[SOLVED] 8700 (non-k) or bust!

[lunchie12]

Hey guys I am about to replace my old system (6700non-k), 16gb2400ram, gtx1060) so that I can play the latest AAA titles at 1440p 100+fps.

I have two options.

Buy this from my Father. Built 5 months ago and barely used because he likes his surface pro instead.

• ASUS PRIME Z370-A II, Intel Z370, DDR4, M.2 Aura Sync Motherboard
• Intel Core i7 8700 6C/12T, 3.2Ghz/4.6Ghz 12MB LGA1151v2 Processor
• Deepcool Gammaxx GT RGB CPU Cooler
• Corsair CMK32GX4M2B3200C16 Vengeance LPX 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4-3200 CL16
• Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD
• Samsung 860 EVO 1TB M.2 SSD
• EVGA GeForce GT 1030 2GB Graphics Card
• Corsair Carbide Series 100R Mid-Tower Case Silent Edition
• Corsair RM550x V2 550W Full Modular 80Plus Gold Power Supply
• Microsoft Windows 10 Home USB Flash Drive 32Bit/64-Bit - Retail RS2 (KW9-00478)
• ASUS USB-AC53 Nano MU-MIMO, Dual-Band AC1200 Wi-Fi Adapter

He is only asking for $500 bucks for the system and I was thinking, sweet deal, buy it and then chuck in a bigger PSU and a 3070.
The only concern is will the 8700 be holding back the 3070 too much or will I be okay?

Or build my own from scratch or maybe even buy Dad's comp and sell the mobo, CPU and GPU and buy a new 3700x or 10700k or something?

Any ideas guys?

 

[Barty1884]

At 1440p, the 8700 (non-K) is a solid enough pairing with a 2080TI, which as far as we know (according to Nvidia), is where a 3070 is going to land performance-wise.

It's not the best pairing (Z370, locked CPU), but $500 seems like a very solid price for the config (6c/12t i7, 32GB RAM, 2TB of SSD space), especially since you could recoup ~$50 pretty easily selling the GT1030.

Considering a better "gaming" chip (unlocked i7 or i9) is going to set you back ~$400 alone, I'd opt for your Father's system, personally.

FWIW, the i7-8700 + 3070 might be ok on the existing RM550X.
It's a quality PSU, and with a 65W TDP CPU, 220W GPU.... On the face of it, should be fine.
I run an overclocked 8086K + 2070 Super from a 550W SuperNOVA G2, so a higher power draw than proposed, and it's perfectly fine (albeit not ideal).

 

[punkncat]

Not sure what the specs are on your current, but given the Covid, back to school demand you could likely sell your current system for that or nearly so, according to spec.

 

[lunchie12]

what do you think, I could get (if anything) for my old system/bits?
i7 6700 @ 3.40GHz
16gb ddr4ram 2400mhtz Adata premium
ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. Z170-AR (LGA1151)
GeForce GTX 1060 6GB (Gigabyte G1 )
Intel 660p 480GB SSD
Razor H440 Case

 

[Barty1884]

~$300, easy. Quite possibly a fair bit more, really depends on the buyer.


Parting it out, you've got a ~$100 GPU (probably, tough to judge what'll happen to a 1060 with RTX3000 on the horizon).

~$150 for the CPU/MB/RAM, all day long.

Still leaves SSD, Case, PSU..... Which is easily $50-$100 combined.

 

[lunchie12]

A couple final questions before I can consider this issue put to bed.

I know that all the cpu's from the 6th gen onwards essentially use the same architecture (albeit upgraded) and I've read articles suggesting that each generation upwards was only a slight improvement. With this in mind do you think its worth upgrading from the 6700 to the 8700? and for that matter on that same tangent would I notice much difference if I went for a 10700 or even the upcoming 11 series vs the 8700 I am considering?

If I was to go down the route of ditching the 8700/370mobo but keeping the rest of dads system what CPU would you recommend as the best bang for buck ?
System would be 90% gaming at 1440p 144htz 27inch panel and 10% screwing around on the net etc...

 

[Barty1884]

Within the same underlying architecture (Skylake, essentially), there are four different 'tiers' when it comes to i7s, for lack of a better term.

Skylake/KabyLake - 4c/8t i7s. (6700 - 7700)
Coffee Lake - 6c/12t i7s (8700, 8086K)
Coffee Lake Refresh - i7s changed to 8cores, no hyperthreading (i7-9700) and i9s were introduced (mainstream).
Comet Lake - i7s brought hyperthreading back, so now 8c/16t.

Throughout, there has been IPC improvements, in addition to core count & clock speed.

Simplistic outlook:
You're looking at stepping from 6th "Gen". For all intents & purposes, 6th & 7th "Gen" could be considered the same. Officially stepping forward two generations, but in practice, stepping to the next big improvement in the stack.

In addition to the IPC gains through refinement of the architecture, you net 2 additional cores & 4 additional threads over your 6700.

Would I notice much difference if I went for a 10700 or even the upcoming 11 series vs the 8700 I am considering?

In short, yes - in newer titles that can leverage >12threads, or benefit from the further architecture improvements.

