Question Bottleneck, need upgrade ?

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Jan 5, 2025
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I recently upgraded to the Asus RTX 4070 Super from the 1660 Ti but the problem is that my CPU can't keep up with it. I have an Intel i5-9400 along with an Asus Rog Maximus XI mobo, and with the new market and so much scope for upgrades I dont know what to get since I'm going to need a new CPU and mobo.

Also, I'm not even getting the full potential out of my GPU since I'm on a PCIe gen 3 and i think its only x8 so I just need some advice on what's good. I don't have a preference on platform, but I have a decently limiting budget but not absurd.

I hope i gave all the information needed and I hope you guys can help, thanks!
 
I5-9400 was a great processor in it's time.(2018)
Run the cpu-Z bench test on your i5-9400
You should get a score of 481:
https://valid.x86.fr/bench/qbciuf
Your single thread performance is the key metric for most cpu limited games.
To do significantly better you will need a motherboard upgrade.
For intel, look for a i5-13400 or i5-14400 class processor which will score 700 or so.
Motherboards come in both DDR4 and DDR5 with equal performance.

If you set the motherboard bios to currency, the 13/14 gen issues have been fixed.
 
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Also do you guys think a 9900k would work I know it’s outdated but it would be temporary until I can get the money I need
A 9900K should be decent pairing with an RTX 4070, an RTX 3080 cpu scaling review is below and can be used as reference since the RTX 4070 has pretty much identical performance. There are some gains to be had with a cpu newer than the 9900K, but not much. Those two components would make a pretty good pairing, and an i9 9900K is around $220. Your current I5 9400 would perform about the same as the I3 10100 in that review, which isn't a bad performer, but you can get some more performance out of the GPU with a better chip.

https://www.tomshardware.com/features/nvidia-geforce-rtx-3080-ampere-cpu-scaling-benchmarks
 
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9900k would perform pretty much like the 9700k in the video. It's got 4MB more cache and hyperthreading so 16-threads instead of 8, but is also 8-cores.

It's an OK upgrade if you can source it locally for a good price, as the cheapest place on eBay with any reviews has it for $145 used. There are plenty of brand-new sellers offering those 7-year-old CPUs new-in-box for less, but I'm not sure if any can be trusted to not be scams, because 0 reviews may mean they couldn't even be bothered to get their friends to buy stuff from them, pay the fees and leave fake reviews to generate some credibility. The best CPU for a socket tends to stay overpriced for a decade or more as many people seem to want to upgrade their vintage stuff as far as possible, so demand remains high.
 
You could do something like this that gets you hardware that's not only 4 years newer than what you have now, but well below your 400-ish budget, if you simply use the DDR4 you already have. There are also multiple levels of upgrade path from the Ryzen 5700 on AM4 if you wanted to upgrade the CPU again later.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5700 3.7 GHz 8-Core Processor ($135.00 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: MSI MAG B550 TOMAHAWK ATX AM4 Motherboard ($139.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $274.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2025-01-22 21:54 EST-0500



Or, you could also add a fair amount of memory at what is most likely a significantly higher speed than what you probably have now, for not much more.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5700 3.7 GHz 8-Core Processor ($135.00 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: MSI MAG B550 TOMAHAWK MAX WIFI ATX AM4 Motherboard ($148.49 @ Amazon)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory ($50.98 @ Newegg)
Total: $334.47
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2025-01-22 21:59 EST-0500



For a rather reasonable price this upgrade nets you something like a 34% increase in single core performance and about a 150% increase in multithreaded performance, over your current configuration. Even if you went with the 9900k you would fall short of the Ryzen 5700's performance by about 12% on single core and about 33% on multithreaded making the 9900k seem like it's not a very good option unless you can find one that's good for significantly less than the upgrades I listed above.
 

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