Dual boot - £1500 UK - Productivity/Gaming

[KeithD]

1. Budget & Location

United Kingdom. No hard budget, my aim is around £1000-1500. That's a big range because I will happily pay more if the value makes it worth, e.g. I may have the budget for a 2080 but I don't think it's worth it for me.

 

2. Aim

Dual booting Linux and Windows (or maybe one inside a VM if its not annoyingly slow). Mainly web browsing, progamming, Photoshop, a bit of video editing. I will also be gaming but it's not my priority.

 

3. Monitors

2 monitors, 1440p. They are only 60Hz, but I want the ability to power a 144Hz monitor in the future if I want it. I just game on one monitor, I don't think you can multiscreen on two monitors (?)

 

4. Peripherals

N/A

 

5. Why are you upgrading?

My PC (specs in sig) is 4.5 years old. My graphics card needs updating badly. I don't think my current CPU would bottleneck a 2070 - but please correct me if I'm wrong. Regardless, I want to upgrade as I'm five generations behind on processors, still on DDR3, can't use M.2 SSDs, etc.

 

I have no preference of Intel or AMD or Nvidia etc, just whatever makes sense.

[corrado33]

The 4790k is approximately equal in performance to the 8600 (non k) version (slightly worse, but better than the 8500). (EDIT: This is for single core performance, when looking at multi core it's ~ a 7700 (non k). When overclocked, it's even better. It's a hell of a CPU, no reason to upgrade.

 

Just buy yourself a new GPU and be happy. You can run linux in windows 10 now (seriously, it's SO easy, just search for "linux" in the windows store). It also depends on what you need to do in linux. If you need to launch a graphical interface, you'll be out of luck, but if you just need access to the shell, it's great.

 

 

[Fasauceome]

10 minutes ago, corrado33 said:

The 4790k is approximately equal in performance to the 8600 (non k) version (slightly worse, but better than the 8500). When overclocked, it's even better.

News to me, since the i7 7700 is worse than the 8600. Pretty sure this isn't true.

 

11 minutes ago, corrado33 said:

It's a hell of a CPU, no reason to upgrade.

This is true though. Still an admirable performer, especially for 4k gaming, which is probably a good performance target with something like a 1080 ti.

 

What I do recommend is a new power supply, and yeah you can use m.2 on many Z97 motherboards, but swapping one out with your current board probably doesn't make much sense for value, so a SATA SSD will work. Also, get your hands on 32GB of DDR3, helpful for video and photos editing.

[Neo-revo]

15 minutes ago, KeithD said:

I have no preference of Intel or AMD or Nvidia etc, just whatever makes sense.

have you tried running a VM in your current build?

 

Corrado33 makes a decent point. and  if you are not doing serious work in both at the same time you should be able to do it with your current hardware  GPU asside

 

You have decent ram speed as well, are you experiencing virtual memory issues? 8Gb is a lot (or not, depending on how you use your system)  I would sugggest adding more to ease the VM's in more easily.

 

 

If you are deadset on a upgrade  i would highly suggest some thing from the ryzen line, they offer very competitive multi thread performance vs cost.  could get a 8 or 12 core from AMD with hyper threading (SMT) that you could use as a server for vm's within a main system.

[KeithD]

Thanks for the responses.

 

I'm not massively up-to-date with how "modern" advances (DDR4, M.2, etc.) translate into tangible performance gains. I don't find my current PC to be slow, but I have no gauge as to how much faster is possible. If I can spend £1000 and see a marked improvement in performance, it could well be worth it for me.

 

@corrado33 I honestly haven't played around with WSL. I've been hoping to ditch Windows entirely but as it were I still need it for now. I think I misunderstood exactly what WSL is capable of, I'll give it a try and see if it can do what I want.

 

@fasauceome If I upgraded to a 2070, do you reckon I would need a new PSU?

 

@Neo-revo i5-9600K is £240 and Ryzen 2700X is £300 - would you take the Ryzen for those prices? I assume I would gain some money back from an AMD mobo if things haven't changed.

 

Thanks once again.

[Fasauceome]

1 minute ago, KeithD said:

If I upgraded to a 2070, do you reckon I would need a new PSU?

It's just that a 5 year old PSU is getting on in years. Not really the fact that the 2070 is too demanding.

[corrado33]

29 minutes ago, fasauceome said:

News to me, since the i7 7700 is worse than the 8600. Pretty sure this isn't true.

 

Crap, you're right, I was looking at the single core performance. 

 

With that said, the 4790k outperforms the 7700 (non k) version according to geekbench, passmark, and userbenchmark. 

[Fasauceome]

7 minutes ago, corrado33 said:

geekbench, passmark, and userbenchmark.

At stock clocks, single threaded cannot be better on the 4790k than the 7700. A 200MHz advantage wouldn't yield that. Geekbench didn't list their OC figure, and everyone knows userbenchmark is only to be trusted for super general figures. Here's what online reviewers like GamersNexus have determined:

7th gen Intel beats Ryzen.

