Upgading CPUs... after a certain point there is no point!

[yannis76]

Hi all,

lately I have been looking into upgrading my i5-8400 for some gaming at 1440p where I was noticing some struggling (RTX 2070 S) and Lightroom/Photoshop. I checked many reviews of both Ryzen and i7-9700k/8700k CPU and honestly I have a hard time justifying the upgrade.
In every comparison I read between the humble i5-8400 and other much more expensive CPUs, there were small differences and only at specialized cases.
- so at 1440p almost all games didn't show a difference of more than 5-10fps
- at lower resolutions difference was higher but both CPU were performing good (>60fps)
- at apps the only big difference was at severely multi threaded apps like video rendering which is rather specialized. Even Photoshop didn't show such a high difference while exporting...

What am I missing here? Is it my wrong impression or the high end CPUs are just a marketing plot with no actual needs to cover?

 

[yannis76]

As @bremen1874 stated you really have to gauge exactly what your usage is and how much difference it will make to you.

If you want to compare a real world photo app that I use daily that can leverage ~8 cores/threads then you can try download the trial of DXO Photolab 3 and try this test here.
https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/posts/33217767

I would guess that my 9700K maybe nearly twice as fast as your 8400. Also as you mentioned Photoshop/Lightroom why not try the Photoshop and Lightroom PugetSystems bench. That will give you some real-world figures to compare against. I have also run these.

Photoshop
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/PugetBench-for-Photoshop-1132/

Lightroom
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/PugetBench-for-Lightroom-Classic-1571/

DXO is unfortunately not compatible with Fuji RAF (RAW) files.
Thanks for the heads up re Puget. I didn't know they had their benchmarks available for download.

 

[yannis76]

Yes, I know due to X-trans. Shame really as Fuji do some great cameras. Still run the DXO test please with my RAW file and preset in the link, I'm curious to see how well long your 8400 takes. Link to trial version.
https://www.dxo.com/dxo-photolab/download/

If you do the Photoshop and Lightroom tests then post back. The Photoshop test takes about ~25min-35min and the Lightroom one is longer.

I tried running them but unfortunately cant run it. Says catalog is too new error...