When to upgrade 9900k...

jon harris · 13 Jun 2021 at 20:10

While I know the 9900k is showing it's age a little, especially in heavily multithreaded tasks, is it that critical to update from a gaming perspective just yet? At 1440p and above I'm going to be GPU bound and I'm not looking to get in to the top tier of FPS for e-sports at 1080p so I'm tempted to hang fire for the moment. Would appreciate your thoughts, many thanks.

EsaT · 13 Jun 2021 at 20:20

E-sport games usually aren't really that demanding so no reason to upgrade.
For other games just don't keep much stuff on background and eight cores will do fine.

Need to change also motherboard (courtesy of artificial limitations from Intel's greed) would increase cost of any upgrade.

drichardb · 13 Jun 2021 at 20:52

I switched from Intel 4790K to AMD 5800X 6 months ago. Did I need to do it? In all honesty, probably not. Sure I'm seeing faster load times and generally smoother gameplay when things get busy but given how much more recent the 9900K is compared to my old chip I would expect the margins to be even smaller.

The question I would be asking myself is this - is there anything else I can spend the money on that would enhance the experience more than a hardware upgrade i.e How good is your monitor/audio/peripherals. Could the room you game in do with a fresh lick of paint and some new furniture?

For myself right now I know I've got more chance of being hospitalised by COVID (despite being fully vaccinated) than I have of finding an upgrade for my GTX 1080 so I'm about to have a demo of some nice ATC loudspeakers and an REL T5x subwoofer to potentially upgrade my audio rig. The gfx can wait

BriT · 13 Jun 2021 at 21:01

Yeah keep the 9900K, you won't see any real huge improvements. Going to keep my 8600k a long time yet.

jon harris · 13 Jun 2021 at 21:07

EsaT said:
E-sport games usually aren't really that demanding so no reason to upgrade.
For other games just don't keep much stuff on background and eight cores will do fine.

Need to change also motherboard (courtesy of artificial limitations from Intel's greed) would increase cost of any upgrade.

Thanks for the quick reply appreciated. I certainly wouldn't bother with LGA1200 based m'boards if i upgraded with LGA1700 not that far away. Equally I'm no Intel fanboy and AMD are certainly on a role with more to come. I think that'll be the decision time when Alder Lake starts shipping and the next AMD offering are also out. Changing now seems a little premature.

Thanks again for the advice.

jon harris · 13 Jun 2021 at 21:11

drichardb said:
I switched from Intel 4790K to AMD 5800X 6 months ago. Did I need to do it? In all honesty, probably not. Sure I'm seeing faster load times and generally smoother gameplay when things get busy but given how much more recent the 9900K is compared to my old chip I would expect the margins to be even smaller.

The question I would be asking myself is this - is there anything else I can spend the money on that would enhance the experience more than a hardware upgrade i.e How good is your monitor/audio/peripherals. Could the room you game in do with a fresh lick of paint and some new furniture?

For myself right now I know I've got more chance of being hospitalised by COVID (despite being fully vaccinated) than I have of finding an upgrade for my GTX 1080 so I'm about to have a demo of some nice ATC loudspeakers and an REL T5x subwoofer to potentially upgrade my audio rig. The gfx can wait

Many thanks sound advice I think. As you say i think a refresh of the monitor (let's not even talk GPUs!) and then compare Alder Lake with whatever AMDs then current offering would sound sensible. 'Upgrading' to LGA1200 would seem like to small a jump and on a socket that was just about to be obsolete, it doesn't make sense.

jon harris · 13 Jun 2021 at 21:13

BriT said:
Yeah keep the 9900K, you won't see any real huge improvements. Going to keep my 8600k a long time yet.

