best midrange/high-end cpu for thread-heavy gaming?

[VeganJoy]

so i play lots of games, and a good few make heavy use of physics calculations. games like beamng, kerbal space program, that sorta thing. i'm sitting on a r5 3600 right now with a 980ti, and am trying to find a high end card (2080ti or reference 6800xt/3080) in the near future to drive 1440p 144hz, so i think a better cpu would be a good pairing. choices i've considered:

 

secondhand 8-10 core intel: i can find a 9900k/10700k for <300, or 10850k/10900k for 375+. already have the cooling to deal with all that, though i'd need to find a board; z390s are pretty cheap now, but z490s are ~100 bucks more for similar skus. 

 

secondhand 8-12 core zen 2: i can find a 3700x for ~250, though i'd prefer to jump to a 3900x which runs about 350 bucks used. already have a board to handle it comfortably. 

 

after watching the gamersnexus video on heavily tuning the 10600k and 5600x, i see that the 10600k did (relatively) very well. so i wonder how a 10850k/10900k responds to fast memory and a heavy overclock similar to what they did, and how that'd compare to a 3900x or something. ideally i'd get a 5900x or something but that's a good bit more than i'd like to spend right now lol.

 

i know that for many games, 6 cores is more than enough, but i'm pretty sure that physics sandbox games and such benefit from extra cores nicely... but feel free to correct me lol. i appreciate any help that you can provide!

[xg32]

unless you can find a 9900k for 200usd, 5600x is the choice here. intel cpus aren't competitive atm.

[VeganJoy]

17 hours ago, xg32 said:

unless you can find a 9900k for 200usd, 5600x is the choice here. intel cpus aren't competitive atm.

even at 1440p? is the difference that high? i'd prefer to get a card in the price range of a 2080ti/3070 so i'd figure the difference would be even less; didnt techpowerup show a weird interaction between turing and zen 3?

[xg32]

18 minutes ago, VeganJoy said:

even at 1440p? is the difference that high? i'd prefer to get a card in the price range of a 2080ti/3070 so i'd figure the difference would be even less; didnt techpowerup show a weird interaction between turing and zen 3?

if you wanna game at 144hz it doesn't matter the resolution, the 5600x is the best choice, i wouldn't bother with intel at all, not sure about the turing and zen 3 thing, never heard of it, just wait for a 3070/3080.

 

If i had to put a generic number on the difference at 1440p, it'd be 10%, the difference between a 3070 and a 3080 at 1440p is about 20%, so that 10% is worth about 100dollars (or if u want, the difference between the 3080 and 3090), but that's just how i think about it, it's not a big deal to some.  If i was to build right now, there's no way i'm going intel. The difference between a 5600x at 4.8 and anything intel is HUGE.

[EspinalAndres]

personally I wouldn´t buy a 6 core CPU i have enough  with my old i5 8400 at 100% all the time while gaming, that could happen even on 6/12, so for me 8 cores is the sweet spot. 9900k/10700k are solid for 1080P.

[VeganJoy]

19 hours ago, xg32 said:

if you wanna game at 144hz it doesn't matter the resolution, the 5600x is the best choice, i wouldn't bother with intel at all, not sure about the turing and zen 3 thing, never heard of it, just wait for a 3070/3080.

 

If i had to put a generic number on the difference at 1440p, it'd be 10%, the difference between a 3070 and a 3080 at 1440p is about 20%, so that 10% is worth about 100dollars (or if u want, the difference between the 3080 and 3090), but that's just how i think about it, it's not a big deal to some.  If i was to build right now, there's no way i'm going intel. The difference between a 5600x at 4.8 and anything intel is HUGE.

how many 5600x's will hit 4.8ghz all core though? i've only seen two tech people with those kinds of chips, gamersnexus and i think derbauer had one. the rest were 4.6-4.7ghz iirc, which still aint bad. i'd like to see how that would compare to a 5.2ghz 10900k or similar...

 

19 hours ago, EspinalAndres said:

personally I wouldn´t buy a 6 core CPU i have enough  with my old i5 8400 at 100% all the time while gaming, that could happen even on 6/12, so for me 8 cores is the sweet spot. 9900k/10700k are solid for 1080P.

with the 8400's gimped clockspeeds and lack of hyperthreading, it's easy to max out its capabilities. for normal gaming, a 10600k/8700k/3600/5600x is more than enough at any resolution. 

[xg32]

8 minutes ago, VeganJoy said:

how many 5600x's will hit 4.8ghz all core though? i've only seen two tech people with those kinds of chips, gamersnexus and i think derbauer had one. the rest were 4.6-4.7ghz iirc, which still aint bad. i'd like to see how that would compare to a 5.2ghz 10900k or similar...

 

with the 8400's gimped clockspeeds and lack of hyperthreading, it's easy to max out its capabilities. for normal gaming, a 10600k/8700k/3600/5600x is more than enough at any resolution. 

4.6-4.7 is like 6.1ghz intel, obviously it wont all translate to gaming directly, but with ram tuning intel's completely behind now except rdr2

[VeganJoy]

26 minutes ago, xg32 said:

4.6-4.7 is like 6.1ghz intel, obviously it wont all translate to gaming directly, but with ram tuning intel's completely behind now except rdr2

ah yes, the recipient of gamers nexus' "Best CPU for Red Dead Redemption 2 at 1080p, Medium, with Dx12"  

 

probably gonna be a tossup between a 5800x/5900x and a 3900x/9900k/10900k; stock vs overclocked with fancy ram seems to be the same 5-10% difference at 1080p medium, which narrows with lesser gpus and higher resolutions. i can get a 10900k for much less than either zen 3 offering, and the difference between them seems to be less than the difference between zen 2 and intel which most people didn't really care about. everyone seems to have gone from "it's just 5-10%, go amd" to "holy shit it's 5-10%, go amd," and for 100-200 bucks i'll take the tiny performance hit lol

[EspinalAndres]

3 hours ago, VeganJoy said:

with the 8400's gimped clockspeeds and lack of hyperthreading, it's easy to max out its capabilities. for normal gaming, a 10600k/8700k/3600/5600x is more than enough at any resolution. 

yes, but the i5 10600k can go up to 90% on some games, an instance i just don't want to see anymore.