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I couldn't wait until late spring for Vega as I needed something that could drive 4K high settings (mostly Ark and Witcher 3, although the RX 480 did do very well at medium settings).  As such I have ordered an MSI Gaming X GTX 1080.  Now the question is how much of a bottleneck will my i5 be?  Will I need an i7?

No.

It's going to depend on the game, but no, not in general you won't be bottle-necking. Of course some games are more CPU bound than others, and for those you'd want as high a frequency as you can get on your 6600K, but I definitely wouldn't buy a new CPU in your case.

A highly overclocked recent model i5? You're already at or near the top of the heap.

You WILL be CPU bound.

I am heavily CPU bound in both WoW and FF-XIV and I "merely" have a 1070.

Thing is: there's jack sh*** you can do about it, because you already own one of the most powerful CPUs out there (in relation to gaming).
So, for now, we have to live with CPUs being the bottlenecks again.

lol CPU bound at 4K? No.

1sh wrote:

lol CPU bound at 4K? No.

Not everything at 4K is GPU-bound.

You're good.

Sorry for not clarifying.  I was expected to be CPU bound in MMO/RTS titles as hundreds of units / player characters on the screen on at once can induce a slideshow even at lower settings.

I was meaning more for single player games like Witcher 3 or Doom, etc.