TR Forums

Been waiting to pull trigger to upgrade from 4790k rig . Primarily high end gaming, and surfing web with online purchases. So was going to get 1700x and buy high end memory and m2 it. But I see the 8700k is about to drop. So which one? Im not an Intel fan boy so feel free to express opinion. Thanx for input.

The i7 8700K is more suited for your particular use case than the 1700x. An i5 8600K, however, should offer the almost exactly the same experience as the 8700k in your workloads and costs significantly less.

For gaming the 8700K will be unbeatable. The 8600K would be pretty much the same in games but in the grand scheme the i7 isn't that much more expensive.

Neither. More info needed. Wait for the reviews. Wait for the price drops.

Compared to the £300 7700K, the £320 1700X does decently, I'd call it swings and roundabouts. We have leaks which say the 8700K will come in at £360; it's a safe bet that it will be better than the 7700K and the 1700X at that price.

But the 1700X is £40 = 12.5% cheaper already, and probably will drop in price within a week or 2 of the launch. Without knowing the rest of your system and the budget, and without seeing benchmarks, who knows if a £290 1700X would be a better choice than a £360 8700K...

Possibly (probably) the 1800X will get cheaper, as it could struggle to be £430 if the 8700K comprehensively beats it. And ofc the Ryzen 2xxx series is scheduled for February, only 4 months away...

Also, and I know it's a silly question, but what is there about a 4790K that doesn't cut the mustard?

I'm going to agree with Topinio -- you need an option in your poll for "wait for the 8700K reviews before deciding." Right now we're only able to make educated guesses. In 4 days we'll have hard data.

For a pure gaming rig, Intel, always. At least 4 physical cores of course. Note that I said "Intel", not "8th generation". You don't necessarily need the newest generation.

As far as the 1700-non-x, that might be more future-proof if you do anything much other than games. If you don't upgrade that often AMD might be a better move.

Of the two I'd say get the Intel unless launch reviews are really crummy, since it's a more stable platform and typically does better for gaming where you need a smaller number of faster/better cores. Where Ryzen gaming makes sense is when you've got around a $200 budget and looking at the 1600/1600X against an i5, not that the i5 is bad but there's something to be said for a little bit of future proofing with six cores versus four.

Really though, a 4790K build isn't going to see major performance improvements for gaming and general use. Two extra cores are a good investment long term, but it'll be a while yet before it really starts to take effect. If it was me I'd probably get a new GPU or more/better solid state storage, and do the CPU after one or two more iterations.

While waiting for reviews is always wise, we can fairly well bracket where price and performance of the 8700k is going to wind up.

We could also use an explanation of what 'high end gaming' means- for example, there'd be little reason to upgrade your CPU if you're not trying to get more than 60Hz solid (so frametimes <16.6ms), regardless of resolution. As suggested above, that money would be far better spent on a GPU upgrade so long as your current i7 is going strong.

For the topic question: as also stated above, for high-end gaming, the 8700k very well should be king upon release. It'll have the best single-thread performance (if only by a margin over similarly clocked i7 6700k/7700k CPUs), but will have that performance across six cores, which alleviates any advantages that the Ryzen 7 CPUs had with more cores but less single-thread performance in gaming.

Further, because you're at high single-thread performance on six cores, the 8700k is rightly expected to outperform the Ryzen 7 CPUs in the greater majority of multi-threading tasks, while it is generally expected to be priced at the low end of that CPU family.

What's your current GPU?

Unless you're already running a GTX 1080 or better, the 4790K is a very decent gaming chip already. Money spent on a new CPU/Board/RAM isn't going to change your gaming performance significantly if you're likely to be GPU-bound in almost every game with a 4790K.

It's true that more cores helps in most modern engines, but the combination of a very high clockspeed, good IPC and hyperthreading in the i7 means that the upgrade you've described is going to perform more like a sidegrade for gaming, and you'll only notice an improvement in tasks you haven't even mentioned, like encoding, rendering, compiling, and more workstation-like loads.

I'll echo what others have said. Intel is king of gaming with the i7. If you haven't OC'ed you can do that and get quite a few more years out of your chip. Either get a better GPU if you don't have a high-end one or just save your money for a year or two.

