6-core/12-thread Core i7 for $200, i7-5820K Revisited

I do love articles like this so much. It's part of the reason I come to TechSpot more than any other tech site on the web. I love seeing how slightly older hardware stacks up to the newest, especially in terms of CPU's. So many people are misinformed about the performance levels in real-world scenarios, so they think the latest CPU's offer huge gains over CPU's from mid 2014-2015. In reality that's not the case, as you've shown here. I'm so glad to see you guys educating others about this, because it'll save them money when they realize they probably don't need to upgrade yet based on what they do with their PC. The money is better spent on a nice GPU instead, if they are gamers of course.

Anyway, I want to get to the whole Meltdown\Spectre fiasco. There is something I'm not quite understanding. According to what Intel said (and a lot of analysts), any CPU's featuring the INVPCID feature should be least affected by ALL the patches that mitigate these major security flaws. This would mean Haswell CPU's and newer, as INVPCID was introduced with Haswell.

What puzzle's me is Microsoft's latest statement contradicts this. They state that Skylake and newer will see the least amount of performance degradation, while Haswell and older will suffer more. I want to know how they came up with this as they did not show any concrete benchmarks to back this up, or even any data whatsoever.

The ONLY way to know is to see how Haswell CPU's perform after they are patched, which seems impossible as I haven't heard of any microcode updates being released yet for those CPU's, even though Intel promised they were coming. I myself am running a 4790K "Devil's Canyon" CPU on a Gigabyte Z97X-UD5H motherboard and I haven't seen any UEFI BIOS update from Gigabyte yet. I keep checking though. I really want to know how badly the performance is affected, since this particular board doesn't allow flashing to a previous version of FW (something I've actually never had to deal with before). So if I were to flash it and end up very disappointed with my performance, I couldn't even choose to just go back and take the risk. Granted, there will be ways to perform some registry edits to help with the OS patch impacting performance, but I won't be able to do anything about the microcode changes.

Please post some benchmarks for older Intel CPU's once they are completely patched for Meltdown and Spectre. I know I'm not the only one that wants to see this!
 
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I'm still on my 3770k and I don't even have it over clocked, lol. Managed to get it 5ghz but I keep it stock. Never felt it slowing me down even after all these years. Now I have it paired with 2 1080Ti's and still don't feel a slow down. I'm sure I could get better performance if I upgraded but I really can justify it at this point. I'm waiting to see a second gen threadripper before I decide if I upgrade or not. My 3770k has virtualization instructions on it that Intel decided to take out in later generations. As far as I'm aware, AMD keeps those all in in their higher-end consumer grade products. Kind of offended by Intel at this point. They are 1) not offering significant performance upgrades to consumers and 2) taking away functionality in the name of bleeding our wallets.

Ever since ryzen I haven't built a single Intel machine for people unless they have an application specific need. I either save them money or put the savings towards a better graphics card.
 
Puiu said:
Lovely. These are some benchmarks I wanted to see for quite a long time now.
Click to expand...

I was hoping these were post Win10 patch results because I have a 5820k and it's been one of the most amazing CPUs I've ever owned. With liquid cooling I can easily push it up to 5.2ghz stable although I generally run it at 4.6ghz which is still a nice overclock. One thing I noticed is it doesn't look overclocked memory although like the article said that could be the memory's fault. I can push it to 2666Mhz but Anything beyond that and I can boot failures.

For reference I'm using a gigabyte x99-ud4 motherboard.

I know they suggest that an upgrade isn't necessary for gamers but I disagree if you also want to capture or stream on the same system. Even with 32 gigs of ddr4 running quad channel and a gtx 1080 I find I drop frames in game and in the capture with the 5820k.

Hopefully the patch(es) don't impact performance too much. I'm concerned about AC Origins because it's very cpu intensive due to it's dual layered DRM (4 layers if you count Uplay and steam basic DRM)

I was planning on upgrading to a threadripper based system sometime this year but the timing of that upgrade is entirely dependent on performance after the patch and firmware update. I'm gaming at 4k whenever possible and every ounce of performance counts.

Overall though the 5820k was the best CPU in it's series. It had a good price and absurd overclocking abilities and while the article says don't buy used I say if you are looking to save some money then go for it. You really can't go wrong with this cpu.
yRaz said:
I'm still on my 3770k and I don't even have it over clocked, lol. Managed to get it 5ghz but I keep it stock. Never felt it slowing me down even after all these years. Now I have it paired with 2 1080Ti's and still don't feel a slow down. I'm sure I could get better performance if I upgraded but I really can justify it at this point. I'm waiting to see a second gen threadripper before I decide if I upgrade or not. My 3770k has virtualization instructions on it that Intel decided to take out in later generations. As far as I'm aware, AMD keeps those all in in their higher-end consumer grade products. Kind of offended by Intel at this point. They are 1) not offering significant performance upgrades to consumers and 2) taking away functionality in the name of bleeding our wallets.

Ever since ryzen I haven't built a single Intel machine for people unless they have an application specific need. I either save them money or put the savings towards a better graphics card.
Click to expand...

