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9900ks good enough for a 3090?

Felon

Felon

Felon

Soldato
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I have a 3090 and an Intel 9900KS, I mostly game at 4k.

In terms of getting the most out of my GPU, would I likely gain any performance if I upgraded my CPU? or when running at 4k, are things so highly biased towards the GPU that the CPU won't make much difference?

Just want to make sure I'm getting the most out of my 3090.

Cheers, :)
 
Nothing to gain with upgrading now so stick with the 9900KF then get a DDR5 based system in a couple of years time.
 
Screeeech said:
I have a 3090 and an Intel 9900KS, I mostly game at 4k.

In terms of getting the most out of my GPU, would I likely gain any performance if I upgraded my CPU? or when running at 4k, are things so highly biased towards the GPU that the CPU won't make much difference?

Just want to make sure I'm getting the most out of my 3090.

Cheers, :)
Click to expand...


If you play in 4K.
There is no point.
 
deuse said:
Doesn't work like that with intel.
One would get very little gains(if anything) going from a 2400hz to 3400hz ram
Click to expand...
At 4K I'm not sure, maybe not, but that's not consistently true anymore. I think the reason it used to be true is because GPUs weren't fast enough and high refresh rate monitors weren't widespread, but now that they are, it does make a difference.
 
No problems at all in most cases. Using 9900k with 3090 on 4K OLED and pretty much most cases GPU bottlenecked. Been a few occasions I have seen bottlenecks, but talking couple of% where cpu is a limit. On the whole for 4k is a solid combo imo.
 
9900k will bottleneck a 3090 at all resolutions. At 5GHz all cores the bottleneck looks very small. Depends on the overclock. RAM speed and timings.
Intel Core i9-9900K @ 5.0 GHz (closest I could find to 9900ks) vs AMD Ryzen 7 5800X @ 4.8 GHz Average fps is higher but not by much.
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/evga-geforce-rtx-3090-ftw3-ultra/28.html
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/asrock-radeon-rx-6900-xt-oc-formula/27.html

For the 3090 FE
1080p
9900k - 196.6
5800x - 208.2

1440p
9900k - 165.1
5800x - 173.7

4k
9900k - 106.7
5800x - 112.5

Does not seems too bad.
 
zx128k said:
9900k will bottleneck a 3090 at all resolutions. At 5GHz all cores the bottleneck looks very small. Depends on the overclock. RAM speed and timings.
Intel Core i9-9900K @ 5.0 GHz (closest I could find to 9900ks) vs AMD Ryzen 7 5800X @ 4.8 GHz Average fps is higher but not by much.
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/evga-geforce-rtx-3090-ftw3-ultra/28.html
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/asrock-radeon-rx-6900-xt-oc-formula/27.html

For the 3090 FE
1080p
9900k - 196.6
5800x - 208.2

1440p
9900k - 165.1
5800x - 173.7

4k
9900k - 106.7
5800x - 112.5

Does not seems too bad.
Click to expand...

What can be interesting is the minimums - my 1650 V2 isn't hideously behind newer CPUs for average FPS for any resolution above 1080p - but if you look at the minimums a 5600X can be 40+% faster.
 
zx128k said:
9900k will bottleneck a 3090 at all resolutions. At 5GHz all cores the bottleneck looks very small. Depends on the overclock. RAM speed and timings.
Intel Core i9-9900K @ 5.0 GHz (closest I could find to 9900ks) vs AMD Ryzen 7 5800X @ 4.8 GHz Average fps is higher but not by much.
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/evga-geforce-rtx-3090-ftw3-ultra/28.html
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/asrock-radeon-rx-6900-xt-oc-formula/27.html

For the 3090 FE
1080p
9900k - 196.6
5800x - 208.2

1440p
9900k - 165.1
5800x - 173.7

4k
9900k - 106.7
5800x - 112.5

Does not seems too bad.
Click to expand...
Here's a direct comparison between a 10700K which is essentially a 9900K and a 5800X, look pretty evenly matched to me atleast in gaming.

 
Joxeon said:
Here's a direct comparison between a 10700K which is essentially a 9900K and a 5800X, look pretty evenly matched to me atleast in gaming.

Click to expand...

You basically get 6 extra frames at 4k with a 5800x. Not a lot of a difference but will widen in future. Its not enough of a big leap in performance for an upgrade atm. The 9900ks is supported by Windows 11 and you can just turn the security features off for your game of choice.
 
zx128k said:
You basically get 6 extra frames at 4k with a 5800x. Not a lot of a difference but will widen in future. Its not enough of a big leap in performance for an upgrade atm. The 9900ks is supported by Windows 11 and you can just turn the security features off for your game of choice.
Click to expand...
It's not even that much at 4K especially when you take games like CSGO out of the equation, more like 1fps.
 
Joxeon said:
It's not even that much at 4K especially when you take games like CSGO out of the equation, more like 1fps.
Click to expand...
You will never see the difference, I agree. The results are taken from an average over many different games. Over 20 and none are like CSGO. I did post the sources.

6 fps will matter if the fps are very low at 4k. Its just a lot of money to upgrade and you wont get a massive uplift.
 
Last edited:
Rroff said:
What can be interesting is the minimums - my 1650 V2 isn't hideously behind newer CPUs for average FPS for any resolution above 1080p - but if you look at the minimums a 5600X can be 40+% faster.
Click to expand...

This would be the most interesting part I agree.

In my opinion, it's not worth upgrading your 9900k right now. Yes, the chip is getting on for 3 years old. But there really doesn't seem to be much to gain from doing so at all.

I really think things will get more interesting. When we see DDR 5 and CPUs with lower nanometers sizes released.

AMD will also have its 3D cache released sometime next year most likely. Which is being said to give a large increase in performance.
 
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