Upgrade to 8th Gen or wait for 9th Gen?

[jpmeneses21]

I just recently upgraded my GPU from a GTX 970 to a 1070 Ti, but my 5-year-old 4th Gen Haswell i5-4570 has finally become a bottleneck. I'm gaming on a 1080p 60hz display.

I'm really itching to upgrade to an i5-8400, an i5-8600k, or even an i7-8700. But I can't make the jump yet because of rumors that the "9th Gen" procs are just around the corner.

So do I upgrade now or wait for the refreshed coffee lake chips? If the rumors are true, the refreshed chips will be about 10-15% faster than the current generation. Is the improved performance worth the wait?

Also, I'm not really an overclocker. But I'm willing to learn and do it if it's going to make my system last longer than the one I have now. 5 years is a good run for a locked i5, but I'm having doubts getting a K chip, because I've read others here in TH who also got a 4th gen i5-4670k, which is the same generation as mine, is also starting to bottleneck, even when overclocked.

What do you guys think? Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[TechyInAZ]

Honestly, 9th gen we have no clue as to when it's coming out. Rumors say maybe by the endish of 2018 but that's all we have.

If your having a good gaming experience right now, I'd wait. If you are experiencing FPS numbers that simply annoy you, then upgrade now.
Specifically I'd upgrade to a Ryzen 2600X you get twice the amount of threads as a core i5 for the same price, and gaming wise, with high speed RAM they are so close it isn't even funny. Not to mention that the 2600X beats the i5s and matches the i7s in games that take advantage of more than 6 threads.

 

[Supernova1138]

Well first off, I wouldn't count on any real performance uplift for gaming on 9th gen CPUs. All the 9th gen is going to offer is more cores on the high end and games really aren't scaling beyond 6 cores at the moment. As far as gaming is concerned the only real benefit 9th gen might offer is the rumor that the i7 9700k and i9 9900k might have soldered heatspreaders, possibly making slightly higher clocks achievable if that improves the high temperatures that the 8700k is seeing.

It comes down to whether you want to hold out for a few months or upgrade now. As it stands right now, assuming you don't also want to do livestreaming or video editing, or something else CPU intensive and you're strictly gaming, it probably isn't going to matter whether you get an 8th or 9th gen CPU.

 

[geofelt]

Normally, I would say if you have a need now, buy now.
If you wait for the next best thing, you will wait forever.

But, I think I would wait.
Rumor has it that the next gen processors will launch August 1.
It is not clear what the chipset issues will be.

For most gamers today, the 8600K with an overclock is as good as it gets.
With an extra $130 or so, the 8700K is what most top end builders will go for.

I think the rumored 9600K will be the best chip to buy.
It will come with higher base clocks and may be a good overclocker.

One need not overclock, but it is so easy and safe to do that I would at least keep that option open.
The big issue will be how many threads can YOUR games use.
Most games can not make effective use of more than 2-3 threads so I think 6 threads from a 9600K is about right for gamers.

I expect the top end I9-9900K(8 cores 16 threads) to be the top dog and be in very short supply initially. It will command a price premium to the early adopters.

 

[mdd1963]

Most rumors say end of August release for upgraded CoffeeLakes...(9600K, 9700K, 9900K)

I'd say any estimates of 15% performance bumps are likely referring primarily to the applications which scale with a 25% core increase. I'm not expecting too much increase in gaming from a 100-200 MHz jump here and there, and, short of in the 2-3 games that scale well above 6 cores/12 threads, would be surprised to see anything other than a barely detectable boost equal to that achieved by the 8086K... (who knows, maybe they'll scale RAM speeds up a tad to a standard 2933/3200 MHz or something...)

 

[nyhcbri]

Im curious to see how the i7-8700k 6 core 6/12 threads compare to the 9700k 8 core 8 threads non hyper threading. Once i know that ill make my decision. Now that the new z390 boards have been announced ill be waiting for that anyway

 

[jerrylee22]

Realize that you can always wait for the newer product - it will always be a little better. If you do this, you'll never actually get anything though! Relate it to this: you recently got an NVIDIA 10 series card instead of waiting for the 11 series because it's worth it right now and there's no guarantee how better the new ones will be, how expensive they will be, or when they'll even be released.

I also recently upgraded, from the 970 to the 1080 Ti, and with my 8th gen i7 8700k, the bottlenecking from my old i5 4690 [a little better than 4570] is gone and performance has actually increased substantially. From my experience, I'd say it's well worth it. My i5 was bottlenecking more than I thought it was, and if you use you computer a lot it's not worth waiting, especially since you may find it's better to get an 8th gen regardless.

I'd personally recommend the i7 8700k for gaming specifically and as many mentioned, the biggest boast of the new 9th Gen processors is more cores, which already aren't utilized to the fullest effect for gaming, and non-overclocked speeds are likely to be comparable to the 8086k (currently not worth the $$ from analysis).

I also didn't see myself as an overclocker, but once I got an i7 8700k I was able to safely overclock it to 4.7 or 4.8ghz on six cores very quickly and easily without really changing any default settings. Despite increased overclocking capabilities, the i7 8700k also has better stock clocks (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_Lake). It will run a little hotter [95W] than your current i5 [84W] (even more-so if overclocked) so make sure you have a decent cooler. Even my old Hyper-212 Evo was NOT getting close to thermal throttling during normal use [peak 86C during "normal" stress tests], but I wouldn't recommend it long term.

Also realize that the processor could be a little overkill depending upon what you're doing this year, but this is a great thing for longevity, and the higher price might make it a more worthwhile investment. You might pay a bit extra now, but the extra performance, assurance of no bottlenecks, and extended amount of time it will perform to snuff might be worth it you.

Of course, it's always up to you, I personally spent a lot of time looking into specifications and benchmarks and found it's the best for what I need it for: price-performance-longevity. Everybody's different, and in some ways it's a "bandwagon" best selling CPU at the moment, but that's because it's currently the "best" for what a lot of people want. I've even heard about this from several different professional "influencers", but of course formulated my own opinion.
Some personal "Ultra" CPU performance in games (performance could vary greatly based on clock speed and graphics settings):
GTA-V 15-30% intermittent peak to %50 CPU usage
Rise of The Tomb Raider often 30-60% with peaks of 80-90's% during initial renders.
In general, it seems almost three times my last i5.