X99 Vs Kaby Lake & 4K HDR Gaming

[zanatos]

Hi,

i am getting a second a PC for my Home (which will be connected to my new UHD HDR TV ).

My current PC is HASSWELL based (z87 4700K with 980 ti)!

My second PC should be SKY LAKE Z??? or X99 (6800K)?

The graphic card for that PC will be the 1080 Ti (when it is released)

The only problem is that i have no info on KABY LAKE and that X99 is a more expensive platform that probably is not worth it so much, or is it?

What is your feedback guys?
When are we expecting Kaby lake related Hardware?

Thank you

 

[xvi]

4k should shift even more of the bottleneck towards GPU. I wouldn't bother with X99 for gaming, myself.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

HTPC? I would go for power efficiency and that means not HEDT platform.

As @xvi said, GPU bottlenecks long before the CPU does. You're better off saving money in the CPU department to splurge in the GPU department.

That said, I would consider Zen too.

Kaby Lake is a minor revision to Skylake. I would expect 5% better IPC at most. Maybe a little faster clock speeds too. Nothing really worth waiting for.

 

[Moofachuka]

Kaby Lake will have a slower clock speed than 6700k, the main difference is the I/O and 24 lanes vs 20 on Skylake.

 

[xvi]

I haven't been following DX12 closely, but I don't think anything upcoming in the game world will really take advantage of the "OMG MOAR CORES" nature of HEDT. If I recall correctly, AMD tried to shift the load off the CPU with Vulkan and DX12 is not far off from trying to do the same. (Might be wrong here, feel free to correct me)

If it was my build, I'd just throw an i5 in it. Silence is often overlooked. My x79 rig is screaming in this heat (even with a 240mm AIO). I'd hate to use it as a HTPC.

 

[Azumay]

I would wait. See what zen brings and see what really kaby lake will do. Kaby lake will not really be a tick tock cpu, so doubt if its performance to games will be much better than skylake.
Save your money up till late fall and see what new stuff then brings. 1080Ti might be out by then, and you can upgrade all. Also amds vega will out then or q1 2017, may offer
performance per watt better(maybe not). Just a lot of stuff coming around in the fall.

 

[RejZoR]

4k should shift even more of the bottleneck towards GPU. I wouldn't bother with X99 for gaming, myself.

With nature how DX12 and Vulkan works, you want more cores for the future...

 

[cadaveca]

With nature how DX12 and Vulkan works, you want more cores for the future...

But the question remains of how long into the future that will be...

And also what the PC will really be used for. Personally, I'd upgrade for more core, and connect the Haswell system to the high-res panel. If using STEAM-based titles, if you need more cores, you can always stream STEAM to the other box without any problems at all. Heck, I stream games via STEAM to my Surface 3 Pro all the time, and they play great.

 

[JalleR]

My old 4771 with HT off used 80-90% cpu in GTA5 (@3700) (w HT it is 40-45%), so my recommendation would be nothing under i7, In the future more than 8 threads will be usable, but for now i think 8 will be OK.

 

[RejZoR]

End of 2016, beginning of 2017. We are now seeing actual DX12 games (Ashes of Singularity, Hitman, new Deus Ex and quite few others). Doom is planned for Vulkan as well, considering the game is already out, it shouldn't take that long.

 

[Vayra86]

With nature how DX12 and Vulkan works, you want more cores for the future...

LOL where have we heard this before?

I think the year 2000 called

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Both are true. DX12/Vulkan: The graphics APIs are multithreaded so they can spread the CPU burden across many cores; however, because both APIs give more direct control over the hardware, rendering requires very little CPU load.

The only way we're going to see more CPU load in games under the new APIs is if they use it for something else (e.g. physics, AI). Physics is best done via async compute though.

 

[RejZoR]

LOL where have we heard this before?

I think the year 2000 called

No it hasn't called at all. Back then Quake 3 was the pinnacle of multithreading. And the ONLY game that even showed any kind of benefit of having 2 threads. So no. But for DX12 and Vulkan, things have changed a lot. Its' freaking 16 years later, it well should be different...

 

[Vayra86]

No it hasn't called at all. Back then Quake 3 was the pinnacle of multithreading. And the ONLY game that even showed any kind of benefit of having 2 threads. So no. But for DX12 and Vulkan, things have changed a lot. Its' freaking 16 years later, it well should be different...

I beg to differ.

Multithreading only makes sense if you have a performance bottleneck on CPU. The actual games where multithreading is touted as the 'great leap forward' in terms of API changes, are the games that really don't do much on CPU at all - big publisher releases that rely heavily on lots of GPU processing, have very little going on or a very streamlined (consolified) experience. The actual games that really needed to move to multithreading in the past, were being built on single threaded engines and bottlenecked on that entirely - no budget to make it multi threaded. Do you see the irony?

