Which cpu better for gaming.

[george.tancre]

I currently have an i9 7980xe with TWO 2080ti in SLI....for Christmas my girlfriend bought me an i9 9900k not knowing anything about cpus or computers.
From what I’ve heard, 9900k is better for gaming and gives better FPS.
Is this true? A cheaper processor by 1500 bucks pretty much is better than a monstrous i9 7980?? If so then should I swap to the 9900k??

 

[kanewolf]

Games don't care about 18 cores (which the 7980xe has). They care about clock speed. The 9900K has a much higher base clock and a higher boost clock. Your 7980xe has a lot more cache and more memory bandwidth (if you have 4 DIMMs). If you do rendering or other tasks that CAN use the additional cores, then keeping your 7980 could be worthwhile. If you ONLY game then the 9900K will be faster.

 

[shmoochie]

It's not going to be a lot better, but you'll probably get some minor fps gains. You have more than enough cores in either chip for gaming, so it mostly comes down to clock speed. The 9900k boosts to 5.0 while the 7980xe only boosts to 4.2.

https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i9-9900K-vs-Intel-Core-i9-7980XE/4028vsm352013

 

[Darkbreeze]

Couple of things on that.

For one, that 9900k is NOT going to work in your motherboard. Completely different sockets and generations.

For another, the multithreaded performance of the i9-7980XE is better, by a lot, while the single core performance of the 9900k is better, by a little.

There are a few ways to look at this but in pretty much all of them other than the multithreading, which is probably not well supported beyond what the 8/16 of the 9900k can already do anyhow, the 9900k is the better option. Unless of course you were to disable hyperthreading on the i9 7980xe and build a custom water cooled loop that was capable of supporting a full time 4.5Ghz or so overclock. Then single core performance would probably be about the same while the multithreaded performance would probably be better on the i9 7980xe because actual cores tend to perform better than hyperthreads do.

Honestly it's just about a toss up between those two CPUs with neither of them really being that much better than the other from a gaming standpoint as to make one jump out. Any game that can REALLY use a bunch of cores MIGHT do better on the i9 7980xe but I don't know of any games that can use more than 16 threads so the 32 threads of the i9 7980xe is pretty much wasted on a gaming machine.

Regardless, I'd return the 9900k unless you are interested in also purchasing a new motherboard and cooler. Depending on what cooler you have now it may not even be compatible with the LGA 1151 socket, or might require a different mounting adapter to be compatible.

For some applications, especially those in the enterprise sector or for server applications, then the i9 7980xe would shine and be a better option.

What the clock speed of each of those is really isn't the MOST important factor, although it is A factor. The fact that it has a higher clock speed WITH marginally higher IPC, that does make a difference for anything that benefits from stronger cores more than it does from multiple cores.