Best CPU for 1440p 144hz that won't bottleneck a RTX 2080Ti

iKrloz

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Jun 9, 2015
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HI, it's been a while since I submitted a new entry in this forum, I need some help from you guys. But first my specs right now:
i7 6700k no Ock'd
Asus STRIX z270e
32 GB Ram 2666Mhz x4 8Gb
GTX 1080 FE (NON TI)
Corsair AX860i PSU
Dell 1440p 144hz G-Sync

As the title says, I'd like to know which is the best Intel CPU to pair with a RTX 2080Ti, since in recent review videos i've seen, reviewers said that even the 8700k bottlenecks the full potential of a RTX 2080Ti when it comes to gaming at 1440p 144hz, which is the card i'm planning to buy. I don't have really a budget limit, however, I'm not really into havingo to buy a 9900k since those are too many cores/threads for me; I use my PC only for gaming, but I'd like to see the full potential of a RTX 2080Ti with a nice CPU to upgrade from my 6700k, and that wont bottlenecks it. Also, I have a 1440p monitor and I have no intention yet on upgrading it to a 4k one, so I will stick with 1440p for a few more years to hit that sweet 144fps framerate on games.

So I guess my question also is: What kind of CPU feature is most important for not bottlenecking the frames on the RTX 2080Ti at 1440p 144hz, clockspeed? or core counts? because if even the 8700k bottlenecks the 2080Ti, whatother CPU could unlock the 2080Ti's full potential at this moment?, or am I missing something here?

So which CPU would you recommend to buy to avoid this bottlenecking the RTX 2080Ti at 1440p 144fps problem, a 8086k, 9700k, or a 9900k? or something else?

thanks in advace for your reply

 
Solution
No matter what hardware you have there will always be a bottleneck, all you can try and do it's match the hardware as well as possible.

Personally right now I'd go for the 9700K, or an 8700K if the price was enough different to tempt me. They game about the same and they match pretty well for other applications too. The gains you get from a 9900K for gaming are not worth the extra cost for me, they are too small to justify the difference.

Sometime in quarter 3 next year when the Ryzen 3 series release they might take the crown, but for now intel hold the fps performance lead in games.
You could make the gamble and build a Ryzen 2600k or 2700k machine now with plans to upgrade later but I can tell you having gone from a 6700K to a...

Dugimodo

Distinguished
No matter what hardware you have there will always be a bottleneck, all you can try and do it's match the hardware as well as possible.

Personally right now I'd go for the 9700K, or an 8700K if the price was enough different to tempt me. They game about the same and they match pretty well for other applications too. The gains you get from a 9900K for gaming are not worth the extra cost for me, they are too small to justify the difference.

Sometime in quarter 3 next year when the Ryzen 3 series release they might take the crown, but for now intel hold the fps performance lead in games.
You could make the gamble and build a Ryzen 2600k or 2700k machine now with plans to upgrade later but I can tell you having gone from a 6700K to a 2700K myself that in most games they perform about the same.

but I'd also stick with intel because you can reuse your RAM with no real penalty whereas with Ryzen you'd want to go for DDR4 2933 or 3200 low latency RAM ideally and at 32GB that's a large expense.
 
Solution

iKrloz

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Jun 9, 2015
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10,530


So, basically as long as Im not playing in 4k I will always see a Bottleneck with an RTX 2080Ti?, and what about the RTX 2080 (NON TI) versison? that would also be bottlenecked? Im playing in 1440p 144hz so I would like to see a great fps increase with this upgrade.

Also, the higher physical cores on the 8/8 thread 9700k is better than the 6/12 thread 8700k purely for gaming?
 
