[SOLVED] Best CPU for a GTX 960?

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Mar 23, 2021
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I was planning on a full upgrade this year since my current hardware was old even by 2017 standards, but due to the huge GPU shortage I'm forced to keep my 960 for the time being

But i'm torn between cpus, and the reviews and benchmarks i find are all over the place. Some say AMD beats Intel by a huge margin, some say Intel still reigns on the gaming department. Basically I want a good future proof cpu, something that I can play with for at least 5 years without worrying too much about upgrading. Ram, mobo, storage and case are less important.

My options are either the 10700K, 10900K on the Intel side, and the 5600X and 5800X on the AMD side.
 
Solution
Realy appreciate your list but if i'm gonna spend some bucks i'd rather go a little bigger, no offense tho. My only cpu options are those i mentioned before

Forgot to mention that my number one benchmark is Cyberpunk 2077, I really wanna be able to push that <Mod Edit> into the maximum, be it 1080 or 1440, so I won't go below a 10700k
You are not going to see much fps improvement by going with the 10900K, 10700K will perform similarly while costing less. The only "downside" of it is going be the 2 less cores and 4 less threads, which you wont use in atleast 5 years if you are going to be gaming.
5800X is a bit better, but costs more for the same core/thread count.
I would settle for the 10700K and call it a day.
Pair it...
You are not going to see much fps improvement by going with the 10900K, 10700K will perform similarly while costing less. The only "downside" of it is going be the 2 less cores and 4 less threads, which you wont use in atleast 5 years if you are going to be gaming.
5800X is a bit better, but costs more for the same core/thread count.
I would settle for the 10700K and call it a day.
Pair it with a good motherboard which will allow you to overclock it to 5GHz and upgrade to 11th Gen with if you ever want to do that and ur all good.
PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i7-10700K 3.8 GHz 8-Core Processor ($321.74 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II 360 56.3 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler
Motherboard: MSI MAG Z490 TOMAHAWK ATX LGA1200 Motherboard ($298.49 @ Amazon)
Memory: G.Skill Trident Z RGB 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory ($117.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 970 Evo 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive ($139.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Cooler Master MasterBox TD500 ATX Mid Tower Case ($139.97 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: Corsair RM (2019) 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($124.99 @ Corsair)
Total: $1143.17
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-03-23 19:02 EDT-0400

So you say the difference in performance mostly in gaming would be barely noticeable between the 700 and 900?

Found this, might be useful https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/news/cyberpunk-2077-cpu-scaling-benchmarks
 
I was planning on a full upgrade this year since my current hardware was old even by 2017 standards, but due to the huge GPU shortage I'm forced to keep my 960 for the time being

But i'm torn between cpus, and the reviews and benchmarks i find are all over the place. Some say AMD beats Intel by a huge margin, some say Intel still reigns on the gaming department. Basically I want a good future proof cpu, something that I can play with for at least 5 years without worrying too much about upgrading. Ram, mobo, storage and case are less important.

My options are either the 10700K, 10900K on the Intel side, and the 5600X and 5800X on the AMD side.

When the gtx 960 was released the best gaming CPUs were 4 core / 8threads Intel i7 4770k/4790k and 4core/4threads i5.
If you plan on keeping 960 for awhile. Then paring it with 10700K, 10900K, 5600X and 5800X don't make much sense.
Just wait until gpu gets cheaper and by then you should also be able to get reasonably priced Ryzen 5600X/5800X
 
I just checked my AIO cooler and i just saw it was a 240, for some reason thought it was a 360, so this might not be enough for the 10900k right? Might aswell end up deciding on the 10700k or 10850k instead
 
As you have already had a Z490 motherboard go for an Intel CPU so that will be more good.

Oh but I don't, my current board is a b150 mortar with an i5 6600, need a whole new pc lol

Another idea someone came up with would be to buy a z590 board in case I want to swap the cpu and ram in the future. Good idea or nah?



PCPartPicker Part List: https://es.pcpartpicker.com/list/LZCCPV

CPU: Intel Core i7-10700K 3.8 GHz 8-Core Processor (€303.50 @ Coolmod)

Motherboard: MSI MPG Z490 GAMING PLUS ATX LGA1200 Motherboard (€191.80 @ Alternate)

Memory: G.Skill Trident Z RGB 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 CL16 Memory (€161.80 @ Alternate)

Storage: Samsung 970 Evo 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive (€88.06 @ Amazon Espana)

Storage: Samsung 970 Evo 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive (€170.00 @ Amazon Espana)

Case: Cooler Master MasterBox TD500 ARGB ATX Mid Tower Case (€132.21 @ Amazon Espana)

Power Supply: Corsair RM (2019) 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply (€114.90 @ Corsair)

Total: €1162.27
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-03-25 12:34 CET+0100


Something like this then?
 
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PCI Express 4.0 at the moment is mainly of interest to folks deploying the latest high-speed SSDs. The new Z590 platform will bake that in, bringing with it a host of improvements, including support for 16 available PCI Express 4.0 lanes, as well as DDR4-3200 (up from a limit of DDR4-2933 on Z490) as a standard memory speed. The boards will also throw up the PCIe x1 area on the chipset and include six extra PCIe x1 slots. Z390 will be equipped with a quad-channel type-2280 for compatibility with Intel's recent 16-lane configurations. We're still waiting on the final details of both boards. When they do arrive, we'll be sure to take a gander at what Nvidia has to say about the new generation of GTX graphics processors, which apparently will require new cards from the hardware supplier to enable full frame rates on the new high-end models