10th Gen vs 11th Gen Intel - Should I wait for the next gen before purchasing?

[cichington]

Hi all,

 

So currently 10th Gen Intel processor are on sale at Microcenter for a very good price.  I am in the process of planning and buying my next build to use for primarily gaming with some light AutoCAD work when needed.  I already have an RTX 3070 for my build.  Is PCIE Gen 4 worth waiting for or should I just bite the bullet on the 10700k?  I know 11th Gen will be better if I decide to upgrade down the line but I know for an 11th Gen i7 I am going to be paying at least $350-$400 (if they are in stock). The 10700k is on sale currently for $250.  Any advice would be great!

 

Thanks.

[_Dawnte_]

Assuming they don't get scalped again, It seems like intel has some good stuff upcoming so I'd wait 

[Moonzy]

if you can wait for more options, just wait

 

so far the news on 11th gen isnt great, but no harm waiting 2 more weeks, unless you're in urgent need of a PC

[trkgmssy]

Waiting feels better for me at least, i am planning to upgrade my setup, but 11th gen has some good benefits. 3200Mhz ram some ghz boost etc. 11th gen motherboards have more potential. At least see the game performance. (im waiting for 11400F i was going to buy 10400F, i almost ordered one but while searching saw the 11th gen leaks, i had to see before buying and 11400F looks very good for the same price (we know that it won't be the same price))

[Mister Woof]

I evaluated the information we have and determined that I would get a 10900k.

 

Reasoning:

 

The 11700k looks like it's only marginally better than the 10700k even with gear 1, and there's no way the 11900k can make up significant ground with only 100mhz more all-core boost.

 

Yes, the turbo TVB looks impressive on paper at 5.3ghz, but that never happens. It will be at its all-core turbo 99% of the time. Even if it is, there's no way that justifies the price hike of 35% over the 11700k. 

 

There's two ways to look at this, assuming both can do Gear 1/memory:

 

1. Both are totally tapped out and have little OC headroom, which would justify why Intel thought the i9 deserves to be an i9 for solely the minor increase in clock speed, then we know from historical information 100mhz isn't make or break for any CPU. The i9-11900k is not worth the 35% premium in this case.

 

2. Both have some headroom, with the 11700k having slightly less. Is there an appreciable difference in performance between a 5.1ghz 10900k and a 5.3ghz 10900k? Not really. It's then an assumption that the minor headroom on the 11900k isn't worth the 35% premium.

 

So that rules out the 11900k as a reasonable option. The i9-11900k pricing is legitimately Ryzen 9 5900x money. Which makes the i9-11900k DOA imo.

 

So that leaves the 11700k at $399, which at stock settings appears to be only slightly faster at gaming than the 10700k. If we cross reference that with 10900k data, we see that the 10900k routinely outperforms the 10700k in almost all gaming tests by more than the margin that the 11700k beats the 10700k. 

 

It's then an assumption based on known data that the 10900k will probably be at least within a few % points one way or another to the 11700k, and probably in some scenarios it's going to be faster thanks to it's higher clock speed and additional cores.

 

Then we look at the fact the 10900k (or 10850k) can be obtained for pretty cheap these days, for as little as $319 for the 10850k.  So you ask yourself, $399 for an 8/16 that is marginally (if at all) faster at gaming than the 10850k, or $319 for the 10850k instead?

 

At that point, it's price to performance, and the i9-10850k wins IMO.

 

Then all we REALLY have left is PCIE3 vs PCIE4. Is PCIE4 worth the 25% premium for the 11700k? 

 

I have almost zero faith the 11th gen will be good. D8baur thinks these chips might OC well because their dies are larger. It's possible, and I hope I'm wrong.

 

41 minutes ago, trkgmssy said:

Waiting feels better for me at least, i am planning to upgrade my setup, but 11th gen has some good benefits. 3200Mhz ram some ghz boost etc. 11th gen motherboards have more potential. At least see the game performance. (im waiting for 11400F i was going to buy 10400F, i almost ordered one but while searching saw the 11th gen leaks, i had to see before buying and 11400F looks very good for the same price (we know that it won't be the same price))

 

I'm running 4000mt/s on my loser bargain bin 10900KF at 5.1+ghz with 4.8ghz cache.

 

You won't see the 5.3ghz boost of the 11900k most of the time. It will be at 4.7ghz 99% of the time, as will the 11700k be at 4.6ghz 99% of the time. 4.8/4.7 if you can keep them under 70c.

 

You can use a Z590 motherboard, so it doesn't really matter.

 

I'll happily eat my words and call myself King Loser if I'm wrong, but I doubt it's gonna happen.

11900k - only if you are Team Intel

11700k - worth considering

10600k/11400/11600k - seems good for budget gaming

5900x - good choice for top end performance, unrivaled in its price class

5950x - unparalleled performance

10700k/10850k/10900k - good value with current discounts

 

 

[Dr0y]

Pci-e gen4 is only useful for ssd drives for now as not much gpu can saturate the pci-e gen3 except the 3090 I think ... as for future gpu release well there's no way to tell if it will be relevant or not ... and if future gpu will be available anyway ... since you already have a 3070 I suppose you're thinking about pci-e gen4 for that precise gpu and not some future upgrade. 

 

if you think your workload can leverage that bandwidth then yes 11th gen is worth waiting for ... or go amd if you can find some 5000 series chip.

 

You can always decide to buy a z590 motherboard in case you want to upgrade to 11th gen in one or two years ... also some z490 board support the pci-e gen4 so it's there too if you decide to upgrade the cpu.