CPU upgrade, per-core performance

[Skrubbmeister]

Like many others, I've recently decided to upgrade when the Nvidia 3000-series releases. I will be deciding between the 3070 and the 3080, leaning towards the latter. And, of course, the big question here is the CPU bottleneck. I'm currently running an i7 8700 (non-k), which has served me well so far. The problem I'm having is that most of the games I play, such as World of Warcraft, don't have good utilization of several cores, so I'm mainly looking for per-core performance, without going above 6-8 cores (since options such as the i9 10900k, while they have attractive clock speeds, are hella expensive). I could stick with the i7 8700, but not having the option to overclock is a bit of a drag. What's the play here? Keep the 8700, or other suggestions?

[Guest]

New tech is not cheap. 

10600K would be a good gamer.

A 8700K would be a good gamer, but you don't have the K

 

 

[Haro]

wait for ampere to actually come out and check how the 8700 holds up with a 3070, it shouldn't struggle with a 3070 over all and especially in higher resolutions, but over all, it shouldn't be bad.

wait for ampere to actually launch and check the 3070's performance and how the 8700 holds up with a 3070 before upgrading. 

[AndrewZScorpion]

Definitely wait as TofuHaroto said. If you do end up upgrading, 9600k or 9700k would be good if you have either a Z370 or Z390 motherboard and are interested in overclocking.

[Nena Trinity]

10600 or 10600K if OCing is planned.

[Dr0y]

Even if you had a K cpu you could not OC without a Z motherboard.  Assuming you have one maybe you could offer to trade that non K plus some money from you for a K variant ... you never know and it might just work as someone can have a K cpu on a dead motherboard and would be willing to trade cause anyway he never bothered with OC and don't really care about OC and just need some money to buy another motherboard ... or some scenario like that ...

 

Also as the other said just wait and see how you cpu performs with the next gen gpu

[Skrubbmeister]

Thanks for the feedback guys, I'll definitely take a look after I see how my 8700 keeps up with the new card. The most recent unlocked i5's look promising in my case, since I don't need a load of cores, as mentioned.