However, not nearly as much of a step up as I'd expect to see going from a 6700 to 8700.

If I was to go down the route of ditching the 8700/370mobo but keeping the rest of dads system what CPU would you recommend as the best bang for buck ?

Unfortunately Intel + Bang for the buck don't go together very well.
The best bang for your buck currently is probably from AMD in the Ryzen5 3600 - which is a 6core/12thread CPU, much the same as the i7-8700. Gaming performance-wise, they're really close.

The 8700K edges out the R5 3600 more often than not, but the non-K would likely give up the slight edge by virtue of it's lesser base/boost clock speeds vs the 8700K

System would be 90% gaming at 1440p 144htz 27inch panel and 10% screwing around on the net etc...

At high refresh 1440p, I'd stick with the 8700 personally. The 8700 is plenty for that IMO.

 

[cryoburner]

If I had both pieces of hardware, I would definitely want to keep the 8700 over the 6700, since it's a 6-core, 12-thread processor compared to a 4-core, 8 thread. A 6700 should still get along pretty well in most games for the time being, but games are becoming more multithreaded, and we will likely see that continue with the next-gen consoles having 8-core, 16-thread CPUs. And even for games that don't utilize a lot of threads, it clocks a decent amount higher. A 6700 boosts up to 3.7-4.0 GHz depending on the number of active cores, while an 8700 boosts up to 4.3-4.6 GHz, around a 15% clock speed advantage, in addition to some slight IPC improvements that can make it around 20% faster at many light to moderately-threaded tasks. And it can potentially be more than 50% faster at some heavily-multithreaded tasks that can utilize all available threads, even if those currently tend to be much less common. There would not be any real advantage to keeping the older i7. And on the used market, 8700s don't actually sell for too much more than 6700s, maybe around a $50 difference or so.

I probably wouldn't bother with the expense of trading an 8700 for a 10700 either. The clock rates are only around 5% higher, which combined with IPC improvements only make it around 10% faster than an 8700 at most (CPU-limited) tasks. It has another 2 cores as well, but those currently won't make much difference in today's games, and the 6-cores with 12-threads of the 8700 should still be good for quite a while. A 10700 would also require a new motherboard. Considering how close the 8700 comes to a 10700 at the vast majority of tasks, and that you can get an 8700 system for a decent price, it's probably best to just keep that. At 1440p, your performance in today's games should be mostly limited by graphics performance anyway, even with an RTX 3070.

 

[lunchie12]

If I had both pieces of hardware, I would definitely want to keep the 8700 over the 6700, since it's a 6-core, 12-thread processor compared to a 4-core, 8 thread. A 6700 should still get along pretty well in most games for the time being, but games are becoming more multithreaded, and we will likely see that continue with the next-gen consoles having 8-core, 16-thread CPUs. And even for games that don't utilize a lot of threads, it clocks a decent amount higher. A 6700 boosts up to 3.7-4.0 GHz depending on the number of active cores, while an 8700 boosts up to 4.3-4.6 GHz, around a 15% clock speed advantage, in addition to some slight IPC improvements that can make it around 20% faster at many light to moderately-threaded tasks. And it can potentially be more than 50% faster at some heavily-multithreaded tasks that can utilize all available threads, even if those currently tend to be much less common. There would not be any real advantage to keeping the older i7. And on the used market, 8700s don't actually sell for too much more than 6700s, maybe around a $50 difference or so.

I probably wouldn't bother with the expense of trading an 8700 for a 10700 either. The clock rates are only around 5% higher, which combined with IPC improvements only make it around 10% faster than an 8700 at most (CPU-limited) tasks. It has another 2 cores as well, but those currently won't make much difference in today's games, and the 6-cores with 12-threads of the 8700 should still be good for quite a while. A 10700 would also require a new motherboard. Considering how close the 8700 comes to a 10700 at the vast majority of tasks, and that you can get an 8700 system for a decent price, it's probably best to just keep that. At 1440p, your performance in today's games should be mostly limited by graphics performance anyway, even with an RTX 3070.

Are you saying that a combination of my Dad's system above with a 3070 wont be enough to hit my target? 1440p at 144htz+ on a 27IPS monitor on upcoming AAA games for the next year or so?

 

[cryoburner]

Are you saying that a combination of my Dad's system above with a 3070 wont be enough to hit my target? 1440p at 144htz+ on a 27IPS monitor on upcoming AAA games for the next year or so?

I was just saying that the fastest CPUs for gaming are only slightly faster than an 8700, and that an 8700 has a decent number of cores and threads, so it's likely to remain relevant for some years to come.

As for getting "144Hz+" at 1440p, it will likely depend on the game. Some games might not manage to hit that even with the fastest CPU and graphics card on the market. Crank up the raytraced lighting effects to their maximum settings in a demanding game like Control, and a 3070 will likely dip below 100fps at native 1440p (though DLSS 2.0 might help with that). Other, less demanding games will likely get hundreds of FPS though. It's hard to say exactly how the 3070 will perform in various games at this time, though it will likely be around the performance level of a 2080 Ti, judging by currently known details. Performance in future games is even harder to judge.