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Anyone think it's a good time to buy a 6700K @ $310 or wait and they may drop a bit more before inventory starts to evaporate?

Microcenter cut their prices to $260 which would be great, if a trip to their closest location didn't eat up most of the difference for me.

Don't think of it as a trip.
Think of it as a pilgrimage!

Despite the hype, most retailers have not radically slashed the prices on Intel desktop parts just yet*. It won't hurt to wait a week or two to see if that actually happens, and Microcenter will still be there too.


* From the early benchmarks, RyZen ain't bad but quad-core Intel parts have by no means been made obsolete especially in games, and at $310 a 6700K can actually beat more expensive RyZen parts in many real-life gaming benchmarks, so it's not even a price premium.

If you can get a price you're happy with, why not? Especially if you already have 170 or 270 based motherboard.

Having said that, the reviews on RyZen should be hitting tomorrow -- probably no harm waiting to see those if you don't have a motherboard already.

Microcenter has historically done this with offering past-gen i7's for $250-$260 (added bonus they'll give you $30 off a mobo with CPU purchase). I'm not sure if Haswell got that deal though (maybe they did and I missed it). I haven't seen any other retailers do that, but now we have Ryzen launch imminent, so perhaps, but I wouldn't get my hopes up.

I would at a minimum wait till tomorrow to see the reviews for Ryzen which should give a better hint as to what Intel prices might do. Early previews say they should be good but if they aren't as good as expected Intel may just keep prices as-is. If they are better than expected, I am going to expect some Intel price drops. Not huge ones (this is Intel we are talking about) but some.

Also, you can get an i7-7700K for that same $310 if you haven't shopped at Jet.com before.
https://jet.com/product/Intel-Core-i7-7 ... 8c8cb0d7f7
Use code TRIPLE15 for up to $30 off.

Ideally I'd suggest waiting until after Ryzen actually launches (and hits general availability/in stock status) before buying, if possible.

I don't think we've seen the real price cuts/adjustments from Intel yet. Can't confirm the validity of the rumor, but if Intel really does launch a 7740K and 7640K then that will definitely bump prices down even further as well.

Why choose the 4.0 GHz Skylake Core i7-6700K over a 4.2 GHz Kaby Lake Core i7-7700K at this point (other than the obvious $311 vs. $350 price)?

Microcenter always has the best prices on CPU's. Love that place. But yeah, a 6700k at $260 is a great deal compared to the 7700k. The slight clockspeed increase isn't worth the extra $90. IPC is the same after all, and the video decoding is worthless if you're using a nvidia/amd vid card anyway (which you should be).

Z

JustAnEngineer wrote:

Why choose the 4.0 GHz Skylake Core i7-6700K over a 4.2 GHz Kaby Lake Core i7-7700K at this point (other than the obvious $311 vs. $350 price)?

because the 6700k is a better CPU overall?

ZGradt wrote:

Microcenter always has the best prices on CPU's. Love that place. But yeah, a 6700k at $260 is a great deal compared to the 7700k. The slight clockspeed increase isn't worth the extra $90. IPC is the same after all, and the video decoding is worthless if you're using a nvidia/amd vid card anyway (which you should be).

Z

The 7700K isn't 350 at Microcenter...

DancinJack wrote:

The Core i7-7700K is $300 at Microcenter...

http://www.microcenter.com/site/brands/ ... ndles.aspx

NoOne ButMe wrote:

JustAnEngineer wrote:

Why choose the 4.0 GHz Skylake Core i7-6700K over a 4.2 GHz Kaby Lake Core i7-7700K at this point (other than the obvious $311 vs. $350 price)?

because the 6700k is a better CPU overall?

...?

I look forward to your sourced explanation of this statement.

Airmantharp wrote:

NoOne ButMe wrote:

JustAnEngineer wrote:

Why choose the 4.0 GHz Skylake Core i7-6700K over a 4.2 GHz Kaby Lake Core i7-7700K at this point (other than the obvious $311 vs. $350 price)?

because the 6700k is a better CPU overall?

...?

I look forward to your sourced explanation of this statement.

Cheaper, lower power at stock, typically uses less power than a 7700k if you overclock it to 4.5ghz.

you do lose out on maximum clock for overclocking based on reviews i have read.

NoOne ButMe wrote:

Airmantharp wrote:

NoOne ButMe wrote:

because the 6700k is a better CPU overall?

