't worth it.

1 Like

The ONLY reason to go for a 6600K/6700k Is the fact it is a newer platform, Aside from that, for the price it's total ass.

1 Like

What do you mean by light workstation stuff?

It's the same conundrum as 2 years ago with ivy bridge and haswell, except even less drastic of a change.
For gaming I would definitely just get the i5 on the newer platform.

Well I am at University so, Word processing, research etc.

Hi, thanks for your reply, have your heard anything about the MSI Z97s krait gaming Mobo, looking at that one because of its look, do you know anything about its performance, reliability etc.

I´m personaly not realy a big fan about that particular Z97 krait board.
There seem to be a few flavs with it .

http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/cpu_mainboard/msi_z97_sli_krait_motherboard_review/1

It looks like it falls a bit behind some of the other Z97 boards in the market, in some of the benchmarks tests they have done.
Which is kinda weird.
If you look at the Gaming performance graph in particular, it scores realy badly, for some oddly reason.
Maybe the board was throttling, or maybe a few flavs with the bios version that time idk.
But it is still a bit weird.

Not realy sure where to nail this as a bios issue, or maybe a overheating throttle issue with the boards vrm´s and mosfets.
But its strange.

If you look at the Msi Z97 Gaming 5 for example, it scores allot better.
For just a few bucks more.

Because intel would make you pay up the ass to even eat a salad. :|

Wow, that's so weird. I have the x99 version of that krait board (totally different I know), but it has been a fantastic upgrade over the UD3 I started with. Never laid hands on the Z97 version, but it would surprise me to know that after the good work MSI has done building their brand in the west over the last 3-5 years that they'd let something like that out the door.

Obviously numbers don't lie and OC3D is a reputable source, it's just damned strange given my wonderful track record with low/mid tier MSI boards since Nehalem

I have the MSI Gaming 7 with the 4790k with my 980ti and I couldn't be happier.

Save money and get the 4790k and I have always been a fan with Asus rog booards and corsair ram

Well, thats disapointing seeing as it looks awesome. Do you know much about the ASUS sabertooth gryphon for gaming as was thinking of putting those parts in the corsair air 240 and doing a matx gaming beast that is smaller and massively better than my old pc.

The Asus Z97 Gryphon is basicly not a bad board, in terms of vreg design its a 8 pwm powerphase design, which basicly means 4.0 true phases with doublers, digi vrm control.
Its definitely not a bad board if you are looking for a m-atx setup.

The Asus Maximus VII Gene which is red and black, is basicly Asus top of the line m-atx board, if you are okay with red and black color theme, then the Maximus VII Gene for a M-atx setup, is a board that i would definitely recommend to take a look at.
This particular board also feutures a fully true 8 powerphase design with digi vrm, 60A blackwing chokes, Nexfet mosfets, 10K black caps, so basicly all the decent stuff.
in terms of feutures, since its an ROG board, it comes with a decent onboard audio, keybot, and the bios in my opinnion is one of the most overclock friendly biosses there are.

But i do have to note that on the Z97 platform, the vreg design is not all that important,
since the Haswell cpu´s have a FiVR (fully intergrated voltage regulator),
which basicly means that there is a voltage regulation inside the chip.
So how high of an overclock you reach, mainly depends on silicon luck of the chip.

Considering the 4770k launchee at that general price bracket, and now the 5820k is equivalently priced I would say you're getting a great deal going down the enthusiast path. Mainstream prices however do suck. That DDR3 to DDR4 margin has closed lol. Skylake is overpriced, but the architecture and sheer core performance is amazing. AMD needs to get Zen out :)