Upgrade Advice

blunt_eastwood

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 4, 2011
Messages
173
I currently have an i5-3570k with 12 GB RAM and a GTX 1060 6 GB. I use a Viewsync VX2758-2KP-MHD 27" monitor, which has a resolution of 2560x1440 and 144 Hz refresh rate.

I play mostly CoD (Warzone) and Battlefield (5) and would like to play the new Battlefield when it comes out. I'm not looking to play at the highest resolutions.

I'm thinking about getting an i7-9700K.

My questions are

1. Is this a good upgrade for what I play?
2. If so, can someone recommend a good motherboard and RAM to go with it?
3. Can I continue to use my GTX 1060 or will that be an issue with that processor?

Thanks for any help you can provide.
 
I would get a 10850K 10 coes 20 threads I think the new Battlefield 6 will benefit from more cores like previous BF games do. I 9700K but its only 8 cores and only 8 threads.

GPU is ok you play at 1080p 144hz anything higher 1440p 4K it will fall behind. Most all games today are GPU dependent meaning the CPU doesn't matter much unless its Battlefield.
 
Don't listen to Comix. He's crazy. I say that with love in my heart :cat:
  1. $250 is a good deal on the 9700K. It will be quite a noticeable upgrade from the 3570K.
  2. I recommend the AORUS Z390 boards for 9th gen Intel. Which one to get will depend on what your requirements are.
  3. Yes, you can continue to use the 1060. I would start thinking about camping out at a Micro Center for something newer, though. For your resolution and refresh rate I'd be going for a 6700 XT, 2080 SUPER, or 3070.
 
^^ what Armenius said. The 9700k is still fast CPU by today's standards and will definitely be a nice upgrade from the 3570k (which was the CPU I upgraded from to the rig in my sig.)
 
Thanks all. I forgot to mention that I would also like to do some streaming on Twitch and content creation on YouTube. Would that change your recommendations?
 
If you're compressing videos a lot more cores will be helpful. The question is how much more money do you have to pay for those cores. It might not be worth it depending on your uses.
 
I used Asrock for 3 years I like Asus Tuf line better had driver issues with onboard sound on my Asrock Taichi. Less eyestrain as in with Asus board as well.
 
Wouldn't the new i5-11400/11400F be as fast or faster in most games now while also being cheaper? I think I'd rather get that with 6/12 cores/threads at ~$190, than a 2 gen old CPU now with considerably lower IPC and only 2 more cores but 4 less threads. Seems like this CPU is the new value king at the moment at least and is also actually available for the most part.
 
Wouldn't the new i5-11400/11400F be as fast or faster in most games now while also being cheaper? I think I'd rather get that with 6/12 cores/threads at ~$190, than a 2 gen old CPU now with considerably lower IPC and only 2 more cores but 4 less threads. Seems like this CPU is the new value king at the moment at least and is also actually available for the most part.
I got this advice from another place. What do you think?

https://www.microcenter.com/product...ming-wifi-intel-lga-1200-microatx-motherboard

https://www.microcenter.com/product...-lake-26ghz-six-core-lga-1200-boxed-processor

https://www.microcenter.com/product...annel-desktop-memory-kit-bl2k8g32c16u4b-black
 

That looks solid to me! Although I have no real input or advice for mobos or RAM on that chipset. If the reviews are solid for them, I say go for it and I think you'd be better off both short and long-term with that than you would be with a 9700K.
 
What kind of content creation are you planning. How long and at what resolution? are they simply one clip or will you be doing a lot of editing? I would say that the minimum res for any content nowadays is 1080@60 or above. If you're going to be doing a lot of editing or rendering long clips. You'll need to seriously consider getting a 2080 GPU and may even want to go one speed up in CPU.
 
What kind of content creation are you planning. How long and at what resolution? are they simply one clip or will you be doing a lot of editing? I would say that the minimum res for any content nowadays is 1080@60 or above. If you're going to be doing a lot of editing or rendering long clips. You'll need to seriously consider getting a 2080 GPU and may even want to go one speed up in CPU.

I most plan on doing a lot of streaming and then putting whatever good content I can get from that on YouTube. So I don't imagine it will be that much editing. I do plan on upgrading my GPU once I can, but what CPU would you recommend in that case?
 