Why wait for reviews where there are already?
I can assure you (since I am Romanian) that lab501 guys are professional, and actually they are very well regarded on the OC community.
Here: http://lab501.ro/procesoare-chipseturi/ ... -gaming/11
8600K is the answer. But really, the delta between 4790K and the new CPUs is so small that it not worth upgrading.

I'm not sure I'd upgrade. You've got a single architectural generation going Haswell to Skylake, and then just a bunch of clock speed and now core count bumps.

You should be able to hit at least 4.7 GHz on your Devils Canyon chip, which makes Kaby Lake 7700k at 4.9 GHz look boring.

Unless you're one of those "144 Hz or bust" people, you've got several more years of usable gaming from your Haswell refresh.

If you are serious about being CPU-limited, how about you tell us THE LIST OF GAMES along with the rest of your system specs, including your GPU and monitor and current overclock? That way we can help diagnose what your bottleneck is

I'm not really sure the 8700K is going to have the single threaded crown if you're comparing a stock 7700k vs 8700k. I think the clock speed is enough to bump it down to second place behind the 7700K. Having said that, I'd personally rather have six cores that I can OC than four that I can OC, but that's just me. You should at least be able to expect Kaby Lake level single threaded performance at the same clock speeds though so there's that.



I would expect roughly the same performance as the 7700K for the most part, until you get to games that really utilize those cores. As others have said though, I think a GPU upgrade is really where the real bang-for-your-buck is. Might look into that route instead. The only reason I'd move on from Haswell is for the increased cores or the updated platform (and newer IGP).

All core turbo is 4.4GHz on the 7700k, while it's 4.3GHz on the 8700k, but the single-core turbos are 4.5GHz for the 7700k and 4.7GHz for the 8700k, and the four-core turbo on the 8700k is also 4.4GHz.

I don't see the 8700k losing any ground here to the 7700k, at stock speeds, and I'd take the higher single-core turbo as an indication that it may overclock better.

You can probably snatch the 1700X already at around $300 (see TRs Thursday deals) but further price decreases are likely. The 8700K is likely to be sold at a premium at launch and MBs are also probably going to be relatively expensive. Consider maybe $100 extra in total. I don't expect major problems at launch (the Z370 is not significantly different from the Z270).

There is no question, the 8700K is a faster chip vs the 1700X for gaming and probably equivalent for multithreaded loads (6 vs 8 cores but with better per-core perf). However, as others have said, the benefit from your current chip is going to be minimal. Looking at the (romanian) review that was posted in this thread, you can see that even in absurd resolutions (1080p), the 7700K would hit for example 120fps min / 250fps max and the 8700K would add 5 fps to that. The difference in 1440p or 4k will practically be non-existent.

If you want to game, save your money for a 1080Ti. You may decide to OC the 4790K, in which case you will probably obtain the same performance as a stock 8700K in most games.
If you have the upgrade itch and you already own a 1080Ti (or at least 1080), then get the 8600K and consider OC. If you money is not an issue, get the 8700K.

The major advantage of the Ryzen platform is that you are guaranteed at least 2 further generations of in-place upgrades, but nobody knows how these generations will do. Zen 2 and Zen 3 are quite far in the future.

8700K listings live in Australia this evening after work, converts out to USD$430 at the usual haunts. Deduct the GST (10%) plus Australia Tax (5%) it works out to be about USD$370.

I'll be interested to see how that compares to you guys across the pond!

Core i7-8700K is $380 at Newegg.
https://promotions.newegg.com/intel/17- ... dium=Email

8700K doesn't look to be so hot for the price point. It barely beats the 7800X at stock. I suspect that memory/cache bandwidth is an issue as well as thermal issues with driving to drive all six-cores at ~4.3Ghz. 1600X is able to pull ahead in workloads where extra cores count.

For low-thread workloads, it seems like 8350K is a more optimal choice for the price if you are willing to OC it. It shouldn't have any trouble hitting 4.5-4.8Ghz thanks to "Socket1151v2" and larger surface from "dark silicon". 5.0Ghz is possible if you are brave enough and have cooling for it.

