PC upgrade from 4th gen to 8th gen intel (maybe Ryzen)

[CTRuppert]

I currently have the i5-4690, 8gb of ram, and RX 580 8gb (plan to upgrade to the next Nvidia series when they release them) for my current build. To start out when I buy my stuff I usually get them from Newegg so I'll be using there prices at the moment while typing this and was using userbenchmark for my performance comparison (don't know how reliable that site is).

I originally was going to just upgrade to a i7 4790k (I don't overclock and the non K was out of stock) but I saw that it was selling for a price of $396 and when I checked the performance it didn't show that great of an upgrade so I decided to look at the prices of the 8th gen cpu.

Edit: didn't want to rewrite this entire thing as I was almost done and it was getting very late so I will put this here instead. I will have to upgrade my ram no matter what CPU I go with because I usually never have enough. As I am typing this I am sitting at 60% used and I'm not really doing much right now. Also budget I wanted to try and stay under $500 if possible.

This is when my issue starts, I was thinking about getting the i5 8400 as there was a much better upgrade in performance while being much cheaper (issue is I would need a new motherboard and rams) but then I saw the i3 8100 which actually offers a slightly higher performace over the i7 4790 (not counting the threads) while leaving me room to get a new motherboard and 16gb of ram. So I wanted to hear from people how the i3 8100 performs such for gaming, VR, doing multi tasking, college work and more. I know the i5 would perform much better with the 6 cores and higher performance but just wanted to know how the i3 perfroms now since they are 4 cores.

After picking out my parts it comes to this (rounding up as well not counting shipping):
$460 for the i5 8400, ram and motherboard
$390 for the i3 8100, ram and motherboard
$400 for the i7 4790k ($420 if the non k goes back into stock including ram) ($520 counting ram) or
$450 for the Ryzen 5 1600, ram and motherboard

So from the prices the i3-8100 is 10 dollars (before edit) cheaper while offering a small performace upgrade from the i7 4790k (not taken account for the extra threads). I know that going the i5 8th gen would be a better option but I am currently keeping an open mind.

Mainly I will be playing games, using virtual box, college work and playing on VR. There are many other things I will be doing but I decided to narrow it down a bit.

Sorry for the extremely long post but thought I would get this out there. I have even considered going with Ryzen 5 1600 or 1600x as well. If anyone wanted to give any info about upgrading to Ryzen instead Ill listen to those comments as well and I am an open minded person so please I don't want to see people bashing about why I should choose there brand over the other (ex: I should get Intel because AMD sucks or the other way around) just because they said so.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Personally I'd just upgrade ram to 16GB and be done.

Upgrade to i7-4790 only, if you need more multiprocessing power - video editing for example.
But since cost is comparable with upgrade to i5-8400 or Ryzen5-1600, then full system upgrade would be better.

i3-8100 upgrade path - not worth it.

 

[CTRuppert]

Okay thanks, I wasn't all that serious about the i3 just thought I would ask about it due to userbenchmark showing it had a slightly higher performance then the i7 4790 at much lower cost.

Also forgot to mention a few things about this upgrade, my total budget for the entire upgrade is a little over 1k for the GPU and CPU but wanted to keep it under 500 for the CPU as I wanted to get a good GPU when Nvidia releases there next GPU. I also received a 4k monitor in October and I want to upgrade the cpu as I was thinking it would bottleneck the gpu for future gaming if I wanted to start 4k gaming as I hope the new gpu that comes out could handle it like the 1080ti. That's also the other reason for my upgrade was to handle the performance of the GPU as I did see a video where a person tested the 4690 with a 1080ti but the youtuber only saw a very small bottleneck in one of the games but I don't remember the resolution he was playing at. Just afraid of the gap widening once the more powerful GPU come out.

Not knowing what the new cards are going to be called but what I was looking for was maybe the next 1180/2080 version depending on the name as an upgrade and don't want any bottlenecks.

 

[CTRuppert]

After I typed that I went back to find the bottleneck and was mistaken a little, the bottleneck happened during the GTA V benchmark test and only when the bus explodes causing the frames to dip down to 40FPS.

 

[ohiou_grad_2006]

That i3 is going to be basically a sideways upgrade, since the new i3s are quads. If you go ryzen, you will want either the 6 core or even 8 core. Ryzen will basically game the same as your i5. IPC is actually right at the same level as haswell. But you would gain multithreaded performance.

You might poke around on eBay. It looks like the standard i7 4790 can be had around 200 for a used one, which would get you most of what you are after. I think the k version was around 300. I think most of the CPUs were used, but if the sellers have good feedback it should be reasonably safe as you could file a case with eBay if something was wrong when it arrived.

Also, you could sell your current i5 and recoup some of your money.

Checked again, looks like another 8gb of ram used would run you around 50 bucks. Personally I'd be tempted to go i7 for current build and more ram, which should give you another year or 2 and give prices time to stabilize.

I think right now 8gb of ddr4 is around 90 bucks for example.

 

[CTRuppert]

I don't know if this sounds strange or not but I don't plan to sell the parts I'm taking out, I have been thinking about donating them to my college. The reason that I want to donate is the computer club tried to get a VR system for educational reasons to teach the public about them but they didn't have a computer able to handle the VR and the school refused to give any funding. The club raised enough to purchase the VR headsets as they wanted 3 but not enough for 3 new PC. I figure if I donate the motherboard, cpu and ram that could be a start to the PC build and they could possibly use some of the raised money to purchase the rest and maybe one headset to use it as a basis to talk the college into funding more systems.

I have debated about selling them and increasing my budget for an i7-8700 but decided to just donate the parts instead as the sale could make up the difference in price between the i5 8400 to the i7 8700.

But as a final note: Ill only be donating them if the club is still trying to get the funds for the PC if not then I will just sell them. And if I did sell them I am going to forget the other cpu and get the i7-8700 but as my budget right now is only 500 for a new CPU, its out of my range and is why I didn't include it originally in the post above.

 

[jr9]

4690 to 4790k or any CPU on that platform = not worth the money vs the performance gain

4690 to any i3 processor, even 8th gen = possibly worth. Same number of cores/threads with 25% more performance if you went 8350k.

i3 8100 = definately not worth.

i5 8400 = worth

so based on this:

Nope: i3 8100
Nope: Any Ryzens
Budget Upgrade: i3 8350k build or i5 8400
DECENT Upgrade: i5 8600k
Ultra amazing upgrade: i7 8700k

You would need a Ryzen 7 1800X to match the game performance of the i5 8400 and the 8400 costs less so forget Ryzen. If you are willing to spend on Coffee Lake, Ryzen is completely pointless. No Ryzen processor will beat a 8600k.

 

[ohiou_grad_2006]

However..... Ryzen + comes out in a couple of months. So that analysis could change if their IPC improves and if clock speeds go up.

 

[CTRuppert]

Thanks for the feedback everyone and I think I have settled on what I'll get. I am thinking the i5 8400 is what I have settled on but before I do I'm going to talk to the computer club to see if they are still doing there vr build. Would hate to order the CPU and find out that they are no longer doing the build for the college.

Now its more of a debate on when I will actually do the ordering as I had originally intended to wait for the release of the next NVidia GPU or do it by next week. Maybe Ill just give it time for now and hope for the release of the new GPU will happen within the next month or so if I am lucky. By then maybe I'll have the luck to increase my budget for the i5 8600k or i7 8700 without needing to sell my parts from the PC. I don't usually do overclocking so I try to stay away from the K models as spending the extra dollar to not ever overclock I don't think its worth the money.