8th Gen or 9th Gen?

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Sithtiger

Weaksauce
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Jun 23, 2016
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Well, I've got a 4th gen i7 4790k with 32GB of DDR3 RAM. MSI Z97 Gaming 5 Mobo and an MSI GeForce GTX 1070 Gaming 8G GPU. I have a Corsair HX 850 Modular PSU. So I have $1,200 to spend. I'd like to get the i7 9700k, but I don't think I can afford it. I'm Ok with that since the 2nd choice is the i5 9600k. The question is 2 fold. I was planning on getting my components on or around Black Friday. I know the i5 8600k will be on sale, but I doubt the i5 9600k, not to mention the i7 9700k. My question is, is it worth getting a 9th gen CPU over an 8th gen? The only difference I can see with the i7's is the 9th gen does have more physical cores, but the one I'll probably get will be the i5. The 9th gen i5 looks completely identical to the 8th gen, save the soldered IHS. Now, I like that, but two things that are a potential problem are price an availability. The GPU comes first, but unless someone can give me a compelling reason that I absolutely need an i5 9th CPU, why not get the 8th gen one? Unless I'm missing something, the i5's look the same, not to mention, if I wait until Black Friday sale, I actually might be able to get an 8th gen i7 8700k. I realize the i7 9700k has 8 cores & 8 threads, but I don't have the funds to buy that. Wouldn't everyone agree an 8th gen i7 8700k would be worth it, if it were on sale? If it's not, then the i5 8600k will be a good deal and it should be just fine. If anyone has any suggestions, I'm all ears!!! The other thing is like someone else said on another thread, the 9th gen CPU's might not be available for a couple weeks or a month, but money is the real problem. I know soldering is better than a thermal IHS, but if the price is the same, I'd get the 9600k in a heartbeat because I know it will run cooler!


So assuming the RTX 2070 is faster than the GTX 1080 Ti, overall, I'm getting that GPU. Nvidia's PR man, Tom Petersen stated on HotHardware's Geeks webcast that he claimed that "The Turing lineup, in general, will perform compared to Pascal. Stating that gamers should expect roughly between 35 - 45% better performance going from Pascal to the same tier Turing graphics card."

What are your suggestions? Thanks in advance.
 
I think the 8700K is still a good bet. I recently traded my 5960X for a 8700K. 8-cores are good for some stuff (video editing or rendering) but not as useful for gaming. I haven't done any extensive benchmarking, but I do notice things feel faster. For example Catzilla and 3dmark are getting better scores. I still need to try real world gaming, but my initial tests seem positive. I think this is because games don't take advantage of many cores, but the higher clock rate makes a big difference. I have a cheap cooler and I'm still getting okay temps. Around 45C idle and the 55 - 65C range under load. Make sure to get a NVMe M.2 (PCIE) drive for your OS. I'm seeing a good improvement in OS coming from a SATA 860 Pro.
 
cybereality said:
I think the 8700K is still a good bet. I recently traded my 5960X for a 8700K. 8-cores are good for some stuff (video editing or rendering) but not as useful for gaming. I haven't done any extensive benchmarking, but I do notice things feel faster. For example Catzilla and 3dmark are getting better scores. I still need to try real world gaming, but my initial tests seem positive. I think this is because games don't take advantage of many cores, but the higher clock rate makes a big difference. I have a cheap cooler and I'm still getting okay temps. Around 45C idle and the 55 - 65C range under load. Make sure to get a NVMe M.2 (PCIE) drive for your OS. I'm seeing a good improvement in OS coming from a SATA 860 Pro.
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Yeah, if I can get it on a BF sale, I'll get an 8700k, however, if the 9600k is the same price, I'd rather get that since it's superior to the 8600k and the 8700k (I think). The 9600k is superior to the 8600k as you can see here . I believe it will be better than the 8700k despite the 8700k has 12 HT virtual threads. I remember reading how the 8600k clocked higher and I know the 9600k will clock higher. I was going to get the 8700k, but if the 9600k is too expensive, then I'll get the 8700k. I hope it releases soon and I hope to see reviews soon too!
 
The 9600k is in no way superior to the 8700k. The 8700k will be way more future proof due to HT.
 
I upgraded from a i7 4790k running at 4600 Mhz to a i9 7900x running 4700 Mhz and a GTX 970 to GTX 1080 on a 4k, 60Hz Monitor.

For day to day needs, you will see absolutely no difference. For gaming you will see a slightly better FPS on both 1080p and 4k (but this is because of the GPU upgrade)

For multi-tasking and/or software like fusion 360/Blender, you will see some benefit, but I am not sure it would warrant spending another $1200 dollars.

At this point, if you are just itching for an upgrade which has nothing to do with price/performance, then I would say wait until the 9th Gen drops and all of the turmoil over price gouging and no/low stock settles.

Hold on to your cash and wait to see how the GTX 2080 pans out. I don't think you will see enough performance increase to make you happy with the cash you spend.

As you can see from my sig, I am not recommending you shy away from buying a nice system, I am just giving my 2 cents.
 
