5960X to 9900K

5960X @ 4.5GHz versus a 9900K @ 5GHz, would that be a sidegrade or an upgrade in terms of overall performance? Yes, there is the clock deficit on the 5960X, but it does have quad-channel memory.

I mean it's pretty obvious the 9900K would be faster. Quad channel or not. The only question you would have to ask yourself is the upgrade worth the platform change.

I'd wait till a meaningful upgrade came along, I'm sitting on my 4930k till 7nm / PCIe 4.0

It will be an upgrade over a 5960x not only in clock speed but in IPC. Whether or not you'd notice any difference is debatable.

If its for games and all you play are poorly optimized grand strategy games than I'd say its worth it.

Anything else, use the money on a better GPU.

This is probably not the answer you are looking for, but I would say it depends..... Having said this, in my personal opinion (using my personal use case scenarios of gaming and high thread use multitasking) I do think it is an upgrade and is not a sidegrade.

There is never a "perfect" time to upgrade. I always go with either defining a performance threshold and paying what it takes to get there or coming up with a budget and spending it to get the most I can for that amount. If you are motivated by looking at a new system because you are unhappy with your current performance, then I do think its a good move to upgrade. If you are only trying to keep up with the jones's then I would probably hold off.

I am in the same boat with my 5930K and I will wait for the equivalent of the 9900K at 7nm... I never had a CPU for so long!

Shoot I'm still rocking my 3970X. Still a good workhorse but Ryzen+ is tempting.

I am getting the itch to upgrade my 5960X (everyday OC'd to 4GHz), too...but gaming at 3440x1440 makes the upgrade not a huge priority. I think I am going to wait until the next prosumer X series release versus getting the "gaming" 9900K. X99 has lasted extremely long for me (and X79 before that).

https://www.techradar.com/news/intel-cascade-lake-x

What performance?

Gaming?
Depends on the resolution. 1080P yeah, 1440P maybe a little bit, 4K no.

Production?
Take a look at the benchmarks and compare. Some programs can use the quad channel memory to great effect, others cannot. Programs that cannot make good use of many cores will benefit a good bit from the better IPC/clock speed if they aren't memory bandwidth bottlenecked.

I went from a 5960X to a 8700K and I think it was an improvement.

Not a night and day difference, by any means, but maybe around 10 - 20% boost in the best case.

Benchmarks (like 3dmark) took a hit, but gaming seems smoother.

Now I just bought a 9900K to swap in. I know it won't be much of a difference, but I like upgrading, so that will be fun.

cybereality said:

I went from a 5960X to a 8700K and I think it was an improvement.

Not a night and day difference, by any means, but maybe around 10 - 20% boost in the best case.

Benchmarks (like 3dmark) took a hit, but gaming seems smoother.

Now I just bought a 9900K to swap in. I know it won't be much of a difference, but I like upgrading, so that will be fun.

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When you went from 5960X to 8700K did you just do a board and CPU upgrade or did you do a full build?

hah im still daily drive a 2700k, but i must admit 8 cores and 5ghz sounds tempting... if you could find the damn things...

sk3tch said:

When you went from 5960X to 8700K did you just do a board and CPU upgrade or did you do a full build?

Click to expand...

It was basically a rebuild. New CPU/RAM/Mobo/SSD. I kept the case, PSU, HDDs, Blu-Ray drive, etc. Of course, there are lots of factors that can affect performance.

I got an fast NVMe M.2 drive for OS (using Samsung SSD before). Got 4133 speed ram (I think I had 3000 or something like that before), and a new motherboard.

The overall PC feels much better, but a lot of that is just an M.2 SSD and new Windows install. In gaming (with the same GTX 1080 SLI) it definitely felt better but I honestly didn't do any serious before/after benchmarks.

I'd consider a 5960X to 9900k move a poor choice for bang for your buck. If I had your processor the only upgrades I'd consider actual upgrades are Threadripper 1920x or better and i9 7900x or better. Everything else would be difficult to justify on performance basis and would not recommend it to anyone.

The more I read/examine, the more I'm convinced to just hold off and wait for either the arrival of Cannon Lake or possibly even Ice Lake.

Yes, it may be another solid 6-12 months, but I mostly game in VR / 4K, so my 4790K @ 4.8Ghz is holding up quite well. I'm thinking most folks with a 5960X are in a similar boat. Yes, it's fun to upgrade, but if I'm going to drop $2K+ on a new CPU/MB/RAM/SSD combo (as I typically go with a top tier stuff), I want to see rather massive performance gains in doing so. Just not feeling it yet with Coffee Lake... Feels more like a last ditch effort by Intel to squeeze every last bit of performance out of last year's tech... not to mention it's also scarce as hell right now.

With next gen VR still a good year or more out and Nvidia currently emptying everyone's wallets with the asking price for the 2080Ti, I'm thinking mid to late 2019 may be a much better time to consider upgrading... with much better options on the table.

Supercharged_Z06 said:

The more I read/examine, the more I'm convinced to just hold off and wait for either the arrival of Cannon Lake or possibly even Ice Lake.

Yes, it may be another solid 6-12 months, but I mostly game in VR / 4K, so my 4790K @ 4.8Ghz is holding up quite well. I'm thinking most folks with a 5960X are in a similar boat. Yes, it's fun to upgrade, but if I'm going to drop $2K+ on a new CPU/MB/RAM/SSD combo (as I typically go with a top tier stuff), I want to see rather massive performance gains in doing so. Just not feeling it yet with Coffee Lake... Feels more like a last ditch effort by Intel to squeeze every last bit of performance out of last year's tech... not to mention it's also scarce as hell right now.

With next gen VR still a good year or more out and Nvidia currently emptying everyone's wallets with the asking price for the 2080Ti, I'm thinking mid to late 2019 may be a much better time to consider upgrading... with much better options on the table.

Click to expand...

I was debating this upgrade as well, but I believe i'm going to hold off for now. The only thing I do that is slow is x265 encoding. I would probably be better of with TH2 for that task.

hello everyone, my name is J and im an upgrade junky erm addict. ive been running my x99 rig for roughly 18m and im dying to upgrade, something, anything! as tempting as a 9900k system would be, there are just too many exciting components coming up to consider an upgrade right now. amd and their 7nm gear sounds amazing! if it lives up to its hype that is, i sure hope so(who knows). amd is also supposed to make a high end splash in the gpu arena next year( again who knows). the intel X9 series is coming soon. which should absolutely give us x99 folks an idea of what we will lose/gain by upgrading. as much fun as it would be to upgrade to a 9900k rig i have to say wait it out. price to performance i honestly cant justify it. i want to. believe me i waaneed to. the x99 platform is still a very potent platform. theres no reason for us 99ers to rush into an upgrade right now. 6 months from now...yeah man. the landscape will be much much different. worth the wait? we shall see. in the meantime my suggestion would be to maximize cpu and gpu cooling. get that killer new case. nab a couple new sets of ddr4 while its on sale. upgrade that 500gb ssd to 1tb or invest in high end fans to help calm the upgrade fever.
wise choice Supercharged!