Thanks for that, that makes sense. Whichever way i went I'd need a new m'board and CPU and I get the feeling that money would be better added to a GPU upgrade (don't laugh) or a refresh of the monitor. Thanks again, appreciate the feedback.

humbug · 13 Jun 2021 at 21:22

The only upgrade option you have from a 9900K is a Ryzen 5000 series but just for games i wouldn't bother, i shouldn't think your 9900K is holding you GPU back, not at 1440P.

faceman123 · 13 Jun 2021 at 21:50

jon harris said:
While I know the 9900k is showing it's age a little, especially in heavily multithreaded tasks, is it that critical to update from a gaming perspective just yet? At 1440p and above I'm going to be GPU bound and I'm not looking to get in to the top tier of FPS for e-sports at 1080p so I'm tempted to hang fire for the moment. Would appreciate your thoughts, many thanks.

controversial opinion here, Sell the 9900k + mobo and side grade to a 5800x or even a 12 core 5900x for +£150

jon harris · 13 Jun 2021 at 22:20

faceman123 said:
controversial opinion here, Sell the 9900k + mobo and side grade to a 5800x or even a 12 core 5900x for +£150

I don't see that as desperately controversial, I've used Intel for years but I'm not an obsessed fanboy but wouldn't i need more to change from 9900k to 58/5900x than £150? No doubting you, just amazed.

faceman123 · 13 Jun 2021 at 22:48

jon harris said:
I don't see that as desperately controversial, I've used Intel for years but I'm not an obsessed fanboy but wouldn't i need more to change from 9900k to 58/5900x than £150? No doubting you, just amazed.

Yeah they go for around 200 used or 275 with mobo,

You can buy a b550 and 5900x for about 480 all in

Grim5 · 13 Jun 2021 at 22:59

Wait for alder or Raptor lake

Cooler running · 13 Jun 2021 at 23:08

I personally would keep a 9900k until the next big launch if I had one, the 11900k is a bit of let down compared to even the 10900k.

Alder lake is meant to be a big step for Intel too given it's their first consumer 10 nm chip.

jigger · 14 Jun 2021 at 10:21

When AMD release the V cache chips. Looks as if they are expecting upwards of 25% performance gains.

Jay85 · 14 Jun 2021 at 10:31

No reason to yet, think like you i will end up skipping a few gens. I only recently jumped onto the 9900k around running a 3770k for around 5-6 years? Unless you're doing a lot of heavy multi threaded work loads, there's no real gains from an upgrade especially when you weigh up cost/performance ratio.

If you're looking at next gen as well you'll have to take into a count of buying new memory as well as new platforms/cpu's will be supporting DDR5. Gonna be a hefty price to upgrade.

jigger · 14 Jun 2021 at 10:55

Jay85 said:
No reason to yet, think like you i will end up skipping a few gens. I only recently jumped onto the 9900k around running a 3770k for around 5-6 years? Unless you're doing a lot of heavy multi threaded work loads, there's no real gains from an upgrade especially when you weigh up cost/performance ratio.

If you're looking at next gen as well you'll have to take into a count of buying new memory as well as new platforms/cpu's will be supporting DDR5. Gonna be a hefty price to upgrade.

The next round of Ryzen chips are DDR4.

humbug · 14 Jun 2021 at 12:25

Yup, these V-Cache chips are DDR4.

AMD are pushing Zen 4 to late 2022 when DDR5 is more established, not that this will matter much as this 3D Stacking stuff looks like a generational upgrade in performance anyway, an AMD one, not an Intel one.

jon harris · 14 Jun 2021 at 22:17

faceman123 said:
Yeah they go for around 200 used or 275 with mobo,

You can buy a b550 and 5900x for about 480 all in

Wow, thanks for that, that's the danger of not really knowing the current AMD market very well. Interesting.

jon harris · 14 Jun 2021 at 22:20

Grim5 said:
Wait for alder or Raptor lake

I have to say that's the current thought process, se how Alder Lake stacks up against what AMD have on the go at that time and hope they squeeze more than Alder Lake / Raptor lake out of the LGA1700 socket...

jon harris · 14 Jun 2021 at 22:22

Jay85 said:
No reason to yet, think like you i will end up skipping a few gens. I only recently jumped onto the 9900k around running a 3770k for around 5-6 years? Unless you're doing a lot of heavy multi threaded work loads, there's no real gains from an upgrade especially when you weigh up cost/performance ratio.

If you're looking at next gen as well you'll have to take into a count of buying new memory as well as new platforms/cpu's will be supporting DDR5. Gonna be a hefty price to upgrade.

Yep, that's my gut feel too and why i maxxed out the Z390 with the 9900K. Next 'upgrade' will probably be a complete new build.