Yeah, I'm plannning on sitting on my 4790k CPU fr the next couple years. We don't have enough games that makes good use of more than 6 threads, and for those that do you're already pushing impressive framerates with just 4 cores / 8 threads.

But yeah, nothing short of 8700k is a good upgrade, if you're hungry for "something new." The 8600k is 6c/6t, which will make it ony a small performance increase over your 4790k.

The 9700k will be 8c/8t, which will be an even better improvement, but that will not be on discount anywhere for the next year. The 8700k will be your best bet.

Intel is castrating the i5 with the 9-series. It got a rebirth with an upgrade to 6c/6t, but it's standing-in-place for the 9-series, while the i7 jumps to 8 cores.
 
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When I render in Fusion 360, it usually uses about 6-8 cores. Granted, if you are playing a Game with something rendering in the back ground, then using a high core count CPU does well, but ideally you don't want to do both that the same time. Fusion 360 taxes the cores at 100% which will be noticeable in games.

I would say that at this point, upgrading a gaming PC to any thing above 6 cores is not worth it ATM, but upgrading a work PC to an i9 is worth the investment.

If someone just has to do an upgrade right now, it would be a toss up between a GTX 1080ti and a RTX 2080 depending on your budget.
 
Yeah, an i7-4790K is probably still good. I had one machine on a i5-4590 w/ 8GB of 1600 speed RAM. I swapped out to a 4790K and 8GB more of RAM and I did notice a slight improvement. Even at 4K, I think people underestimate how much the CPU and other components have an effect on performance. It wasn't huge, but I saw around 10% performance boost, and sometimes closer to 20% in a few games (for example, going from 50fps to 60fps, which was key). I agree with others that it's probably not worth the upgrade unless you go with 8700K.
 
cybereality said:
Yeah, an i7-4790K is probably still good. I had one machine on a i5-4590 w/ 8GB of 1600 speed RAM. I swapped out to a 4790K and 8GB more of RAM and I did notice a slight improvement. Even at 4K, I think people underestimate how much the CPU and other components have an effect on performance. It wasn't huge, but I saw around 10% performance boost, and sometimes closer to 20% in a few games (for example, going from 50fps to 60fps, which was key). I agree with others that it's probably not worth the upgrade unless you go with 8700K.
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Well yes, but he already has the 4790k, . The performance increase will be much smaller than you saw, because games have finite limits on how many cores they can use

There was a time when people would have called you crazy for buying an i7 2600k over an i5 2500k just for games, but as you can see those days are over. Games are making better use of more threads, but it's a slow process adding more
 
Sloginfizz said:
I upgraded from a i7 4790k running at 4600 Mhz to a i9 7900x running 4700 Mhz and a GTX 970 to GTX 1080 on a 4k, 60Hz Monitor.

For day to day needs, you will see absolutely no difference. For gaming you will see a slightly better FPS on both 1080p and 4k (but this is because of the GPU upgrade)

For multi-tasking and/or software like fusion 360/Blender, you will see some benefit, but I am not sure it would warrant spending another $1200 dollars.

At this point, if you are just itching for an upgrade which has nothing to do with price/performance, then I would say wait until the 9th Gen drops and all of the turmoil over price gouging and no/low stock settles.

Hold on to your cash and wait to see how the GTX 2080 pans out. I don't think you will see enough performance increase to make you happy with the cash you spend.

As you can see from my sig, I am not recommending you shy away from buying a nice system, I am just giving my 2 cents.
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Thanks, I appreciate your honest suggestions. I agree with you as far as noticing a big difference in performance. The only exception to that rule programs that currently favor Intel or some games are more CPU intensive, like SWTOR or Ashes of the Singularity. I don't play the latter, but I do have some games that favor single-core CPU performance over multicore CPU's. I think it's REALLY stupid that game developers haven't embraced multicore CPU's since they've been that way for a while now because we hit a wall on being able to find another like silicon, which has reached the end of its life because we can only shrink CPU dies a bit more which is why we've been stuck at 5GHz max for a while now. Finally, Carbon Nanotubes is the future and now that they've overcome the issues of not being able to develop it in a fast manner, but also the ability to create a lot of sheets, particularly large sheets. Anyway, my point is while multicore CPU's are fantastic, speed makes a big difference too and now we have the ability to continue to speed up processors, but we can shrink them well beyond 1nm and beyond which is into Quantum computing.

Anyway, I won't be able to upgrade for a long time and holding on to the money isn't an option. We're both low income and I'm on permanent disability by way of mental illness. Something I don't intend to stay on if I can find something, anything that can help. I say I because my doctors, here where I live are shit. They just are. It's not just me either, many people don't get the right help and they don't even realize it. You might ask, well you certainly don't seem to have a mental illness. That's because right now, I'm feeling OK, but the band-aid method that I figured out through using myself as a guinea pig wasn't pleasant, but it's either that or give up and kill yourself. I did try that 18 years ago. It didn't take. My Bipolar II, Borderline Personality Disorder (nothing to do with Multiple Personality Disorder or DID as it's called now), and finally Generalized Anxiety Disorder Anyway, until then, picking up computer jobs here and there is my only way to buy something, for me, or anyone else. My disability check goes to the rent, all of it. The reason I can't just wait is that the wife keeps borrowing money, then paying it back, then borrowing and paying it back. It's a vicious cycle that keeps getting to be a wider gap.