You would get better performance from an upgrade sure but a good overclock will also help. Pairing a 1080ti to such an old CPU seems crazy to me. In all cases you will end up CPU bound way before the gpu hits its limits. It's also not just about raw clockspeed. There have been architecture changes that make newer cpus better.

Of course of you are gaming at 1080p you're fine but at the same time why would you buy a 1080ti when the 1070 would suit you just fine.
 
d0x360 said:
I was hoping these were post Win10 patch results because I have a 5820k and it's been one of the most amazing CPUs I've ever owned. With liquid cooling I can easily push it up to 5.2ghz stable although I generally run it at 4.6ghz which is still a nice overclock. One thing I noticed is it doesn't look overclocked memory although like the article said that could be the memory's fault. I can push it to 2666Mhz but Anything beyond that and I can boot failures.

For reference I'm using a gigabyte x99-ud4 motherboard.

I know they suggest that an upgrade isn't necessary for gamers but I disagree if you also want to capture or stream on the same system. Even with 32 gigs of ddr4 running quad channel and a gtx 1080 I find I drop frames in game and in the capture with the 5820k.

Hopefully the patch(es) don't impact performance too much. I'm concerned about AC Origins because it's very cpu intensive due to it's dual layered DRM (4 layers if you count Uplay and steam basic DRM)

I was planning on upgrading to a threadripper based system sometime this year but the timing of that upgrade is entirely dependent on performance after the patch and firmware update. I'm gaming at 4k whenever possible and every ounce of performance counts.

Overall though the 5820k was the best CPU in it's series. It had a good price and absurd overclocking abilities and while the article says don't buy used I say if you are looking to save some money then go for it. You really can't go wrong with this cpu.

You would get better performance from an upgrade sure but a good overclock will also help. Pairing a 1080ti to such an old CPU seems crazy to me. In all cases you will end up CPU bound way before the gpu hits its limits. It's also not just about raw clockspeed. There have been architecture changes that make newer cpus better.

Of course of you are gaming at 1080p you're fine but at the same time why would you buy a 1080ti when the 1070 would suit you just fine.
Click to expand...
I have 2 1080Tis in SLi and game at 4k. I know I'm most likely CPU bound, but I have no problem keeps ng a stable 60FPS at whatever settings I'm using.

Like I said before, I'm waiting for the second gen threadripper before I upgrade. The instruction sets I use for virtualization aren't available on later i7s or even higher consumer grade CPUs so I'm stuck with the 3770k u til further noticed. Threadripper has the instruction sets I need but gen 2 is right around the corner so I'll just wait. I could overclock if I wanted but I just don't feel the need. If I had 6 instead of 4 cores I would wait another few years before an upgrade but multithreaded performance is starting to show its age. Gaming shows no noticable performance impact but when I'm running 2-3 virtual machines it does slow down. I can't risk overclocking in that situation for stability issues.

I'm not on water but I do have a solid copper zalman 9700 that is as close as you can get on air. I've had the same cooler since 2006, lol. At idle the fan doesn't even spin so I'm sure that has a lot to do with longevity.

It just really sucks the new i7s can't do what I need almost forcing me to buy a $1500cpu that's slower in everyday tasks. Can't and never will be able to justify that. I'm just hoping gen 2 ryzen will be on par or better than Intel's new CPUs. I have to go with AMD either way because it will seriously save me over a thousand dollars over Intel and provide more functionality.

FYI, I run 2 gaming PCs off of one rig when someone comes over. If I upgrade I lose that ability unless I go with AMD. I also run a third PC off of it as a basic "house" computer. Virtualization is awesome!
 
I have a 5820k on an Asrock extreme 4 running 64 gigs of ram(cost £90 for 4 8 sticks when I bought it)

I do like the setup I've had it for 2 years now, I just feel the itch to upgrade. saying that I had my previous setup for 6 years before that, and that is still being used by my wife. that was another 6 core intel the 980x EE.

I really like the look of the ryzen 7 1800x platform but I guess ill stick to what I have at the moment.

oh, im running a Vega RX 64 on it as well.
 
JAmie71 said:
I have a 5820k on an Asrock extreme 4 running 64 gigs of ram(cost £90 for 4 8 sticks when I bought it)

I do like the setup I've had it for 2 years now, I just feel the itch to upgrade. saying that I had my previous setup for 6 years before that, and that is still being used by my wife. that was another 6 core intel the 980x EE.

I really like the look of the ryzen 7 1800x platform but I guess ill stick to what I have at the moment.

oh, im running a Vega RX 64 on it as well.
Click to expand...
At least wait and see how Zen+ does and if you really aren't in a hurry then wait for the true next gen CPUs from both Intel and AMD in 2019 with big die shrinks.
 
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I'm sitting with the 5960 and while it doens't OC quite as nicely as the 5820, it runs everything I need quite nicely...

I have it paired with 3 Titan Xs (Maxwell) and I game at 4k no problem.

