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I5 8400 upgrade?

MartinPrince said:
You still think it's worth swapping out a 6700XT for a 3070 is worth it for single digit improvement? I'm sure I've just seen you write elsewhere that ...

"upgrading a LGA 1700 system for 5% more performance will probably be somewhat mute."

You can't have it both ways... :D
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It’s hard say how much the i5 8400 at 100% load is hurting performance.

Pairing an RTX cards with anything less than the highest end system is a mute point.
 
MartinPrince said:
Precisely, so until you know for a fact then it is best not to guess with other people's money.
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So the OP’s issue is the RTX 3070 not the CPU. Pair the CPU with anything other than a Nvidia RTX card and the performance of the i5 is really decent.

We know that even in best case scenarios for the RTX 3070 the RX 6700XT can beat it and RDNA2 is particularly strong around the OP resolution. We also know you can sell a used RTX 3070 for a lot more than it’s costs to buy a new RX 6700XT.
 
Ok so, as usual, this thread has diverted into semantic arguments over what is best, not what is best for the OP. He should buy the best CPU he can afford as it’s likely it could be carried over to a new monitor and GPU in the future. Regardless of what he buys he should notice an improvement, in some cases a big one too.
 
Tbf, he was asking about a CPU upgrade, which would have broader benefits than swapping out the graphics card.

He can surely make up his own mind about the RTX 3070 graphics card, but it's more than sufficient at 1080p/1440p, especially if he upgrades the CPU. I know this because my 8 core CPU hasn't been a bottleneck so far, logically a next gen CPU would reduce the total load on the CPU further. My brother has a 8400 CPU, and I can see that in unit heavy scenes, it's not enough to handle CPU intensive games like Total War:Warhammer II.
 
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jigger said:
So the OP’s issue is the RTX 3070 not the CPU. Pair the CPU with anything other than a Nvidia RTX card and the performance of the i5 is really decent.
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No, this is why you keep making the same error. Read what the OP said again, his issue is his low frame rate in particular in New World. We don't know precisely what is causing this. It could be his CPU, maybe the game is poorly optimised, maybe there is something else in his system.

Therefore to suggest selling his GPU and buying another one without first establishing what is causing the exact issue is like going to a doctor with slight chest pain and him straight away suggesting triple by pass heart surgery. Daft.
 
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I compared an i5 8500 (@4.1Ghz) to the current score of the 12700K (@5ghz) in the R23 single core benchmark here:

https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu_benchmark-cinebench_r23_single_core-15

There's a performance improvement of 62.7%, if the benchmark is to be believed :)

The i5 8500 is a slightly higher clocked version of the i5 8400.

In the R20 single core benchmark, the performance improvement is about 90%, comparing the same CPUs, but I'd take that with a huge pinch of salt.
 
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Thanks all, some interesting reading. Just to be clear my main question was about upgrading the cpu, I have no intention to sell the 3070.

My main point was if it's financially worth it. I'm only interested if I would get a decent increase in FPS in games (I don't care about cpu benchmark scores) and it doesn't cost an arm and a leg.

It sounds like it's not worth it with my current motherboard and I should possibly wait to see what this next generation of CPUs from intel will be like. I've got around 600-700ish to buy CPU, ram, mobo.

Cheers
 
For the most cost effective option I'd probably try pick up an 8700 or 8700k for £150-180 sell the 8400 for £80 which would mean only £100 net spend for what would double your thread count then stick with that for a couple of years till DDR5 matures then go with a next gen setup.
 
Joxeon said:
For the most cost effective option I'd probably try pick up an 8700 or 8700k for £150-180 sell the 8400 for £80 which would mean only £100 net spend for what would double your thread count then stick with that for a couple of years till DDR5 matures then go with a next gen setup.
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That is not worth it just to get Hyperthreading (and a MHz bump). For that money he can get a 9700K/KF and as I've had a 8700K at the same time as a 9700K and benched it thoroughly, I can tell you that the 9700K is by far the best route for gaming and extending the life of his other components. 8 cores 8 threads is better than 6 cores 12 threads for the vast majority of scenarios.

