When to upgrade my pc

[Philbobaggins11347]

Need to know when to upgrade my current pc build. Right now I have an i5 4690k paired with a gtx 980 that a friend gave me. I'm looking to upgrade to the z390 platform and get an i5 9600k, which I deemed better suited for my needs and budget than trying to stretch and get an i7 8700k. I was wondering if I should go ahead and go on this upgrade, or if I should wait for the market to change. By this I mean that I'm pretty unaware of any new cpu news and releases that are coming soon, so I guess my question is, since I can do it now, should I go ahead and upgrade my pc? And if not, why?

 

[wowmow]

now would be a pretty good time, next gen intel may come later this year though but there isn't any real proof.

 

[mikewinddale]

I'd at least wait until CES in about a week. AMD is going to formally announce the 3rd generation Ryzen, which is rumored to go up to the Ryzen 9 3850X with 5.1 GHz boost and 16 cores for $499. Even the midrange Ryzen 5 3600X will have 8 cores at 4.8 GHz boost for $229. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-ryzen-3000-series-matisse-specs,38310.html

Meanwhile, the highest Intel CPU (that isn't HEDT) is the Core i9-9900K, with 8 cores at 5.0 GHz for $499.

So you might be able to get a Ryzen 9 with twice as many cores as the Core i9, but the same clock speed, for the same price.

At the very least, Intel might have to slash prices on the Core i9 once the Ryzen 9 is announced.

 

[Philbobaggins11347]

I'd at least wait until CES in about a week. AMD is going to formally announce the 3rd generation Ryzen, which is rumored to go up to the Ryzen 9 3850X with 5.1 GHz boost and 16 cores for $499. Even the midrange Ryzen 5 3600X will have 8 cores at 4.8 GHz boost for $229. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-ryzen-3000-series-matisse-specs,38310.html

Meanwhile, the highest Intel CPU (that isn't HEDT) is the Core i9-9900K, with 8 cores at 5.0 GHz for $499.

So you might be able to get a Ryzen 9 with twice as many cores as the Core i9, but the same clock speed, for the same price.

At the very least, Intel might have to slash prices on the Core i9 once the Ryzen 9 is announced.

Do you really think price cuts would trickle down? I wish I had been paying attention in the past but I don't know if that's happened with previous ryzen releases. What do you know about that? Reason I'm somewhat impatient is because I want to get parts ordered and in before I start back to school next Tuesday.

 

[mikewinddale]

Oh, then yeah, if you're in a hurry, then sure, go ahead and buy now.

One thing I will say is that Intel seems to change its socket and chipset compatibility constantly, so you'll have a limited upgrade path. Meanwhile, AMD has promised to support AM4 until 2020. (I'm not sure if that's until January 1, 2020 or December 31, 20202.)

So if you buy a Ryzen, you'll have a more certain upgrade path. By contrast, if you go Intel, you might find that next year, Intel has released a new socket and chipset that isn't backwards compatible with the previous one.

Intel processors tend to have higher clock speeds and IPC (instructions per clock), while AMD Ryzen tends to have more cores for a given price range. So for the price of a Core i5-9600K with 6 cores at 4.6 GHz boost, you could also get a Ryzen 7 2700 with 8 cores at 4.1 GHz boost. Typically, the Intel will be faster at lightly-threaded applications where clock speed is more important than threads, whereas the Ryzen will be faster at more heavily-threaded applications where more threads are more important than clock speed. If you're running a program that can take advantage of 8 cores, then the Ryzen's extra 2 cores more than make up for its lower clock speed. Benchmarks typically show Intel winning at games while AMD wins at things like scientific programs, encoding, and video editing. But they're both pretty close, neck-and-neck.

Here's a review where the Core i5-9600K and Ryzen 7 2700X appear in the same chart. (The 2700X is just a 2700 with a slightly higher turbo clock of 4.3 GHz.) https://www.anandtech.com/show/13400/intel-9th-gen-core-i9-9900k-i7-9700k-i5-9600k-review

So the Core i5-9600K looks like it would be plenty good. But just FYI, that's what AMD is up to.

If you decide to go AMD, your chipset choices are X470 and B450. The two are almost identical, just with a slightly different number of PCIe lanes and SATA ports. So if you want to save money, check out Ryzen + B450 and compare the prices to your Intel parts. https://www.kitguru.net/tech-news/leo-waldock/amd-b450-chipset-preview-x470-features-at-a-lower-price/