[SOLVED] Is now a good time to upgrade my CPU?

MatthewJamess

Reputable
Aug 24, 2020
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4,535
First, I live in Argentina, so US prices and stocks don’t really apply here. This is my current set up: an I5 4460, 16gb ddr3 RAM, and a 2060 GPU. For a while now, I’ve been thinking of upgrading to a 10th gen Intel CPU, as Ryzen prices and availability here are a joke. However, now 11th gen is here, although a more expensive than previous gen.
My problem is this: I’ve been here more and more that DDR5 and PCIE gen 5 is on the way now, and it made me really doubt whether I should but a new CPU, Motherboard, and RAM combo right now, or wait for said improvements to hit the marked. To give you an idea, both H510 and B560 chipset MB are not available here yet, so new stuff will take couple of months before it gets to my country after it hits the US market.
What should I do?
 
Solution
DDR5 and PCIe 5 won't bring any improvements to the table. DDR5 is just there to catch up with processors being more data hungry and there isn't even a dire need to move off of PCIe 3.0 yet. Even if you're rocking an RTX 3080, you can go down to PCIe 2.0 x16 (~50% of PCIE 4.0 x16's bandwidth) and still not lose 5% performance on average.

Practically any Core i5 or Ryzen 5 made in the past two years will be a really good upgrade from what you have.
DDR5 and PCIe 5 won't bring any improvements to the table. DDR5 is just there to catch up with processors being more data hungry and there isn't even a dire need to move off of PCIe 3.0 yet. Even if you're rocking an RTX 3080, you can go down to PCIe 2.0 x16 (~50% of PCIE 4.0 x16's bandwidth) and still not lose 5% performance on average.

Practically any Core i5 or Ryzen 5 made in the past two years will be a really good upgrade from what you have.
 
Solution

punkncat

Champion
Ambassador
A stab in the dark considering I know nothing of pricing and availability there...

IF I were going to consider 10th gen (which is worthwhile IMO), I would also consider looking at 9th gen. In some cases the 9th gen actually outperforms the 10th and (has been) priced in such a way as to be quite attractive here before stock got low on them.
Unless you have a specific need of PCI4 I would not get an 11th gen. I did, and regret it, mostly.