Looks like you'll really get your answer in about 45 minutes. I'd just wait a tiny bit.

Camembert.

8350K looks damn expensive - until I realised you're not really buying an i3 anymore.

Guess that'll be my new hotness for customer builds, as it's price parity with 7350K here.

8700K is definitely my go to one if it is about gaming!

8350k is a sleeper in its price range. AMD has nothing that can compete against it 4 threads or lower. It should OC like a champ.

The extra two cores from its 7350k predecessor makes all of the difference.

It looks to me like the i5 8400 is a good buy unless you absolutely need more than 6 threads.

The all-core turbo isn't that high though. Its too bad no one is able to bring back the free BCLK overclocking that was available on some Skylake boards. An 8400 with the ability to overclock could be a monster of a CPU at a very reasonable price.

All that said... my 2500k has lasted so long, it makes cutting corners on a CPU purchase seem like less of a good idea. If my next chip lasts me 6+ years, a $150 price premium (to an 8700K) is only $25 per year...

Who am I kidding, I don't even need to upgrade yet!

ozzuneoj wrote:

It looks to me like the i5 8400 is a good buy unless you absolutely need more than 6 threads.

Just wait for the i5-8500, 8600, and 8600K numbers!

Krogoth wrote:

8700K doesn't look to be so hot for the price point. It barely beats the 7800X at stock.

But, why would you even make that comparison? The price delta in motherboard alone puts the 7800X at another 'price point'.

Comparing platform price points, the 8700K is unbeatable in gaming and as fast or faster in almost everything else at its price point.

Krogoth wrote:

8350k is a sleeper in its price range. AMD has nothing that can compete against it 4 threads or lower. It should OC like a champ.

The extra two cores from its 7350k predecessor makes all of the difference.

Now this one we can agree on .

However, I would caution against using it as a gaming CPU vs. the 8600k unless absolutely price-limited: having four non-HT cores is still a limitation for real-world and/or multiplayer gaming the same as it has been since about the release of the 4000-series, as HT helps keep maximum frametimes down by providing non-FPU resources to all of the other stuff that's running on a real desktop.

There are enough games from even 2015 onwards that bog down on traditional i5 4C/4T CPUs now. The XBone/PS4 era has taught developers to use 8 threads, and most of them are now doing it. i7 4C/8T is often much better, or any of the 8+ thread Ryzen options at similar prices.

What really matters in gaming is the framerate when the performance tanks in busy scenes. if an R5 or i7 can keep things above 60 and a old 4C/4T option is languishing in the 30's then it's yet more proof that quad core is (finally) no longer ideal.

MOSFET wrote:

ozzuneoj wrote:

It looks to me like the i5 8400 is a good buy unless you absolutely need more than 6 threads.

Just wait for the i5-8500, 8600, and 8600K numbers!

I'm keeping an eye on this thread.

https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/i5 ... g.2521222/

Supposedly some Asrock boards advertise fancy BCLK features again, so we'll see if anyone figures out how to make them work on locked CPUs. Another site got the bclk to 130Mhz on an i7 8700k with HT disabled to "simulate" overclocking on an 8400... but I have a feeling the unlocked nature of the chip is what allowed this to happen.

Airmantharp wrote:

Krogoth wrote:

8350k is a sleeper in its price range. AMD has nothing that can compete against it 4 threads or lower. It should OC like a champ.

The extra two cores from its 7350k predecessor makes all of the difference.

Now this one we can agree on .

However, I would caution against using it as a gaming CPU vs. the 8600k unless absolutely price-limited: having four non-HT cores is still a limitation for real-world and/or multiplayer gaming the same as it has been since about the release of the 4000-series, as HT helps keep maximum frametimes down by providing non-FPU resources to all of the other stuff that's running on a real desktop.

Outside of a few outliers, going beyond four threads yields little or no benefits to mainstream workloads and games. Unless you plan on streaming with the CPUs. It is them main reason why Intel never bother making a 6 core normal desktop SKU until pressure from Ryzen 7.