Upgrade to an i7 6700K in 2020?
Upgrade to an i7 6700K in 2020?
I purchased my i7 6700k with a prebuilt PC around four years ago. I own a GTX 1070 Founders Edition and 16GB DDR4 RAM at 1000MHz. In some games, my CPU reaches 100% regardless of graphics settings. My GPU is working well and rarely exceeds 80% usage. I suspect the CPU might be limiting performance. It has been optimized to 4.6 for about two years now. What should I do? Many threads I’ve read suggest waiting, but they’re from a while ago.
Skylake measures 14nm; consider waiting until 10nm for noticeable improvements.
Keep an eye on the upcoming Ryzen updates or the Ryzen 4000 release and observe their performance. Regardless, you'll likely require a new motherboard as well.
10nm offers limited gains; Intel plans to move to 7nm with 12th or 13th generation. The 11th generation brings a new design but remains at 14nm. The 10th serves as a refresh of existing concepts once more. We’re seeing advancements that could surpass the last update by a couple of years. I’ve heard estimates that the 2080ti might cost around $350 by 2028 and that the 3060 will eventually outperform it in certain scenarios. Rocket Lake should deliver solid single-thread performance, possibly even better than previous models despite being at 14nm. AMD could end up leading in single-thread speed with Zen 3 and the 9900K. I expect Rocket Lake to match or exceed that in that category. A system purchased today might feel outdated in a few years compared to what’s available now. We’ve experienced stagnant progress for years, but soon companies will unveil breakthroughs delayed for years.