gridironcpj
Resolution is not the only factor. 

I did not claim it was, learn to read.
 

gridironcpj
If you consider an engine such as Ubisoft's Anvil, you'll see a perfect example of how the polygon count leads to much higher draw calls, bottlenecking even a GTX 970. I'm on a mobile device, so it's not feasible to produce a bunch of links, but look up Jokerproduction's Assassin's Creed Syndicate performance review, in which he shows a 970 being bottlenecked by an i5 Skylake processor.

So a single badly written engine is your counterpoint...? One that was universally infamous for being a horrible port? Ok then. That dudes "performance review" is mostly him complaining about the engine lol. 
 
But you seem to be missing the point entirely. Let me specifically address your Fallout 4 claim, using Gamersnexus articles which you seem to like (they do a good job). 
F4 CPU: http://www.gamersnexus.net/game-bench/2182-fallout-4-cpu-benchmark-huge-performance-difference
F4 GPU: http://www.gamersnexus.net/game-bench/2177-fallout-4-pc-video-card-fps-benchmark-all-resolutions
 
Would you look at that, at 1440p Ultra the 970 only gets 59 FPS, well less than the 6600k at 71. But at 1080p Ultra the 970 can do 80, more than the 6600k at 72. Would you look at that, the CPU frame limit stayed constant between the resolutions, but the GPU limit varied.
 
It's almost like I said "Thus you can see why talking about a CPU bottleneck without mention of the game or resolution is just silly."
 
Basing your buying decisions on a couple of poorly optimized console ports and not defining what resolution, FPS, or settings is the target, is useless; which is what you were doing.
 

somethingc00l

gridironcpj
Resolution is not the only factor. 

I did not claim it was, learn to read.
 

gridironcpj
If you consider an engine such as Ubisoft's Anvil, you'll see a perfect example of how the polygon count leads to much higher draw calls, bottlenecking even a GTX 970. I'm on a mobile device, so it's not feasible to produce a bunch of links, but look up Jokerproduction's Assassin's Creed Syndicate performance review, in which he shows a 970 being bottlenecked by an i5 Skylake processor.

So a single badly written engine is your counterpoint...? One that was universally infamous for being a horrible port? Ok then. That dudes "performance review" is mostly him complaining about the engine lol. 
 
But you seem to be missing the point entirely. Let me specifically address your Fallout 4 claim, using Gamersnexus articles which you seem to like (they do a good job). 
F4 CPU: http://www.gamersnexus.net/game-bench/2182-fallout-4-cpu-benchmark-huge-performance-difference
F4 GPU: http://www.gamersnexus.net/game-bench/2177-fallout-4-pc-video-card-fps-benchmark-all-resolutions
 
Would you look at that, at 1440p Ultra the 970 only gets 59 FPS, well less than the 6600k at 71. But at 1080p Ultra the 970 can do 80, more than the 6600k at 72. Would you look at that, the CPU frame limit stayed constant between the resolutions, but the GPU limit varied.
 
It's almost like I said "Thus you can see why talking about a CPU bottleneck without mention of the game or resolution is just silly."
 
Basing your buying decisions on a couple of poorly optimized console ports and not defining what resolution, FPS, or settings is the target, is useless; which is what you were doing.
 

the thing that gets me with these reviews are they are done on a sparse system, meaning they load windows and driver and thats it, i would rather see real world results, with common used programs and some stuff running in the background, but that in itself causes a problem, what apps are commonly used? to many variables for a clear cut answer. all i can say is that with my typical multi use setup, MS office, printer software installed, corsair link, evga precision and torq software and logitech gaming software, sound card stuff and etc... running that i still pull decent frame rates, now mind you i have a 1080 monitor so 4k is of no concern to me. example, in BF4 in ultra settings i stay around 100fps, same with crysis3 and doom and every other game i currently play, so to spend a $100 extra for a few more fps that is not going to make no difference in my real world is silly. now if i was into heavy encoding or a huge photo shop or video editing person then my choice would have been different, but thats what i have a 6 core with HT Xeon for with a quadro card.   

quadlatte
 but thats what i have a 6 core with HT Xeon for with a quadro card.   

Yup, that's the basic point I'm trying to make, build for what you want to do, not everyone has the same goals or budgets.

personally if you have the $$ always go for the best ... I7, baby.
 

While you went with the i5 I would almost consider the i7 since we are in an era where I think that 4k gaming is going to becoming more and more mainstream. Even if you don't have a 4k monitor now the chances are good of seeing reasonable 4K monitors during the time you would be using any computer upgrade done now. Or at least for me where I can go 2-3 years off a CPU upgrade but when I do I normally go all out.

Actually X99 is very attainable on a budget and it has the advantage of using of all those high core count Xeons once they start flooding the used market in a few years with the rise of the upcoming X299 and server platforms.  The trick is to look at used Xeons for your CPU.  The EVGA Micro 2 X99 motherboard can be had for under $200 and a Xeon 1620-V3 (4core 8 thread CPU @3.5ghz) can be had used off of ebay for about $200 leaving you the option to upgrade to a 6 or 8 core later.  And if I am not mistaken some of the 16XX Xeons are overclockable as well.

I built an X99 bare bone setup for about $450 buying a Xeon 1620-V3 for $200 of ebay, a used X99 Micro 2 off the forums here for $100, and bought one of those Gskill RGB 16gb RAM kits for about $150.