[SOLVED] What CPU upgrade path should I take?

[SteelStruck]

Hmm, so a few months ago, I bought a GTX 1650 super to put in my old machine with an i5-4440 and 12gb of 1666 MHz of DDR3 ram. But my CPU is definitely bottlenecking the 1650super especially in the type of games I play. So my question is should I buy an i7-4770 off of eBay for about 70$ or spend 320$ on an i5-10400 with an all-new motherboard and ram? (I could probably sell the old processor motherboard and ram for about 100-110$ on eBay, so the new platform would be more like 220$) I also know the i5-10400 is slightly overkill for a GTX 1650 super but I play a lot of CPU intensive games like Planet Zoo, and Mordhau. I also edit videos, not as a job but for local political campaigns I volunteer for, this is also my daily driver workstation pc.

 

[thefxgamingrules]

If you are buying a new motherboard and CPU, I'd personally suggest waiting for the Ryzen 5000 series to drop.

 

[Dj0gany]

Hmm, so a few months ago, I bought a GTX 1650 super to put in my old machine with an i5-4440 and 12gb of 1666 MHz of DDR3 ram. But my CPU is definitely bottlenecking the 1650super especially in the type of games I play. So my question is should I buy an i7-4770 off of eBay for about 70$ or spend 320$ on an i5-10400 with an all-new motherboard and ram? (I could probably sell the old processor motherboard and ram for about 100-110$ on eBay, so the new platform would be more like 220$) I also know the i5-10400 is slightly overkill for a GTX 1650 super but I play a lot of CPU intensive games like Planet Zoo, and Mordhau. I also edit videos, not as a job but for local political campaigns I volunteer for, this is also my daily driver workstation pc.

10400 is a really good deal.Even if its a bottleneck,when in the future you buy a better gpu,it would go along better.If u buy 4770 you would probably end up upgrading again in 2 years.

 

[Dj0gany]

If you are buying a new motherboard and CPU, I'd personally suggest waiting for the Ryzen 5000 series to drop.

i think it will be a bit more expensive.

 

[thefxgamingrules]

i think it will be a bit more expensive.

Well IMO Ryzen 3000 prices should drop and it would be a very compelling choice then.

 

[Dj0gany]

Well IMO Ryzen 3000 prices should drop and it would be a very compelling choice then.

I thought u were suggesting him to buy 5000 series cpu.My bad

 

[geofelt]

Your i5-4440 has 4 threads and a passmark rating of 4659 that is when all 4 threads are fully loaded.
The single thread rating is 1854. That is arguably the more important spec for cpu intensive games.

The i7-4770 alternative gives you 8 threads and a rating of 7023/2171

The 12 thread i5-10400 rating will be 12659/2605.
A much better upgrade, I think.
Most any lga1200 motherboard will do, plan on$80 or so for a B460 motherboard. Even a cheaper H110 will do.
On ram, intel does not need fast ram. $50 should buy you a 2 x 8gb ddr4 kit.

You could also consider the 8 thread i3-10100 which sells for $110 and has a rating of 8904/2649
It would perform about as well in games

 

[SteelStruck]

Your i5-4440 has 4 threads and a passmark rating of 4659 that is when all 4 threads are fully loaded.
The single thread rating is 1854. That is arguably the more important spec for cpu intensive games.

The i7-4770 alternative gives you 8 threads and a rating of 7023/2171

The 12 thread i5-10400 rating will be 12659/2605.
A much better upgrade, I think.
Most any lga1200 motherboard will do, plan on$80 or so for a B460 motherboard. Even a cheaper H110 will do.
On ram, intel does not need fast ram. $50 should buy you a 2 x 8gb ddr4 kit.

You could also consider the 8 thread i3-10100 which sells for $110 and has a rating of 8904/2649
It would perform about as well in games

For sure, the reason I am considering going with intel over AMD is that I can get away with cheaper ram and a cheaper motherboard.

 

[ttower2020]

Motherboards for AMD tend to be cheaper than the Intel ones, and RAM prices are Very low, and the difference between low and high sped ram can be as little as $10. I think AMD may have increased prices some for the 5000 series, but a decent mid-range board and CPU from AMD tends to be cheaper in my experience, at least for 2000/3000 series.