Though for now, because of the resolution he plays at I would sit tight for now until he has actual empirical date that shows the improvement he gets for the games he plays. Then he can make an informed decision on facts rather than guesswork.

I'm currently about to test New World (the games he's playing currently) with my 9700K at stock and will get back to him as to my results so he can assess what if any difference there is.
 
For Alder Lake, Intel seems to be forcing all RAM (DDR4 or 5) running over 3600mhz to run in gear 2 mode (slowing down the memory controller). Source here:
https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/luke-hill/ddr4-vs-ddr5-intel-core-i9-12900k-testing/2/

"For our motherboards and testing, 3600MHz kits (1800MHz DRAM frequency) resulted in Gear Mode 1. This allowed 1:1 operating and a memory controller speed of 1800MHz. 4000MHz and higher resulted in Gear 2, which resulted in a 2:1 operating mode between memory controller clock and DRAM clock."

This is not great, considering Comet Lake has no trouble running 4000mhz (or a bit higher), without restriction. No doubt, Intel does not want DDR4 overtaking DDR5 in benchmarks...
 
MartinPrince said:
That is not worth it just to get Hyperthreading (and a MHz bump). For that money he can get a 9700K/KF and as I've had a 8700K at the same time as a 9700K and benched it thoroughly, I can tell you that the 9700K is by far the best route for gaming and extending the life of his other components. 8 cores 8 threads is better than 6 cores 12 threads for the vast majority of scenarios.

Though for now, because of the resolution he plays at I would sit tight for now until he has actual empirical date that shows the improvement he gets for the games he plays. Then he can make an informed decision on facts rather than guesswork.

I'm currently about to test New World (the games he's playing currently) with my 9700K at stock and will get back to him as to my results so he can assess what if any difference there is.
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Personally I'd rather have 12 threads vs 8 going forward.
 
Core count matters much more than the thread count. Hyperthreading tends to increase CPU utilization, which improves performance generally, but it's not a massive difference.
 
Joxeon said:
Personally I'd rather have 12 threads vs 8 going forward.
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You'd be choosing by far the wrong option. It's not the threads count it's the core count. Read up on it. People have long been slightly hoodwinked by Hyperthreading. If you asked the average joe how much extra HT gives them many would guess at double (100%) performance improvement, after all, you have double the threads from 6 -> 12. In reality HT only offers at very most a ~20%-25% improvement and this is only when all the actual cores are fully loaded first and the software is compiled to take advantage of HT.

Though going from 6 cores to 8 cores gives you an 33% improvement across the board (for fully threaded programs) , not dependent on whether the program is compiled to take advantage of it. Some games/software is not and performance will decrease slightly with HT on due to how the scheduler works between the game/program and OS.

I had a 32 core Xeon system and I had to disable HT as it made performance much worse for the software that I used.
 
Looking at gaming results here:
https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/luke-hill/ddr4-vs-ddr5-intel-core-i9-12900k-testing/6/

It looks like sticking with DDR4 RAM would be sensible, DDR4400Mhz CL19 seemed to perform the best in many games, despite running at Gear 2, like DDR5 RAM.

The DDR5 Corsair Dominator 5200mhz CL36 RAM was the only DDR5 module kit they tested, and currently costs around £260.

Presumably, low latency DDR5 RAM would perform similarly or better than high frequency DDR4 RAM, but I've no idea when this will be available.
 
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Based on this IPC benchmark, I'd say it would be a good idea to wait for Zen 3 + extra cache, probably called the Ryzen 6000 series, it should be available to buy in early 2022. You could even wait for Zen 4 the end of 2022, depends if you are in a rush to upgrade or not.

Link here:
https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/core_i5_12600k_processor_review,7.html

Intel is ahead in gaming performance with Alder Lake currently, but not by much.
 
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It would be worth for now seeing if you can get a cheap 8700K or 9th gen on ebay or the like. Until you are ready to upgrade your entire platform.

The extra clock speed from overclocking would help feed the GPU and if you get one with more cores or threads that's going to help minimum frame rates too.
 
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