If there is anything I have learned over the past ten years, it is that the market shifts towards the most common denominator and that all games are tailored to that. We all know this; look at how the past console gen has slowed down progress for up to seven long, long years. Right now, that lowest common denominator is a quad core, and it is extremely unlikely this will turn into a 6- or 8-core in the near future. The consoles get an upgrade - but they gain the most on the GPU side and they keep a low-power CPU part to drive it, albeit at slightly higher clocks. The real questions to ask here: What games would use all that processing power? And what's more, how many consumers are paying for more cores? Not enough to justify a new market, that is for sure. There is a very clear reason the PS4 and X1 were marketed as cheaper consoles than their predecessors. People want it cheap, simple and easy.

The multithreaded nature of DX12/Vulkan is NOT going to be used for elaborate physics simulation or other such tasks that will dramatically push the CPU. Perhaps as an optional part, but never as integral gameplay or a core of the game. The multithreading within the new API serves to make gaming more portable, more mobile, and better suited for VR on a wider range of systems. It fits entirely in the push to smaller devices, it fits perfectly in the One Windows / Continuum spirit of W10, and it fits the market that is now saturated with dual-to quad-core machines, a vast majority of them being low-power or laptop models with lower clocks, but enough threads available.

Of course we can dream, but if you are being realistic about it, you know these are just dreams of a future, not the actual near future of DX12. If there is any push in gaming, it is a push to offload as much as possible to GPU. Not CPU. Of course some games will benefit, most notably grand strategy and high draw call oriented game engines, but that's not going to dramatically change our games. Even Ashes is nothing more than an RTS with lots of units on screen, something Total War/Creative Assembly has been doing for some years now.

 

[RejZoR]

You think physics are the only thing that needs separate thread? Audio, Ai, yes, physics, graphics and even with graphics, if you run two cards, you could utilize two separate threads for each graphic card instead of trying to sync the entire clusterfuck of data to process into a single thread. I think I've caught somewhere you can even utilize several threads to do graphic tasks alone. It's why no one was doing it now, because it was such pain in the ass to use multithreading because API just wasn't designed for it.

 

[Vayra86]

You think physics are the only thing that needs separate thread? Audio, Ai, yes, physics, graphics and even with graphics, if you run two cards, you could utilize two separate threads for each graphic card instead of trying to sync the entire clusterfuck of data to process into a single thread. I think I've caught somewhere you can even utilize several threads to do graphic tasks alone. It's why no one was doing it now, because it was such pain in the ass to use multithreading because API just wasn't designed for it.

All of that still doesn't change a single thing about economic principles and the way the market works and has always worked... I understand what you want, I want it too, but if we are realistic about it, games are not going to suddenly make giant leaps forward at all.

Look at the Async shaders and AMD GPU performance (another 'way of threading' and scheduling differently). Giant leaps? Nope...

 

[RejZoR]

Is there even anyone with anything less than a quad core for gaming? Multi-core CPUs were exotic back then. Now they aren't. That's the largest difference. No one is going to develop advanced software tech for 5 users with hardware to utilize it. We've had multi-core CPU's for ages now, but no software API to support it properly. That's DX12. What DX12 depends on now is not hardware or softare (API), it depends on Windows 10 and its adaption. Before you could update DirectX independently of OS, now you can't. So, more user have to actually use Win10 to make it more logical to use by devs, It's how it is.

 

[zanatos]

So from what i am readying i should wait for new KABY LAKE? correct?

 

[FordGT90Concept]

The only thing maybe worth waiting for at this point is AMD Zen.

 

[zanatos]

So the big question is 6 cores vs 4. I m inclining to go with skylake for now

 

[SithLord]

So from what i am readying i should wait for new KABY LAKE? correct?

I think FordGT90Concept hit it on the nose here:

HTPC? I would go for power efficiency and that means not HEDT platform.

As @xvi said, GPU bottlenecks long before the CPU does. You're better off saving money in the CPU department to splurge in the GPU department.

That said, I would consider Zen too.

Kaby Lake is a minor revision to Skylake. I would expect 5% better IPC at most. Maybe a little faster clock speeds too. Nothing really worth waiting for.

waiting for kaby lake won't actually yield much improvements over skylake

So the big question is 6 cores vs 4. I m inclining to go with skylake for now

Skylake is a good architecture, you will be happy with it. and with the price-point around haswell you cant go wrong

 

[RejZoR]

Considering you're spending big, I wouldn't really skimp on a CPU. If I were you now, I'd go with 6800K for sure. It's essentially 5820K that I have on a newer node,slightly optimized IPC and more instructions. 6 cores will always come in handy, especially for DX12 titles and if 6800K is anything like 5820K it should also clock well.