Best Value Intel CPU at present?

[aoaaron]

With the new intel pricing for their 9000 series.

1. What is a good price for an 8700k?
2. Would a 8086k around £400 be worth it?
3. Do intel CPUs require top of the line RAM?


I'm not sure whether to go for an 8086k now as the 9900k seems way out of reach and the 9700k im not sure if its going to be worth the price premimum over the 8700k given it doesn't have HT.

 

[Rroff]

Intel CPUs are in a silly place sitting here with a 4820K that manages an OK overclock there is nothing really tempting if it has less than 8 cores / 16 threads but the Intel CPUs that can do that aren't really tempting price wise. I'd feel like a mug buying a 6 core / 12 thread CPU even for mostly gaming and even if it managed 5+GHz.

 

[aoaaron]

Intel CPUs are in a silly place sitting here with a 4820K that manages an OK overclock there is nothing really tempting if it has less than 8 cores / 16 threads but the Intel CPUs that can do that aren't really tempting price wise. I'd feel like a mug buying a 6 core / 12 thread CPU even for mostly gaming and even if it managed 5+GHz.

Honestly my bigggest regret from my build 4 or 5 years ago was not going for the i7 in regards to my 4670k. It just hasn't aged well. a few more hyperthreaded cores would have got me by on video editting and gaming.


I don't want to make that mistake again lol.


As much as I like the idea of AMD, gaming is my priority. I've never upgraded my CPU until about 5 years, and I use emulators which AMD just don't play nicely with due to IPC.

 

[Rroff]

From a 4670K I guess the 6/12 CPUs make a bit more sense - I think my biggest regret was not going for either the 5820K earlier or getting one of the 6/12 CPUs that work with 2011-v1 - it just doesn't make sense money wise at this point to spend what they cost.

 

[flea.rider]

your going to have to change the board in any case so why not amd ? it's so much cheaper ...

 

[maklabouhlel]

your going to have to change the board in any case so why not amd ? it's so much cheaper ...

Some are loyal to Intel.

 

[Rroff]

your going to have to change the board in any case so why not amd ? it's so much cheaper ...

Slightly more worth it going from a quad core but for gaming, etc. the Ryzen CPUs don't massively distinguish them from a reasonably overclocked 4000 series i7 - obviously more beneficial if you are playing the odd game that makes use of more than 8 threads effectively or doing a lot of desktop stuff that is heavily multi-threaded.

I've built a few 1600/1700, 2600, etc. AMD systems for people recently and they are pretty decent for general purpose but just wouldn't get me to spend money coming from a 4820K.

 

[aoaaron]

Yeah totally agree.


Given the costs of the 9000 series, I'm trying to find a happy medium for

your going to have to change the board in any case so why not amd ? it's so much cheaper ...

I've read benchmarks for dolphin/CEMU and they say to expect similar FPS to haswell.


I don't have much use for all their cores and would prefer better gaming performance. the AMD 2700x builds I've seen are within 100£ of AMD.


I can get an 8700k w/mobo and 16GB of RAM and cooler for £720ish
I can get an 8086k w/mobo and 16GB of RAM and cooler for £750ish
From this site, I can get a 2700x with 16GB of RAM for £620ish




Please if I'm wrong, someone educate me as I'm sure there must be a flaw someone in my logic.


To me £400 for an 8086k seems like a great price. Am i being thick? I can't find an 8700k for <400... ! and I feel as if the 8086k may match the 9700k which is going for £500.

 

[Rroff]

To me £400 for an 8086k seems like a great price.

Aren't really going to do any better on the Intel side as things stand - it isn't a great place CPU wise at all currently unless you are upgrading from an older CPU limited to a "reasonable" budget and something like the AMD 2600 fits the bill :s

 

[Aretak]

I use emulators which AMD just don't play nicely with due to IPC.

That's just a lie. I use emulators on my 2700X, including the most demanding ones out there like Cemu and RPCS3, and see great performance. You're living in the past if you think there's some huge IPC gap between Intel and AMD.

There's a clockspeed gap of course, but I'm yet to meet the game that I can't emulate on Ryzen at full speed that I could on an Intel chip. In fact, it's a question I pose to people who parrot this nonsense about emulation all the time - name a game on an emulator that I can't run at full speed on my 2700X which does run at full speed on an Intel chip. I'm yet to receive an answer in about 15 tries, so maybe this is my lucky day? Name one and I'll report back.

 

[aoaaron]

That's just a lie. I use emulators on my 2700X, including the most demanding ones out there like Cemu and RPCS3, and see great performance. You're living in the past if you think there's some huge IPC gap between Intel and AMD.

There's a clockspeed gap of course, but I'm yet to meet the game that I can't emulate on Ryzen at full speed that I could on an Intel chip. In fact, it's a question I pose to people who parrot this nonsense about emulation all the time - name a game on an emulator that I can't run at full speed on my 2700X which does run at full speed on an Intel chip. I'm yet to receive an answer in about 15 tries, so maybe this is my lucky day? Name one and I'll report back.

I was unaware of this. I've read everywhere that the AMD processors struggle, e.g. CEMU BOTW compared to the intel.

I actualy just posted on the CEMU reddit and they all said go to intel...