Ryzen beats 4th gen Intel.

Therefore, 4th gen i7 can't beat 7th gen i7 (unless CPUs have become rock paper scissors).

While I do really like the 4790k, it's not really realistic to suggest a CPU that came out almost 5 years ago beats Intel's newest lineup in any real way (core for core anyway)

[corrado33]

5 minutes ago, fasauceome said:

At stock clocks, single threaded cannot be better on the 4790k than the 7700. A 200MHz advantage wouldn't yield that. Geekbench didn't list their OC figure, and everyone knows userbenchmark is only to be trusted for super general figures. Here's what online reviewers like GamersNexus have determined:

7th gen Intel beats Ryzen.

Ryzen beats 4th gen Intel.

Therefore, 4th gen i7 can't beat 7th gen i7 (unless CPUs have become rock paper scissors).

While I do really like the 4790k, it's not really realistic to suggest a CPU that came out almost 5 years ago beats Intel's newest lineup in any real way (core for core anyway)

So.... two companies that are literally built on testing CPUs (and have test results TENS OF THOUSANDS of CPUS) is less trustworthy than a youtuber who has tested... at most... a dozen of a single chip? Yes, I know geekbench does allow OC. 

 

Cinebench is the one outlier who puts the 7700 ahead of the 4790k, by ~45 points, which would EASILY be made up by overclocking.

[Fasauceome]

2 minutes ago, corrado33 said:

So.... two companies that are literally built on testing CPUs (and have test results TENS OF THOUSANDS of CPUS) is less trustworthy than a youtuber who has tested... at most... a dozen of a single chip? Yes, I know geekbench does allow OC. 

Well, userbenchmark is just that, users benchmark their equipment. This leaves a lot of room for imprecise data. And like I said, if geekbench posted a head to head with their OC data, it would make more sense, but without that, it doesn't make for a real good comparison. What does make for good comparison is people benchmarking game performance or other types of performance, outlining their testing methodology, and then publishing it.

[corrado33]

Just now, fasauceome said:

Well, userbenchmark is just that, users benchmark their equipment. This leaves a lot of room for imprecise data. And like I said, if geekbench posted a head to head with their OC data, it would make more sense, but without that, it doesn't make for a real good comparison. What does make for good comparison is people benchmarking game performance or other types of performance, outlining their testing methodology, and then publishing it.

So... like... passmark which publishes their testing methods and has different results for OC'ed chips and stock chips?

[Fasauceome]

2 minutes ago, corrado33 said:

So... like... passmark which publishes their testing methods and has different results for OC'ed chips and stock chips?

Passmark does the same thing as userbenchmark, they outsource their testing, nowhere is a testing methodology outlined when you compare 2 chips.

Again, 4.2GHz on really old, 28nm haswell vs 4.0GHz on 14nm kaby lake, doesn't make logical sense for the 4790k to win at stock speeds.

[corrado33]

9 minutes ago, fasauceome said:

Passmark does the same thing as userbenchmark, they outsource their testing, nowhere is a testing methodology outlined when you compare 2 chips.

Again, 4.2GHz on really old, 28nm haswell vs 4.0GHz on 14nm kaby lake, doesn't make logical sense for the 4790k to win at stock speeds.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_test_info.html

 

And they also separate their overclocked and stock ships. 

 

Geekbench has an entire 14 page document describing their CPU workloads.

 

https://www.geekbench.com/doc/geekbench4-cpu-workloads.pdf

 

Sure it does. In single core tests the 4790k SHOULD beat the 8600 which I originally compared it to.

 

Stock speed of the 4790k is 4 ghz. Stock speed of the 8600 is 3.1 GHz.

 

This is why I'm so confused by people rushing to upgrade every CPU generation. Sure, this last one has thrown in more cores which is nice, but honestly 1150 and 1155 chips are still perfectly relevant. 

 

EDIT: The whole reason I"m arguing is because I literally just made a spreadsheet with every single benchmark I can find online for every single intel processor. While the newest ones are the best, they lose by a long shot in price/performance, and some of the previous generations high end and extreme chips still outperform the majority of the new chips. 

[KeithD]

I wouldn't be upgrading to a 7th gen, I'd be upgrading to a 6-core 9th gen (or an 8-core Ryzen) so there would have to be some benefits.

[Neo-revo]

6 hours ago, KeithD said:

Thanks once again

Well not at those prices.. go with what you feel will suit your needs,  i guess the value argument is only really valid if you want more than 6 physical cores.

 

yes you might save some of that money back out of a mobo buy, but again it mostly depends on what you want and its subsequent cost. i trust your own sourcing prices to the end destination. that VAT taxes i never really understood.  how is a company selling you something counts as adding value (other than selling something someone wants)

 

But again it depends on the chipset/model/brand  Recently i almost bought a threadripper, until i thought about it some more and realized i'd end up spending 1-2g more after all the parts were considered. And completely negate the 1920x savings of almost 500$