If you're planning on keeping this system for a good while. Might be worth it to at least get a current gen Mobo and get a 10400 or 10700 for a bit more.
 
I most plan on doing a lot of streaming and then putting whatever good content I can get from that on YouTube.
Most people who do that have a secondary pc for streaming alongside their gaming PC. The gaming PC will output to a capture card, such as an elgato in the streaming pc, which the mic/camera are also connected to. So one pc for gaming, and the second for encoding and uploading. A lot of people use an old rig they had lying around for the streaming pc, as a midrange 4/8 processor is usually enough for processing 1080p content. There's quite a few articles on how to do it, like this one or this one. (ever wonder how streamers' gaming rig can crash, freeze or reboot and their stream still works fine? that's how)

Now you can do everything on one PC, just expect the occasional hitch or stutter in intensive titles. If trying to do it on one PC the absolute lowest CPU I'd go for would be one around a 10850k or a 5800k.
 
If you're planning on keeping this system for a good while. Might be worth it to at least get a current gen Mobo and get a 10400 or 10700 for a bit more.

Could you recommend a Mobo? Also, just to confirm, you're recommending a 10400 or 10700 over a 11400? I assume the 11400 is better.
 
Most people who do that have a secondary pc for streaming alongside their gaming PC. The gaming PC will output to a capture card, such as an elgato in the streaming pc, which the mic/camera are also connected to. So one pc for gaming, and the second for encoding and uploading. A lot of people use an old rig they had lying around for the streaming pc, as a midrange 4/8 processor is usually enough for processing 1080p content. There's quite a few articles on how to do it, like this one or this one. (ever wonder how streamers' gaming rig can crash, freeze or reboot and their stream still works fine? that's how)

Now you can do everything on one PC, just expect the occasional hitch or stutter in intensive titles. If trying to do it on one PC the absolute lowest CPU I'd go for would be one around a 10850k or a 5800k.
This is helpful, thanks. How about if I use an i5-3570k for streaming? That's what I'm upgrading from.
 
I currently have an i5-3570k with 12 GB RAM and a GTX 1060 6 GB. I use a Viewsync VX2758-2KP-MHD 27" monitor, which has a resolution of 2560x1440 and 144 Hz refresh rate.

I play mostly CoD (Warzone) and Battlefield (5) and would like to play the new Battlefield when it comes out. I'm not looking to play at the highest resolutions.

I'm thinking about getting an i7-9700K.

My questions are

1. Is this a good upgrade for what I play?
2. If so, can someone recommend a good motherboard and RAM to go with it?
3. Can I continue to use my GTX 1060 or will that be an issue with that processor?

Thanks for any help you can provide.
Silicon Lottery sells 11600k which can't do high overclocks, for way under MSRP:
https://siliconlottery.com/collections/intel-rocket-lake

that will spank a 9700K and have better motherboard features. and if you need to squeeze pennies, the 11400 is a solid choice. It matches a 10600k and is only 10% off from the 11600k, in the worst case scenarios.

Are you using your CPU cores to encode your stream or quicksync (Intel GPU encoder on the integrated graphics chip) or NVENC (nvidia encoder on the GPU)?
 
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My recent upgrade for gaming posed a similar dilemma.
Nearly all games are fine with 6 cores (+/-HT) but I always buy for the future a little at least so turned down the 10600K,
I would have bought the 10900K if it wasnt for the very high power use and heat so happily settled with the 10700K (8core +HT).
Testing with HT turned off in a few recent AAA games I cant tell the difference.
Its clocked to 5.3GHz none AVX + 5.2GHz AVX without HT, and 5.2GHz none AVX + 5.1GHz AVX with HT.
Mobo is an Asus Strix Z490-E. If you dont intend on a max overclock, the Strix F will do fine.
 
Silicon Lottery sells 11600k which can't do high overclocks, for way under MSRP:
https://siliconlottery.com/collections/intel-rocket-lake

that will spank a 9700K and have better motherboard features. and if you need to squeeze pennies, the 11400 is a solid choice. It matches a 10600k and is only 10% off from the 11600k, in the worst case scenarios.