Aug 27, 2018
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I had the same exact setup as you with two 1080ti's and i7-6700k, monitor is an Asus ROG PG278QR 1440p 165Hz. I went with two 2080's. I had a 2080 ti but it worked for exactly 3 hours and then fried itself. I also had a 2080 FE that had a fan controller issue. Ended up with two MSI Gaming X 2080's. I upgraded my cpu to a 2700x with a Crosshair VII, with the intention of upgrading to the next 7nm AMD 3700x later in 2019 on the same motherboard. Battlefield V runs at 165-180 fps on Ultra @ 1440p, I cap it at 164 with Gsync on. I really considered the 9700k, but I liked the idea of taking the cooler off and tossing in another cpu for a performance jump in the next year or so. 2700x in no slouch, the difference in running multiple programs from the 6700k is very obvious. Gaming at 1440p and up is mostly gpu limited anyway, just need those extra cores as BFV actually uses them and many games coming out will start to as well. Good luck and it is a tough decision btwn these top cpu's. The downside is for the 2700x you will probably want 3200 c14 ram which usually can be oc'd to 3400 easily, memory controller needs faster ram. All of them will need a new motherboard, just not sure how much you wanted to spend on the next build.
Here is my build:
2700x OC to 4.3@1.40V
Noctua NH-D15
Crosshair VII
32GB 4x8 SniperX 3400
RTX 2080x2 MSI Gaming X
Corsair HX1200i
Asus PG278QR
 

Dugimodo

Distinguished


What I meant was something will always bottleneck you in any game, whether it's the CPU or GPU etc will vary from game to game and the settings you use. There is no way to 100% match the hardware so well that they always max out together.

The 9700K games slightly better right now mainly due to slightly higher clock speeds, the core/thread count between the two doesn't seem to make much difference, at least for purely gaming and not multitasking while gaming.

I don't have a crystal ball but I suspect it will be quite a while (as in years) before any games will need more than 8 threads to perform well simply because the developers would be cutting off a large % of their market if they did that, right now very few need more than 4 threads.

I base this off memories of buying a core 2 quad and watching my friends and their core 2 duos play all the same games for the next few years with no issues at all. Quad core was nice but nothing needed it. I feel like the next few years will be similar, 6 or 8 cores is nice but you will probably be able to play most games with 4 if not all of them.

My point with all that rambling, I don't think 6/12 or 8/8 is going to matter much.

 


I think you would be fine with an 8700K... At 1440P.

Or at most a 9700K...
 

Cioby

Distinguished
No matter what hardware you have there will always be a bottleneck, all you can try and do it's match the hardware as well as possible.

Personally right now I'd go for the 9700K, or an 8700K if the price was enough different to tempt me. They game about the same and they match pretty well for other applications too. The gains you get from a 9900K for gaming are not worth the extra cost for me, they are too small to justify the difference.

Sometime in quarter 3 next year when the Ryzen 3 series release they might take the crown, but for now intel hold the fps performance lead in games.
You could make the gamble and build a Ryzen 2600k or 2700k machine now with plans to upgrade later but I can tell you having gone from a 6700K to a 2700K myself that in most games they perform about the same.

but I'd also stick with intel because you can reuse your RAM with no real penalty whereas with Ryzen you'd want to go for DDR4 2933 or 3200 low latency RAM ideally and at 32GB that's a large expense.
You mean 2700x

Well basically at 1440p you will get a few more fps based on each game, with a Intel core. If you get a 2080Ti you get 30% more fps over a 2080 or 1080ti. So for the maximum possible performance obviously you're going 2080ti.

At 4K the 2700x is close to the i7 in frames since it relies more on your GPU. But if you get the 2080 over the 2080ti you could forget 4K on some titles, since you have only 8GB of VRAM. I'd better recommend you get a 1080ti unless you want the ray tracing. More Vram, same performance, cheaper - just get a custom cooler 1080ti. Aorus is really good.

Also I do not understand why you care so much about bottlenecks, it's not like you lose anything (just don't go with a Ryzen for gaming at below 4K since you will clearly lose a lot of frames with a 2080ti). And with 2080ti + i7 you might reach max 144 fps on some titles. The only real beast for me is Kingdom Come deliverance which I couldn't play at 4K so I am running at 1440p. With a new 8700k at 1440p I can push Ultra at 60 fps now. You may want to invest in a Gsync monitor also since you won't get 144 fps at every game.