Upgrade is in order. i7 3930k -> ?

Goal: High FPS gaming ( 144Hz, 1440p / 90+Hz VR ) for the next 5 years at LEAST.

I bought this system in april 2012 and only upgraded to SSD's and the GTX780 -> SLI -> GTX1080Ti.
Got the 16Gb DDR3 from the start as well.

Now, I realise I'm being bottlenecked. I finially want out.
To be fair, I never félt bottelnecked. This system always played very nice.
I bought the 3930k initially to run Arma 3 at top level and I didn't do much research.
Figuered ' ey, 6 cores, quad channel memory and decent CPU speed? Should run everything buttersmooth!'
Ha... If the games used the extra cores and memorylanes, sure. But not in 2012. Not for the next several years after that in fact.

One thing it DID help in, however, is negating the DDR3 bottleneck now-a-days.
Quad DDR3 or Dual DDR4. I'm sure there's a difference somewhere, but this system ate most, if not all games till now. So why upgrade? This board/cpu is simply old tech and I need play catch up.

So I'm wondering: I really like the 9900K(S).performance, but I think the chipset is quite limited.
Also, it's old tech. VEry nice, but old tech. The 10900k will have the same problem. Limited by the chipset.

Is there a HEDT equivalent that would help me out here?
I see there's a 10900X coming out, with all the bells and whistles of the HEDT chipset, but purely Freq. wise, it doesn't do 9900K(S) numbers, does it? Basically I'm paying more for a more future proof board and memory lanes, and I'm paying with pure FPS numbers.

Is it too early to compare these 2 and could I find my thing at ryzen gen 2?

TL;DR: not sure if I should go Intel i9 10900K , HEDT 10900X or Ryzel Gen 2/wait for 3. I can still wait.

 

Did you check out the reviews for ryzen 3950x? You will probably be able to use this processor fine for the next decade but you will have to change video cards to be able to keep playing new games at 2k@144hz. Get 32gigs of RAM since they are cheap now.

I hesitate to recommend Intel these days since they seem to be vulnerable to exploits and fixes might reduce the performance of the cpu overtime.

 

You're not wrong, and I did check out the reviews. Not sure if I want to go more than 10 cores for now. Not many apps/programs I use, make use of the cores.
Also, and I forgot to mention this, I believe this gen Ryzen are the very last to use AM4. So that's a hard stop in potential upgrades there.

I am making it hard for myself, I realise. Just... there are so many options and yet it feels like we're on a point of change here.

 

shame u cant wait for untill 2021 for amd ryzen platform which should be am4+ or am5 which give u 4years worth of upgrades and bit of furtureprove

 

How is that a hard stop when even a $59 B450 board can use the 16 core cpu. I ditched my 3930k for even a 1500x setup back in Sep 2017.
Never regretted it, and in fact gone 1500x,1600, and now 2600x.

Even the 1500x felt alot better in gaming without even overclocking vs my 3930k that was @4.1 with 1866 ram.

 

Welcome to the real world, sorry to burst your bubble.
Nobody posseses 5 years vision in tech world with pinpoint accuracy.
A LOT can happen in those years to come, so somewhere some things have to change.

 

I still prefer Intel platform (not concerned by vulnerabilities).

I started to buy parts for new Intel rig, but I am still fine with current 4930k. I do not chase neither 100+Hz refresh rates nor 1440+ resolutions so I play modern games without bottlenecks.

 

@mbk1969 you seems to behave like a badger, you just don't care. Having some smart policies and some powershell skills you can really be ahead of some petty vulnerabilities.
you mad lad.

 

I am in the same boat, still running 3930k. Its a still decent chip, proved much better buy than quad cores back in the day. I was looking at 3600X but i want an 8c/16t cpu or it feels like i sidegraded.

Still looking and waiting and i recommend you do the same. This will be an interesting year.

 

I prefer Intel extreme/enthusiast platform because:
- I can use XMP profile to overclock the RAM;
- I can utilise 40+ PCI-E lanes having more robust performance avoiding chained PCI-E controllers;
- I can assemble the rig, install Win10 and play games without constant awaiting for new BIOS and chipset drivers;
- CPU cache memory is still needed and extreme CPUs have it in bigger chunks.

