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Argh - jump or wait for Comet Lake?

Vertigo

Vertigo

Vertigo

Soldato
Joined
28 Dec 2003
Posts
16,516
Argh I'm back with the indecision again.

Current machine is Sandy Bridge based and nearly 9 years old. Mobo is dying (USB flaky, not stable with 16GB any more) so due for replacement.

Plan is heart transplant - new CPU, mobo, mem, SSD, cooler, likely in a new case. With the spec I want to go for (9700K based), the price for all of this has now dipped below £1k which is decent.

But Comet Lake is coming...

Do I jump or wait? How long is it likely to be before Comet Lake actually arrives? Even when it does, it's not going to offer much more performance really and will cost more as it's new, right?

Logic tells me to just do it now rather than wait but another part of me says it's daft to upgrade on the cusp of a new platform/socket.
 
Vertigo1 said:
Argh I'm back with the indecision again.

Current machine is Sandy Bridge based and nearly 9 years old. Mobo is dying (USB flaky, not stable with 16GB any more) so due for replacement.

Plan is heart transplant - new CPU, mobo, mem, SSD, cooler, likely in a new case. With the spec I want to go for (9700K based), the price for all of this has now dipped below £1k which is decent.

But Comet Lake is coming...

Do I jump or wait? How long is it likely to be before Comet Lake actually arrives? Even when it does, it's not going to offer much more performance really and will cost more as it's new, right?

Logic tells me to just do it now rather than wait but another part of me says it's daft to upgrade on the cusp of a new platform/socket.
Click to expand...

I had to upgrade right now for tax purposes (9900k build - very happy with it.)

But if I had had the chance to wait for a few months, then I probably would have done so.

Still, I've no regrets. My new system is more than good enouigh for me for at least the next 5-7 years.
 
The biggest issue I have with the 9700K is the lack of hyperthreading which was obviously just to differentiate it from the 9900K.

Now HT is coming back with Comet Lake (to both the i7 and i5 by the looks), the 9700K looks like it could end up being this weird blip where it's the only i7 without HT.
 
Vertigo1 said:
The biggest issue I have with the 9700K is the lack of hyperthreading which was obviously just to differentiate it from the 9900K.

Now HT is coming back with Comet Lake (to both the i7 and i5 by the looks), the 9700K looks like it could end up being this weird blip where it's the only i7 without HT.
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Get a 3800X or 3700X. They are cheaper than the 9700K. And you can still upgrade up to 16 core CPUs both on Ryzen 3000 & Ryzen 4000 series.
Make sure you buy a good RAM 3600C16, which isn't that expensive today (~£130-140)
 
The 3700X trades blows with the 9700K but, for primarily gaming usage, they're very similar and the 3700X is only 30-40 quid cheaper which is nothing in the scheme of things.

Yes they're very competitive but I don't see the massive price/performance advantage everyone seems to go on about with the new Ryzens.
 
Vertigo1 said:
Yes they're very competitive but I don't see the massive price/performance advantage everyone seems to go on about with the new Ryzens.
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No, but they have none of the security concerns which Intel have, not to mention that new vulnerabilities with Intel chips keep coming to light.
 
Comet Lake brings nothing special. 10 core, other than that same as Coffee Lake.
Needs a 400 series motherboard, which is not expected to receive another generation of cpus and doesn't have pcie4.

If Ice Lake came to desktop, that would be interesting, not expecting it to happen before end of 2020.

So pull the trigger now.
I do suggest to consider Ryzen 3600X, 3700X or 3800X over 9700K depending on budget. Paired with B450 or X470 mobo they will provide same performance and features for a better value and longevity.
 
Vertigo1 said:
The 3700X trades blows with the 9700K but, for primarily gaming usage, they're very similar and the 3700X is only 30-40 quid cheaper which is nothing in the scheme of things.

Yes they're very competitive but I don't see the massive price/performance advantage everyone seems to go on about with the new Ryzens.
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That's probably because you're only considering gaming, where the R5 3600 is a better bang-for-buck choice than the R7 3700X. Intel's closest priced chip to the R5 3600 is the i5-9400, which is much slower and doesn't even have SMT. The nearest real competitor is the i5-9600K, which is ~25% more expensive and requires overclocking to beat the R5 3600 in per-core performance (and still doesn't have SMT).
 
WesleyBurns said:
Wait for the 3950X. Years of performance under its belt and single core should be fantastic if the reports of 4.3GHz on all 16cores are true!
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By the time that an average home user requires 16 cores (which is a long, long way away), there will be other 16 + core CPUs out that will smash the 3950X into the park. 6-8 is the sweet spot now and will last for quite some time.

I've just built a 3600 based system for a mate and it performs without issue, it's a complete bargain of a CPU for its price and the last I checked, nothing comes close at that price point.
 
Unless you're using your system for a fringe case that still favours Intel, there is literally nothing in Intel's desktop portfolio now or for the next few years that can touch Ryzen.

I would still suggest waiting a little longer though to let AMD get their full Ryzen 3000 offering out there, specifically the B550 motherboards and the 16 core 3950X. Possibly even Threadripper 3000 if you want to go BEAST MODE.

Give it until the end of the year to fully assess Ryzen options, or if you want to pull the trigger now then it's a solid B450 or X470 motherboard and 3700X/3800X, or 3900X if Comet Lake's 10 cores piqued your interest.
 
ChrisD. said:
By the time that an average home user requires 16 cores (which is a long, long way away), there will be other 16 + core CPUs out that will smash the 3950X into the park. 6-8 is the sweet spot now and will last for quite some time.

I've just built a 3600 based system for a mate and it performs without issue, it's a complete bargain of a CPU for its price and the last I checked, nothing comes close at that price point.
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True and 10 years from now a 4 core may do what a 16 core does now.

In recent years there has a been a slow but steady increase in single core performance and performance gains generally come from core count at this point in time.

I see value in higher clocking less cores in use figures. They will be the best binned chiplets saved for the 3950x.

Also to note the 3950x is reported to beat the 18 cored i9-10980XE (165watts)

Depends why you upgrading, my 4790K was still fine but I wanted to build a monster PC for the hobby of it in the end for way lower costs than it once took.
 
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I'm strongly considering Threadripper as much for the extra PCIe lanes as for the extra cores. Not that I'll be putting in a second GPU but rather at some point I'll want to add high-speed networking without impacting the GPU.
 
Quartz said:
I'm strongly considering Threadripper as much for the extra PCIe lanes as for the extra cores. Not that I'll be putting in a second GPU but rather at some point I'll want to add high-speed networking without impacting the GPU.
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Unless you're thinking about 100 Gb/s I don't think you need HEDT's extra PCIe lanes for high speed networking. I have 10 Gb/s copper NICs in my server and desktop (X370 & X470), which reaches over 8 Gb/s over Cat 6.
 
DragonQ said:
Unless you're thinking about 100 Gb/s I don't think you need HEDT's extra PCIe lanes for high speed networking. I have 10 Gb/s copper NICs in my server and desktop (X370 & X470), which reaches over 8 Gb/s over Cat 6.
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Yes but they cut the GPU slot from x16 to x8.
 
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