 

[groo]

I am in the process of getting a 1650 super for my i5-4440. I will likely upgrade to an AM4 (or 5 if its it out then) board with a low end CPU, then figure an upgrade to the CPU and memory at least once with a graphics upgrade or 2 before upgrading the board again.

I like AMD for long upgrade paths like that because they stick with their sockets for awhile. Inet has a new socket for every minor chip revision it would seem. When I got into the AM2 socket when it was brand new, I started out with one of the weakest CPU they ever made for that slot, like a single core at 1.2 ghz or something. Semperon 1900? I remember the only AM2 CPU worse was only ever mentioned in developing countries. they don't list either on wiki. I remember it being a step down from my Pentium 4 for raw power. It was out for such a little time and such garbage that I'm not surprised. It was a $40 place holder for my system, but it got me into the new chip socket and DDR2 memory. Had I gone with a S-939, I'd have never been able to upgrade the CPU, nor been able to upgrade the memory as far as I did on that board either. I upgraded that CPU twice. The second CPU was a bit more powerful than the best common S-939 chip. the last upgrade was more powerful than anything possible when I built the machine, and it was pretty cheap when I ended up buying it. That system served me for quite a few years without ever leaving me hopelessly obsolete. Graphics, I think I went OBG or an old PCI card from my P3, to something to the ATI 4850 I have in my current machine and drastically in need of an upgrade now. I might have jumped straight to the 4850. I couldn't carry over the previous machine AGP card, and I ended up selling that P4 machine complete, monitor and everything.

 

[xxxWARSPITExxx]

B550 and a Ryzen 3600 or 5600x . But find a deal on a B550 now before everyone else does the same.

 

[SteelStruck]

The reason I am going with an i5 10400 over a ryzen 5 3600 is that the i5 about 8% faster (on stock clocks) for 20$ less and I can pair the i5 with a cheaper motherboard without feeling like I am loosing out.

 

[SteelStruck]

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/ntKRx6 here is the ram and motherboard I would probably go with if I bought an i5-10400.

 

[InvalidError]

Well IMO Ryzen 3000 prices should drop and it would be a very compelling choice then.

I doubt it: Zen 2 and Zen 3 are made on the same 7nm process, so I expect AMD to move all the Zen 2 wafers it can to Big Navi, Zen 3, PS5, series-SX, etc. ASAP, which will likely translate to Ryzen 3000 supply drying up within weeks and their prices actually going up.

Zen 1/1+ prices crashed when Zen 2 launched because AMD still had to burn through its 16/12nm wafer agreements, so it had to continue selling them even if it had to do so at slight loss to avoid paying penalties for bailing out on its wafer commitments or writing excess wafers off altogether. Not the case with Zen 3.

 

[SteelStruck]

I doubt it: Zen 2 and Zen 3 are made on the same 7nm process, so I expect AMD to move all the Zen 2 wafers it can to Big Navi, Zen 3, PS5, series-SX, etc. ASAP, which will likely translate to Ryzen 3000 supply drying up within weeks and their prices actually going up.

Zen 1/1+ prices crashed when Zen 2 launched because AMD still had to burn through its 16/12nm wafer agreements, so it had to continue selling them even if it had to do so at slight loss to avoid paying penalties for bailing out on its wafer commitments or writing excess wafers off altogether. Not the case with Zen 3.

Interesting. I had no idea of this phenomenon.

 

[InvalidError]

Interesting. I had no idea of this phenomenon.

The joys of fabs-for-hire. If you have an on-going contract for 150k wafer sstarts month (wspm) on 16nm and launch new products on 12nm, you still have to do something with the 150wspm you bought until the commitment expires, same when you go from 12nm to 7nm.

The next time we may see heavily discounted AMD CPUs will likely be when Zen 4 launches on 5nm in very late 2021 where AMD will need to burn the remainder of its 7nm wafer commitments assuming 5nm yields are good enough to support an immediate transition.