Question i3 9100f to i5 9400f or i5 9500f? Which would be the better option?

[GBZara]

I know the i7 exists and it still seems kind of expensive. The one thing I'm worried about is that the upgrade will not be worthwhile enough. My other components are a GTX 970 ASUS ROG Strix edition with a single stick of 16 GB DDR4 RAM. I mostly play Destiny 2 and Battlefield games. And no, there are not a lot of other options where i live. Covid has made it really hard to get a lot of components and those are the choices i have right now.

 

[TommyTwoTone66]

Depends on a lot of things really.

Are you only interested in gaming performance, or do you do some professional work that could make use of the extra 2 CPU cores the 9700F gives you?

How much of a difference is there in price between the 3 options?

For me, a 9400F is £130, a 9500F is £140 and a 9700F is £230. I don't regularly use Lightwave, Adobe After Effects, or any other professional software where the 9700F would make a difference..

So for my needs, the 2 extra cores and 5% clock speed increase for £90 is definitely not worth it for the 9700F, so I would go for the 9500F

As for "will I even notice any difference in games" over the 9100F? Probably not, no. All you are doing is going from 4 very fast cores to 6 very fast cores. Most games don't and can't make use of more than 2 cores, so I doubt you'll see any changes in games.

The correct option is to upgrade your GPU, but that's not possible right now.

 

[sizzling]

Do you already have a motherboard and RAM?

 

[GBZara]

Do you already have a motherboard and RAM?

My other components are a GTX 970 ASUS ROG Strix edition with a single stick of 16 GB DDR4 RAM

 

[GBZara]

Depends on a lot of things really.

Are you only interested in gaming performance, or do you do some professional work that could make use of the extra 2 CPU cores the 9700F gives you?

How much of a difference is there in price between the 3 options?

For me, a 9400F is £130, a 9500F is £140 and a 9700F is £230. I don't regularly use Lightwave, Adobe After Effects, or any other professional software where the 9700F would make a difference..

So for my needs, the 2 extra cores and 5% clock speed increase for £90 is definitely not worth it for the 9700F, so I would go for the 9500F

As for "will I even notice any difference in games" over the 9100F? Probably not, no. All you are doing is going from 4 very fast cores to 6 very fast cores. Most games don't and can't make use of more than 2 cores, so I doubt you'll see any changes in games.

The correct option is to upgrade your GPU, but that's not possible right now.

Hmmm that makes a lot of sense, I hadn't thought of it like that. Thank you!

 

[sizzling]

My other components are a GTX 970 ASUS ROG Strix edition with a single stick of 16 GB DDR4 RAM

What is the RAM spec and does that mean you don’t have a motherboard?