Anyway, I've got to upgrade by the end of this year, BF because of the deals, but if Intel drops the 9th gen chips soon, I can see. The only way I'll be able to get the i7 8700k, is if it's on sale for Black Friday. I've just seen so many reviews and it seems the i5 8600k performs better on gaming, but since Intel uses that damn thermal compound instead of STIM like they're doing for the 9th gen (like they used to do), the 8700k is hot...like AMD used to me. Now AMD has the cooler chips...sigh. If only I could wait until the Zen 2 architecture, I'd like to see who's faster. I love Intel's CPU's, but they no longer hold that commanding lead that they used to. They became complacent while AMD was working on an Intel killer. Honestly, AMD should have just called their Ryzen line Threadripper, because the Ryzen CPU's do this too. I don't see Intel beating AMD after they release their 5nm Ryzen CPU's. Intel will likely make a comeback, but it won't be until their 10th gen processor at the earliest I think.

I'm also thinking about getting a GTX 1080 Ti instead of the RTX 2070. Just have to wait and see what the reviews say. I think Ray Tracing will be awesome, but unless Nvidia put enough Tensor cores in their hybrid DLSS cores, they might have REALLY screwed up! So, right now I'm pissed at Intel and Nvidia. Nvidia a little more, since I think they should have at least put CUDA cores in their Turing cards, as if it had no Ray Tracing cores in it, because if an RTX 2080 Ti only gets 33, 35, 60...whatever FPS it is that I've heard only on a 1080p monitor, then how the hell do you think a 2070 will do. Again, I'll wait until the reviews come out. I just want the reviews to come out before the BF sales come out for Intel and Nvidia because I know both are going to sell very fast, regardless!
 
According to wccftech...

9700k is faster than both 8700k and 2700x at its stock clock.
 
For anyone who's still following this thread, I've got an update. Ok, so, I was able to make some more money was able to upgrade my whole system, although I have to wait on the GPU for a couple months. I think this will actually be a good thing in the long run since the 2080's and especially the 2080 Ti's had an overheating problem with their GDDR6 memory. Here's what I bought and can use as soon as it comes in tomorrow. I bought an i5 9600k, Asrock Z390 Phantom Gaming SLI/ac and G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 16GB DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600) Model F4-3200C16D-16GVGB RAM. As I said before, I have to wait a couple months to buy an RTX 2080. I'm gonna get the MSI GeForce RTX 2080 GAMING X TRIO Video Card. Core clock of 1515 MHz and a Boost clock of 1860MHz. It currently costs $849.00. Aside from the price, which I can get, I just need to save for a couple of months, the size of this card is a problem. I have a CM HAF 912. The card is 327 mm or 12.87" inches. I know I'll have to remove one of my drive cages, but I still wonder if it will fit? According to PC Partpicker, it will, but can anyone verify that? Also, this card has a perfect 5 out of 5 eggs at Newegg. That will probably change, but it's the highest rated RTX 2080 at Newegg at this time.

The other choices currently are: the EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 BLACK EDITION GAMING for $760.00. It's only 269 mm or 10.60" inches and the cheapest of the bunch. It's got the lowest boost clock at 1710 MHz. There are two other EVGA RTX 2080 cards, same design, the only difference is one has a Boost clock of 1800 MHz for $800 and the other has a Boost clock of 1815 MHz for $850.00. I'll take one of those 4 cards. I actually would like
 
Might want to go with the EVGA if it will give you clearance in the case. Better than having to do a ghetto mod or having problems.

I have a 2080 Ti FE, and I had no problems with +100 on core. I'm getting around 1965MHz boost. You can probably overclock any of those cards.
 
I'm looking at a used 8700k and used 8086k - $100 more than the former. The 1st seller of the 8700k is saying it has a 'different' IHS - the cpu is delided with a G5400. Can anyone explain what this means and what condition the cpu is probably in? I was also shown a video - with three sets of temperatures - are you guys familiar with seeing those settings? This is in Windows and I haven't been using Windows for a while. Would that be 'idle' and 'load' and something else? They were in the 40s - sounds bad?

Thanks for any feedback. Maybe I should consider the 8086k for $100 more although the other cpu is at a much cheaper price. The 2nd seller is legit and wants a lot because of the better binned cpu, obviously.
 
i7-8700K with MSI Z370 Gaming M5 and G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series DDR4 3400 PC4 27200 (I use Model F4-3400C16D-16GVK 2x8GB) and Windows 10 Home x64

every other CPU/mobo/mem combo I've ever built had at least one or more hangups or quirks but not the combo listed above (I've built 3 of them)

reviews/comments say the 8700k runs too hot when OC'ed but mine runs 4.9 GHz @ 68C using a Fractal Design S36 all-in-one liquid cooler ($109 at newegg). Max temp is 90C, I think
 
Nice. I got my 8700K to 5GHz and I'm happy with it. Probably stick with this for a while unless something crazy comes around.
 
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