...?

I look forward to your sourced explanation of this statement.

Cheaper, lower power at stock, typically uses less power than a 7700k if you overclock it to 4.5ghz.

you do lose out on maximum clock for overclocking based on reviews i have read.

So no sources?

JustAnEngineer wrote:

DancinJack wrote:

The Core i7-7700K is $300 at Microcenter...

http://www.microcenter.com/site/brands/ ... ndles.aspx

It's really a shame that the closest Microcenter to me is a 16 hour drive. Probably doesn't pencil out.

JustAnEngineer wrote:

Why choose the 4.0 GHz Skylake Core i7-6700K over a 4.2 GHz Kaby Lake Core i7-7700K at this point (other than the obvious $311 vs. $350 price)?

Just price, though Microcenter does have good prices on 7700K as well. Mostly due to the fact that Microcenter uses processor prices to get people in the door, but being so far away it's mostly a wash for me, so not a real option...and no online retailer is really discounting the 7700K. Maybe we'll see a Black Friday deal or some Intel repricing with the Ryzen business that'd change the 7700K price enough that I'd grab that instead.

I haven't read anything compelling enough about the 7700K that I'd even pay an extra $30-40 for it, though it does seem like a slightly better processor--just not enough to matter to my use case. I'd prefer to put any savings toward some more RAM or something.

I'd go Kaby Lake at that small difference in price because Kaby Lake OCs a bit better, from what I can tell.

Airmantharp wrote:

NoOne ButMe wrote:

Airmantharp wrote:

...?

I look forward to your sourced explanation of this statement.

Cheaper, lower power at stock, typically uses less power than a 7700k if you overclock it to 4.5ghz.

you do lose out on maximum clock for overclocking based on reviews i have read.

So no sources?

Actually, just to sidetrack this argument, I noticed that the 6700K stock was outperforming the 7700K stock in some of the Ryzen reviews gaming benchmarks.
Possibly just within the margin of measurement error, but I thought I'd mention it, even visible in TR's own review (Doom, OpenGL):



I

Yeah that's got to be just a margin of error thing given how similar Skylake and Kaby Lake are. Interesting though, and good news for bargain hunters looking for a Skylake upgrade on a budget.

Chrispy_ wrote:

Actually, just to sidetrack this argument, I noticed that the 6700K stock was outperforming the 7700K stock in some of the Ryzen reviews gaming benchmarks.
Possibly just within the margin of measurement error, but I thought I'd mention it, even visible in TR's own review (Doom, OpenGL):



I

That wasn't the only odd result. The 5960X was beating the 6950X in multiple benches. Take the Doom Vulkan bench, it easily won ALL of them compared to the 6950X even though both have the same base clockspeed. http://techreport.com/review/31366/amd- ... reviewed/6

I suspect that's because the x86 architecture is now so refined that when Intel tweaks the architecture between generations they are no longer straightforward "improvements across the board". More like "lose 5% in these less-common scenarios to gain 8% in these more-common scenarios".

In other words, they're just fettling now and there's no low-hanging fruit to pick - any gains in one area are likely to come at the cost of something else. The difference between Skylake and Kaby may be very subtle and we know it's not architectural since Kaby is just a die shrink - but perhaps the process tweaks make enough difference to thermals/power that Skylake can actually boost higher than Kaby in some workloads. Who knows..... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Another question for everyone: when do you think RAM prices will stabilize/decline?

Ram prices are stable, they haven't in the past year(much). Now when they will go down, who knows.

Mandatory KLR question. Do you have a milk create on the back of that bike?

Don't forget that you have to overclock the 6700K to 4.5ghz whereas the 7700K I own boosts to that automatically. Mine currently runs at 4.7ghz on all 4 cores on air at 30c idle and about 70 under stress (gaming a bit less). I'm not supposed to mention it because some people on Rage3D got annoyed at me bragging about it LOL but my CPU can over clock to 5ghz on air at 1.35V. For an extra $40 a 7700K is well worth it IMHO.

spiritwalker2222 wrote:

Ram prices are stable, they haven't in the past year(much). Now when they will go down, who knows.

Actually, they've been going up. See for yourself The majority of DDR4 32GB kits on Amazon have received a $50-80 price increase since November.

Prices are expected to continue to increase in 2017