i9 9900K or i7 9800X for GTX 1080Ti SLI Gaming? (4k res btw)

[yeetgod]

I am interested in upgrading my aging i7 6700k and I am wondering whether the higher clock speed of the i9 would produce a better gaming experience than the ability for both cards to have access to 16 PCIe lanes. I am unsure which exactly would have a more substantial effect on performance considering the two processors are otherwise not that different as far as I can tell.  

[TrigrH]

5 minutes ago, yeetgod said:

I am interested in upgrading my aging i7 6700k and I am wondering whether the higher clock speed of the i9 would produce a better gaming experience than the ability for both cards to have access to 16 PCIe lanes. I am unsure which exactly would have a more substantial effect on performance considering the two processors are otherwise not that different as far as I can tell.  

The cpu will help significantly more than the pcie lanes.

[badreg]

At 4k, you're still GPU bound 99% of the time with either chip, so it won't matter.

 

Additionally, the bandwidth bottleneck with two cards is the SLI bridge, so the x8 is not a limiting factor.

[LamoidZombieDog]

I7-9800X is 20086 Speed

I9-9900K is 20145 Speed

Ryzen 7 1800X is 15390 Speed

AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 2700X is 16969 Speed

 

I7-9800X is 699.00 USD

I9-9800X is 529.99 USD

Ryzen 7 1800X is 349.00 USD

AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 2700X is 309.99 USD With RGB heatsync

 

go for the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 2700X its the best Value

[yeetgod]

Just now, LamoidZombieDog said:

I7-9800X is 20086 Speed

I9-9900K is 20145 Speed

Ryzen 7 1800X is 15390 Speed

AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 2700X is 16969 Speed

 

I7-9800X is 699.00 USD

I9-9800X is 529.99 USD

Ryzen 7 1800X is 349.00 USD

AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 2700X is 309.99 USD With RGB heatsync

 

go for the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 2700X its the best Value

I could not be less concerned with price so I'd go for an i9 according to this chart. Also could you provide a source for this? And did this info take into account SLI/Multi GPU setup?

[LamoidZombieDog]

a source of what? the speeds? or the Purchase Link?

 

13 hours ago, yeetgod said:

I could not be less concerned with price so I'd go for an i9 according to this chart. Also could you provide a source for this? And did this info take into account SLI/Multi GPU setup?

A source of what? the purchase link?

and yes it was

[Spotty]

The 1080Ti should run fine on x8 PCIe lanes each. It's really only once you get to the Titan V (and maybe the RTX 2080Tis??) that you begin to start seeing limitations of x8 and need x16. Gamers Nexus has done a piece on it that might interest you. https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/2488-pci-e-3-x8-vs-x16-performance-impact-on-gpus

If you run the 9900K at 5GHz the higher clock speed should help more than the PCIe bandwidth of the 9800x.

I'm surprised you're having performance issues in games at 4k resolution with the 6700K? I play 1440p 144hz with a 6700k and single 1080Ti and for the most part it's fine, though the CPU does start to struggle in some games at higher refresh rates. CPU should be able to handle 4k 60FPS just fine, though since you're running SLI 1080Tis you might be using a 4k 144hz panel like the Asus Swift PG27UQ?
What sort of games are you playing and what performance (FPS) are you seeing in those games? What level of performance are you aiming for?

[Jurrunio]

at 4K you're so GPU bottlenecked (Even with SLI), even 8700k will be sufficient.

[Jackson]

If you check "The bandwidth Issue" of this guide it's stated that there are in fact issues with x8/x8 vs x16/x16 and even x16/x8 in some games. 
There's also this video here that's linked in the same guide:

I think too few people actually own an SLI setup and perpetuate that x8 pcie 3.0 won't be saturated when outside tests seem to show otherwise.

[XR6]

Go for an i9 9900k.

Don't bother with SLI, it's useless. Few games support it, plus even if you do manage to find a supported game, it won't get as good performance as a more powerful single card. 

 

[yeetgod]

13 hours ago, Spotty said:

The 1080Ti should run fine on x8 PCIe lanes each. It's really only once you get to the Titan V (and maybe the RTX 2080Tis??) that you begin to start seeing limitations of x8 and need x16. Gamers Nexus has done a piece on it that might interest you. https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/2488-pci-e-3-x8-vs-x16-performance-impact-on-gpus

If you run the 9900K at 5GHz the higher clock speed should help more than the PCIe bandwidth of the 9800x.

