I just upgraded to an i7 6700k, and also have a gtx 980 for my GPU, yet even with this set up I still get slowdowns in games with all the hacks enabled. Is there anything that could be ruining my performance because the forum said an i5 should suffice and my CPU is well above that.
What games are you getting slowdowns with and what are your Dolphin settings?
There is no reason you should be getting slowdowns in any game except maybe The Last Story.
Post screenshots of your settings please, and what Dolphin version you're using.
My guess is that the shader cache slowdowns are the issue, they will be "fixed" when ubershaders are implemented in dolphin.
As it turns out MSI afterburner was reporting the usage on my integrated GPU, and not the desktop GPU so while I thought my GPU was at about 20% usage it in-fact was topping out with the graphic settings I had, sorry for wasting your time.