Hmmm... I'm so undecided now on where to go! My rig is mostly going to be used for gaming and everyones told me intel is better due to the higher clockspeed. Do the AMDs come with their own coolers?

 

[Rroff]

You're living in the past if you think there's some huge IPC gap between Intel and AMD.

Conversely though in terms of single thread performance (taking into account clock speed) - there isn't a huge increase going from a decent clock speed 4000 series CPU to a 2700X - the 2700X in that review needs to be overclocked to 4.4GHz to pull away from the 4790K by any significant amount and that isn't taking into account how the 4790K overclocks.

So if it is a big factor in what you are doing it makes it hard to justify spending money in that direction.

 

[Aretak]

I was unaware of this. I've read everywhere that the AMD processors struggle, e.g. CEMU BOTW compared to the intel.

I actualy just posted on the CEMU reddit and they all said go to intel...

Hmmm... I'm so undecided now on where to go! My rig is mostly going to be used for gaming and everyones told me intel is better due to the higher clockspeed. Do the AMDs come with their own coolers?

Most people are simply clueless and parrot what they've been told for the past however many years it's been, when AMD's best was what you see at the bottom of that graph. Back then AMD chips did suck for emulation. I have Breath of the Wild and I can tell you that it runs at full speed without trouble at the standard 30fps. I haven't tried much of it with the framerate unlocked, so I'll report back on that once I take the dog for a walk.

Conversely though in terms of single thread performance (taking into account clock speed) - there isn't a huge increase going from a decent clock speed 4000 series CPU to a 2700X - the 2700X in that review needs to be overclocked to 4.4GHz to pull away from the 4790K by any significant amount and that isn't taking into account how the 4790K overclocks.

So if it is a big factor in what you are doing it makes it hard to justify spending money in that direction.

But emulation is no longer just about single-core performance. RPCS3 uses every thread you can give it, for example. I agree that there's no point moving from a 4790K to a Ryzen chip if you only use emulators and don't care much about PS3 emulation. But there's no point moving to Coffee Lake chip either, so the correct choice would be buying nothing in that scenario.

 

[aoaaron]

Sadly guys i have a 4670k and its bottlenecking me badly haha.


So you guys suggest that the 2700x is actually BETTER than the 8700k/8086k? Why do people pay the preimum for it?

I'm so confused.
BTW I'm gaming at 4k/VR as main priority.

 

[SiDeards73]

Sadly guys i have a 4670k and its bottlenecking me badly haha.


So you guys suggest that the 2700x is actually BETTER than the 8700k/8086k? Why do people pay the preimum for it?

I'm so confused.
BTW I'm gaming at 4k/VR as main priority.

If your gaming at 4k CPU almost becomes irrelevant as your GPU bound anyhow.

 

[aoaaron]

If your gaming at 4k CPU almost becomes irrelevant as your GPU bound anyhow.

Not the case with VR. Especially Fallout 4 and Skyrim as I've encountered.

 

[PiKe]

Intel prices are insane, an i3 8100 is about £75 more than it was around 4 weeks ago!

 

[Aretak]

Do the AMDs come with their own coolers?

Just to answer this, most do. I'm not sure which 2000 series ones don't (or if they don't), as some first-gen ones didn't. The 2700X does though.

Anyway, to report back on Cemu, here's a quick test in BotW (1440p rendering resolution, not that it matters for a CPU test):

Unfortunately I don't have a save further in any more, and there are more demanding areas than this, but still, not bad for a CPU that's crap at emulation (running at stock). Especially when you consider that BotW is the most demanding game there is for Cemu.

Sadly guys i have a 4670k and its bottlenecking me badly haha.

So you guys suggest that the 2700x is actually BETTER than the 8700k/8086k? Why do people pay the preimum for it?

I'm so confused.
BTW I'm gaming at 4k/VR as main priority.

Whether the 2700X is better than an 8700K would depend on what you'll be using it for. The biggest argument in favour of the 8700K is that it can produce higher framerates at lower resolutions. The gap between it and the 2700X is significant in a lot of games at 1080p when tested with a card that's completely overkill for 1080p like the 1080 Ti. As you increase the resolution, it starts to matter less as you become ever-more bottlenecked by the GPU. At 4K there is no difference in gaming performance between the two whatsoever, because you're going to be limited by your GPU 100% of the time (within reason - obviously if you load up the original Deus Ex on your SLI 2080 Tis, you obviously might find you're CPU limited again). All I'll say is that I game at 1440p/144Hz using a 2700X and an overclocked 1080 Ti and find myself GPU bottlenecked in the vast majority of titles, let alone at 4K like you. I can't speak as to VR, because I've never even tried it.

As for why people pay the premium for Intel, either because they game at extremely high framerates and lower resolutions, or because they have loyalty to the brand. Many won't consider AMD due to past reputation, as you can perhaps see with people telling you that Ryzen is bad for emulation without really having a clue how it performs. At previous prices I can see an argument for Intel if you really do want to push less-demanding games to as high a framerate as they'll go. In the current world, with the 8700K priced at 50% more than the 2700X though? Not for me. Not ever.

 

[signal11th]

I'm an Intel fan boy and even I can't recommend you buy one at the moment.

 

[tamzzy]

The best intel at the moment is AMD. Lol