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Question

Upgrade from 1090t phenom II x6 to Intel worth it.

Sep 16, 2015 4:02PM PDT

Hello all, I am looking into upgrading my computer. It is mainly used for gaming. My current specs are amd phenom II x6 1090t, EVGA GTX 780, corsair 850w plus psu, 8 gigs ddr3 ram can be overclocked to 2333 currently at either 1600 or 1866 don't remember, Samsung evo pro 256gig ssd, 1tb hdd. Currently running at 1920x1080 one monitor. Don't plan on dual or 4k any time soon. I also use a lot of flight sims as well as GameCube and ps2 emulators.

Upgrade options: i5 6600k skylake with 16 gigs ddr4 ram. Or I5 4690k haswell.

So my question is which will be better? I know that ddr4 right now does not provide many performance increases but it very well could in the future and if I'm upgrading I don't want to be stuck in the past, however I don't want to just throwaway money. And as far as processor performance I can't say as I have seen many good benchmarks for skylake v haswell. Does anybody know good or bad to either of these processors?

Discussion is locked

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Answer
You can compare CPUs at CPUBOSS
Sep 16, 2015 4:16PM PDT

I use CPUBOSS to get a first look at CPUs. Next I see what Tomshardware has offered.

But then we have this:
"Our tests demonstrate fairly little difference between a $225 LGA 1155 Core i5-2500K and a $1000 LGA 2011 Core i7-3960X, even when three-way graphics card configurations are involved. It turns out that memory bandwidth and PCIe throughput don't hold back the performance of existing Sandy Bridge-based machines. "
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-cpu-review-overclock,3106-4.html

A lot of folk are making this move for game performance. For that I look at the GPU.

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GPU not the issue
Sep 16, 2015 4:25PM PDT

i have done some tests and my GPU does not reach 100% capacity in some games. I have a feeling that the phenom may be bottlenecks get and getting a little old. I have had this processor for about 5-6 years and it does not overclock well at all. The highest stable I can get is 3.5ghz. I think it's time for a cup upgrade. However if I go haswell I don't want to get the feeling that I will be stuck in the past due to buying previous gen hardware. Like I said above I know ddr4 doesn't do a whole lot now but I could in a year or two and I don't want to be stuck with old tech. However I want to be able to justify the $200 price difference between the two. I have a budget for both so that isn't the issue. I just want to know if the extra $200 is worth it.