I'm surprised you're having performance issues in games at 4k resolution with the 6700K? I play 1440p 144hz with a 6700k and single 1080Ti and for the most part it's fine, though the CPU does start to struggle in some games at higher refresh rates. CPU should be able to handle 4k 60FPS just fine, though since you're running SLI 1080Tis you might be using a 4k 144hz panel like the Asus Swift PG27UQ?
What sort of games are you playing and what performance (FPS) are you seeing in those games? What level of performance are you aiming for?

I just use a 4k 60Hz panel because one of those 4k 144Hz panels are quite a bit off of my budget. I am interested in upgrading my CPU because

firstly it's overclock is mediocre (Needs more than 1.4V for a somewhat stable overclock to 4.5Ghz when others online can reach 4.7 to 4.8 on the same sort of voltage).

 

Also, I feel that games like Assassin's Creed: Odyssey are extremely demanding on my hardware and I suspect my CPU might be bottlenecking my entire rig when I really struggle to reach 45 FPS at 1080p. to reach a reliable 55-60fps in 1080p I have to really bring low settings which just seems odd and frustrating considering the enormous price that came with 2 GTX 1080Tis (probably like more than $1,600 when considering shipping and taxes). Also to consider how capable these cards are supposed to be and then to see them struggle so much in running the game immediately suggests to me that 1. the game was optimized by a team of fucking apes and 2. the cpu might be a bottleneck. My computer has been able to handle dreadfully unoptimized games with no problem before, such as in Just Cause 3. The issue might just be limited to Assassin's Creed, but the fact that the game is very new brings me on to my next point.

 

In general my performance issue considering all the games I play are fine but I do expect the gaming requirements to just get more hard on my hardware and I am the sort of person that cannot stand to have to lower a setting in a game because I decided to make the switch to PC not just for the convenience and all the fancy lights and everything else but for the advantage over consoles in clear graphical superiority. For Assassin's Creed odyssey to give my computer a stroke leads me to believe that my older parts do need to be upgraded at this point to continue to use high settings in new games. The level of detail that is being put into games these days is  incredible and being able to experience it in the highest settings is a great experience. Right now I can reach a somewhat stable 60fps in Battlefield 1, Star Wars Battlefront 2, Beam NG Drive, GTA V, Skyrim Special Edition, and F1 2018. All of those examples except TES V SE were not able to get 60fps until I overclocked to 4.5Ghz and a lot of them still experience some amount of lag spikes and stuttering. I'm sure future titles are going to require more powerful hardware and I saw a significant performance increase when I upgraded my CPU from an i5-6500 to an i7-6700k (when I had a GTX-1060 3GB) and now I am seeing a noticable performance improvement since overclocking. I know that getting a more powerful CPU can have a real benefit to performance and upgrading to a higher end motherboard is probably not a bad idea considering my mobo is nearing it's fourth birthday. 

 

Considering that 8k and 4k 144Hz monitors will start to lower in price in a few years and triple A titles will only continue to get more demanding, I would rather upgrade my CPU right now before upgrading my graphics cards considering the enormous investment I have put into them. I'm sure I will replace them with a new top of the line graphics card whenever 8k or high refresh rate 4k panels become cheaper but you raise a good point on how the new Titan V or the RTX 2080 Tis might have more significant performance benefits from more pcie lanes so it makes it difficult to really gauge whether in the future the ability for cards to have x16 will or will not be more valuable than CPU clock speed when considering gaming performance. 

 

12 hours ago, 1kv said:

Go for an i9 9900k.

Don't bother with SLI, it's useless. Few games support it, plus even if you do manage to find a supported game, it won't get as good performance as a more powerful single card. 

first of all bud its a hot flex  and also there are nice fps benefits in most games I've played. The only game that had no improvement that I can think of is Assassins Creed Odyssey. Overall it is not as much of a waste as people say. Especially now in the new cards like the RTX 2080Ti an SLI setup is pretty good. 