Are you using your CPU cores to encode your stream or quicksync (Intel GPU encoder on the integrated graphics chip) or NVENC (nvidia encoder on the GPU)?
Thank you. I don't know about the encoding as I'm very new to this and don't really know what I'm doing.

If I can get away with the 11400 I will do that, but can I use that to stream on a single PC?
 
Thank you. I don't know about the encoding as I'm very new to this and don't really know what I'm doing.

If I can get away with the 11400 I will do that, but can I use that to stream on a single PC?
Ok, here are some points on streaming:

Streaming, no matter how you do it, will take some of your CPU and GPU resources. This is because in order to stream, your PC must access the GPU and capture the frames for the video. If you do additional things such as downscaling, adding webcams, animations, stat trackers, borders and effects, etc: all of those things must be composited into each frame. So...that takes even more resources, GPU and CPU. And once each frame is composited, then your PC has to upload it through your streaming app. Basically, this means you won't get the same gaming performance, while streaming.
Also, if you use your GPU's encoder, that will also take some GPU resources.

And if the resource usage is too high, your stream can be choppy, your game can be choppy, or both.

Its often a good idea to cap your framerate while streaming, to maintain better frametimes in-game and also to prevent the game from taking 100% of your GPU resources. So for example, if your PC requires more than 90% of your GPU resources to maintain about 120fps, you should cap your framerate lower than 120, to make sure that your GPU has the extra resources available for streaming. If your PC requires more than 90% to run the game at 60fps, you need to lower some graphics settings in the game.

Some people feel that running games at framerates divisible by the framerate of your stream, results in a smoother stream. YMMV. it is not a hard rule. But it seems like certain games can benefit from it. (example: for a 60fps stream, you may try playing the game at 60fps, 120fps, 180, etc. For a 30fps stream, you can play at 30, 60, 90, 120, etc). If your monitor actually reports 59 or 59.94hz instead of 60, then you may want to set your stream to capture at 59.94fps, if the option is available (OBS Studio has this option).

Encoding quality:

The best quality streams are done with CPU encoding using the Fast, medium, or slow presets. or Nvidia's Turing and Ampere NVENC GPU encoder using the StreamFX plugin and some advanced settings. (The NVENC encoders on older GPUs are still pretty good. But the encoder for Turing and Ampere, when configured correctly, is some of the best quality you can get. Compareable to Medium and Slow presets for CPU encoding).

CPU encoding is very intensive. Generally speaking, its not advised to stream on one PC with CPU encoding, unless you have a CPU with 12 cores or more. Even the 10 core 10900k has trouble streaming at Fast and Medium presets, while also playing a game. However, you may be able to get away with it, for a slower paced game or something which requires very little resources from your CPU. Generally, the mimimum CPU to stream most games on one PC at the higher quality presets, is the Ryzen 3900x.

Using GPU encoders or Quicksync, you can have a great experience streaming on one PC, as long as you manage your GPU resources, like I said above.
However, sometimes GPU encoders can get bogged down, if you have more than one webcam in your stream or a lot of effects, borders, animations, etc, in your stream. Its just something which you have to test and experiment with. And that behavior can sometimes be better or worse, depending upon the game.

If you don't have Turing/Ampere NVENC or a CPU which can handle at least the "Fast" preset, the next options are Intel Quicksync, AMD's GPU encoders, older versions of NVENC, or lower quality/faster presets for the CPU. The quality from these options is a lot lower and will look pretty bad at 1080p, unless you are playing a really slow paced game. or something like a card deck game, where you aren't moving the entire screen at once. So if you are using one of these encoders, you should probably stream at 720p. Also, if the game is really slow paced or doesn't have full screen movement, you can do a 30fps stream and then your bitrate will have more bits per frame to work with.

Twitch limits the bitrate you can use. Regular users can't go much beyond 6000kbps (you can go a little beyond, but not a lot). Twitch partners can go up to 8500kbps. And I think some of the most successful channels may be allowed 10,000kbps.

6,000kbps is not very much. Again, if you don't have hardware which supports really high quality encoding, use 720p and/or try 30fps stream.

Youtube and some other services allow higher bitrates. If you have good enough internet, you may consider streaming there for better quality. at 10,000kbps, you may be able to have a pretty good 1080p stream, even if you don't have high quality encoder settings. With good CPU encoding or Turing/Ampere NVENC, 10,000kbps should look pretty great at 1080p.