But of course if you like constant tweaking you better get AMD platform.

 

Mmm, I guess I could. I've waited so long, another year shant hurt.

I'm sure it is faster, more efficient, but like my options open and only upgrade once every few years. 5+ would be ideal.
Current gen is at it's last legs with DDR4. I don't upgrade to get faster IPC, but for the overall update in technology.

Sure thing, or... nothing much. Like the past 10 years for Intel.
A good, topline CPU/board will provide me with the ability of feeding these nice GPU's I keep buying every 3 years.
Keep a as steady framerate as possible.
Though perhaps less so, now that SLI is falling out of the picture.
But then data troughput options are nice, I'm not sure we're in need of much more for gaming for the coming 5 years.
We barely fill PCI-e 3 8x, Memory is blazing fast over several channels and games aren't thàt memory sensitive.
There's barely a difference in SSD performance going brand to brand for my intended use.
So I'm sure a good CPU/board will server me pretty good for 5 years.
I just want options and 'up there' performance.

I've looked at the exact same CPU as a temp. system. But temporary system in wait for a better age is rarely a good Idea, did it before with the Core infrastructure and that wasn't nice. Lost a lot of money there.
10c feels nice enough, but yeah, I might just wait another year

* AMD does have a XMP equivalent, no? And I believe it's more effective performance wise with Ryzen 3xxx than with Intel.
* PCI-e Lanes are indeed nice. Yet I don't expect to use them at the start.
* You're not wrong, but I remember Intel board needing new BIOS'ses as well, so I'm not sure here.
* True there, I have 12Mb on this oldie and that wasn't standard for a long time. I'm sure that helped for a time ^^. Then again, AMD has this just as well... what's it called? Gamer RAM? Works afaik.

 

I am not corporate user to be concerned by recent side channel vulnerabilities. I has no intellectual or financial property at home rig. And my home rig is not a server for huge network, so performance loss is not a concern either. I leave mitigations at default state and performance is still perfect for all my games.

 

Big reason I ditched X79. No native m.2 NVME for boot drives, DDR3, MGPU dying out. Whole setup felt like a waste anymore.

 

no point using nvme for a boot drive anyway.

 

Well, not a waste, I feel like it's still powerful. Like a 80's sportscar powerful. Nice engine sound and still rather fast but you have to fight it to make it go straight, has terrible MPG, good luck finding replacement parts that are compatible and no electronic aids what-so-ever.
But yes, it's how I feel.

Cable management . All I can think of, really.
I'm using a Asus Hyper M.2 x16 card for compatibility with NVMe / M.2 drives, but I still need one pesky Sata SSD as a boot drive.

 

what ram frequency do you have?

ARMA likes fast cpu and high ram speeds as well, it constantly communicates trough memory controller and yeah.. 2400mhz CL10 would be the best upgrade atm, I saw some ddr3 still selling and not tooo expensive either, you can resell them later np.
https://geizhals.eu/?cat=ramddr3&xf=15903_DDR3~254_2400~256_4x&sort=p#productlist


I've seen it myself too and this was just 2133 to 2400, by very cpu bound games up to 5-7fps difference, by some even more up to to 10, this was when I still benchmarked a lot.

 

Sounds like you should wait for DDR5 to arrive then. Neither Intel nor AMD have it yet so no point in considering your options right now.

I do very little tweaking with my Ryzen system (both desktop and HEDT). The only time I've updated the BIOS in the past year was for Matisse compatibility. Otherwise, I pretty much leave things alone.

At any rate, AMD's Threadripper supports XMP or its equivalent, has more PCIe lanes (and they're 4.0) and has more cache. Looks like it's right up your alley

 

There is the chipset. Which I still prefer from Intel. And PCI-E 4 offers benefit only for NVMe.

 

For the record, most consumer motherboards apart from basic OEM stuff can read an XMP profile.

