No, it's purely because out of the 6 specialists I've spoken to, yes specialists, they've all recommended it over the other one, 2 of them are retired, so they aren't just telling me it b/c it's worth more.
Lol, I'd like to hear the "specialists" reasoning behind this. These people are feeding you LIES. I have no obligation to lie to you. The benchmark I linked you to (did you even look at it? >_<) proves without any doubt that the 2600k beat the 980X in 29/42 benchmarks (+/- 1 or 2, I counted it very quickly). To further put it in perspective, that's 69% - 31% in favor of the 2600k.
Let's calculate cost/performance.
I couldn't find the 980X on Newegg, possibly because it's out of stock. Either way though, I distinctly remember it actually being more expensive than the 990X ($1050 vs $1000) so I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt by going with the 990X here:
990X - $1000
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115079
2600K - $315
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115070&Tpk=2600k
Now let's take a look at benchmarks (I'll actually post the images here, since you obviously didn't bother to look at the link I posted for you)
My source, if you feel like checking any of my info/educating yourself
2600K won by a significant margin. SYSmark is a benchmark designed to test relative performance in general use applications. This might not seem like much but it's a HUGE deciding factor. How fast you do general task inadvertently effects your efficiency even down to the more specific and targeted tasks.
Now let's take a look at game benchmarks:
Now I'm no "specialist" but those graphs tell us definitively that the 2600K outperforms the 990X in gaming. Hell, even the 2500k outperforms it in all but one test.
Now I'm going to show you some of the areas where the 990X is in fact better, and just to keep this free of bias. These are the areas where the 980X took the lead in benchmarks in the last list I linked you to as well. They're very specific and not something I'd really make a decision based on, but here it goes:
The only one out of those that sticks out to me as something that might concern you is Winrar possibly. Even at that... it beat the 2600K by one second. Is one second justification for a pricetag of almost $700 more?
Two more benchmarks demonstrating superiority in very common applications you might even see yourself ACTUALLY USING.
I'll spare you the images from the benchmarks but the 990X is clearly superior in terms of video encoding/transcoding. Not amazingly superior, but usually anywhere from 15-35% more efficient depending on the format/file size/etc. If this is a big issue for you, great - go for the 990X. Does an extra minute rendering a file (which is a gross overestimation, for all intensive purposes we're talking about a matter of SECONDS) justify the $700 higher pricetag?
Power consumption is another thing to consider, which is significantly better on the 2600K:
The 2600K and 990X both overclock great. You can very easily hit 5.0GHz on either chip without going too extreme on cooling methods. The 2600K is more power efficient at those clocks, cooler, amazingly stable, and faster clock for clock.
As you can see, the 990X clocked at 3.46GHz doesn't perform as well as the 2600K clocked at 3.4GHz. The top table clearly demonstrates better overclockability as well on the 2600K side. The same performance gap can be seen even under these overclocks in gaming scenarios, the 2600K still performs better as demonstrated in previous gaming benchmarks (I'll spare you the pictures, check link if you don't believe me)
You can crunch the numbers if you are so inclined but at this point I really feel like it is unnecessary to provide an exact price/performance on the 990X/980X. The proof is in the benchmarks. Even if they performed equally, which they don't, the 990X costs THREE TIMES AS MUCH. If you want, you can rely on your so called specialists who are very obviously misleading you into thinking that higher price equates to higher performance. You can choose to ignore all of the things I have just pointed out to you right here. The choice is really yours.. I do not control how carelessly you spend your money.