Feel free to ping me for more questions about this stuff.
 
Ok, here are some points on streaming:

Streaming, no matter how you do it, will take some of your CPU and GPU resources. This is because in order to stream, your PC must access the GPU and capture the frames for the video. If you do additional things such as downscaling, adding webcams, animations, stat trackers, borders and effects, etc: all of those things must be composited into each frame. So...that takes even more resources, GPU and CPU. And once each frame is composited, then your PC has to upload it through your streaming app. Basically, this means you won't get the same gaming performance, while streaming.
Also, if you use your GPU's encoder, that will also take some GPU resources.

And if the resource usage is too high, your stream can be choppy, your game can be choppy, or both.

Its often a good idea to cap your framerate while streaming, to maintain better frametimes in-game and also to prevent the game from taking 100% of your GPU resources. So for example, if your PC requires more than 90% of your GPU resources to maintain about 120fps, you should cap your framerate lower than 120, to make sure that your GPU has the extra resources available for streaming. If your PC requires more than 90% to run the game at 60fps, you need to lower some graphics settings in the game.

Some people feel that running games at framerates divisible by the framerate of your stream, results in a smoother stream. YMMV. it is not a hard rule. But it seems like certain games can benefit from it. (example: for a 60fps stream, you may try playing the game at 60fps, 120fps, 180, etc. For a 30fps stream, you can play at 30, 60, 90, 120, etc). If your monitor actually reports 59 or 59.94hz instead of 60, then you may want to set your stream to capture at 59.94fps, if the option is available (OBS Studio has this option).

Encoding quality:

The best quality streams are done with CPU encoding using the Fast, medium, or slow presets. or Nvidia's Turing and Ampere NVENC GPU encoder using the StreamFX plugin and some advanced settings. (The NVENC encoders on older GPUs are still pretty good. But the encoder for Turing and Ampere, when configured correctly, is some of the best quality you can get. Compareable to Medium and Slow presets for CPU encoding).

CPU encoding is very intensive. Generally speaking, its not advised to stream on one PC with CPU encoding, unless you have a CPU with 12 cores or more. Even the 10 core 10900k has trouble streaming at Fast and Medium presets, while also playing a game. However, you may be able to get away with it, for a slower paced game or something which requires very little resources from your CPU. Generally, the mimimum CPU to stream most games on one PC at the higher quality presets, is the Ryzen 3900x.

Using GPU encoders or Quicksync, you can have a great experience streaming on one PC, as long as you manage your GPU resources, like I said above.
However, sometimes GPU encoders can get bogged down, if you have more than one webcam in your stream or a lot of effects, borders, animations, etc, in your stream. Its just something which you have to test and experiment with. And that behavior can sometimes be better or worse, depending upon the game.

If you don't have Turing/Ampere NVENC or a CPU which can handle at least the "Fast" preset, the next options are Intel Quicksync, AMD's GPU encoders, older versions of NVENC, or lower quality/faster presets for the CPU. The quality from these options is a lot lower and will look pretty bad at 1080p, unless you are playing a really slow paced game. or something like a card deck game, where you aren't moving the entire screen at once. So if you are using one of these encoders, you should probably stream at 720p. Also, if the game is really slow paced or doesn't have full screen movement, you can do a 30fps stream and then your bitrate will have more bits per frame to work with.

Twitch limits the bitrate you can use. Regular users can't go much beyond 6000kbps (you can go a little beyond, but not a lot). Twitch partners can go up to 8500kbps. And I think some of the most successful channels may be allowed 10,000kbps.

6,000kbps is not very much. Again, if you don't have hardware which supports really high quality encoding, use 720p and/or try 30fps stream.

Youtube and some other services allow higher bitrates. If you have good enough internet, you may consider streaming there for better quality. at 10,000kbps, you may be able to have a pretty good 1080p stream, even if you don't have high quality encoder settings. With good CPU encoding or Turing/Ampere NVENC, 10,000kbps should look pretty great at 1080p.

Feel free to ping me for more questions about this stuff.
Thank you, I probably will follow up with more questions once I get started.
 
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