40 PCI-express lanes from the processor isn't needed outside of dual or triple GPU setups, and those are for the most part the equivalent of peeing on a grease fire right now for support. You can attest to a RAID card needing some lanes (x8), but I had an LSI Megaraid on my Z97 system for a while until I got sick of the LONG boot times with it and pulled it out. It lives in a box now somewhere, but it didn't make but maybe a 2fps (margin of error) max difference going to x8 lanes on PCI-express 3.0. I couldn't otherwise see any difference. You'll easily find limits on mainstream systems if you use RAID cards, but outside of that (not to mention long boot times for that), you really shouldn't hit the limits. There's somewhere around 20 available CPU lanes and 20 available chipset lanes from a mainstream/enthusiast x570/x470 AM4 board (and on X570 they are PCI-E 4.0, the only consumer platform with it).

I assembled this x570 Asrock Phantom Gaming 4 + 32gb (2x16gb) Micron 3000mhz bargain-bin cl-15 memory + R7 3700X CPU + stock cooler + generic brand NVME drive (on sale!) without an issue with release day BIOS and whatever drivers were out there and didn't have any issue.
No bios updates - not even now. I updated the chipset drivers in December - though I reckon Windows handles a lot of that unless you tell it otherwise (I've shut it off). There's no boosting issues either.
...In before someone else says CHEAPEST X570 MOTHERBOARD that doesn't stink - it's actually pretty good - I'm very please - coming from a 20~25 year die-hard ASUS fan.

CPU Cache memory... ah yes, that, PLEASE OH PLEASE look at the Ryzen 3500X and up processors and see how much Cache Memory they have VS the intel processors in the same price bracket or even the next higher bracket. Then compare X299 chips to TRX40 socket/Threadripper 3000 chips. If you need cache memory the mainstream AMD chips often rival the HEDT intel chips. Yes, cache memory DOES make a difference. It keeps the CPU better / more consistently fed - if the scheduler is any good anyway.

I do lots of content production for 3D games and also play a lot of games on it. Does just fine and doesn't seem to bottleneck a 2070 Super from any test I can gather with this R7 3700x. Absolutely no overclocking on anything, no PBO stuff (precision boost overdrive), just left all on default in BIOS and pressed XMP profile button in BIOS to get proper RAM speed. Surely I could overclock the Micron memory to get more out of it and the CPU, but I have no time for overclocking when the processor overclocks by itself 100% stable. This is content creation, can't afford instability here.

Really, please do look at the AMD offerings, stop limiting yourself as that is how it appears to me (sorry if that's offensive).

(edited for clarity, tee hee)

Don't be chained to the 'it's not worth it' post. If you've had the machine 5 years or more, go ahead and buy an AM4 machine and be a happy camper. If you're just going to game it's fine. You obviously enjoy PC Hardware or you wouldn't be here. Treat yourself. Get either the 3700x or the 3900x, 32gb of memory (CL14 @ 3200mhz / CL16 @ 3600mhz should be considered 'optimal'), Ryzen like Micron memory, and X570 as you want obviously a newer platform to last years, any board is fairly good except the MSI MPG board which they cheaped out on the VRAM.
I upgraded from a 4790k @ 4.4ghz w/2400mhz 32gb CL-11 memory, and Sata SSD's in RAID. There's no comparison to how much you can do on these computers and how much smoother this is. Sure the 4790k (and the 3930k / 4930k) are still quite capable; but if you want to upgrade, then by all means DO! If coming from HEDT I would definitely go X570 not B450 as you will want those platform features for longetivity. Asus x570 WS PRO is beautiful, but the Asrock x570 Phantom Gaming 4 is cheap, has open-ended slots and an intel NIC, 8 sata ports, and does the job almost as well (you might not notice a difference).
If money is no consideration, then you should look to Threadripper 3960x/3970x, it absolutely puts the stomping on most anything available outside of server chips costing 5-digits - even in games it rocks - a far cry from what Threadripper 1xxx and 2xxx were in games. I would sure like to see cheaper chips available in the future for it though.
--Good luck!

 

@bobblunderton
I already wrote here - I am still fine with my Intel rig from 2012/2013. Thank you.