[SOLVED] Should I upgrade CPU or not?

[fish21]

Hi,

My current system is Intel I5-8500 cpu and MSI RTX 2070 itx-mini. This gives me a bottleneck of around 15 - 20% if I am not mistaken.

I am thinking about upgrading my cpu to a I7-9700 ('no-k'). The lowest price for this cpu is 270 EUR in my country.

I can only upgrade to Intel 1151 socket cpu as I do not want to replace my motherboard. So AMD or other Intel is out of the question. I am also not looking at the 'k' version as I do not intend to overclock and the price difference is not worth the performance difference imo.

I mainly play AC - Oddyssey (and soon Valhalla) and RDR2 on 1440p mixture of High and Ultra settings. With my current system I get arround 50 - 55 FPS on average. If i get 10 FPS more I would consider it but otherwise I personally think it may not be worth it.

Do you think it is worth it for me to make this upgrade? It is hard to know the increase in FPS since there are hardly any 9700 (no-k) benchmarks with a 2070. Almost all benchmarks either have 9700k or 2070 Super or both.

Thank you

 

[rgd1101]

what the motherboard?

 

[fish21]

My motherboard is MSI Z370I GAMING PRO CARBON

 

[General Kenobi]

My motherboard is MSI Z370I GAMING PRO CARBON

Honestly now that you are upgrading to a new cpu get an i9 9900 dont go for i7 it's just 8/8 especially when games are becoming more demanding so id personally consider an i9 .

 

[sizzling]

How did you come up with the number 15-20% bottleneck? If you used one of those bottleneck calculator sites then forget everything you read their, they are complete misleading garbage.

Have you monitored cpu and gpu usage while playing your games? Do any cpu cores hit 100% usage? Is the gpu utilised 100%?

 

[fish21]

Honestly now that you are upgrading to a new cpu get an i9 9900 dont go for i7 it's just 8/8 especially when games are becoming more demanding so id personally consider an i9 .

I thought about the I9 9900 but on CPU userbenchmark there seems very little performance difference with the I7 9700 (difference effective speed 0%, overclocked core +3%) The OC 64 core speed is 38% faster though but I am not really sure what that means for current game performance.

The price difference however is huge. It is more than 100 EUR more expensive. I am not prepared to spend that much, certainly if there's only a marginal effective performance difference.

How did you come up with the number 15-20% bottleneck? If you used one of those bottleneck calculator sites then forget everything you read their, they are complete misleading garbage.

Have you monitored cpu and gpu usage while playing your games? Do any cpu cores hit 100% usage? Is the gpu utilised 100%?

I used a bottleneck calculator but I also noticed it during gaming. My CPU was constantly hitting 100% indeed while the GPU was not.

 

[General Kenobi]

I thought about the I9 9900 but on CPU userbenchmark there seems very little performance difference with the I7 9700 (difference effective speed 0%, overclocked core +3%) The OC 64 core speed is 38% faster though but I am not really sure what that means for current game performance.

The price difference however is huge. It is more than 100 EUR more expensive. I am not prepared to spend that much, certainly if there's only a marginal effective performance difference.


I used a bottleneck calculator but I also noticed it during gaming. My CPU was constantly hitting 100% indeed while the GPU was not.

The thing is you won't have 8c/16t, games are becoming more demanding and the title which you want to play are all AAA. And it's not about the clock speed clock, clock speed is only one aspect of a cpu a trust me you can wait and spend 100EUR later, 8c/8t will get obsolete. And yes never trust those bottlenecking site the fact is bottlenecking always depends on what you ask: game resolution, texture details and all of this will vary in every game. Consider this playing with the hardware that you currently have in 480p you gpu and cpu would be like' are you kidding me' and you will notice bad fps. What ill suggest try the games you are playing at different resolution and texture quality and see how it differs. Yes your cpu i5 is a bottleneck and if you don't want to upgrade Mobo and other stuff my best recommendation is get a i9 9900. Again its not only about the clock speed.

 

[xravenxdota]

btw never use userbenchmark as a reference as it based 80% score on single core.That's to benefit intel.

 

[drea.drechsler]

btw never use userbenchmark as a reference as it based 80% score on single core.That's to benefit intel.

They made those changes when Ryzen 3000 started to embarrass Intel. I wonder what they'll do to benefit Intel once Ryzen 5000 results start hitting. Assuming the 19% IPC uplift proves out, they can't continue making fun of the 'more corez' AMD processors and expect it to work.

 

[fish21]

I looked up more info about the I9 9900 and found quite a few forum posts stating that the z370 is not a good match for the i9. Many issues relating to power and thermal. So I won’t be getting that.

Since no one really seems to know (understandably though since it’s very specific) what the FPS increase will be with a 9700 vs 8500, I am just gonna buy one and test it out.

If it’s worth it I will keep it. If not I will return it.

thanks for all the info

 

[General Kenobi]

I looked up more info about the I9 9900 and found quite a few forum posts stating that the z370 is not a good match for the i9. Many issues relating to power and thermal. So I won’t be getting that.

Since no one really seems to know (understandably though since it’s very specific) what the FPS increase will be with a 9700 vs 8500, I am just gonna buy one and test it out.

If it’s worth it I will keep it. If not I will return it.

thanks for all the info

If you aren't gonna oc i9 9900 its not going to be an issue, however get what seems best for you and what's possible for you, i can completely agree that an i9 is expensive but you must also consider as a average consumer we don't expect ourself to upgrade every generation so when we upgrade to a exisiting platform we expect it to do it for the last time and then maybe later change it altogether. I7 9700 is gonna be fine for a while.... later-No i don't think, and it's possible that a 8t cpu can be a bottleneck and cpu bottleneck are not the best thing since you don't have alot of headroom to upgrade majorly in gpu, bcz if you are cpu limited you gotta upgrade not only cpu but Mobo and ram (sometimes and if I'm not wrong ddr5 is coming next year). Whereas when bottlenecked by gpu you just gotta plug out a pci cable and smash it in the pci slot, now 3080 is a different thing you gotta have a good psu too. But I'm sure you know what i mean so yes again as i said get what's seems best for you.

 

[geofelt]

Bottleneck calculators are junk science.
They do not know about YOUR games for one thing.

Here is a back handed way to see if YOUR games are cpu limited.
Limit your cpu. In windows power management, limit the maximum cpu% to something like 85%.
Go to control panel/power options/change plan settings/change advanced power settings/processor power management/maximum processor state/
This will simulate what a lack of cpu power will do.
Conversely what a 15% improvement in core speed might do.

That is the approximate increase in single thread capability that a 8500 to 9700 would buy you.
The 9700K is a bit stronger at stock, and you would have the ability to overclock with a good cooler.
If this is an ITX build, cooling may be an issue.

As of 2/6/2019
What percent can get an overclock at a somewhat sane Vcore in the 1.337 to 1.375 range.
And AVX offset = 2.

I7-9700K

5.2 10%
5.1 35%
5.0 78%
4.9 100%