 

13 hours ago, LamoidZombieDog said:

a source of what? the speeds? or the Purchase Link?

A source for the data you presented 

[Guest]

ryzen 5 2600

[yeetgod]

1 minute ago, ears_ears said:

ryzen 5 2600

over my dead body 

[Guest]

1 minute ago, yeetgod said:

over my dead body 

Por qué?

 

Actually I take it back, keep your 6700k, you're not going to experience ANY fps boost with an i9

[yeetgod]

11 hours ago, ears_ears said:

Por qué?

I'm team blue lol 

 

11 hours ago, ears_ears said:

Por qué?

Actually I take it back, keep your 6700k, you're not going to experience ANY fps boost with an i9

you can keep ya abacus fam 

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, yeetgod said:

I'm team blue lol 

Fanboying a company, even if it was AMD, is stupid enough.

 

Fanboying a company that has repeatedly used anti-competitive tactics against their only competitor is beyond stupid.

[Spotty]

1 minute ago, yeetgod said:

I am interested in upgrading my CPU because

firstly it's overclock is mediocre (Needs more than 1.4V for a somewhat stable overclock to 4.5Ghz when others online can reach 4.7 to 4.8 on the same sort of voltage).

Yeah, I struggle a fair bit with the 6700k overclocking but not as badly as you. I could do 4.8GHz at 1.4V and stable in Cinebench, games, etc. To get to 4.9GHz I had to go to almost 1.5V just to get in to windows and had to go as high as 1.525V (temporarily, obviously) to get it to finish a Cinebench test. Once you hit that wall you hit it hard.
 

50 minutes ago, yeetgod said:

Also, I feel that games like Assassin's Creed: Odyssey are extremely demanding on my hardware and I suspect my CPU might be bottlenecking my entire rig when I really struggle to reach 45 FPS at 1080p. to reach a reliable 55-60fps in 1080p I have to really bring low settings which just seems odd and frustrating considering the enormous price that came with 2 GTX 1080Tis (probably like more than $1,600 when considering shipping and taxes). Also to consider how capable these cards are supposed to be and then to see them struggle so much in running the game immediately suggests to me that 1. the game was optimized by a team of fucking apes and 2. the cpu might be a bottleneck. My computer has been able to handle dreadfully unoptimized games with no problem before, such as in Just Cause 3. The issue might just be limited to Assassin's Creed, but the fact that the game is very new brings me on to my next point.

The recent Assassins Creed games do have some performance issues. I think no matter what CPU you have you will see those games underperforming compared to what the hardware should be capable of.

I exported some 1440p videos the other day using my 6700k and it took what felt like forever. So the 6700ks do start to show their age in some tasks. If you're the sort of person that likes to have the greatest hardware, then the 6700k is starting to get a bit old and the 8th gen and 9th gen CPUs walk all over it. If you're spending $700+ (CPU + Mobo) just because your system is underperforming in Assassins Creed then I think you may be wasting your money and you may be no better off at the end of it.

Out of curiosity, have you tested how Assassins Creed runs with SLI disabled?
What is the specs of the rest of your system? Motherboard? RAM?

[yeetgod]

1 minute ago, Spotty said:

Yeah, I struggle a fair bit with the 6700k overclocking but not as badly as you. I could do 4.8GHz at 1.4V and stable in Cinebench, games, etc. To get to 4.9GHz I had to go to almost 1.5V just to get in to windows and had to go as high as 1.525V (temporarily, obviously) to get it to finish a Cinebench test. Once you hit that wall you hit it hard.
 

The recent Assassins Creed games do have some performance issues. I think no matter what CPU you have you will see those games underperforming compared to what the hardware should be capable of.

I exported some 1440p videos the other day using my 6700k and it took what felt like forever. So the 6700ks do start to show their age in some tasks. If you're the sort of person that likes to have the greatest hardware, then the 6700k is starting to get a bit old and the 8th gen and 9th gen CPUs walk all over it. If you're spending $700+ (CPU + Mobo) just because your system is underperforming in Assassins Creed then I think you may be wasting your money and you may be no better off at the end of it.

Out of curiosity, have you tested how Assassins Creed runs with SLI disabled?
What is the specs of the rest of your system? Motherboard? RAM?

