Upgrading from i7 6700k advice

Feel like it's coming to the decision of getting a 12600k/12700k now or just waiting for the next gen AMDs. The hard part is that it always feels like whenever something new comes out there is always the thought that "just wait for the next ones to come out and they will be much better etc". Why does upgrading have to be so difficult..

The sensible move if you are looking for performance, without all the features would be get a B450 motherboard plus a 3D-Vcache CPU, and some faster DDR4 RAM. Assuming AMD don't jack the prices of the new parts then £280 5600X(new version) CPU, and you can get a 'good' B450 board and 32GB DDR4 3200/3600 for ~£170 all-in. So you'd spend £450, vs the £800 suggested above, and in 12-18 months you could upgrade again, you'd still easily get a couple of hundred quid for the parts you just had, so would have a budget of £650 without ever going over the original £800 but be on whatever is the latest and best platform be that Intel or AMD in 2023-24. Or you can hope and prey that Intel release another generation of Z690 compatible CPU's that actually show a large performance gain, which is unlikely, that will be Meteor Lake in 2023-24.
 
The sensible move if you are looking for performance, without all the features would be get a B450 motherboard plus a 3D-Vcache CPU, and some faster DDR4 RAM. Assuming AMD don't jack the prices of the new parts then £280 5600X(new version) CPU, and you can get a 'good' B450 board and 32GB DDR4 3200/3600 for ~£170 all-in. So you'd spend £450, vs the £800 suggested above, and in 12-18 months you could upgrade again, you'd still easily get a couple of hundred quid for the parts you just had, so would have a budget of £650 without ever going over the original £800 but be on whatever is the latest and best platform be that Intel or AMD in 2023-24. Or you can hope and prey that Intel release another generation of Z690 compatible CPU's that actually show a large performance gain, which is unlikely, that will be Meteor Lake in 2023-24.
With the 3D Cache CPU path its a dead end. The Alder Lake route at least has 2 years of life in it
 
With the 3D Cache CPU path its a dead end. The Alder Lake route at least has 2 years of life in it

Hence why I said use the B450 board, as Z690 is also a dead-end, it has Raptor Lake left which at best is going to be a tweak of Alder Lake. So life is irrelevant, since the performance will be similar with a much lower cost. Re-read what I wrote, it is about the platform cost, buying a DDR4 Z690 is a dead-end
 
The sensible move if you are looking for performance, without all the features would be get a B450 motherboard plus a 3D-Vcache CPU, and some faster DDR4 RAM. Assuming AMD don't jack the prices of the new parts then £280 5600X(new version) CPU, and you can get a 'good' B450 board and 32GB DDR4 3200/3600 for ~£170 all-in. So you'd spend £450, vs the £800 suggested above, and in 12-18 months you could upgrade again, you'd still easily get a couple of hundred quid for the parts you just had, so would have a budget of £650 without ever going over the original £800 but be on whatever is the latest and best platform be that Intel or AMD in 2023-24. Or you can hope and prey that Intel release another generation of Z690 compatible CPU's that actually show a large performance gain, which is unlikely, that will be Meteor Lake in 2023-24.
That does sound like a fair option, the case is now that I'm probably not going to want to wait for too long, playing some bf 2042 today and probably some better optimisation to be done in that game, but even with everything on low I struggled to get close to 60fps and the CPU was maxing out consistently. Just a tricky one when not knowing exactly when AMDs next gen CPUs will be released, don't really want to wait until well into next year with some pretty lackluster performance I have now.
 
just playing devil's advocate but all we know from press release is that the v cache chips are coming in Q1 next year...they could announce in jan for feb release date or march, or maybe beginning of jan, we don't actually know and that's possibly a 4 month wait...and then performance 15% gain on current 5000 series...is that back up with alderlake so parity? can't remember top of my head, and pricing? we don't know that yet either...so if went with alderlake you could have it now, you don't have to wait..
a ddr4 z690 is more expensive, but that's really the only cost difference really compared to a B450 board..you'll still have to buy ddr ram. and a b450 board is pcie3 only, incl the gpu slot...z690 board is pcie5 gpu slot(irrelevant at mo but it's there, and next years gpu's are meant to double todays throughput)...the tomahawk ddr4 board(taking this as my example at £259) can also take 4 pcie4 nvme's...b450 can take none, and if you compare to a b450 tomahawk max, it can take 1 pcie3 nvme. I'd take the vrm's on the z690 tomahawk over a b450 board...from what I read, a lot of them were poor(someone posted a list..wasn't pretty reading)
I'd say the z690 board is more equivalent to a X570 board no? and most of those only take 2 nvme, and are similarly priced to the z690's....x570 tomahawk down at £179 now, but few months ago was £230..same with ram..when I bought in jun, sammy b die 32gb was over £300, corsair 3600c18 over £200, the crucial ballistix 3600C16 was £190 and out of stock
Just saying modern cpu wont be a bottleneck for foreseable future, it'll be the gpu, so if you went alderlake route, cpu is powerful enough you wont be upgrading in a year or so, it'll do you fine, and with pcie5 for your gpu, you can upgrade that 1st and you'll still have a gaming rig. AM5 is due end of next year, and I guess that'll be pricey too. Online saying DDR5 wont become mainstream till 2023/2024 so still life in ddr4 boards yet
then again, black fri might see great sale prices on existing kit, which makes everything change again. very happy with my b550 board and 5800X
 
Last edited:
That does sound like a fair option, the case is now that I'm probably not going to want to wait for too long, playing some bf 2042 today and probably some better optimisation to be done in that game, but even with everything on low I struggled to get close to 60fps and the CPU was maxing out consistently. Just a tricky one when not knowing exactly when AMDs next gen CPUs will be released, don't really want to wait until well into next year with some pretty lackluster performance I have now.
A prominent leaker has confirmed 3D cache Ryzen would be released end of Jan so availability will be in Feb 1st week.
 
Back
Top Bottom