Conclusion

Default

First of all we’re going to have a closer look at performance differences with standard clock speeds. From our overall performance rating we see that the Core i7-6700K is on average 27% quicker than the Core i5-6600K. In this case you need to keep in mind, that the i7-6700K packs four cores and eight threads thanks to Hyperthreading, whereas the i5-6600K features four cores only and no Hyperthreading.
Searching for benchmarks with best possible scaling on the i7-6700K we find WinRAR benefitting and running more than 117% faster on this CPU than on the i5-6600K. On the other hand it's interesting to see that with Blackhole's Single Threaded benchmark the i7-6700K pulls away by only 4%.
We also had a closer look at power consumption and in idle we noticed that our test setup with Core i7-6700K was burning 20% more power than our test platform with Core i5-6600K. In case of load power consumption the difference was 11%.

4.2 GHz

Overclocking both processors to 4.2 GHz basically makes the Core i7-6700K performed 8% faster and the Core i5-6600K benefits by 9%.
A closer look at power consumption reveals that overclocking these CPUs makes for quite a difference. With the Core i7-6700K we see system power consumption rise by 7% in idle and 4% under load, when comparing with the default power consumption values. In the case of the Core i5-6600K system power consumption goes up by 6%, when the CPU is under full load. In idle the difference 4%.

4.2 GHz DDR4-3000

The default clock speeds of DDR4 in the case of both platforms tested is 2133MHz and therefore running the memory at 3000MHz is quite a boost. Overclocking the system with the Core i7-6700K inside we notice that the performance goes up by 13%. In the case of the Core i5-6600K the difference is 13% on average as well.
Looking at idle power consumption, the system with Intel Core i7-6700K turns almost 15% more energy into heat, whereas with the i5-6600K consumption goes up by 13%. Under full load the differences are almost 16% in the case of the i7-6700K and 9% for the i5-6600K.

Recommendation

If you're looking for a new CPU for a content creation workstation and gaming then the Core i7-6700K is the preferred choice over the i5-6600K. Since most professional applications are capable of making good use of four cores and eight threads, the i7-6700K is overall faster. Should you be using applications which are limited to four cores only, then the i5-6600K is a great choice. But since most content creation application support more than four threads such a scenario is very unlikely. Considering that based on both these CPUs one would be building a price optimized workstation, we can recommend overclocking your CPU. This will speed up for example rendering processes significantly and help you get the most bang for the buck.

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 8 - Frybench
Page 2 - 3DMark Physics	Page 9 - HWBot Prime
Page 3 - XTU	Page 10 - UCBench
Page 4 - Cinebench	Page 11 - Performance Rating
Page 5 - SiSoft Sandra	Page 12 - Power Consumption
Page 6 - Blackhole	Page 13 - Conclusion
Page 7 - WinRAR