I'm not really upgrading just for Assassin's creed but rather to ensure that I can handle future titles that are going to eventually be just as demanding as assassins creed. I have actually tried disabling SLI and I do not think the results were really any different. my remaining pc specs are a corsair Hx850i, 16 GB 2133 Mhz, and an Asus Z170 pro gaming/aura 

 

[Spotty]

2133MHz RAM is on the slow side, especially considering the high end specs of the rest of the system. You might be able to overclock the memory a little bit. I did see a youtube video of 2133mhz vs 3000mhz in an assassins creed game give some performance variance, but can't remember if it was Odyssey or Origins. I'll see if I can find the video again.
 
Edit:
I think it was the Origins video I was thinking of here which was with an i7 7700k:

But I did find an Odyssey video as well which does show some performance variance with memory speed, however the caveat is this test was with Ryzen CPU which does benefit from faster memory speeds.

<Video removed>

 

Found the one for Odyssey that is tested with an Intel i7 8700k instead of a Ryzen CPU.

Edited January 6, 2019 by Spotty
Videos

[yeetgod]

15 minutes ago, Spotty said:

2133MHz RAM is on the slow side, especially considering the top notch specs of the rest of the system. You might be able to overclock the memory a little bit. I did see a youtube video of 2133mhz vs 3000mhz in an assassins creed game give some performance variance, but can't remember if it was Odyssey or Origins. I'll see if I can find the video again.

I've considered upgrading my ram in the past but the prices were pretty high. While ram is cheaper now, it still is more expensive than I'd like, and I will probably just upgrade my CPU and mobo first and wait for prices to drop because I think I can live with my current memory speed. I am very interested in that video you are talking about tho 

 

Edit:

oh shit I'm really surprised how much of a difference there is in performance, thanks for sharing the videos dog 

[Spotty]

13 minutes ago, yeetgod said:

I've considered upgrading my ram in the past but the prices were pretty high. While ram is cheaper now, it still is more expensive than I'd like, and I will probably just upgrade my CPU and mobo first and wait for prices to drop because I think I can live with my current memory speed.

I think if you are going to spend $550+ on a CPU, you should also invest ~$110-$120 on a 2x8GB kit of 3000MHz RAM. You could then sell your existing 2133MHz DDR4 on the used market and get a decent price for it that will cover a decent portion of the cost of upgrading the RAM. I imagine a 2x8GB 2133MHz kit could fetch $75 used??

[LamoidZombieDog]

11 hours ago, yeetgod said:

A source for the data you presented 

 

[yeetgod]

18 minutes ago, LamoidZombieDog said:

 

neato thanks

[LamoidZombieDog]

17 minutes ago, yeetgod said:

neato thanks

No Problem

[yeetgod]

15 hours ago, Spotty said:

I think if you are going to spend $550+ on a CPU, you should also invest ~$110-$120 on a 2x8GB kit of 3000MHz RAM. You could then sell your existing 2133MHz DDR4 on the used market and get a decent price for it that will cover a decent portion of the cost of upgrading the RAM. I imagine a 2x8GB 2133MHz kit could fetch $75 used??

After looking into how much performance higher mhz ram can provide, I think that it is certainly worth a look considering that I am already using pretty much the worst DDR4 ram out there (It is straight up just a pcb; also for some reason the second stick I bought came as a black pcb when the first one is green and my computer refused to boot initially so certainly getting higher end ram is a good starting point here). It gets the job done but there is probably significant performance that can be gained from upgrading as far as I can tell- upwards of 20 fps or more. Since DDR4 is going to be replaced by DDR5 in the near future, I am considering just waiting for DDR5 to arrive and save as much as possible for that time. I have heard of some reports suggesting that it should come later this year possibly and certainly by next year. Unless DDR5 is very expensive when it comes out (which is a real possibility), I'm probably going to wait on upgrading instead. The specs of DDR5 are looking really spicy; the initial (and least powerful) DDR5 ram seems to be better than even the fastest DDR4 memory and even faster sticks will follow that as well. Apparently 16GB 4600Mhz will be the low end for DDR5 so it seems worth it to wait on upgrading. 

 

Source for the DDR5 ram https://www.eteknix.com/ddr5-ram-expected-2019/