I definitely wouldn't suggest my setup to anyone (at the time, I had a specific amount of money that HAD to be spent on one system, hence the stupidity of my setup), but after 3.5 years, still running awesome :)

I don't think Haswell needs an upgrade for at least another year or 2 - unless you have money to burn and just HAVE to have the best...
 
Squid Surprise said:
I'm sitting with the 5960 and while it doens't OC quite as nicely as the 5820, it runs everything I need quite nicely...

I have it paired with 3 Titan Xs (Maxwell) and I game at 4k no problem.

I definitely wouldn't suggest my setup to anyone (at the time, I had a specific amount of money that HAD to be spent on one system, hence the stupidity of my setup), but after 3.5 years, still running awesome :)

I don't think Haswell needs an upgrade for at least another year or 2 - unless you have money to burn and just HAVE to have the best...
Click to expand...

If you mined crypto for the entirety of the time you had that setup you could have offset the entire cost of your system. My 1080Tis paid for themselves in 4 months by mining Vertcoin after you factor in electricity. I'm still Mining and my system has paid for itself 3 times over
 
yRaz said:
If you mined crypto for the entirety of the time you had that setup you could have offset the entire cost of your system. My 1080Tis paid for themselves in 4 months by mining Vertcoin after you factor in electricity. I'm still Mining and my system has paid for itself 3 times over
Click to expand...
I didn't say they haven't paid for themselves - I mine as well :)

It was just a stupid waste of money when I could have had 4 980Ti cards for far less money and better performance.... but hey, it's all good :)
 
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My 5820k serves me well at 4.6ghz, And I also can not get anything over DDR4 2666mhz as well, I've gotten 2700mhz or so with the FSB, and CPU strap, but its not worth it.

Though I wish I did get the 5930k or the 6850k for the extra PCI-E lanes, I have SLI and a USB 3.1 card and a USB 3.0 card for internal front panel connections and I can still use a M.2 drive, but any more than that that I'll start seeing issues on my Asus x99 Deluxe.
 
It would be interesting to see how the 5820K compares to Ryzen in gaming. These scores are conspicuously absent from the gaming benchmarks even though they are included in the productivity benchmarks...
 
Emu81 said:
It would be interesting to see how the 5820K compares to Ryzen in gaming. These scores are conspicuously absent from the gaming benchmarks even though they are included in the productivity benchmarks...
Click to expand...
at 4.6GHz it should be faster than the Ryzen CPUs in gaming by a few percent. the average at the end puts it at the same performance level as an 7700k with no OC.
 
Emu81 said:
It would be interesting to see how the 5820K compares to Ryzen in gaming. These scores are conspicuously absent from the gaming benchmarks even though they are included in the productivity benchmarks...
Click to expand...


Yes I would like to see this as well.
 
cliffordcooley said:
Although the chip is pin-compatible with the previous-generation Ivy Bridge-E and Sandy Bridge-E boards, we decided to install it on an upgraded LGA2011v3 setup.
Click to expand...
Boilerhog146 said:
5820K isn't compatible with the sandybridge-E x79 platform, unless something has changed,
Click to expand...
The article did make it sound as if that was an option. I do believe you are right about that.
https://ark.intel.com/products/82932/Intel-Core-i7-5820K-Processor-15M-Cache-up-to-3_60-GHz
Click to expand...

That was a mix up with the editing, I'll fix it now. You'll notice I said something a bit different in the Hardware Unboxed video ;)
 
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cliffordcooley said:
Although the chip is pin-compatible with the previous-generation Ivy Bridge-E and Sandy Bridge-E boards, we decided to install it on an upgraded LGA2011v3 setup.
Click to expand...
Boilerhog146 said:
5820K isn't compatible with the sandybridge-E x79 platform, unless something has changed,
Click to expand...
The article did make it sound as if that was an option. I do believe you are right about that.
https://ark.intel.com/products/82932/Intel-Core-i7-5820K-Processor-15M-Cache-up-to-3_60-GHz
Click to expand...

What unboxing video? :p,didn't see the link.
I caught that, I can be right once in a while,it helps that,
I'm currently still on an ASUS Rampage 4 Extreme X79 with a 3930K ,I would love to be able to do a cheap upgrade like this, but alas Intel put the fix in ,so I have to ditch the 500 dollar mobo when I upgrade.

So when I do finally upgrade it will be a full platform upgrade.probably a complete system ,backup rigs will get swapped out.
 
Last edited:
Hey Techspot: due to the whole Spectre & Meltdown debacle, this entire article needs to be redone with the latest security patches and microcodes installed. The Spectre microcode in particular reduces the 5820K's performance quite a lot. As the relative performances of the various chips compared in this article have now been significantly altered, the entire conclusion of this article is quite possibly wrong, and needs to be revised.
 
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The low performance numbers were due to the motherboard being upside down. Mine went up 10% as soon as I turned the motherboard right side up.
 
Looks like I won't need to upgrade my 5930K@4.5Ghz for years; heck even my i7 960@4.1Ghz /980Ti and 3930K@4.2Ghz/GTX 1060 6GB are great for 1440p and 1080p, respectively.
 
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