Buy now or wait?

[Coopermar]

I am looking to upgrade my cpu from a i5 4460 to something at the top(thinking 9900k atm). Is it worth waiting for the expected comet lake processors? Or, should I just wait for black friday and buy a 9900k then? In other words, should I buy now? Or wait?

 

PS: I know I will have to upgrade my motherboard.

[Coopermar]

4 minutes ago, Genwyn said:

It’s just another small step up, might be able to snag the 9900K for cheaper when comet lake comes to market. 
Be wary of big ticket items around Black Friday, you watch prices on it rise on average all October and November and then Black Friday comes around and it drops back down to msrp where it was in September.

While the 9900k is still obviously a big ticket item, do you think they will still stick to that strategy considering they are now over a year old? It would seem to me that they would drop the price considerably because of the massive chunk of market share AMD has seemingly stolen from them. I feel like they would be stupid to not drop the price.

[Coopermar]

2 minutes ago, Genwyn said:

That’s what I mean, it’s kind of a double edged sword. Chances are the 9900K will be cheaper due to the comet lake release, and it will be a better option then as a result since the difference between the 9900K and whatever’s replacing it will be minimal since it’s still f o u r t e e n n a n o m e t e r s of disappointment.

But at the same time popular items like that frequently fall into the deceptive Black Friday pricing. 
So it may be cheaper. It might be the same price. 
I say wait regardless, just in case it is cheaper. Either you save some money or lose out on 20 days of not having it.

Would it be worth it then, instead, to try and tough it out for 10nm/7nm? I feel like that's going to be at least a year+. Maybe upgrade to something like an i5 9600k and wait for 7nm? What is the performance difference between 14/10/7nm?

[Coopermar]

16 minutes ago, Genwyn said:

The fabrication process itself doesn’t directly indicate performance but rather what can be done with the silicon when it’s that small. It’s why AMD is putting out 65 watt 8 core processors when previously we had 95 watt quadcores.

You can make higher core count, lower power processors with a lot more cache and better overall performance on a lower fabrication scale.

Intel has been on 14nm since skylake, and they’ve improved over time, but as they add more cores you watch that power draw go up and the actual performance per core stagnate.

 

My idea on waiting is that if you always wait for the next product you’re gonna be stuck with what you have forever. Realistically nobody should’ve ever upgraded from haswell until right about now. But people upgraded to skylake from haswell because they didn’t want to wait.

I say get a 9900K around Black Friday. Or a Ryzen 9 3950x if you want to go full high end. No point in waiting a year for Intel to maybe push 10nm or for something drastic to change.

Even if the 9900K is all but obsoleted by new tech in 2 years and costs 150$, is saving that much money worth 2 years of time and performance?

Okay, so then I get to the point where I have to make the decision of whether to spend the extra $100 on a 9900k rather than a 9700k. What does the 8 extra threads do? I could also opt for a i5 9600k, but I think the 9700k is well worth the price. I will use the cpu mostly for gaming, but want it to be competent enough in other normal everyday uses.

[dizmo]

Definitely wait for Black Friday, you can save a ton of money.

As far as waiting longer than that, if you play that game you'll be waiting forever; there's always something better just over the horizon.

 

15 minutes ago, Genwyn said:

That’s what I mean, it’s kind of a double edged sword. Chances are the 9900K will be cheaper due to the comet lake release, and it will be a better option then as a result since the difference between the 9900K and whatever’s replacing it will be minimal since it’s still f o u r t e e n n a n o m e t e r s of disappointment.

But at the same time popular items like that frequently fall into the deceptive Black Friday pricing. 
So it may be cheaper. It might be the same price. 
I say wait regardless, just in case it is cheaper. Either you save some money or lose out on 20 days of not having it.

Intel doesn't really lower prices on the release of a new chip. They simply sell through their current stock.

10 minutes ago, Coopermar said:

Would it be worth it then, instead, to try and tough it out for 10nm/7nm? I feel like that's going to be at least a year+. Maybe upgrade to something like an i5 9600k and wait for 7nm? What is the performance difference between 14/10/7nm?

The Ryzen 3600 is a better choice than the 9600k.

[Mister Woof]

Wait for BF.

 

Last BF I got a Ryzen 5 1600 and X370 motherboard for $149. The same deal existed with the 1700, but I was too slow.

 

This year I expect similar deals on Ryzen 2000 series.

 

Will be stupid crazy deal with a 2700/b450 for $149

[Coopermar]

9 minutes ago, Genwyn said:

Anything that’s good at using lots of cores and threads will see a massive performance increase. Video or photo editing, 3D modeling or whatever. Some games but not too many will use that many cores and threads, but if multitasking heavily it will be useful.

If it’s just for gaming then it may be pretty overkill. If you do any kind of professional work then you’d want the cores and threads but just for games go for the i5 instead.

Or a Ryzen 5 3600 if you want to go AMD.

Okay but specifically, the 9900k is 8/16 and the 9700k is 8/8. For gaming, will the extra threads make a huge difference? Cpubenchmark has the 9700k ranked higher for overall efficiency so it's a bit confusing.

[Coopermar]

Just now, Genwyn said:

For just gaming, no. The 8 extra threads are not needed.

 

Okay, thanks for all your help!