Question What CPU should I switch to?

[Stoio]

A year or two ago I built my first pretty budget pc and I think that I have to upgrade.

I think that I want to upgrade my CPU asap but I'm having a hard time deciding what to switch to. I'm trying to keep things as budget as possible, I've found a used i7 9700k for sale for a decent price but I'm not really sure if its a good choice.
I wanted to ask more experienced pc enthusiasts what would be better: to carry on with a better 1151 socket CPU or spend a little more and switch to AMD

My Specs:
i3 9100f
MSI 1650 Super Ventus XS
24GB DDR4

 

[Lucky_SLS]

both your gpu and cpu are budget tier options. it would be difficult to say how much of an improvement you might see when your gpu could also be holding you down.

try to lower the gpu settings in the games and see if have an fps increases to your current settings. this will give you a good indication which is bottlenecking your game performance more.

would you mind telling us the budget for your upgrade, cpu cooler, case, psu make and model? also the games you play and want to play...

 

[Misgar]

The 9700K provides twice as many cores as the 3100F (8 vs 4) and a decent speed increase, but at the expense of higher power consumption (95W vs 65W). If you have a very basic motherboard, the VRMs may get a bit warm with the 9700K. Do have any plans to overclock the 9700K? If so you might need a new heatsink if the motherboard can cope.

For programs that benefit from extra cores, the 9700K is a good upgrade at minimal cost. Switching to another socket type (AMD or Intel) will probably cost more, because you have to replace the motherboard as well as the CPU.

 

[Stoio]

My GPU doesn't really reach high percentages when playing so I think that it i3 is too weak + those 4 cores don't really hold up well by today's standards. My CPU is at 90% - 100% in a lot of games and its causing some very bad freezes.

I have the stock intel cooler I was going to upgrade but then I saw that my i3 doesn't hit 70C at all its mainly at 60C - 65C.

PSU - DeepCool 500w DE500

My budget is around 500 euros but if I have to spend a little more to future proof it then I will. I want to play more modern games like warzone 2.0 and your standard single player games

 

[Lucky_SLS]

Would german links work for you? I am think something like this:

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D 3.4 GHz 8-Core Processor (€289.00 @ Mindfactory)
CPU Cooler: Thermalright Phantom Spirit 120 SE 66.17 CFM CPU Cooler (€48.90 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Motherboard: Gigabyte B550 AORUS ELITE V2 ATX AM4 Motherboard (€116.90 @ Alza)
Power Supply: Asus ROG Strix 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply (€94.92 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Total: €549.72
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-06-09 12:42 CEST+0200

 

[Stoio]

Would german links work for you? I am think something like this:

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D 3.4 GHz 8-Core Processor (€289.00 @ Mindfactory)
CPU Cooler: Thermalright Phantom Spirit 120 SE 66.17 CFM CPU Cooler (€48.90 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Motherboard: Gigabyte B550 AORUS ELITE V2 ATX AM4 Motherboard (€116.90 @ Alza)
Power Supply: Asus ROG Strix 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply (€94.92 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Total: €549.72
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-06-09 12:42 CEST+0200

Yes they would. Thank you this looks pretty good!

 

[geofelt]

Try this simple test:
Run YOUR games, but lower your resolution and eye candy.
This makes the graphics card loaf a bit.
If your FPS increases, it indicates that your cpu is strong enough to drive a better graphics configuration.
If your FPS stays the same, you are likely more cpu limited.

How good do you need to be?
9700K will add some processing threads that helps multiplayer games.
But, the single thread performance will be similar, and that is what games ned most.


Anything faster will involve the expense of changing out your motherboard.
My usual advice is for Intel users to upgrade to Intel, and for AMD users to upgrade to amd.

I might suggest a I3-13100 which is about 2x as fast as your 9100f. About 150 euros.
A B760 motherboard would also be about 150 euros.
You can keep your 24gb of ddr4 ram. Intel is not sensitive to ram speeds.

On the ryzen side, prices and performance will be similar.
Since most games are single thread performance sensitive, check out the cpu-z bench and look at the single thread performance rating.
13100 scores 678. Your 9100f should be around 475. The 4790K single thread performance is similar

 

[Stoio]

Try this simple test:
Run YOUR games, but lower your resolution and eye candy.
This makes the graphics card loaf a bit.
If your FPS increases, it indicates that your cpu is strong enough to drive a better graphics configuration.
If your FPS stays the same, you are likely more cpu limited.

How good do you need to be?
9700K will add some processing threads that helps multiplayer games.
But, the single thread performance will be similar, and that is what games ned most.


Anything faster will involve the expense of changing out your motherboard.
My usual advice is for Intel users to upgrade to Intel, and for AMD users to upgrade to amd.

I might suggest a I3-13100 which is about 2x as fast as your 9100f. About 150 euros.
A B760 motherboard would also be about 150 euros.
You can keep your 24gb of ddr4 ram. Intel is not sensitive to ram speeds.

On the ryzen side, prices and performance will be similar.
Since most games are single thread performance sensitive, check out the cpu-z bench and look at the single thread performance rating.
13100 scores 678. Your 9100f should be around 475. The 4790K single thread performance is similar

I am CPU limited, my FPS stays the same when I lower settings the FPS even increases when I increase the settings, I think that is because my GPU isn't really pushed to the max with the 9100f. I will probably end up upgrading to a 9700k since I'm on a tighter budget and a better cooler since its prone to get a little warmer than the 9100f.

In the future I'll switch to the AMD 5 platform, its not really possible right now because of the budget because it will get pricy having to switch the ram as well.